Why Do I Celebrate Easter?                                      a sermon by Sarah Movius Schurr

So you may notice I am wearing a hat today. Well, it is an Easter bonnet to be exact.  I have always loved to wear a hat to church on Easter.  When I was a little girl I always got a new spring dress for Easter, and to go with it, my mother would take me to the local Rodgers variety store for one of those little white Easter hats.  Sometimes I would even get white gloves.  I felt like a princess in my fancy Easter outfit, but generally I could not leave the hat on for more than 5 minutes because I hated that elastic strap under my chin that held the hat in place. But 5 minutes was enough time for the little old Norwegian ladies in our Lutheran Church to see me and make an appropriate fuss.  Now, I no longer seek out the patronizing pats of little old Norwegian ladies, but I still dress up for Easter Sunday every year.  And when my kids were little and I still could, I dressed them up for Easter as well, including buying my daughter a little white hat and sometimes even gloves.

This dressing up for Easter goes along with the whole excitement of the Easter eggs, the Easter basket with a chocolate bunny, and a big Easter brunch with my extended family. I think of this as a cultural ritual, a part of our society.  Like the start of little league baseball and hay fever, Easter celebrations, with all their commercial trappings, are one of our ways of knowing that the winter is over and it is time for spring.  For lots of people I know, this is what Easter is all about. It is a time of celebration with family.  It is a time of chocolate bunnies and colorful eggs.  (take off the hat now)

But why do I celebrate Easter anyway?  I am a Unitarian Universalist, and we don’t really do Easter, do we?   I once heard that Unitarian Universalists believe that Easter is the day Jesus comes out of the tomb and, if he sees his shadow, we have three more weeks of basketball. I love celebrations, and heaven knows I love chocolate!  But I have some additional reasons for celebrating Easter.  They are religious reasons because, for me, Easter is a religious holiday. Now keep in mind, my kids tease me that I think EVERYTHING is religious.  Occupational hazard, I guess. And Easter is perhaps not a religious holiday for me in the same way it for my Christian friends.  I do not celebrate the physical resurrection of Jesus.  I don’t believe Jesus died to save me from my sins and came out of the grave three days later. But Easter is religious for me none the less, for two reasons.  These are what I want to share with you today.  And I will give you a hint, Jesus is a part of the answer to why I celebrate Easter.

I have always found the workings of Mother Nature to be truly miraculous. How many of you have experience a transcendent moment when looking at the splendor of the natural world?  And in the spring, Mother Nature is really busy.  I once had a friend tell me that in the spring, “the whole darn earth is pregnant”.  Bulbs are coming out of the earth and we see yellow daffodils, red tulips, and purple hyacinths.  The trees that have been bare for so long are now covered in new green leaves.  Azaleas and flowering quince bushes are showing their colors all over town.  Even the bugs, dormant during the cold winter, are buzzing around.  The squirrels and ducks are chasing each other around with the passion of the season.  As the old English song goes, “Now is the month of Maying when merry lads are playing. Each with his bonny lass, upon the greening grass”.  No wonder it is spring that so many ancient traditions choose as a time for celebrating new life and fertility.   We decorate with figurines and pictures of rabbits and eggs, all ancient symbols of life and fertility that have been adopted into the Easter holiday from their ancient and pagan roots.

Long ago, in pre-Christian Europe, folks had no electric light or gas heat, so winter was a long and difficult time.  I think about those cold, olden-days every time we have an ice storm and the power goes out.  Winter without electricity would seem really long and hard.  When winter started to fade, that was absolutely a time for celebration.   People believed that spring and the warmer weather were brought by the spring goddess.  In March they had celebrations in her honor, to invite her to come back to them soon.  And the goddess always did come, every year.  The spring goddess was called Ostara, or Eastra.  That is where we get the name for the holiday of Easter, is from the spring goddess.  Pretty cool, huh?    Other Easter celebrations have ancient roots as well.  The word Lent comes from the old word “Lenten” which means springtime.    Spring celebrations in many countries include wearing costumes, such as the masks and costumes of Mardi Gras.  In Sweden, children dress as witches when they deliver Easter cards to the homes of friends and set of firecrackers in the street to scare away bad luck. The tradition of these costumes comes from the ancient times when people wanted to frighten away the demons of winter to allow room for spring.    Spring fertility rituals of planting spring flowers and gathering the first blooms of pussy willow evolved into the tradition of planting an Easter garden, or Mary Garden. 

I think the need to celebrate the coming of spring and new life is instinctive.  People have always done it, all over the world.  From the Pagan Beltane celebrations of fertility to the to the Easter celebration of life rising out of death.  It happens over and over. After a long winter of cold and darkness, we are somehow transported to joy and celebration by the changes in the earth in the spring.  I think even those who may shy away from religious language or even the ideas of a religious thought can find them selves in an attitude of awe and thanksgiving when faced with a beautiful spring day.  This is an innate human spirituality that surpasses different religions, different cultures, and different ages.   It is the miracle of earth.

The other religious aspect of my Easter holiday has to do with the Jesus story. I am a Unitarian Universalist, yes, and I really do find meaning in the Easter theme of life overcoming death.  I am not speaking here of physical resurrection.  I think that is a biological distraction from what I see as the real message of the Jesus story.   But Easter offers religious liberals an example, in the Jesus story, of how we all overcome death with our life. Please allow me to tell you my version of the story of the Passion of Jesus.  It is a little different than Mel Gibson’s version, I assure you.

Jesus was a young Jewish man of deep religious faith.  Though from a very modest family he was schooled in the Torah, the holy book of his people.  He had a natural aptitude for religious thought.  Even as a kid he could be found discussing theology with the elders at the temple. Jesus had a vision of how the world could be better. He spoke to people about love, and justice.  He cared for the poor and the sick.  He spoke to religious leaders and beggars with equal comfort.   This is hard enough to do today, but must have been even more of a challenge in the class-oriented society of the ancient Middle East.  Jesus was a pretty amazing guy with a lot of charisma.  He became a popular speaker and social and political activist, taking his messages of love and justice around the countryside.  He had a group of men and women who hung out and traveled with him as he spoke at gatherings and impromptu rallies.  He was quoted as saying things like, “blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth, blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy, blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God”. 

Lovely words with lovely sentiments.  But some of his words had more of a radical edge.   He challenged the people and reminded them they had a higher authority to answer to than the local or occupying Roman governments.  Here is an example. Local religious leaders brought him a woman who about to be stoned to death for the sin of adultery.  They wanted to see what Jesus, this religious radical, would say about following the law of God, as they had always understood it.  This was not a random and angry crowd.  Stoning adulterous women was a well-accepted form of punishment in their legal system, as it still is in some parts of the world today.  The woman who was being punished might have been a local prostitute, who may have had customers amongst the town leaders ready to kill her.  Jesus looked at the group. He played in the dirt for a while, showing little regard for men who tested his convictions this way. Then he said, “now, he who is without sin cast the first stone.”  The town elders were the first to leave the area and no stones were thrown at that woman. But you see that by stopping that execution that day, by calling on the conscience of the community, he was rocking the boat of society.  He was upsetting the order and challenging the laws.  Love, compassion, and justice can be ideas that radically challenge the status quo. Jesus reminded people in many of his stories and speeches they had to answer to a higher authority in their behavior than that of the temple or the governmental leadership.  As in this famous story of the Good Samaritan…A man was walking down a road between two towns, the ancient Middle Eastern version of a dark alley.  Sure enough he was attacked, beaten, and robbed.  He was left for dead by his assailants, naked and bleeding by the side of the road.  Along came a priest who saw the man, and crossed to the other side of the road to avoid the bloody crime scene.  Next a Levite, a lay leader in the church and community, came down the road.  He also passed by the man lying unconscious by the road.  Thirdly, a Samaritan came by and he stopped to render aid.  Because of this famous story we think of a Samaritan as a nice person, but to the original listeners of this story the Samaritans were the foreigners who would not be expected to show mercy to any Jew.  The Samaritans were often looked down on as second class citizens.  This kind Samaritan put medicine on the man’s wounds, put him on his own horse and took him to town.  There he paid the innkeeper two denari, two months rent, to care for the man as he recovered.  Jesus charged the listeners of this story to be like the Samaritan in the story, the one who showed mercy, rather than the upstanding civic or church leaders.

Jesus was drawing large crowds wherever he spoke.  He was causing quite a stir with the powers that be.  His cousin, John the Baptizer was arrested and put to death for his rabblerousing. When challenged on the topic of taxation Jesus said, “give to the emperor what is due the emperor, but give God what is due God.”  What was the government going to do with this Jesus person?  I believe that Jesus was no fool and he had a keen insight into people and how they work.  He knew the writing was on the wall and that those in power would not let him keep this up.  But he did not back down from his work or preaching his radical ideas of justice and love.  He decided to make a truly bold statement.  He went to Jerusalem and he went at the season of Passover.  To put this in a historical context, that would be like marching into Washington DC on he Forth of July.  This was a major city and this was a very important time of year.  As he rode into town, crowds gathered and began putting their coats on ground and cutting palm leaves on the road to make a grand parade.  They had no permit for this demonstration and the crowd was filled with the young and the sick and the poor.  But there were lots of them and they really loved this guy.  They cheered him as he came into town.  That had to scare those in power and they began to plan how to get rid of him.  The local leaders said it was better to have one man die than a whole nation destroyed.  They feared that a popular Jewish leader, supported by the people, would bring the Roman government down with a vengeance and upset the balance they had achieved.

Jesus, as a practicing Jew, celebrated the Passover Seder with his friends that week.  At the Seder dinner he talked of how he wanted his friends to always remember him and that he wouldn’t be around much longer.  He predicted that he could be betrayed by some of his friend and that others would deny knowing him if things got rough.  They said, “No Jesus, we are with you all the way”. But Jesus was right.  A few days later, one of his disenchanted followers “ratted him out” and told the guards where they could find him in a quiet garden at prayer.  They knew better than to try to arrest him when loving crowds surrounded him.  Jesus was arrested and put on trial.  In the Book of Luke it says the leaders thought Jesus was “stirring up the people”.   Outside the trial, some of the guards came up to one of Jesus’ friends and said, “hey, didn’t I see you with Jesus the other day”.  Saving his own skin, the apostle Peter denied ever knowing his friend.  Jesus was indeed found guilty and was executed by the crucifixion.  This method of death was very public and painful, but it was not uncommon. It was generally used when they wanted to make an example of someone.  Two thief’s were executed along with him that day.  The brave and kind man named Jesus died a horrible death, the death of a criminal.

Now comes the miracle of Easter.  They killed Jesus because they wanted to kill his words and ideas.  They wanted to silence his message that was becoming way too popular in their world.  Destroy the man and you destroy his movement, right?  Well, it didn’t work that way.  His message stayed alive.  His movement stayed alive.  His remaining friends and followers did remember him and they told his stories to others.  The stories lived on and were told to more people.  After many years those stories were eventually written down.  I am afraid the writings including the creative editing and embellishing over time as often happens with the stories of fallen heroes.  I am willing to bet that everyone in this room had heard of Jesus and knew that he once lived and preached a message of love and justice.  After 2000 years, his name and his message lives on.  His work inspired the work of people like Martin Luther King and Mother Theresa in our time, as well as the founders of our Unitarian and Universalists faiths.

Can any of us ask for a greater example of life conquering death?  And best of all, this is a form of immortality, or to use the Christian word “eternal life”, that is available to all us.  When we live the best life we can, working to create a better world, speaking from our heart in inspiration, we too can make a change in the world that will live on for generations to come.  Did you write a song of peace?  Did you work for justice?  Did you help build a church?  Those deeds live on long after we are gone, continuing our work in the world after we have left it.  This story, this Easter story, the story of how death did not stop the message of Jesus…  this is a terrific example of how we too can live on through our words and our deeds.  Unitarian Universalist theologian, Forrest Church, says that because we know our lives are finite, we must live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for.  As the Buddhist wisdom tells us, all life is impermanent.  What stays on after we are gone are the consequences of our actions.

At this Easter season, my we take joy in celebration.  We can celebrate the changing of the season and the new life all around us. It is truly a miracle.  And may we follow the example of so many prophetic men and women, including Jesus of Nazareth, who have come before us.  Those men and women who worked and sometimes even died to make the world a better place for everyone.  They live on as long as their work of love and justice continues, and their inspired words are still spoken.

So be it.