of
Beverley Burgess
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, Massachusetts
Easter Sunday – April 12, 2009
When Jan first proposed the idea of “Gifted Promises” using her discretionary spending funds as seed money, I picked up one of the 20 $50 dollar bills with no idea how I was going to grow this seed money or what I was going to do with it. So there it lay on a small tray on my bureau. One day I found a bunch of change in a coat packet and dropped it on the tray on top of the $50 bill—a Eureka moment! So each day since I have been emptying change (quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies onto that tray.
With gratitude my gift is connected to this Easter Service and every service we have. My contribution to Lenten Manual reveals my “Gifted Promise”.
“Gifted Promises for Musical Notes”
Seated in the familiar pew, the minute the first note sounds.
My eyes gaze upward toward the organ, toward the piano, the bells, the voices.
My ears are perked and ready, my emotions are on alert.
My eyes move to the light beams dancing in harmony with the music
across the dark wood of this sanctuary.
Those beautiful sounds each week add comfort to my soul, lift my spirits,
give me hope and bring me joy.
Those loving sounds of inspiration must never die.
So coin stacked upon coin as note is tacked upon note,
I built my own tribute to our music.
And after all is counted plus $50 I match it with great joy and
pay tribute to the spiritual contribution of First Parish Music.
Final tally – $211.20 toward the music line-item for our 2009/2010 fiscal year.
Today our chalice light symbolizes our sincere appreciation to all that is musical at First Parish.
“Blessed Resurrections”
A Sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
Easter Sunday
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
April 12, 2009
Astonishing! A miracle! How could it be? Such are the exclamations we imagine at the first hearing of what is at the heart of the celebration of Easter, the legendary resurrection of Jesus of Galilee from death to life. You heard the story from the Gospel According to Mark, the earliest of the recorded Gospels. Each of the Four Gospels of the Bible as we know it offers its own version of what is said to have happened.
What do you believe? It’s Easter after all!
It’s time to believe….in daffodils. We all believe in daffodils. After all, we see them. We smell them. We remark on their waking. We sing about them. Our children hand them to you right here in this Meeting House. They must be real.
It’s time to believe….in heaven and earth. I’m of the same mind as Mark Belletini:
“…the heaven I see daily overhead never argues with me. It just tumbles clouds through my eyes and yours…And the earth I walk never argues with me either. It mostly just explodes with buds and petals like some out-of-control fountain.”
Heaven and earth are real.
It’s time to believe….in spring, difficult on same days, easier on others; but the buds are about to burst, the trees are about to leaf. So the sun is reluctant to cast its warmth. Maybe this year the sun is just a late bloomer. Nonetheless spring is real.
Then there’s the matter of resurrection, resurrection from death to life, that gnawing story of Easter. We who are people of faith and doubt commonly cast a large shadow on this one, this story that has drifted across the centuries from the who-knows-who-they-really-were biographers Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Legend has a way of meandering like the currents of a river over time, an oft-told tale turned hearsay. Legend has a way of shedding its fluid quality, and before you know it, it’s resolute belief.
Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t rise from the dead. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t lay his hands upon a massive stone, set it in motion, and walk forth from his place of burial into the light of day and life. Is this the core of Resurrection? Is this the core of Easter? That’s for you to decide. And you know you don’t have to agree with me just because I’m your minister. You really don’t. But here’s what I believe.
I believe that the core of Resurrection lies in what Jesus said and taught in what we know, for prime example, as the Sermon on the Mount. They were hard teachings. Remember, Jesus lived in a time and place of foreign occupation. The Roman Empire was real, deadly real. That utter lack of separation of church and state were the stuff of the petty provincial leaders washing their hands over the argument about who this character Jesus really was and delivering him to those who did the dirty work of doing him in.
But his teachings—legendary or historic—hold a truth of heart that we still have a hard time hearing, so powerfully timeless are they, especially those blessed “Blesseds” of the Sermon on the Mount. As Father John Dear, a Jesuit priest and peace activist remarked, “Open your Bible to Matthew 5 and you will never be the same.”
Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:
‘Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
And that heart-stopping finale:
“Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
Reinhold Niebuhr, that 20th century giant of a preacher and theologian, claimed that the call of preaching is “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” No wonder preachers who take this seriously don’t win popularity contests! No wonder Jesus’ status with the public vacillated between rock-star Alleluias and a crown of thorns. With the Blesseds alone, he provoked the haughty, irritated the self-righteous, offended the aggressive, jarred the self-satisfied, and alarmed the powerful terrified of losing their grip. In brief, Jesus drove the exceedingly comfortable into a posture of defensiveness, of lashing out, of silencing anyone who would dare to utter such a radical round of proclamations. Who are the poor to be blessed? Who are the peacemakers to be blessed? Who are the reviled and persecuted to be blessed?
The Blesseds of Jesus’ sermon are no less disarming, no less radical, in our own day. They are also no less true. We know where arrogance and self-righteousness and violence have led us. Some of us know it well, whether we’re downwind or maybe even upwind of it all. Yet in this most interesting of times, fresh blessings are in play. New ways are in the wind. New resurrections are possible if we heed the undercurrents of our time and the provocative Blesseds of the first century teacher from Galilee.
On this Easter morning, I suggest to you that each of these Blesseds proclaims a resurrection. Each of these Blesseds is the stuff of hope for all who are down and out and powerless and empty-handed and yes, unsuccessful in an age of success wrought in terms of how much and how big and how powerful. A stone rolls back from a tomb of despair. The light of day sheds light on what is and what isn’t. Life as we know it can be different IF we receive the gifts behind the legend of Easter, IF we mark the teachings of Jesus that provoked Pilot’s harsh judgment and prompted the fearful and desperate crowd to stand complicit.
Resurrection happens when idols tumble, and idols tumbled through the preaching and the parables of Jesus. Idols tumbled with each proclamation of who exactly is blessed. Resurrections happen when the poor gain their fair share, when the powerless are empowered, when the unjustly imprisoned walk free, when the hegemony of having more bows to the deep joy of sharing more.
Against all odds, daffodils work their way up through the harshest of soil amid the harshest of winters to enter the light of day in full and robust blossom. Against all odds, the heaven of the skies above us and the earth of the soil beneath us work with us if we will but practice reverence for this precious earth. Against all odds, those among us without hope are embraced by those among us who can hold up in the promise of resurrections that are seen and heard and touched so real are they.
Blessed are the down and out, for their time shall come!
Suffering continues, but we need not suffer alone. Illness and injury happen, but we are all healers in the making. Injustice persists in full play, but each of us is an advocate in the wings for comforting the afflicted and afflicting—and sometimes simply annoying—the way too comfortable. Circumstances bear down on us, until someone somehow leans hard against stubborn boulders that can be moved.
Did the teacher, the prophet, the rabbi, the historical Jesus actually walk out of the tomb two thousand years ago? I don’t know, but I doubt it. I do know and I do believe that the blessings of his life and the blesseds of that sermon to a scraggly assembly of followers held resurrections for Jesus’ day and carry credible miracles for our own day, resurrections of hope and possibility that, in the words of that old hymn, “Earth shall be fair and all its people one.”
Let us open our hearts to such an Easter. I love you. May God bless us all.
Amen.
Sources:
Mark Belletini, “Exultet for Easter Morning,” in Sonata for Voice and Silence: Meditations, Skinner House Books, Boston, 2008, 50-51.
John Dear, SJ, “The Beatitudes of Peace,” Reflections offered at a “Call to Action” conference in Milwaukee, November 21, 2006. http://www.fatherjohndear.org/NCR_Articles/Nov21_06.html.
http://www.fatherjohndear.org/
Karen Lewis Foley, “Daffodils Waking,” in For All That Is Our Life: A Meditation Anthology, Helen and Eugene Pickett, Editors, Skinner House Books, Boston, 2005, 42-43.
Robert A. Guelich, “Sermon on the Mount,” in The Oxford Companion to the Bible, Edited by Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan, Oxford University Press, New York, Oxford, 1993, 687-689.
The Gospels According to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in The Bible (Revised Standard Version)
Paul S. Minear, “Blessing,” in The Oxford Companion to the Bible, Edited by Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan, Oxford University Press, New York, Oxford, 1993, 92.
Reinhold Niebuhr, The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses, Edited by Robert McAfee Brown, Yale University Press, 1987.
“Turn Back,” Words: Clifford Bax (1886-1962), used by permission of The Peters Fraser & Dunlop Group, Ltd., Music: Genevan psalter, 1551, in Singing the Living Tradition, The Unitarian Universalist Association, Beacon Press, Boston, 1993, 120.
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