Eastering

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Victoria Shepherd Rao, Ministerial Intern

27 March 2005

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

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PRAYER: Victoria Shepherd Rao

May we understand redemption and self-sacrifice in life-enhancing ways.

Maybe it is not by the death on the cross that we are saved but by the death of our need to always be right, or to have the last word, to always have our own way. Perhaps we may be afraid that if we do not strive to be heard our voice will be drowned out by a thousand different noises, that if we do not stand up for ourselves, we will be overlooked by others. These are real fears.

May we redeem them for trust. May we trade our worries for ourselves for broader, more expansive concerns and by them feel the universality of human need. Need for enough food, for clean water, for shelter, for personal acknowledgement, for enough love. May we be moved by such universal needs – the needs we all share.

Our needs may be met or maybe some of our personal needs are not being met. May we have the honesty to accept ourselves just as we are and the strength of character to do what is necessary to take care of ourselves, so that we may each, in turn, care for others.

Easter is the high holiday, the day when Christians celebrate the supreme self-sacrifice of the one who called the Creator God so familiarly as “Dad.” Christians believe the whole world of possibilities changed in that sad act. Let us also seek to appreciate the unimaginable possibilities an attitude of self-sacrifice ushers into our world.

Let us recall the little parrot in the Jataka tale the children heard*. She shows us how the heart can be powerfully stubborn when it sets itself on the well-being of others. The promise which motivates the one who is self-sacrificing is not only the well-being of others but the possibility of an ultimate kind of satisfaction not with the self but within the self, the sense that there is truth in the statement, “I did everything I could.”

May we here today grow in our capacities to act and be with others in a spirit of self-sacrifice, and may we learn a new meaning for redemption, trading the confines of our self-interest for the expansive realms where concern for the well-being of all humanity, even all beings can bring meaning into our lives abundantly, hope into our outlook irrationally, and joy into our hearts unexpectedly.

* The story of “The Brave Little Parrot” is part of the Buddhist tradition of Jataka Tales, or stories of the Buddha’s previous lives. In this particular story, a parrot does everything she possibly can to put out a fire which is destroying the forest home she shares with many other creatures, regardless of the danger and the seeming hopelessness of the task. Her efforts move a god to tears and his tears become a saving and restorative shower that puts out the flames.

SERMON: Eastering

Religion is a funny thing. On the one hand, we insist that our religion is about dealing with our deepest and most important questions: matters of morals, ethics, even life and death. Nothing in the world is outside the reach of religious concerns and questions.

On the other hand, we expect all our worship services to be rated “G.” There are animated children’s cartoons more risqué than the average sermon. This makes it hard to tell the truth, if the truth is too challenging, unorthodox, or just plain disturbing. And nowhere is this more true than in Christmas and Easter sermons! I have Christian colleagues who say these are often their least favorite sermons, because there is so much pressure to offer nothing more challenging than a Hallmark card with a Happy Face on it.

I’m not a Christian. But if I were a Christian minister and this were Christmas, the first words in my Christmas sermon would be “You know there was never a virgin birth, don’t you?” And for Easter, I’d begin by saying “You know that no corpse ever walked, don’t you?”

There is a saying that the first word in religion must always be NO – NO to the nonsense, so there is room to say YES to the more profound insights of the best religions. But it’s hardest to say No to the two central myths of Christianity – that there was something supernatural about either the birth or the death of the man Jesus.

There wasn’t anything supernatural – not because I said so, but because the world isn’t built that way, either now or then. Christianity was born in the first century, couched in the first century scientific picture of the world. They believed the universe was a local affair, with three levels. It’s the view of the world you can still see by going outside on a clear day; it was one of the most intuitive and common-sense pictures of the world we’ve ever had, even if it wasn’t within a billion light years of being true.

In the middle was the earth, which was flat sort of like a big pizza. The sky above was a dome made of rock – they called it the “firmament,” and the Greeks had their strongest god, Atlas, charged with holding the heavy thing up. Good gods and angels came from up there – either above the cloud layer around Mt. Olympus, or above the higher clouds in Christianity. And below the earth was the place of fire and brimstone, as you could see by looking at what volcanoes brought up from beneath. This was the home of the bad gods and demons.

That’s the first century scientific world picture you have to have in mind to make sense of a lot in the Christian scriptures. When the gospel writers say that the heavens opened and a voice shouted down “Behold, this is my beloved son in whom I am much pleased,” it demands that old picture of the world, where the top of the sky just wasn’t that far away. Or when they say that Jesus descended into hell or ascended into heaven, you need that same ancient picture to make sense of it.

That’s the way the world has to be built in order to have gods mating with humans, corpses ascending to heaven, descending to hell or going anywhere at all. And the world isn’t built that way, either now or then.

But it takes some courage for ministers to tell the truth on Christmas Sunday, or Easter, because in the opinions of most people, Christianity is about supernaturalism.

That’s because for two thousand years there has been this awful contradiction between the religion of Jesus and the religion about Jesus. The religion of Jesus is found in the things he taught people about how to live, how to treat one another. The religion about Jesus is the magical religion of the baby and the cross, in which the teachings of the man Jesus are often completely overlooked.

The religion about Jesus has always been the religion of literalistic and fundamentalist Christianity. It is about believing a certain story that few people would even know how to believe, with the promise that if you do, you’ll be saved some day after you die. Jesus would have hated that story. But then, Jesus never heard of either Christmas or Easter. They weren’t created until long after he had died.

The religion of Jesus is not supernatural at all. It is about how you can be saved, be made more whole, here and now, and how you can help make the world more whole here and now.

The message of Jesus was a message of liberation and empowerment; the messages from the religion about Jesus are too often aimed at frightening people into obedience to agendas like hating gays or independent women, or sanctioning a war against people in Iraq that look a whole lot more like Jesus than they look like most of us. These are political and military agendas that Jesus would have seen as wrong or hateful.

And the religion of Jesus isn’t about Easter. It isn’t a noun. It’s a verb; it’s about Eastering. It’s about the miracle of new life coming from old, life out of death, right here and now. Nothing supernatural, though it feels so magical when it happens, you know? “Do you have a light?” Jesus asked; “Don’t hide it under a basket.” Have you been given a gift of life? Don’t hide that, either. Share it, give it to others. Life is about honoring that spirit of life that comes and goes as it likes, but when it comes our way it can make all the difference between feeling dead and feeling alive, you know?

Literalistic religion promises a Garden of Eden, which would be an awful place. A place where only obedient, unquestioning, uncurious people are welcome, a garden where no one is allowed to grow into their full humanity. It is not a garden at all, but a trap. It’s a trap in which your spirit can die, because living spirits, like living people, always question, always grow and change. In less than three days, the Garden of Eden would just bore you to death.

Literalistic religions say you can’t save yourself, it can’t happen now, and it can’t happen here. Liberal religions say “If not now, when? If not here, where? If not you, who?” And we answer, “New life can come to you. Here and now.”

If this were Christmas, I’d say that honest religion is a manger made ready for the birth of the sacred within our midst. The Easter Bunny doesn’t need a manger – actually, I’ve never really wanted to know how or why that rabbit lays colored eggs and foil-wrapped chocolates.

Liberal religion – and the religion of Jesus was a liberal religion, not a literal one – offers not a Garden of Eden, but a Garden of Eastering. A fertile place where new life is welcome because we trust the future more than the past.

That’s how I think of this church: as a garden of Eastering. A couple years ago, I overheard our current Board vice-president tell someone that this church was a “Do-ocracy,” where those who choose to do something give the place its character and direction. That’s a Garden of Eastering, a place giving birth to the future.

Before you leave today, we’re going to give you a gift, a symbol of this Eastering spirit, to take home as a reminder. But more about that later.

When you think about it, our annual budget is really just paying the costs of providing that Garden and the staff to tend it, but not the new life that grows in it. We never know what or where that new life will be, because it comes through you. For instance:

I’ve never seen another church with the range of high quality music we have here. Think of the weekly offerings from Brent, Bryan, John, our choir and our many guest musicians. Almost every imaginable style of music is here, from a choir singing Bach to a soloist singing a song by Joni Mitchell or the Beatles, or the wonderful music from “Pieces of East” we have this morning. There’s almost nothing we won’t try, as long as it can carry a spirit that can move us – that’s the key. And that’s why the music program is great: it’s a garden in which the Spirit can grow and flourish. That’s a garden of Eastering.

Or think back a few months and ask why we had such a super Christmas Eve pageant. Why was it so nice? Well, because Vicki Rao, our ministerial intern, took charge of it. Because a few members who had experience in set design and theater direction offered to lend their talents. Because a lot of parents drove a lot of kids to rehearsals, and four or five hundred of you came to be here for it. Eastering doesn’t have a season; it can even happen at Christmas.

Have you walked through the lovely landscaped garden we have in back? Five years ago, it was a playground filled with dangerous junk that had been condemned. Then a few members decided we deserved and needed something beautiful instead. They talked with me and the board, consulted with landscapers, researched top-quality playground equipment, had professional plans drawn, raised money, put in a lot of work, and now a condemned dump has been transformed into a place of beauty for all ages.

And this church has been designated a Natural Habitat by the State of Texas, and a Green Sanctuary by the Unitarian Universalist Association. It’s the only church in Texas with that designation. Why? Because a handful of members who were more sensitive to the grounds than the rest of us felt called to transform it, worked at it and did it. That’s how Eastering works.

Very soon, out in the foyer, we will have a huge twelve-foot long credenza, custom designed and built for us. Why? It wasn’t in the budget. But one member got so sick of the look of the foyer he decided to do something, got some others to help him, talked with me and the board, collected money, and soon there will be a new locus of beauty in our foyer, born of the imagination and care of ordinary people right here in this room. Eastering.

And our new Friday Movie Nights. Several months ago, I thought we needed more opportunities for community that had nothing to do with fundraising, and thought that well-chosen movies might be a way to do it. I solicited donations from several members, who generously contributed a total of over two thousand dollars, and we bought a projector and eight-foot screen. Then some members came forward who wanted to help, decided we should have soda and popcorn for a more complete movie experience, and put it together. We had our very first movie night two days ago, this past Friday night. The members who had put it together told me that if we ever had forty people show up for one of these, they’d call it a success. Friday night, we had eighty-five here. That’s Eastering. New life, appearing where before there had been nothing but a big room, a big garden waiting for something new to be born in it.

This summer, some of our high school kids will be taking part in a Freedom Ride organized by the UUA: a long bus ride retracing some of the steps of the freedom marches in the civil rights movements of forty and fifty years ago. Why? Because one member thought it would be neat to have some such trip, and after more heads got involved, this trip emerged, money was donated, and our kids will have a trip this summer they will never forget, to reconnect them with some terribly important parts of what it means to be an American who cares enough about freedom to make personal sacrifices for it. Eastering.

The church budget, as essential as it is, can’t create the magic that brings new life to this place. All it can do is pay for the garden and hire the staff to tend it. But whether the garden will give rise to new shoots of life – that is really up to you, to the spirit that dwells in you, that makes you aware of little things about this place that need new life, and that moves you to help with the miracle.

And if you think about it, life is like this too. You work to pay the bills, to provide a garden where Eastering might happen, and you work to create a relationship that can give life to you.

Because besides the kinds of institutional Eastering that help make this church so alive and healthy, there are those more down-to-earth, personal gifts of life and grace that come to us.

Last year, a member of this church was diagnosed with a form of pancreatic cancer. The prognosis for pancreatic cancer is usually awful. She went through tests and the ordeals of treatments. This week, she sent me an e-mail saying there are no signs whatever of any cancer cells, and her prognosis is now for a normal life of another few decades. That’s Eastering.

And just last night, I received an e-mail from Cathy Harrington I want to share with you. Many of you know that Cathy was our ministerial intern two years ago, who is now the settled minister in Ludington, Michigan. And many of you also know that last November, her 26-year-old daughter and youngest of three children was murdered in California. It was about as devastating as anything a parent can ever go through, and it devastated Cathy. Her church gave her time to heal, and even arranged all the Sunday services in December. She spent time with her family, went to Nicaragua for ten days – a place that had some magical healing powers for her. And last week, she went to San Francisco to take part in a four-day street retreat, living, eating and sleeping with some of San Francisco’s homeless people in the Tenderloin area.

Here is her Easter e-mail:

Davidson:

I just returned from a week on the streets of the Tenderloin with the Faithful Fools. I went in search of God and much to my surprise found Her.

I ran into a homeless man named Will, who I met last year. He said the Lord put it into his heart to give me a gift. It was a magnificent silver cross [that had belonged to his mother], a gift of grace that has moved me from despair to the realm of healing and wholeness. It was one of many glimpses of the divine this past week. Finally, grief has released its deadly grip on me and I am able to breathe again. I think I can actually walk through the valley [of the shadow of death now], instead of staying forever in the shadow.

Happy Easter, Cathy.

We all live in the valley of the shadow of death: that valley where death, disease and despair can rear their ugly heads at any time, without rhyme or reason. It can be scary in that valley; it’s no wonder so many people live in fear rather than trust and hope.

But there are more than shadows in this valley of life. There are also gardens: amazing gardens in which new life can and does grow. For us. Here. Now. It may not be supernatural, but it surely feels miraculous. Let us go seeking those miracles, and seeking to be part of those miracles for the world around us.

Happy Eastering!