Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Duluth 
Easter: Tradition, Transition, Transformation
Karen Johnson Gustafson, April 8, 2007
It is easy, I think, to take this Easter thing waaay too seriously. I have been doing it for years. Jane Rzepka's essay in this month's newsletter for the UU Church of the Larger Fellowship (clfuu.org/quest , click "From Your Minister") was a complete breath of fresh air – permission to unstick myself from the last vestiges of my pre-UU search to align myself with a meaning shared by so many people that I love and respect – namely my Christian colleagues and friends for whom the death and resurrection of Jesus is a compelling and informing truth or at least metaphor for the possibility of human transformation and redemption. I have felt for a long time that I have needed to establish a relationship to that story that could translate into something life giving for me that I could in turn pass on to you.
For years, now, I have doggedly stuck to what Rzepka calls the "myth-miracle-mystery approach", where the stories associated with the season provide deep, quiet spiritual meaning. I have for the past several years avoided seasonal metaphors and other approaches because I have been sensitive to the angst that many of you feel about the particular story that has co-opted much of Western religious culture – so much so that the Jews must fight to assert the much older tradition of Passover born out of an entirely different story, a story that is largely eclipsed in the Western world in favor of the more compelling drama of death and resurrection.
Neither of these stories, as Rzepka points out, is central to Unitarian Universalism. Unitarian Universalists in general do not believe in much literal significance. What ties us to all of these stories and approaches to these seasonal holidays is that we DO believe in transformation and we DO believe in metaphor and we do believe in hope and possibility. This is what we tend to care about and upon what we tend to center our theology. What we know is that some metaphors speak to some of us; others to others. We know that transformation is something that many of us have experienced in our own lives in ways that are large and small, in ourselves and in those we observe. Some of it is simply natural – an embryo becomes a baby, becomes a child, becomes and adolescent, becomes and adult. Where did the child go? Transformation, indeed. Explainable through biology? Yup. Miraculous? Yup, that too. A bulb to a tulip, an acorn to an oak, a drug addict to a productive citizen, a grief stricken widow to a blushing bride, a cancer patient to a cancer survivor.
Each of these transformations has a story, maybe more than one. And when it is well told with enough universal elements, it becomes anyone's story. As Unitarian Universalists living in the northern hemisphere, we know that spring is all about transformation, regardless of the story we choose as our metaphor. A metaphor is, after all a way of reminding ourselves of an intangible truth when it is needed to address a tangible reality or answer a question that is not immediately answerable.
In the case of spring or resurrection or survival beyond loss or pain, we see the movement from dormancy or darkness through resignation, to the glimmers of hope and ultimately new life in some form.
What is difficult is that the new life is not always in the form we want or even need at the time.
The story of the life and death of Jesus as a metaphor is one that resonates for Unitarian Universalists. Most of us get the idea of martyr hood for an ideal. The basic teachings of this bold first century Jew are right in line with the principles and purposes of Unitarian Universalism. The accounts of his teachings include words like justice, compassion, responsibility, truth, love, peace. The early Unitarians used these as central teachings, claiming to be the religion OF Jesus not the religion ABOUT Jesus.
And this religion of his was important enough for him to defy the political leaders of the day and choose to ride into the city of Jerusalem amidst cheers and jeers KNOWING, if not from supernatural sources but from basic political savvy, that there was enough investment in silencing him that he would almost surely be arrested and put to death. Standing up for what we believe is a high value in our faith tradition so we can relate to this.
And he IS, according to the story, arrested and he IS put to death, hung on a cross as was the practice of the day. This is not unbelievable. Jesus is a deeply sympathetic figure a victim of injustice and political manipulation. He did not deserve the punishment he received. This, like so many such tragedies, begs for the transformation.
We as Unitarian Universalists resonate with the kind of transformation that comes when ideas outlive their author and the movements that result continue to be driven by the ideas that herald a long living and a greater good .
The story of Martin Luther King works for us as a metaphor for commitment to the cause of equal rights; the story of Ghandi works for us as a metaphor for how to speak truth to power. These stories work for Unitarian Universalists because they are grounded in the real and difficult human condition that understands transformation not as sudden and dramatic and supernatural but as gradual and flowing from grace and effort and moving with the ineffable laws of nature.
So, for many of us, the resurrection of the body is the point of departure from the Jesus story because it detracts from his humanity and shifts the attention away from the kind of transformation that comes from the subtle and far reaching immortality emanating from a life well lived and a message that transforms – like the cycles of plant that germinates with time, sends sprouts, grows leaves, bears fruit, dies and returns its nourishment to the earth that others might live. This is a wholly other kind of resurrection, of returning life to life.
This kind of resurrection serves as another kind of metaphor. It is the hope inspiring event that calls for the celebration of what has been transformed. It is the mother of all symbolic transformation events. The awakening of dead possibilities, of new life unexpected – in the words of the Rev.Victoria Safford:
"The dead shall rise again.
We know, because we've seen it.
We don't know, and never will, where the leaf's strength comes from in the spring. We don't know, and never will, entirely, where our own strength comes from. But we have known despair, some of us, and deep discouragement, some of us, and discord of the mind and heart, or disasters of the body or the spirit or in both. We have known dead hope, dead courage, dead caring, dead will, dead faith, dead vision, dead power, deep winter, and we have felt, perhaps when we least expected to feel anything at all, our own slow blood stir in the vein like maple sap, and something very small and tight within begin to swell and open up, urgent, imperceptible at first, then undeniable—love lives again that with the dead has been.
Did the sun come up this morning, no thanks to us and all for us, and did the earth awake again, or did it not?
We will testify to resurrection."
As Unitarian Universalists most of us do not believe in celebrating supernatural transformation at Easter. But we do believe in natural transformation and the celebration of milestones and turning points in life's journey. Birthdays, graduations, weddings, memorials, retirement parties, ground breakings and yes, even the promise of spring, we celebrate as a way of acknowledging individual and community achievement, endurance, commitment, not so much as ends but necessary stepping stones. We stop on the often tedious and mundane path which, day to day can seem like is going no where and take in the whole horizon – a years worth, an educational segment, a courtship, a lifetime, a career a year of seasons because from this vantage point we can see the small transitions, the little deaths and resurrection, as it were, that add up to transformation. We celebrate, not only for ourselves but for those who are struggling to believe that transformation is possible. Celebration generates hope.
The ancient followers of Jesus needed hope. They chose to find it in a supernatural event that ultimately became the central manifestation of their religious movement. We need hope. Unwilling to accept the supernatural, we still claim what is natural and manifest in our experience. Unwilling to accept the resurrection of the body, might we not claim the metaphor of resurrection as a manifestation of our need for hope.
Jane Rzepka says, Let's keep the spring holidays simple. What do you care about at this time of year? What theology rings true for you? How will you make it manifest?"
What an extraordinary invitation!
Today I invite you to lift up the possibilities for your lives; to take stock of the small rebirths and transitions that have graced your life since last month or last year; to claim what you care about and make it manifest; to celebrate all of that.
"We have wintered enough, mourned enough, oppressed ourselves enough.
Our souls are too long cold and buried, our dreams all but forgotten. We are waiting to rise from the dead.
In this, the season of steady rebirth, we awaken to the power so abundant, so holy that returns each year through earth and sky.
We will find our hearts again, and our good spirits. We will love and believe, and give and wonder, and feel the eternal powers.
The flow of life moves ever onward through one faithful spring, and another, and now another.
May we be forever grateful." Jane Rzepka
Alleluia.
Amen.