Sermon

INTRODUCTION: Some years ago while still living in Oklahoma, I made a date with a colleague at the University where I had an interim appointment. We chose to go to a road performance of the San Francisco Opera Company. It was a first date, and when I arrived at LaDonna’s home, she invited me in and then closed the door and locked it – which was not normal protocol for first dates, especially for a Methodist minister in Oklahoma. She then explained that her last boyfriend had just been there earlier, and made veiled threats if she went out with someone other than he.

Being the brave sort, I quickly pointed out that we had nothing invested in this relationship, and that maybe she should work out her issues with her old boyfriend before we went out. She assured me that their relationship was over, plus, she wasn’t going to let him get away with doing that to her…which should have been a clue for me.

Nonetheless, in a few minutes, we ventured out the door without incident, got into my car, I backed out and started driving down the residential street on which she lived. We had just passed the first intersection when her boyfriend came speeding out in his car, and actually bumped the back bumper of my car.

I sped up while calling 911 on my cell, and explaining my plight to the dispatcher. So as to underscore the gravity of the situation, and that this was not some adolescent kid’s altercation, I said, “Just so you know, Ma’am, we’re both 50 years old.”

I looked in the rear view mirror at her idiot boyfriend who was still pursuing us. I looked over at her. And I thought, “Geez, this opera better be good.”

In hindsight, I’ve often thought of how important our years can be, even one or two, especially as we age. My father was 12 years older than my mother. He had no reticence about giving his age, but Mother always hated it because she was concerned that people would think she was as old as Dad.

I like the late comedian George Carlin’s take on the matter of life and death. He wrote:

I think the life cycle is all backward. You should die first, and get it out of the way. Then you live in an old-age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work 40 years until you’re young enough to enjoy retirement. You get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating – and you finish off as an orgasm.

I always like to celebrate Easter and the Passover, both based on events that never happened. But there are some stories in our history as human beings that we have to draw circles around and say, this story is different. This didn’t happen like two plus two equals four, where black is black and white is white. This story is special. This story comes out of the wonder of being human. This story comes out of the glory of choosing to be a person of faith and hope. This story comes from that inner room of the soul where hopes and dreams are stored…where when doubt and despair are advancing on all sides, we can draw on the word that will instill courage and confidence against all odds…that will offer a fortress against the advances of those things that would destroy what really makes a society civilized and progressive.

In the dark night of the eternal soul, preserved and maintained by the people of the covenant and the Torah, there is a flame burning like the burning bush before which Moses stood. It does not go out. It is not consumed. Rather, it’s a light in the darkest darkness against ignorance and fear. When the ugly head of prejudice raises its head against reason and compassion, this flame of truth keeps burning and shining into the corners of fear occupied by racists and cowards.

The same for Easter. We should never discount the stories of faith which inform Judaism, Islam and Christianity. These are the stories that will give rise to the soul, that will uplift the human heart and create the music to change our mood and manner. We should always want to hear over and over the stories that have power and purpose, wonder and awe.

But what does the language of Easter mean in a pluralist congregation such as All Faiths…especially since humankind moved many centuries ago beyond the primitive worldview that believed in demons, in hell, in walking on water, in people being raised from the dead, in heavenly mansions and streets of gold?

So what is it we’ve replaced that language and those thought patterns with? Are we really an accidental, by-product of nature, the result of matter, plus time, plus chance…a mere spark in the infinite darkness that appears, flickers, and then is gone forever?

Loren Eiseley said that our species is the Cosmic Orphan. That we are the only creature on the Planet, and maybe in the Universe, which asks, “Why?” Other animals have instincts to guide them, but humankind wonders, “Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going?”

For certain, one of the tragedies of the modern era, especially among liberal religious, is that we have divorced ourselves from the ancient stories of faith. We’ve taken them to the laboratories for testing and concluded that they failed. We’ve reduced them to logic and experience and found them wanting. We’ve examined their narratives and found them conflicted.

That’s certainly true of Easter. In the modern era, we know there’s no way that any man at any time, died, lay for three days in the grave, and then came to life, floated around for 40 days and then went back to heaven where he is now god.

That misses the whole point, which is that we human beings, our species, has the capacity to face the worst of circumstances and events and not let them destroy us. That’s the message of Easter and it’s one we need to hear.

Our psyches cry out for affirmation and hope. We want to hear that, “Yes, life is important. Hope is real. There’s more to living than muscle and blood and skin and bones.” Or more importantly, our end will not one day be reduced to feeding tubes, and artificial breathing machines, and debates by loved ones over when to let go. Easter says without apology, life should be more than that.

But how should we appropriate what Easter says? First, let me say that, I doubt very seriously that Jesus would be a Christian today. He was a Jew through and through. He would be celebrating Passover and a Seder meal. His radical agenda for social and religious change is what caused him to be executed. It was so radical that it’s doubtful if he preached more than six months or so, before the authorities arrested him for what he said. He had no permanent address, no bed to sleep in, and was in great conflict with the religious and political leaders of his day. His constituency was the disreputable…those on the margins of society: prostitutes…those with the disease of leprosy…tax collectors for the occupying empire of Rome…and the racially despised. He treated women as persons of value in a society that diminished their worth, and he never said anything – not anything! – against persons of same sex orientation.

And yet! In the most unlikely of circumstances, his life became the model for faith in a way that began to compete with Judaism, its mother religion, and with the government sanctioned pagan religions of Rome. So much so that Christianity eventually took over Rome and transformed the whole of Western culture.

The message of Easter is that in moments of the greatest difficulty: when everything we have valued and dreamed of has been lost…when our deepest fears have become reality…when the promises we relied on have all been broken...and every account in life seems overdrawn...when we would give anything to fast forward pass the bad parts…Easter says, help is on the way. In the most unlikely of circumstances, faith finds a way to hold on until the tomorrow that encompasses all tomorrows.

Easter is a message for all faiths…all hearts…all visions…all dreams…all hopes. When every prop that has held you up is knocked out from under you…when every dream has vanished into the vagaries of yesteryear…when there is no thing and no one on whom you can depend…there is a message of faith that has lived through the ages.

It’s not faith to believe in the past. It’s not even faith to believe in the future. Rather, faith is the confidence to stare the present in the face, and despite all we know about our limitations, about what could be and might have been…to go ahead and put one foot in front of the other, to reach your hand out to a friend for help…and when there’s no friend there, to reach within and know that there is that within which was grasped by Jesus, acknowledged by Moses, proclaimed by Muhammad…namely, that there is within our Universe that which is more than muscle and blood and skin and bone…there is that within which looks defeat and doubt in the eye and turns to face tomorrow.

Faith is not about living forever, but how to live the life we’ve been given. It’s how to hold on…when the handholds have all been removed.

What helps us to live is not disputes about what happened 2,000 years ago or what didn’t happen…but what happened last week when we lost our job…what happened this week when we went to the doctor...what’s going to happen next week unless something radically changes.

What the religions of the world are about, and what their great myths such as Easter proclaim, is that there is a way to live in the midst of disappointment…that though defeated, we shall rise again…though we’ve experienced failure, we shall succeed…though we’re depressed we can know what it is to be happy and full again.

The question is never what happened back when…rather, it’s how whatever happened in all kinds of “back when’s,” intersect with our lives in the now…in this moment of time.

Some time back, I read the book, The Medici Effect, which sought to explain extraordinary achievements in various segments of our society. And one of the things that the book underscored was how many successful ventures were marked by failure, before they succeeded.

For certain, the life of Jesus could be viewed that way. But Easter came and his disciples found a way to say, He is not here in the grave, but he is raised. And so can we say about every tough experience, every failure and every disappointment.

I want to ask you now to turn the clock back to 1992. The one-time nation of Yugoslavia is hemorrhaging, with ethnic battles dividing a people who at one time were proud of their unity and diversity. Most never imagined the beautiful city of Sarajevo would be drawn in to the religious and racial hatred that had engulfed the rest of their land. But soon, the once proud site of the Winter Olympics was a battleground for vicious ethnic strife with constant battles and firefights.

During a momentary break, on the afternoon of May 27 of that year, a line of people rushed out to buy bread when the only bakery that still had flour opened briefly. A line snaked out the front door and around the corner hopeful of buying at least one loaf. But at 4 p.m. that day, a terrorist cannon shell was lobbed into the center of the city, killing 22 innocent civilians.

The next day people hid in their homes, hungry, but afraid…afraid to go to the bakery, for fear another shell might fall. Worried that they too might become another casualty.

But then one of the strangest thing that’s ever happened in war occurred: From his nearby apartment, Verdran Smailovic, the principal cellist of the Sarajevo Orchestra, appeared with a music stand and his cello in front of the bakery. At exactly 4 p.m., in the midst of the blood and the rubble, he began to play Albinoni’s, Adagio in G Minor:

For the next 22 days, exactly at 4 p.m., in honor of the 22 persons killed, he came back to play. When the people heard and saw Smailovic playing his cello in front of the bakery, and heard its beautiful music, they took courage, and rejoined the line to buy bread. And when the Bosnian Serbs began to attack the funeral gatherings of those who had been killed at the bakery, Smailovic started attending the funerals and playing there as well.

That’s faith…in the face of death all around him, Smailovic played the cello, and because of his gift of faith, they gained the courage to venture out again. It didn’t bring those 22 persons back to life. But it gave faith and hope to those who survived.

Faith is about facing the grimmest of futures and refusing to give in to despair. I submit that we have the resources of all our ancestors, residing within. We have the wisdom of the faiths of all ages. We have the capacity to claim victory over defeat, triumph over yesterday, and to celebrate the life we’ve been given.

[1] Presented April 04, 2010 at the All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, 2756 McGregor Blvd., Ft. Myers, FL, with the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.