Easter

We celebrate this High Holy Day of Easter as a festival of hope with Pagan and Christian origins.


On Good Friday morning,
  I heard one of my favorite historians,
    Jon Meacham, say,
      "Returning to the roots of our faith
        is a way forward."

For us UU's the roots of our faith
  are many and varied.

To quote from the "About Us" tab
  on our NIUU website,

"Unitarian Universalism affirms and promotes seven Principles grounded in the humanistic teachings of the world's religions. Our spirituality is unbounded, drawing from scripture and science, nature and philosophy, personal experience and ancient tradition as described in our six Sources."

Those are beautiful words
  for us to live by in our faith.

We can and do draw from those six Sources
  as the roots of our faith.

For Easter Day, I want to highlight
  two of the six Sources:

Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves,

and

Spiritual teachings of Earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.

(I'm full of quotes in this sermon, and I'm not done!
  These really do come
    from our own congregation's web page,
      https://niuu.org, under the About Us tab.)

Speaking of Jewish and Christian teachings,
  today we are thinking of Passover and Easter.

Both are remembrances of deliverance.

They are in no sense identical,
  but they are clearly related.

Passover is a celebration of Liberation,
  and it has been and will always be
    a source of hope for people who are oppressed
      in all kinds of times and places.

Easter is a celebration of Resurrection,
  and it has been and always will be
    a source of hope for people
      who are facing fear of death
        in all kinds of times and places.

In thinking of the spiritual traditions
  of Earth based spiritualities
    instructing us us to live in harmony
      with the rhythms of nature,
        we are learning to draw strength
          from the fits and starts
            of the arrival of Spring.

Spring brings to mind the Goddess, Persephone,
  whose story sings in harmony
    with the stories of Passover and Easter.

Spring brings new a beginning of life and growth,
  as in the story of Persephone herself.

Liberation brings a new beginning
  of the freedom and self-determination of a people,
    as in the story of Passover.

Easter brings a foretaste of fulness of life,
  now and in the world to come,
    as in the story of Easter.

All three of these Sources of our faith,
  Earth-Centered traditions,
    Judaism, and Christianity
      bring us hope
        in this time in which we need it most.

In our own times
  we are in particular need of hope.

Hope is by no means certainty.

We face many unknowns these days,
  and what we do know can appear
    overwhelming and terrifying
      if we stop to look carefully
        and wake up to the realities
          we and the whole world may be facing.

There will be a lot of suffering and death,
  especially among the most vulnerable people.

It can be difficult to sustain hope
  in the face of some of the information
    we are having to cope with.

Hope is still important, no matter what.

Speaking of hope brings me
  to yet another quote,
    one that is especially important to me,
      the great poem by Emily Dickinson:

Hope is the thing with feathers 
That perches in the soul, 
And sings the tune without the words, 
And never stops at all, 
 
And sweetest in the gale is heard;         
And sore must be the storm 
That could abash the little bird 
That kept so many warm. 
 
I’ve heard it in the chillest land, 
And on the strangest sea;       
Yet, never, in extremity, 
It asked a crumb of me.

I love that poem
  because it sings so beautifully 
    about hope, and I am trying to say
      that hope in abundance
        is exactly what we all need right now.

I have high hopes that our physical separation
  will result in a collective victory over
    the apocalyptic scourge
      that is threatening all the humans
        on our small planet.

I have hope for many other things, too,
  above all that we will learn some vital lessons
    as a result of the experience we are sharing.

We need each other so much
  that we cannot afford to be as divided
    as we were becoming in our society.

United we stand, divided we fall,
  is more than just a saying.

It is a reality that we are living.

Even a Public Service ad has been saying,
  "We stay apart now
    so that we can be together tomorrow."

What we are doing
  in physically separating ourselves from each other
    is fulfilling the call of our Source of faith
      in Judaism and Christianity,
        responding to the Love of God
          by loving our neighbors as ourselves.

I even have hope for those who are suffering most.

So many people are being hurt
  by the struggling economy
    that they are inspiring compassion
      in other humans.

Part of the compassion we are seeing
  is beautifully expressed in the following saying
    from freedhearts.org:

And then the whole world walked inside and shut their doors and said, "We will stop it all. Everything. To protect our weaker ones. Our sicker ones. Our older ones." And nothing in the history of humankind ever felt more like love than this.

I want to carry this concept of hope
  even further:

I have come to believe that no one ever dies alone.

One of the saddest phenomena
  of the fatalities of the coronavirus
    is that families and loved ones
      cannot be present at the bedside
        of its victims as they die.

Yet I take comfort from believing
  that no one dies alone.

The experience of people
  who have had near death experiences
    is that someone they know comes for them.

They do not face death alone,
  even when it is not yet certain
    that they will in fact depart this life.

Many of us have had experiences
  that affirm that experience,
    often from the words of loved ones
      who are near death.

My step-Dad's mother,
  on the afternoon she died,
    told him that two of her sisters
      had come to see her.

He said, "But, Mama, they died years ago,"
  and she replied, "I know, but they were here!"

Such experiences give me hope
  in times like these.

Despite all the appearances,
  I really am convinced that no one dies alone.

Despite the appearances
  of our present circumstances,
    I do believe that we can rely
      on the benevolence of the Universe.

That in any case is my hope.

At times like ours
  we need to reach deeply within ourselves
    to draw on the roots of our faith
      as a way forward.

Amen.

So let it be.

Blessed Be.