Mary Sermon

THE SPIRIT RETURNS
A sermon for Easter Sunday, April 24, 2011
delivered by Mary Tiebout
at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Sussex County

One day in late March, or early April, while driving toward Newton, I glanced at a large sign at the corner of routes 517 and 611. Near that corner, on a lovely hill sits the tall-spired Tranquility United Methodist Church. The rather large sign had these words: “It’s spring! I’m back!!”

“That’s their Easter message?” I thought. “It’s nice to see that the Methodists have a little sense of humor. Did the minister do this?”

In a moment I did see that the sign belonged to Green Township. A few days later the words on the sign had been changed to advertise an egg hunt that took place last weekend.

I did like the message. It appeals more to me than other messages about Easter – about our sins being forgiven, the tomb being empty, the gates of hell being opened. I’m more comfortable thinking about the victorious trickster rebellious spirit of Jesus saying, “I’m back” than wondering about my inability to believe that Jesus rose up after a particularly brutal form of execution, and then walked the earth for an untold number of days until he disappeared into the clouds.

My guess is that each one of us here has our own image of Jesus. That’s the premise of a book by Stephen Prothero who teaches at Harvard. His book, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon, suggests that people of all religious traditions in America and people who are atheist or who do not participate in any religious group – everyone still has some kind of image of who Jesus was or is.

Unitarian Universalists often claim that ours is the religion of Jesus rather than a religion about Jesus. One of the many famous people who are associated with the early years of Unitarianism – supporters if not regular members – was Thomas Jefferson, who, while President, took two copies of the New Testament and a straight razor and in three nights managed to do what scholars take years to do – he created a text of the life and words of Jesus the man, eliminating stories telling about miracles Jesus performed and other doctrinal assertions that were obviously added much later.

In an edition of The Jefferson Bible (the one with a foreword by Forrest Church), Jaroslav Pelikan writes in the afterword: “Like other Enlightenment rationalists, Jefferson was convinced that the real villain in the Christian story was the apostle Paul, who had corrupted the religion of Jesus into a religion about Jesus, which thus had, in combination with the otherworldly outlook of the fourth Gospel, produced the monstrosities of dogma, superstition, and priestcraft, which were the essence of Christian orthodoxy. The essence of authentic religion, and therefore of the only kind of Christianity in which Jefferson was interested, needed to be rescued from these distortions, so that the true teachings and person of Jesus of Nazareth might rise from the dead page – the only kind of resurrection Jefferson was prepared to accept.”

Jefferson’s Bible ends with these words from the Gospels of John and Matthew: Then they took the body of Jesus and wound it in linen clothes, with the spices as the manner of the Jews is to bury. Now in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus, and rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.

What just recently occurred to me is the full circle -- the wrapping of Jesus in the cloths, at the end of his life – a life that began with Jesus, the babe, wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

* * * *

Last week’s issue of Time Magazine featured a story about Rob Bell, the Evangelical preacher in Mars Hill, Michigan. His new book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, has recently been published.

The title of the article is No Hell? Pastor Rob Bell Angers Evangelicals. The author, Jon Meacham writes:
Bell “suggests that the redemptive work of Jesus may be universal…his arguments about heaven and hell raise doubts about the core of the Evangelical worldview, changing the common understanding of salvation so much that Christianity becomes more of an ethical habit of mind than a faith based on divine revelation.”

We hear from Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary: “When you adopt universalism and erase the distinction between the church and the world, then you don’t need the church, and you don’t need Christ, and you don’t need the cross.” Okay…

And again Meacham: “From a traditionalist perspective…to take away hell is to leave the church without its most powerful sanction.” Okay…

This is exactly what Universalism and Unitarianism did. They took away the premise of fear, the belief in the depravity of humanity, and the punishment in hell. Universalism and Unitarianism offered hope and love instead of fear. Our founding denominations could not scare anyone to attend; they could only try to be the beloved community, a community of justice and hope.

The article continues: “Bell…believes that Jesus, the Son of God, was sacrificed for the sins of humanity and that the prospect of a place of eternal torment seems irreconcilable with the God of love. Belief in Jesus, he says, should lead human beings to work for the good of this world.” Okay!

At our Passover Seder last Sunday, I thought about Jesus. According to the writer of the Gospel of Matthew, it was just before Passover that Jesus took aim at the high priests, the scribes and Pharisees, calling them hypocrites and blind men, criticizing the institution, the temple and its desire for riches and power while the needs of the people went unmet.

Voices were raised this week by members of the crowds assembled at the Vatican. They want the church to respond to the needs of the over 23,000 homeless people in Rome.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in!

Within days, Jesus goes to the Passover meal held in the upstairs room of a house…Jesus knowing his time was near, the line had been crossed, he had given his life to a mission of justice, of revolutionary love, turning over the tables of the tax collectors, exposing greed and injustice.

We read these words in last week’s Hagaddah: “Each drop of wine we pour in hope and prayer that people will cast out the plagues that threaten everyone everywhere they are found, beginning in our own hearts:

The making of war
The teaching of hate and violence
The destruction of the earth
The perversion of justice and of government
Fomenting of vice and crime,
Neglect of human needs,
Oppression of nations and peoples,
Corruption of culture,
Subjugation of science, learning and human discourse
The erosion of freedoms.

I wondered when I heard this list… At the Passover meal, did Jesus hear words similar to these about the brokenness of his world? Would he have shared the bitter herbs, drunk of the cup of the pain and suffering of the world while sitting with his friends?

Suffering is the Good Friday story. Jesus knew about and had compassion for those who suffered. He was killed because he was a threat to the authorities. His revolutionary love challenged the political, religious and social structures that diminished the lives of people – women, strangers, the poor, people with diseases and disabilities. In today’s world, Jesus would have been sent to a place like Guantanamo Bay or he would have been “disappeared.” He was crucified at the hands of the Roman government…capital punishment for one who exposed truths, for one who taught people that this is it, that the kingdom is here, that it is this life on this beautiful earth, now, here, this garden.

Jesus dies. If the story ends, as Thomas Jefferson believes, when the body is placed in the tomb and the friends walk away, then what do we make of Easter? We have rejected the premise of eternal punishment, the possibility of burning in hell, a belief based on fear, but do we still seek a message of salvation?

Are we waiting for someone or something to save us?
Perhaps the salvation we seek to make real lies in the restoration of the dignity of people around the world. Salvation lies in places such as Yemen, Bahrain and Libya where people seek freedom. The places where women struggle for safety. Salvation, is it food for people who are hungry, water for animals whose streams and ponds have gone dry, conservation of forests and oceans? Perhaps salvation is recognizing the rights of the earth and its beings.

Easter is the celebration of life. Do we say, “agnus dei qui tollis peccata mundi,”
Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world?

Or do we say, agnus dei qui adoremus, canus dei, equus dei qui adoremus.
Rosa dei, flora dei, fauna dei…

The holy is life. The holy of holies is the earth. Our salvation is our loving. Our great compassionate imagination will save us.

It’s spring! If we’ve been gone, maybe deep in the dark earth, now is the time to come back. The light of the world, the life-giving sun, calls us back. The air, the water, the colors, the fragrance, the necessity, the chance to love calls us back. Life welcomes us back. We welcome life back. The spirit is love. The spirit is life. The spirit returns, remember?