Easter Day

On this high holy day, Christians celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus. As Unitarian Universalists, we can surely celebrate new life and the Goddess. 

Blessed and Happy Easter Day to everyone! 

I've been doing a lot of confessional preaching lately. 

"Confessional preaching" simply refers to my sharing 

  some of my own experiences as a way 

    to approach a given topic in a meaningful way. 

Today's sermon will be no exception 

  to the confessional preaching 

    that I have been doing. 

Easter is by far my favorite religious holiday. 

Easter and the whole concept of resurrection 

  and new life 

    have long been the most important concepts 

      of my faith. 

My father died on Palm Sunday 

  when I was five years old. 

The following Sunday, Easter Day, 

  I had my first experience of the hope and joy 

    we can receive 

      by celebrating resurrection and new life. 

Almost forty years later, 

  I had another powerful spiritual experience

    when I led the Committal Service 

        at my mother's graveside. 

I commented afterward, 

  "We really do believe those words we speak!" 

The words I had in mind were, 

  "Sure and certain hope 

    of resurrection to eternal life..." 

In my experience, the sure and certain hope 

  were closely related to my experiences 

    around celebrating Easter Day. 

Memories of my mother 

  are very much in my heart and mind 

    today and tomorrow. 

Today, April 4, is Easter Sunday, 

  and it represents the power of hope in my heart 

    which my mother and I shared so long ago 

      and for so many years since. 

My mother was born on April 5, 1910, 

  so tomorrow is the 111th anniversary of her birth. 

Another way of describing the number 

  of this anniversary 

    is to say that she would have been 

      eleventy-one years old tomorrow.  

The eleventy-first birthday 

    is especially significant for fans 

      of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. 

The birthday party 

  that begins the first of the three books 

    of the Tolkien trilogy 

      was the eleventy-first birthday of Bilbo Baggins. 

The birthday and the party were a new beginning, 

  setting in motion many events 

    which led to a powerful redemption story 

      for the people of all kinds 

        in Tolkien's Middle Earth. 

Likewise, I can feel a new beginning forming 

  around the eleventy-first anniversary 

    of my mother's birth. 

She laid the foundation for my faith 

  and for my life-long commitment 

    toward respecting the faiths of others. 

The new beginning I can feel is deeply personal, 

  but it does not belong to me alone. 

I am not one person by myself. 

There are many of us who believe 

  as my mother taught me: 

    People who are different from me, 

      whether they look different, think differently, 

        or speak a different language, 

          are still valuable as human beings 

            and worthy of respect. 

I'm looking for a new beginning of the rights 

  of human respect and dignity among us all. 

Naturally, my mother always has been 

  and always will be

    an important part of my heart and my life. 

Having "sure and certain hope" 

  that I will see her again 

    brings great comfort to my heart. 

The words, "sure and certain hope," 

  sound like a contradiction in terms, 

    but truly, deep down, they are not. 

We think of hope as something we hold on to 

  in the face of the uncertainties of life. 

When we aren't sure that something will happen, 

  we might say, "I hope so," 

    if it's something that we want, 

      or, "I hope not," 

        if it's something that we do not want. 

Those statements about hope 

  do not sound sure and certain at all. 

Yet hope is much more than saying, 

  "I hope so,"  

    or, "I hope not." 

Hope entertains the possibility of good things 

  that we do not yet see, 

    or the avoidance of bad things 

      that we hope not to see. 

Hope may seem far from sure and certain, 

  but at the same time, 

    it can represent an expansion of understanding. 

Hope can be the celebration of the possibilities 

  around something we are unsure about. 

I have hope for a new beginning among us humans 

  in which we will respect and care for each other 

    more and more, whether I live to see it or not.

Over the years of my life 

  I have learned that the concept of resurrection 

    and the hope for life after this life 

      has different meanings to different people, 

        and the meanings vary by time and place. 

The early Christians had an even wider variety 

  of expressions of faith 

    than Christians have today, 

      and there were many different faith traditions 

        that also had concepts of resurrection 

          and eternal life. 

The ancient Greeks and Romans believed 

  in a life after this life, 

    and they sometimes even used the term, 

      "resurrection." 

In many cases, they may have meant reincarnation. 

In fact, there is evidence 

  that some of the biblical writers 

    may have meant something similar. 

Today there are Christians who think in those terms. 

Some simply believe in reincarnation. 

Some consider reincarnation a form of resurrection. 

One way of integrating 

  the concepts of reincarnation and resurrection 

    came from a Roman Catholic friend 

      while I was in High School. 

As she explained it to me, 

  she believed that reincarnation 

    is a form of purgatory. 

Through reincarnation, she believes, 

  people can work through issues and problems 

    in more than one lifetime 

      if they need or want to do so. 

Others could come back as teachers 

  if their knowledge was not adequately shared 

    in a single lifetime. 

The concept of reincarnation as purgatory 

  was intriguing to me 

    because I have sought ways to find 

      meaningful connections among a wide variety 

        of ideas about religion and spirituality. 

In other words, 

  not only can we respect each other's ideas, 

    we can also learn from them. 

It is here, 

  in the respect and even acceptance 

    of differing ideas 

      that I find my own deepest connection 

        with the traditions of UU faith. 

One does not have to believe certain doctrines 

  in order to respect the faith and ideas of others. 

One is free to believe in certain doctrines, as I do, 

  and still be a UU. 

One need only treat others' ways of believing 

  - or not believing - 

    with true respect. 

What is more, even when we disagree, 

  and maybe especially when we disagree, 

    we can accept one another as human beings 

      with equal value. 

Early Christians did not always respect each other, 

  but they did have a wide variety of beliefs, 

    and many of those different beliefs became 

      part of the Christian faith tradition. 

Most of the ancient world believed in a variety 

  of gods and goddesses. 

Zeus was the Father God, 

  and many of the Christian ways of portraying 

    and understanding God the Father 

      were based on Zeus. 

His children, sons and daughters of the god, 

  were other gods and goddesses. 

I trust you can see where I'm going with this: 

  Jesus was called the Son of God 

    in a way that was not dissimilar to the way 

      Perseus and Hercules were called sons of Zeus, 

        among others also called sons of Zeus. 

What is not so well known is 

  that there was a feminine counterpart to Jesus, 

    Sophia, Holy Wisdom, 

      whose church was and is 

        among the best known in the world. 

It was the church Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, 

  today the mosque of AyaSofia in Istanbul. 

From ancient times, there has also been 

  a Goddess of Resurrection and Spring, 

    Persephone, daughter of Zeus and 

      Earth Mother, Demeter. 

The most ancient version of her story 

  was our story for today. 

She is important at Easter time in my view 

  because she is not only the Goddess of Spring, 

    she is also the Goddess Queen of the Underworld, 

      the Goddess of Resurrection. 

Her return to our world in the Spring 

  brings hope of new life to all living things 

    and hope of eternal life to everyone 

      who is learning to find hints of divine light and life 

        in our own lives every day. 

Easter is not the end of our search for hope. 

It is the beginning. 

We will keep searching! 

Amen. 

So let it be. 

Blessed Be.