Beginning Anew

an Easter sermon preached by Rev. Khleber M. Van Zandt V at First Unitarian Church of Alton, Illinois, April 12, 2009

 

I was awakened this fine Easter morning by a loud celebration of some sort outside my bedroom window.  When I woke up enough, I realized it was a lone wild bird that was carrying on excitedly about one thing or another.  I can mimic some birdsong, like the trill of bobwhites or the caws of crows.  But this was different, not so much a song as a blast of syllables without taking a breath in between… 

It was long before daylight and this singular little creature was creating quite the racket and demanding I pay attention to whatever it was that it was so excitedly trying to announce.  Good Lord! I thought, it’s 4 a.m.!  Can’t this wait?  As I lay there listening to the tumult but not quite understanding, I remembered something I’ve heard my daughter-in-law tell my grandkids when they get so excited that they’re hyperventilating:  “Use your words!  Use your words!”  Of course, the little bird was using its little bird words so I wouldn’t have understood what it was trying to say anyway.  As I think about it now, it was simply trying to get me to wake up and share his or her excitement at the beautiful new day waiting to be born out there just beyond the horizon.

 

It’s been a long, long winter here in our little piece of the temperate zone, and it feels to me like all of us have been hiding out indoors for way too long.  Now that the sun’s come out and the temperatures have risen some, the outdoors is calling – not only the little bird outside my window but the green grass and the profusion of flowers in the yard and in the park and all along the highways and byways.  In our backyard garden, we’ve had lettuce out for a couple of weeks, and it’ll probably do okay if the bunnies will leave it alone for a little while longer.  I put a few tomato plants and broccoli sprouts in the ground yesterday and that felt really good.  I’ve got some seedlings of peppers and herbs and sunflowers ready to go out if it ever feels like the danger of frost is finally past.  There’s life bursting forth out there, and I would dearly love to get out more and be a part of it all.

I like the work of gardening, perhaps because I don’t have to feel a huge responsibility towards any of it.  Spring would happen no matter what I choose to do or not do - it doesn’t seem like I have to do a thing in the world to have all this new life breaking in all around me.  I just show up without a care and without turning a finger and start partaking of the sights and sounds and smells and wonders of a resurrecting creation.  What a gift!  What a privilege!  Who am I to deserve such a thing?  It’s amazing, for sure, and – when I can remember to pay attention - I’m grateful beyond words.

On the other hand, I also have to realize that nothing much comes into being without a terrific struggle on someone’s or something’s part.  I think of what a lot of parents and families go through becoming parents and families, especially that interesting part about being heavy with child – not that I’ve ever carried a child around on the inside of me.  But I’ve read about it, and I’ve been close to people who have, as if that would ever qualify me to speak on the subject.  [But then, when has lack of qualification ever stopped me from speaking…?]

I remember in my earlier life, when I was part of a ‘pregnancy team’ years ago (in other words, when I was married to the mother of my children) - -  I remember helping plan for the blessed event, talking about what to do when the time came, talking about what labor pains might be like and how a person might get through such a painful time.  As part of our plans, we kept an overnight bag packed and close at hand.  We knew who to call, which hospital to go to, which family members would meet us at the hospital and what they would bring with them. 

But, you know, even the best-laid and most well-intentioned plans fall apart in the face of a new reality.  Labor pains announce the utter and complete disruption of life-as-usual.  When the time for new life comes, it’s always a surprise, it’s never like you’ve planned, and it always changes everything.  You can delude yourself into believing you’re ready for the new world, but the universe has a way of showing you who’s boss and letting you know who’s really in control.  Our neat and logical human plans get pushed aside and bowled over in favor of whatever pain comes next, whatever fear crops up, whatever joy creeps in to steal our hearts away.

In young families of whatever size or shape, new life is disorienting.  It’s hard to keep up with.  It demands your full attention.  The old ways of coping don’t work so well anymore and it takes energy and persistence to gain one’s grounding once again.

 

On other subjects:  Some of you will remember Garrison Keillor’s joke about Unitarians and Easter:  Garrison told about how all the other churches in his little town of Lake Wobegon would be busy on Easter morning talking about the resurrection while the Unitarians were over there in their place, huddled together discussing flowers and bunnies and trying every trick in the book to keep from mentioning “you-know-who.”

Well, I’ve already mentioned flowers and bunnies, so I may as well move on at this point to “you-know-who.”  In one of our readings this Easter morning, we heard my Christian teacher and friend Steve Patterson arguing that, from his perspective, it is Jesus’ life rather than his death that is of critical importance to a person like himself.  The wild and ancient claims about the resurrection and about the back-from-the-grave appearances of Jesus only make sense in light of the high esteem in which his followers held the teachings of Jesus. 

His ideas about the empire of God – and the ways in which he embodied that vision – were what caught people’s attention at the time.  Those first followers never imagined he had died for them or had died to somehow save them from sin and damnation – those theological trappings would be added much later in history.  To those who knew him personally, he was not a God who had decided to come to earth, but was a fully-human being who had achieved an enlightened and an enlightening vision of how life could be, how life ought to be, how life already was if you could but have ears to hear and eyes to see it that way. 

It may have been his announcement of the possibility of a new life that got Jesus into big trouble with those in authority.  This new life he was announcing would certainly have been then [and should certainly be now] intensely disorienting to those who had powers to hold onto and privileges to protect.  If you’re a scribe holding an important government or religious job, you may not want to hear about how the dominant paradigm is about to be overturned.  If you’re a Pharisee protected by your party bosses, you may not want to hear how all the networking you’ve done to get to where you are about to be rendered moot. 

If, on the other hand, you’re already expendable, if you’re someone who’s sitting right on the bottom of the social structure like a prostitute or a tax collector, or if you’re someone who’s already fallen completely off the bottom rungs of society like a leper or a person with a disability, you might be more than ready to hear of this new phase of history where the last shall be first, where the hungry will be filled, and where those who weep will at last be permitted a good laugh.

How would we fare in such a reversal?  It’s people like us who have some resources at our disposal who probably don’t want to hear that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the poor.  It’s people like me who stand in high places and talk a lot who should be most disturbed to hear that it is the meek who will inherit the earth.

Yes, this new empire that Jesus had announced would utterly disrupt life-as-usual:  those who mourn would find comfort, peacemakers would be exalted over warmongers, the pure in heart rather than the big givers would see God.

Among those first followers, the spirit of life had taken hold.  Healing had taken place.  Hope had returned.  A vision of a new world was coming into more and more complete focus.  And then, all of a sudden, he was dead – at the hands of the very authorities who had made life so miserable for so many, at the hands of the world that was supposed to be overturned by the advent of the new empire of God. 

All of a sudden, Jesus was gone, placed in the tomb, and sealed inside behind a seemingly immoveable stone.

 

If it was the blindness of the ancient world that put Jesus in a tomb, our world is no better.  So often, we, too, lack vision.  So often, we, too, lack the ability to see beyond ourselves.  We post-moderns are laid low by a multitude of sins that trap us in tombs of our own devising:  addictions, compulsions, fear, cynicism, arrogance, overwork, boredom, petty  bickering, the unwillingness to risk enough to grow.

These tombs of ours can feel like safe places, the familiar low-grade deteriorations a shelter from the tumult and uncertainties of the outside world.  When I’m locked away behind some seemingly immoveable stone, everything in my tiny space becomes comfortably routine, I know how things are gonna go, I don’t have to expend any energy being creative, and I can simply rest in the certainty of my misery and pain. 

But when Easter happens, and the morning rolls that stone away, and out beyond the limits of my vision a lone wild bird excitedly announces the coming of spring, then I am beckoned to come out from my resting place and to try again to participate in a life that is gift and privilege and undeserved.  I am invited to begin anew.

Not that a new life is ever easy. Not that it isn’t disorienting.  Newness is hard to keep up with, it demands attention, the old ways of coping won’t work anymore and it takes energy and persistence to find your grounded.  When new life comes, it’s always a surprise, it’s never like you’ve planned, and it always changes everything.  You can delude yourself into believing you’re ready for the new world, but even the best-laid and most well-intentioned plans fall apart in the face of a new reality. 

The universe has an uncanny way of showing you who’s boss and letting you know who’s really in control.  And thank goodness!  You didn’t want all that responsibility anyway, did you?  Life-as-usual costs more than you wanted to spend to maintain.

 

It’s Easter morning.  The announcement of spring has been made, you have received your invitation to participate, and now the decision is up to you.  Will you stay in your tomb, safe from the tumult and uncertainties of the outside world, comfortable in the certainty of your misery and pain?  Or will you risk everything you’ve known and everything you’ve owned to step through that open doorway into a new reality? 

What will you do?

 

So may it be.