luke 24:1-12
Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson
Scripture: Luke 24:1-12 - New International Version
1On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. 5In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.' “8Then they remembered his words.
9When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. 10It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. 11But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. 12Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.
Meditation:
When my son was a preschooler, he had a record of children’s verses, songs and ditties. One of them has remained with me all these years.
As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today.
Oh, how I wish he’d go away.
I suspect that we all have such people in our lives, people who on one level, obviously aren’t there, but who to us, nevertheless, are engagingly present.
Maybe it is your father long gone, who rides along with you in the car, making comments and observations about your driving…or your mother who notices when you haven’t cleaned your plate, and reminds you to stand up straight.
So I wonder, if most of us share this very common and very human experience, why it is that Easter is so hard for many of us to embrace. Jesus is, it seems, the man of the ditty for many Unitarian Universalists.
As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today.
Oh, how I wish he’d go away.
That’s how it was for me for many years… Jesus the man I proclaimed was not there, who I kept on meeting. He would not go away. For many it still is so. Despite our disclaimers, explanations, we know he lives. His story lives, his message lives. His dream and his vision of a world made one and held in the everlasting all including, divine embrace is alive and well. We can love the vision, and still have trouble with the one who brought it to us, who greets us every time we turn around.
What makes it so hard to believe that Jesus, dead 2000 years, still lives? What makes it so hard at least, to suspend disbelief…especially when our faith and our principles reflect and are based on his teachings? What is it that puts the kibosh on our spiritual imaginations…that does not allow us to live in the world as if these wonders were true?
I suspect it goes back to some of those people in the cloud of witnesses of our lives, people who are watching us in our minds eye…people who we look up to or whose approval matters.
Perhaps we are afraid of being duped, of being caught believing something that isn’t true and feeling not just foolish, but humiliated, even shamed. To be caught in a mistake, to be caught being gullible or even being wrong, can become an unbearable experience to be avoided at all costs. What if we should believe something that turns out to not be completely true?
Is it so terrible to be wrong? To have made a mistake? What are the consequences? Does it mean that we are a mistake? Sometimes, it feels that way.
An eager five year old raises their hand to answer a question – and the answer is wrong. How did you feel when it happened to you? Embarrassed? Humiliated? Shame. If the experience was one about our personal value and our worth, the cost of being wrong was high, the risk was great. Better not to take a chance.
And when something you believed as a child was exposed to be untrue, did you feel betrayed, disoriented, not knowing whom to trust or believe? Did you let it go, chalk it up as one of those experiences of life, or did you store it away in some dark sealed emotional jar into which you added every other time you found out something you were told, or something you believed, was untrue. A jar of petty embarrassments and heart wrenching betrayals…a jar of humiliation and shame.
Is that why it is so hard to let go, to believe, to risk the joy of believing the deeper truth of a story, even if it does not seem to make sense in the world as we have known it?
Often what happens is that we get a case of creeping cynicism.
Cynicism protects us from being duped, from being hoodwinked, from being somehow fooled into believing that life is wonderful, that people are good, that peace is possible, that God is love. Cynicism may be a protection against an imagined shame…but it is also a protection against a spiritual life. It is not by accident that the language of a spiritual life, is of faith. The life of the spirit requires an opening of the heart and mind, a presumption oftrust, the disarming of the layers of protection and a willingness to risk disappointment as well as joy.
That is what we need today, this Easter …open heart, open mind, and a willingness to risk disappointment, so that we might also chance experiencing true joy.
Tom Owen-Towle, minister emeritus of the First Unitarian Church in San Diego has said that “ Cynicism is spiritual treason.”
“Cynicism is spiritual treason.” Remember that – not only for Easter, but for the days that spread before you.
Do not be afraid. Open your hearts to wonder. Be the Easter people- the people who know that with love, anything can happen and dreams can come true.
Focusing Questions:
What beliefs do you long to embrace, and resist nonetheless?
What about these beliefs are compelling?
What would you have if you let them become a part of you?
What would you lose?
What are the fears, the barriers that hold you back? Have a conversation with them.
What will open your heart and mind this Easter to the possibility that hope does not always need to be explained, love does not always need to make sense, and the movement of the Holy Spirit is free and unencumbered?
What do you need to be an Easter person?
Prayer:
Gracious God, Worker of Wonders, Healer of Hearts, Solace in Sorrow and Lover of All, we thank you for your presence. We are glad that you do not give up on us; that your love is not contingent on our response, that your watchful companioning is not thwarted by our days of doubt or confusion. Help us to honor the Risen Christ wherever we meet him. Help us to welcome him into our lives, our minds, our hearts, our stories. May this Easter day be for us a day of resurrection, when all that held us back and held us down is lifted and we are free to rise and stretch and meet the day with gladness. May the renewal of the earth kindle a renewal of our spirits. And may our joy be a blessing that helps heal the world. Amen.
|
