A Sermon by the Reverend Ellen Rowse Spero
First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church,
Chelmsford, Massachusetts
March 20, 2005
Ancient Reading: Mark 16:1-8
Modern Reading: Mary Oliver, Maybe
Copyright 2005, Ellen Rowse Spero. All rights reserved.
I am putting my cards on the table. This sermon is not an historical or intellectual review of the life and times of Jesus. I have plenty of books and could do such a sermon. Actually, I would need several sermons to do it well. Instead, I am going to talk about why Jesus matters to me, as a Unitarian Universalist, how he is essential to my own spirituality, a guide, a mentor, a way to connect with God. So, I want to be clear that what I am offering is my own perspective, not THE truth but as my experience as part of what I hope will be an ongoing conversation. So, here we go.
I feel like I am caught in the middle between Christianity’s central focus on the worship of Jesus and his Kingdom to Come, and Unitarian Universalism’s view of him as a persona non grata. If anyone affirmed the inherent worth and dignity of every person, if anyone promoted justice, equity and compassion in human relations, if anyone encouraged us to accept one another and value spiritual growth, it was Jesus. For us to accept the Religious Right’s view of him and to cede him to them as a moral authority is crazy. To follow Jesus’ teachings would mean no death penalty, no poverty, no war, and I believe, no homophobia, no racism or the like. As a society, we would value and care for our children, our elderly, the ill, the prisoner, the refugee. As my favorite bumper sticker says "Jesus was a Liberal." We don’t need to claim him as the only voice of our tradition. But he can be one of the important ones, as historically, he has been, especially for the Universalists.
For me, Jesus is an embodiment of God’s love, or, if you prefer, the Spirit of Life that calls us to compassion, to our best selves. Jesus was a human being, fully so. But he was not just a Really Nice Guy. He knew God and God’s love in a way that was radically different from what had come before, and yet, at the same time, was deeply grounded in his own Jewish faith. Jesus took the message of the Hebrew prophets to "do justice, love kindness and walk attentively with God" and lived it out through a radical hospitality. He welcomed to the table those who had been denied their humanity because of their gender, their ethnicity, their work, their perceived illness or disability, or their social class. Jesus modeled a life of ministry grounded in feeding and healing, one that asks us to give over our lives in service to others in the ways of compassion and justice. The words of Jesus that clutch at my heart, and reflect the heart of my call to ministry, lay out this nearness and simplicity of what he called the reign of God, or Shalom, what the Buddha called Nirvana, what we are grasping for when we talk about wholeness, healing, peace, justice: "You shall love the Holy with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ (and) ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these." Or, as he tells his disciples: "I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me…(for) truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’"
Like the Buddha who was transformed by his awakening into something more than the man, Siddhartha Gautama, Jesus is more than just his words of wisdom, more than just a Really Nice Guy. He embodied the Holy, the Spirit of Love, of Compassion, giving it human voice and making it accessible to human touch. But living, loving and serving so deeply in both the realm of the Holy and the realm of humanity require sacrifice. Walking attentively with the Holy is demanding because the call for justice and compassion is so clear and urgent. It is bound to make some people, particularly those comfortably established in the status quo, very angry and very afraid.
And that is why I believe Jesus was crucified. It was not in atonement for our sins. In making the Spirit of Love accessible to human voice and human touch, he threatened those happy with the status quo, the powers-that-be in both the ruling Roman Empire and among his own people. But Jesus refused to be afraid, or rather, to allow his fear to separate him from God. That was his leap of faith that carried him through his last supper with his disciples, his dark night of the soul in the Garden of Gethsemane, and through the terrible ordeal of his death. So, we cannot take only the story of his life into account. We must also wrestle with the story of his death and resurrection.
For this, I turn to the Gospel of Mark. Mark is the oldest account of Jesus’ ministry, death, and resurrection. It has three endings, one added in the second century and the other in the fourth century. But originally, Mark’s Gospel ended with Jesus’ female followers fleeing in terror, too afraid to speak. The uncomfortable, unfinished quality of the original ending moved the Church Fathers make it match the other gospels. But to me, this ending relates most faithfully the original telling of Jesus’ resurrection.
The abrupt ending, with the women silent and afraid, leaves us with many questions: Why did the women not speak of what they had seen? Why were they afraid rather than comforted? What happened? These questions return us to the beginning of the Mark’s story: the sudden appearance of this man Jesus with his powerful words and acts of healing, his parables layered with meaning, his obvious but mysterious relationship with God. And so, the story gets told again and again, its ending bringing us back to its beginning and the story of Jesus’ life.
The other thing of course is that the women did not keep silent. They eventually overcame their fear and spoke. We wouldn’t know the story unless they had. So, what is going on here? Why end with silence about Jesus’ resurrection rather than celebration?
Let me offer some context. The theme of what Jon Levenson calls "the death and resurrection of the beloved son" is deeply grounded in the biblical tradition, beginning in Genesis with the story of Abraham and both his sons Ishmael and Isaac. Again and again, a beloved child faces death. Each time the story is told, there is a different twist. God opens the eyes of Hagar, Ishmael’s mother, to a well that she might save her son from dying of thirst. Then we have God’s terrible command and Abraham’s unquestioning obedience to sacrifice Isaac, with Abraham’s hand stayed by God at the last minute. In the Book of Judges, the warrior Jepthah unthinkingly offers as a sacrifice the first person he sees, following a victory in battle, only to have it be his beloved daughter. No last minute rescue comes in this tale. In 1 Kings, God, at the demand of the prophet Elijah, resurrects the dead son of an impoverished widow. Jesus resurrects a dead girl, the dead son of another impoverished widow, and his beloved Lazarus. For Jesus’ disciples resurrection was a central theme of their faith. So, God’s ability to resurrect Jesus would not have been an issue of faith: of course God could do that! That was not was new, amazing, terrifying, and ultimately, glorious about Jesus being resurrected. For them though, this ancient paradigm of their faith had been given a new twist.
Something happened. Something happened so powerful as to leave speechless those who had already witnessed Jesus’ radical hospitality and gifts of healing in his lifetime. Jesus’ followers were initially devastated and destroyed by his death. They ran and hid. They denied knowing him. They abandoned him on the cross. They were shattered to learn that Jesus was not what they thought: the Messiah, the Warrior King sent by God to overthrow their oppressors and rule with righteousness and justice (sounds a bit like the Buddha, no?).
Then IT happened, a leap of faith that changed the hearts and minds of Jesus’ followers. Death transformed Jesus: it revealed him to be something other, more, than the disciples had first realized. They recognized something that they had not been able to see when Jesus was alive and with them. His death should have ended things. His ministry, his message, his power, should have died with him. But that did not happen. And these disciples, unfaithful and fearful failures, found themselves transformed. In the words of Mary Oliver, "they felt their souls slip forth like a tremor of pure sunlight." They were empowered to speak, to heal, to continue to build the community of faith, of justice, of love that Jesus had begun. The spirit of Jesus, which was the Spirit of Love, was now in them. And now they were to embody what he was, what he is.
Maria Doria Russell writes, "The pattern was established at Sinai and under the Buddha’s tree, on Calvary and at Mecca, in sacred caves, at wells of life, amid circles of stone. Signs and wonders are always doubted, and perhaps they are meant to be. In the absence of certainty, faith is more than mere opinion, it is hope" (p. 430, Children of God). Jesus’ resurrection is a sign, a wonder, of faith. In the absence of certainty, it claims trust in the mystery as well as the love of the Holy. It does not try to prove anything, for the Spirit of Love does not seek proof. The story of Jesus’ resurrection is not about ascertaining fact versus fiction. It is about engaging in the story and coming to experience hope as well as fear in the face of mystery, and growing faith from that hope. It is to believe that despite all we see in the world, that Love is stronger than death. Than fear. Than hate, Than injustice. Than racism. Than homophobia. Than misogyny. Than all the forms of oppression and dehumanization we can think up. There is a Spirit of Love, a Spirit of Compassion, in us, between us, around us. Whether we believe it comes from the Divine or from within the human heart, or both, it pulls us towards our best selves, toward wholeness, toward Shalom. And it is through the courage and sacrifice of those who give it a human voice, who make it accessible to human touch that we know it: ancient and modern, from different faith traditions, whether it is Micah, Jesus or the Buddha, whether it is Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. King, or Mother Teresa, whether it is those many anonymous people who make the decision to act against the bullying powers of oppression and dehumanization, like the family that hid my mother and grandmother during World War II. Like the hotel manager, Paul Rusesabagina in Kigalia, Rwanda who hid those fleeing from the genocide. Like Vedran Smailovic, the cellist from the Sarajevo Opera who, during the siege of that city, played everyday for 22 days the Adagio by Albinoni at the spot in the marketplace where 22 people had been killed in a mortar attack.
So Jesus remains an important presence in my Unitarian Universalist faith because he offers a path for me to follow that deepens my connection with God, with my fellow human beings, and with my own soul. The story of his death reminds me of the cost and sacrifice of speaking the truth to power as well as speaking the truth in love. That I cannot minister out of a place of fear. The story of his resurrection reminds me that faith grounded in love can transform despair into hope because the power of love is stronger than that of fear. But still, ultimately, it is the story of his life and ministry that resonates and speaks most deeply to my very Universalist theology. For me, that is where his true power reveals itself. Jesus reminds me that Shalom--or whatever name we give to our vision of a healed and whole world, a world where the spirit of peace, justice, and compassion reign--is among us, and close at hand. We need only to have the courage to lift the veil and respond to the Spirit of Love, by seeking justice and embracing loving-kindness for one another.
Resources:
Jon D. Levenson. The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
Mary Doria Russell. Children of God. New York: Fawcett Books, 1998.