Soul Force

Easter Lives On

Rev. Paul Sprecher

Second Parish in Hingham, www.secondparish.org

April 12, 2009

What an extraordinary week this is whose ending we have come together to celebrate this Easter morning. A week ago was Palm Sunday; kids, do you remember how we celebrated the story of how Jesus came into Jerusalem almost two thousand years ago, how the people greeted him as some sort of superhero? They expected that he would defeat the Romans who were oppressing them, that he would almost magically lead them to freedom even as they came to Jerusalem to remember Passover, their celebration of liberation from slavery in Egypt more than a thousand years before. Things went pretty well during much of the week, enthusiastic crowds came to hear what Jesus had to say, and then on Thursday Jesus gathered his disciples for what we remember as the Last Supper and warned them that he was going to be betrayed by one of them and handed over to the powers that be. One of the things Jesus did that night was to give his disciples a new commandment, that they love one another. He wanted them to care for each other, to care about each other, to be brothers and sisters to each other – the good kind, I mean, brothers and sisters on their best behavior! He established the Lord’s Supper that night, also known as Holy Eucharist, and he predicted that Peter, the disciple who fancied himself tougher and more loyal than any of the others, would deny him three times before the rooster crowed the next morning. Peter promised that he’d never do such a thing. Then they went out to the Garden of Gethsemene and Jesus was arrested and hauled away and all of his followers fled in terror. In the course of that night, Peter – bold and boastful Peter – did indeed deny that he even knew who Jesus was three times before it was morning. Kids, maybe you’ve broken a promise one time or another; maybe you’ve promised to keep your hands off the cookies or balls outside the living room and found the temptation a little too great when the time came to stand up for what was right. If so, you can empathize with Peter as he realized how badly he’d broken his brave promise of the night before.

Good Friday brought catastrophe. Jesus was sentenced to die by the most painful and humiliating method possible, a method the Romans used to suppress any revolts by their subjects. We all know how painful it is when someone or something dear to us dies, the emptiness it leaves us, the sense of loss, the grief. So of course the followers of Jesus were deeply shocked that Jesus had left them so suddenly, so completely, so alone.

So far, so good; we can identify with the people in this story, the bravado of Peter, the excitement of the crowds on Palm Sunday, the sorrow of the followers on Good Friday. Now comes Easter and suddenly the stories have a different character to them. Jesus seems not to be dead after all; Jesus is not in the grave where he was placed on Good Friday. We can speculate about what really happened, we can have debates about what is true and what is not true. What we do know for sure is that the followers of Jesus told each other remarkable stories about how Jesus was somehow not really dead and gone forever, how he continued to touch their lives even after that horrible death, how they had renewed hope which compelled them to tell the story of his life and his death. Rita Brock and Rebecca Parker in their new book Saving Paradise tell us that the earliest Christians believed that this renewal of life and hope had opened a paradise on earth for them, had lifted them out of despair to hope and renewal – but that’s a subject we’ll explore more in our service next week.

Easter is a holiday ideally suited for spring. The original events occurred around Passover, a spring festival as well as a festival of liberation, but as Christianity spread Easter came to be associated with ancient celebrations of spring in other parts of the world as well. Our English name for the holiday, “Easter,” comes from the Germanic god of fertility, Eostre, and the Easter eggs which decorate our egg tree are a reminder that eggs were suddenly plentiful in spring. Rabbits, or hares, were also symbols of the god of spring, and therefore symbols of life and of fertility. So while it’s not strictly true that Easter Bunnies bring Easter eggs, it’s certainly true that spring brings them both! In spring, life returns, flowers bloom, and we all emerge from our winter caves and heavy coats to greet the sun of spring another year. Just so, the followers of Jesus experienced that return of Jesus into their lives. They remembered how he told stories about how seeds have to fall into the ground and die in order to come back as new life, and they came to believe that Jesus was still with them in a similar way.

They told lots of stories about having experienced Jesus even after he was dead, among them the one from the Gospel of John we read this morning. One of the things these stories have in common is that his followers did not recognize Jesus when he first appeared to them. In the story we read, Mary Magdalene assumes that the figure who turns out to be Jesus is the gardener; it is only when he calls her by name that she recognizes him. Like the reports of angels appearing to people in the Bible, this appearance also has a kind of illusive quality; the main thing about this meeting is that Mary is given a task to do, to carry the news that Jesus is not really gone from among them to the other disciples; and then this brief encounter ends. These stories seem to have a particular message: It’s not so much about the nature of Jesus as it is about what his followers need to do next.

There’s another story in the last chapter of the Gospel of John, this one about the men, Peter and the other fishermen. They’ve returned to their old lives, plying the waters as they were when Jesus first called them to follow him. They weren’t catching anything, and Jesus called to them to try casting their nets on the other side of the boat. Suddenly their nets were filled to overflowing and only then did they recognize that it was Jesus who had called to them. Peter, always the bold one, rushed to be the first to greet him, but Jesus challenged him, asking if Peter loved him. Of course, Peter replied. Jesus said, “Feed my lambs,” and then asked again. Of course, Peter replied, and Jesus said “Tend my sheep.” But Jesus asked a third time, “Do you love me?” By this time, Peter is feeling hurt; surely Jesus knows the answer to this one! He says, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.” Perhaps by now it’s dawned on Peter that, just as he denied Jesus three times just two nights before, Jesus has tested him three times to make sure that he really means it this time. And finally, at the end of the story, he tells Peter simply, “Follow me.” The author of the Gospel of John concludes by saying, “But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” All we have, finally, are the stories that were told. The clearest message that emerges, though, is to be about the business of caring for each other and for those who need our help, as we have all done this morning in our Easter Offering to our Interfaith Food Pantry here at Second Parish.

Albert Schweitzer was a brilliant theologian and a first class organist. He concluded his book about trying to track down who Jesus really was by recalling that last appearance of Jesus to his disciples as they were fishing:

He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.[1]

Schweitzer, great Unitarian that he was, chose to follow. He became a doctor so that he could go to Africa where he believed the way led him, to undertake the tasks assigned to him. For each of us, there are tasks assigned if we would be followers of the way of which Jesus spoke; we must listen ourselves to know what those tasks may be. In our long Unitarian and Universalist tradition of freedom of conscience, we have always held that only the individual person can determine for him- or herself what these tasks may be. For us as for Schweitzer, when we pray “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,” we too are committing to follow, to find the tasks that have been set for us, to follow in the way and let our lights shine, let our lives shine. Each one of us, “wise or simple,” child or adult, has that as our task. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” It is in that spirit we gather. It is in that spirit that we go forth.

Amen.