Easter ~ April 8, 2007

First Universalist Unitarian Church ~ www.uuwausau.org

Rev. Paul Beckel

WELCOME

It is the season of Passover, Easter, Spring Equinox, and chocolate bunnies. It is the season of gatherings and meals, vivid sacrifices and murky traditions. Fertility and renewal if only if only winter would ever end. Since we bring different traditions and different meanings, our opening prayer may seem a little bold for it contains the word “unconditional.” So if you need to do so, you can cross your fingers while we say it, and then you can pore over the text later to see if there was anything you wouldn’t have wanted to say.

An Easter Litany for Trees    by James Broughton

Harken, fresh saplings on Easter morn!

To ensure your perennial resurrection,

affirm your faith in the miracle of green

by repeating yearly this credo of renewal:

I believe unconditionally in

the one impossible truth

the two doors of perspicacity

the three windows of the unthinkable

the four corners of the boundless

the five pillars of insecurity

the six towers of pointlessness

the seven roads to the vanishing point

the eight capitals of bewilderment

the nine arenas of intrepidity   &

the ten palaces of impossible wisdom   wherein are kept

the original designs for the world’s trees

the original scores for all birdsong

and the master blueprint for the first

            explosion of springtime

Be true to this faith all your budding days

and ye shall branch   blossom   and be leafy

                        to the joy of all...

as many times as there are Easters.

T  S  {  R

GATHERING HYMN                        Morning Has Broken   #38

CHILDREN’S FOCUS                       A Little Bit of Winter    by Paul Stewart

Summary: Rabbit and Hedgehog, best friends, say goodbye for the winter. Hedgehog will be slumbering, Rabbit will miss him while he scrounges for food. But Hedgehog wants to know what winter is about so he gets Rabbit to promise to save some for him. Rabbit eventually figures out how to do this by wrapping a snowball in some leaves, and burying this icon of winter. When Hedgehog awakes he’s grateful to Rabbit for sharing this little bit of Winter experience, even though, to Hedgehog’s surprise – winter bites!

READING      adapted from “The Storm” by Sigurd Olson, in The Singing Wilderness

Sigurd Olson, one of the great nature writers of the 20^th century, was a friend of Phil Carspecken’s father. Phil says that tips from Sig helped him to get his first story published as a freelancer. I’ve seen Sigurd Olson’s books on the shelves of at least a couple of nature lovers my age. So the influences pass on from one generation to the next. And the themes too continue to be central to our lives: how to honor a natural environment that is both overwhelmingly beautiful, and just plain overwhelming?

It was mid-April before I heard the first robin singing …the grass had not begun to green, but there had been mist, and a soft lushness had come into the air which spoke of more to come.

Everywhere were the tunnels and the round grass houses of the meadow mice. Small pools of ice-water lay in every hollow, full of larvae and crustacea and other forms of life which until then had lain dormant in the muddy bottom. Toward the end of April there were many birds: the white-throated and white-crowned sparrows in droves, the song sparrows, the black-headed Harris, chickadees, juncos, and evening grosbeaks by the score, but what really brought music to the hill were the purple finches. There were robins and pine siskins and red-polls. Never before had there been so many at one time during any migration period I could remember.

Then one day in early May the sky darkened and, instead of rain, snow began to fall, lightly at first and then in huge flakes, until the brown earth was turned to white. The birds stayed on and other flocks came in, swelling their numbers, as they met the storm. The first day the snow covered all the food in the countryside. And still the flocks came in from the warm and rainy south. I shall never forget the morning of the second day; the sound of the singing at daybreak, the warbling of the purple finches, the mating-calls of the chickadees, and the clear flute-like calls of the whitethroats all blended into one great symphony of thrilling sound while the snow grew deeper and deeper.

Surely, I thought, the storm would not last. But the cold grew more intense, a wind came up, and the snow came down as heavily as before. By the end of the week there was a foot of it, and the singing grew less and less noticeable. The birds sat dejectedly wherever there was shelter, and I picked up many that had died. Their feathers were sodden with the wet, and though I had placed out all the food I could find—suet, bread crumbs, chick feed, sunflower seeds—the birds were thin and emaciated.

Then came the grackles with their opaque eyes and long, sharp bills. I did not actually see them kill any of the smaller birds, but they did feed on those which had died and frightened those still alive. At the first flash of black wings all birds on the hilltop froze. There was no move to escape, just complete immobility as they waited for death to strike. The grackles would stay for a while, then leave as quickly as they had come. As soon as they were gone, the singing would begin once more in spite of the terror the birds had known.

The storm covered the north country with from twelve to sixteen inches of snow; millions of birds were stopped in their migration, and uncounted thousands must have died. Then the skies cleared, the sun came out, and in a week the ground was almost clear. The grass turned swiftly into green to make up for the delay. I remember getting up at dawn one morning after the storm was over. There again was the music, swelled by new species that had just come in. The blizzard of May and all that it had brought were forgotten. I listened to the robin in the tall aspen where I had heard it first, and it poured out its liquid trill as happily as before. The threat was gone, spring and its dangers past.

MESSAGE

Spring and its dangers. So quickly we forget. We cling to the comforting image of spring as a transition from the harshness of winter to Gentleness. But transitions are rarely gentle.

We mark the holy days -- Easter, Equinox, Passover -- because we know how quickly we would otherwise forget. Without fairly dramatic reminders, we forget the intensity of our experience: that incredibly valuable asset, our own direct experience. Without reminders we lose touch with what we have felt, what we have seen, what we have suffered, even treasured moments lose their shine if we are not reminded of what they have meant to us.

Rabbit and Hedgehog -- planning for spring well in advance -- attempt to make something real for one another. They attempt to hold and to share something that is really beyond words. And even then, with all their good intentions, it nearly slips through their fingers. Hedgehog was honest. He knew that he would be out of touch over the winter. He would forget his very best friend. Even if he survived the winter he would fail to experience its horrid intensity crashing right over his head.

And one of these winters one of them will not make it through. But the other one will keep going through the motions in honor of their friendship …and probably even find new friends who will find meaning and purpose in their enacted story.

That’s what we do with ritual, that’s what we do with holidays. We attempt to hold on to and share meanings, so that the next generation might understand what has been precious to us: stories, memories, values, people, treats, hopes, the value of holding-on through hard times. In all likelihood the details will be misplaced along the way. The tradition -- at least in form -- will fail. But the connection will last.

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Hedgehog didn’t get it. He didn’t get it until he could touch it. Winter could not be explained to him, it had to be experienced first hand. And it bit him!

The birds in the storm also experienced winter first hand. After not being used to it and not being prepared for it. And of course not choosing it, but becoming trapped.

We should be glad at the end of a long winter to get even bread and water, but then life unexpectedly gives us dessert.

But not always. We don’t always get more than we deserve. Or do we? In Christian Easter stories, his friends go to Jesus’ tomb and find it empty. As if it wasn’t bad enough that their leader was dead. As if it wasn’t bad enough that he died a Horrible death. As if it wasn’t bad enough that they had turned against him in the end. As if all of that wasn’t bad enough, now they could not even mourn for him at his grave because his grave was empty.

So what did they do? They did what any good Buddhist would do in the face of emptiness – they celebrated! Is this insanity? Were they just fooling themselves? Not at all. I’m not suggesting that the pacing of the story is realistic, but in the face of serious loss, we do ultimately have to choose despair or renewal. Bitterness or hope.

And Jesus, their teacher, the trickster, the Jew who celebrated Passover as the against-all-odds release from bondage... Jesus had taught them to take an unconventional, unexpected perspective on things.

Periodically our world is turned upside down. There is an ending. And the possibility of a new beginning. We either welcome the possibility or we don’t. Now obviously I’m putting this in pretty stark terms. Real grief and resurrection contain countless shades of gray, flashbacks, memory loops, and outright barricades.

This past Friday Juliette Guth’s twin sister died. Juliette asks for our thoughts and prayers today as she grieves. It would be heartless to say to her under these circumstances: hey it’s over, just start again. But one day she will. Fortunately Juliette is a master at holding multiple truths in her heart at the same time. She can know, and she can feel, that her sister has died. And at the same time she will know, and she will feel communion with her twin for the rest of her days.

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Communion is a ritual in which people come together to feast on the bounty of the earth, to

give thanks, and to re-commit to live up to the ideals that their communion symbolizes.

Communion is done in countless ways to remind ourselves of the common hopes and fears, memories and realities that we face together as human beings.

Today I offer to you the sweetness of chocolate. Like all good symbols, chocolate has been adapted to mean many different things.  It has gone from being known as the food of the gods, to a sign of luxury and wealth, to aphrodisiac, to tonic prescribed by doctors for good health.

It remains all of these things, and more: sweet and pungent infinity in your hand, a symbol to savor, a symbol of the abundance in this moment.

According to Aztec legend, a long time ago, Quetzalcoatl (ket-sahl-ko-AH-tul), the god of wisdom and knowledge, came down from his land of gold, where the sun rests at night, to be the people’s priest king. He taught them how to paint and how to work silver and wood.  He gave the people their calendar and showed them how to grow corn.  And he brought them the seeds of the cacao tree. The bearded, white-skinned Quetzalcoatl taught the Aztecs how to grow the cacao tree, harvest its seedpods, and prepare a delicious drink, chocolatl.  Before he left, Quetzalcoatl promised to return on a “one reed” year, which occurs every 52 years on the Aztec calendar.

In 1519, a bearded, white skinned explorer named Cortez encountered the Aztec kingdom ruled by Montezuma.  Since this happened to be a “one reed” year, instead of treating Cortez like an enemy, the Aztecs welcomed him as their returning god -- with great feasts that concluded with the serving of chocolatl in golden cups. Cortez, however, was not the god that the Aztecs had hoped for.  He responded to the people’s generous welcome by imprisoning Montezuma, seizing large amounts of gold, destroying Aztec temples, and converting the flourishing civilization into an enslaved Spanish colony. Like birds in the storm, the Aztecs didn’t know what hit them.

For many of us, our experience with similarly perverse powers posing as god has led us to mistrust anything that comes from the outside in the name of love. And we have turned inward.

And that’s not always such a bad thing.

Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace activist, is an excellent representative of the love-filled inward journey. He writes, “During a conference on religion and peace, a Protestant minister came up to me toward the end of one of our meals together and said, “are you a grateful person?”  I was surprised.  I was eating slowly, and I thought to myself, Yes, I am a grateful person.  The minister continued, “If you are really grateful, how can you not believe in God? God has created everything we enjoy, including the food we eat. Since you do not believe in God, you are not grateful for anything.”

Thich Nhat Hanh was surprised by this comment because his daily spiritual practice was one of mindfulness.  Awareness, paying attention to what lay before him, whether he was eating or breathing or engaging in conversation...living every moment with appreciation for the presence of love. Being fully alive to the presence of love is certainly not a matter of rejecting god.  But the person whose spiritual focus is upon a god out there may have difficulty relating to the person whose journey is directed inward. 

Thich Nhat Hanh proposes that Christians and Buddhists can share a communion -- a First Supper, out of which everything becomes fresh and new. So I offer you now the communion plate in memory of the last supper, but also in hope of something new. I ask that when you take your chocolate, take a moment to consider what you have in your hand.  See it. Slowly, and with full awareness, taste it.  See in every morsel a gift of the whole universe.

Caution: this is organic fair trade chocolate, but it may contain nuts.. [pass plates]

[music -- the lovely birdlike sounds of flute and piano by Jacob and Molly Roseman]

[afterward]      

“Do you know what I have done? I have given you an example that as I have done for you, so you should do for one another. You may do for one another through your kind words or unexpected gifts. You may do for one another by living with integrity. You may do for one another by resisting temptation. Or you may do for one another by contributing money – your precious time and talent that has been converted into a very tangible form. This church humbly and imperfectly converts all of these energies into a community of learning, growing, and sharing.

OFFERING

CLOSING HYMN      O Ye Who Taste that Love is Sweet      #296

BENEDICTION        

As you go today take with you the spirit of our communion. Savor. Persevere. And give thanks.