Reading: John 20: 1-18

Sermon

"The Easter Miracle" Vanessa Southern

For many Christians the world over today is the most joyous day of the year.  Why is that?  What does this day mean to them?  And what does it mean to us as Unitarian Universalists?

Well, today is the day that many Christians celebrate an incredible miracle that they believe took place over two thousand years ago.  The miracle was that on this day that Jesus, dead by crucifixion, was brought back to life and taken by God up into Heaven.  Today they celebrate (and some of us do also) that Jesus is still alive, walking the cloudy byways of heaven, keeping watch over us, and waiting to return to be with us again.  Many folks take the story Pat read to us today as literally true and celebrate its reality.

Many Unitarian Universalists are probably closer to Thomas Jefferson in their approach to miracles, including the Easter Miracle.  Jefferson took a pair of scissors and cut all the miracle stories out of the Bible, because as a man of science, he said he didn't have a place for them in his faith. He was a disciple of the teachings of Jesus, he said.

Or perhaps some of us are merely agnostic about miracles.  That is, we might like to believe in a God who splits seas to free the oppressed and raises Jesus from the dead, but... well... it's impossible to KNOW if it really happened.  So, we table the issue.  As Augustine wrote, "Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature."  In other words, who knows?!

On the whole question of miracles I am a fan of approach of the Reverend Peter Gomes'.  Gomes is the Chaplain at Harvard University's Memorial Chapel.  He suggests that too often religious folk get caught up in asking 'whether or not' or 'how' miracles could have happened. Could the tides at certain times of the year have made the Red Sea appear to part? Did an earthquake roll that rock away from the tomb's entrance?  Yet, Gomes writes: "The question to put about a miracle is not 'Is it true?' or even 'How can this be?' but rather, 'What does this say?'" (Gomes, p. 140, Sermons).  Miracles, he says, are in essence simply messages.  So, the question we should be asking is what is the message of the Easter story?

As Princeton theologian Diogenes Allen writes, "Mysteries to be known must be entered into." So, let us, for a moment, enter into the story.

For this story to make any sense, we need to begin on Good Friday.  We need to enter the story with a Jesus on a cross, betrayed, scorned, murdered by his fellow human beings out of ignorance, ugliness and fear. One very gentle and good man has been the victim of the worst humanity has to offer.  The sky is black, the curtain in the temple is torn, and there is an ominous feel in the air.  "Will human evil have the last word," is the question that rings out on this day.

Late that Friday, Jesus is taken down from the cross and laid in a tomb.  Enter Mary Magdalene.  Some say she is his disciple, some scholars say possibly his wife.  No matter what the details, it is clear that she is someone who loves Jesus deeply.  Yet, for two days Mary Magdalene has not been able to prepare Jesus for burial.  She has not been able to clean him and anoint his body with special oils, as was the custom, because Jesus died on the Sabbath and Jews were forbidden to work on Sabbaths.  So, as the sun sets on Saturday night and the Sabbath and its restrictions against labor end, Mary heads to the tomb to prepare Jesus' body for burial.  At dawn she finally arrives at the tomb.

This woman must have been like a corpse herself this morning.  I imagine her weak from crying and bent over from sadness.  What she loved most in the world, gone and she hasn't even been able to even care for his remains, give him his last rites.  What is worse is that when she arrives at the tomb, she arrives to see that the huge rock that blocked the entrance of Jesus' tomb has been rolled away and that his body is missing.  She assumes what you or I would under the circumstances.  She assumes the worst -- that Jesus' enemies have taken the body to defile it.  She runs to her friends Peter and Simon to help her look for it.

And then comes the comic relief in the story: Mary returns to see two people seating where the body would have been.  They are angels.  You can almost imagine them in white clothes with halos.  However, in her agitated state, he misses these details and asks them where the body is.   Then, she sees Jesus himself and (it only gets worse), thinking him the gardener, she asks him the same question.  It is only when Jesus says her name that she realizes it is him.  Then he tells her the good news -- that he is not only alive (THAT she can see) and that he is being taken up into Heaven to be with God.

In this moment, as confused and frightened as she must be, Mary knows at least one thing: she knows that neither death nor evil has had the last word!

The likelihood or scientific probabilities of bodily resurrection aside, let us ask as Gomes invites us to ask, what is the message of this story?  What is the Easter story, even the Easter miracle trying to tell us? Well, for me, it is this:
That tragedy and loss don't always have the last word.  That sometimes the Phoenix (like this congregation) can rise from the ashes and hope can be reborn from the loneliest of nights.
That doing all we can some days to banish goodness, to be careless with the God among us - humanity is forgiven.  That there are second chances.
It is a message that something -- call it God, call it the force of love in this world -something refuses to give up hope on us.  Indeed the God who seemed absent at the cross, is very much present at the tomb.
So, evil may have its day, but never will it claim much more than that.  And we are never alone for long!

Peter Gomes writes, "the essence of a miracle is not in its power, nor in its extraordinary capacity, nor in its ability to attract attention and high visibility, but rather in its capacity to meet and to satisfy a need." (Gomes, p. 140, Sermons)

The need, then, that Easter responds to, is our need for love without bounds, our yearning for acceptance by that which knows us better than we know ourselves.  It is the need for second chances and it frees us to live the lives we were meant to live.  No more need there be fear of failure or a sense of ourselves as lost causes.  If the tombs can be emptied for the people responsible for Good Friday, surely resurrection and new life is possible for us.

May we take this message to heart, practice resurrection in our lives, let go of what is dead, and embrace new life.  May we love and forgive ourselves, offer second chances to ourselves and others, knowing the power of such second chances to remake the world.  And may we know hope is never lost and we are loved abundantly, NO MATTER WHAT.  That, to me, is the miracle message of Easter.  And it is ours to live.  But only if you believe in it!

Happy Easter, everyone.
 

Today we have heard the story of Easter, a great miracle in a world filled with lesser, everyday miracles.  Easter always comes at a time in the year when the world around us is reawakening for another round in the endless circle of life.  Trees and plants seem to have been reborn from a dry and lifeless state.  Birds and animals emerge from their winter shelter.  Spring brings a rebirth of the life-giving forces that have sustained our interdependent web of life for as long as anyone knows.  Another miracle?  Some might call it that.  Some might say that it is just a natural process, a constant rebirth and renewal that is taking place at every moment, everywhere on our precious planet.  Each one of us is a part of that great cycle.  We are born, we grow, we flower, we fade.  Now we invite you to experience a small miracle with us.  In my hand is a bulb.  A gladiola to be exact.  It is dry and brown.  No green sprout, no fine roots, nothing that would lead us to believe that life is ready to burst forth in glorious green and soft pastels.  With this bulb  I give you, one fairly small miracle.  As you leave this morning, we will offer each of you the gift of a bulb.  Please take it home if you wish or you can plant it here on the church grounds.  Please note that a bulb has a proper top and a bottom.  The bottom usually has some dried root hairs on it and the top is slightly pointed.  Planting it right side up and about six inches deep is highly recommended.  Whatever your technique, I invite you to plant it, nurture it, be a witness to its rebirth, cherish it, believe in it.  It is a miracle.