Rolling Away the Stone

Rev. Mark Stringer

First Unitarian Church of Des Moines

3/31/02

 

Reading “Rolling Away the Stone” by Sara Moores Campbell

 

In the tomb of the soul, we carry secret yearnings, pains, frustrations, loneliness, fears, regrets, worries.

 

In the tomb of the soul, we take refuge from the world and its heaviness.

 

In the tomb of the soul, we wrap ourselves in the security of darkness.

 

Sometimes this is a comfort.  Sometimes it is an escape.

 

Sometimes it prepares us for experience.  Sometimes it insulates us from life.

 

Sometimes this tomb-life gives us time to feel the pain of the world and reach out to heal others.  Sometimes it numbs us and locks us up with our own concerns.

 

In this season where light and dark balance the day, we seek balance for ourselves.

 

Grateful for the darkness that has nourished us, we push away the stone and invite the light to awaken us to the possibilities within us and among us—possibilities for new life in ourselves and in our world.

 

Sermon

A few days ago I was asked by the barber who gets paid to cut my hair and to make small talk, what I do for a living.  After I told him that I am a minister, he said, “Busy time of year for you, huh?”  At first I thought the guy was really intuitive…after all I had not yet completed preparing for a funeral I was to conduct the next day…and my mind was busy ticking through the items on a growing list of responsibilities…including this very service.  I soon realized, however, that his question was not prompted by his awareness of my internal anxiety about getting my work done.  He was assuming that my workload was heavier because it was Easter week.

 

I told him that as a Unitarian-Universalist minister, I am not expected to conduct the numerous services that often accompany the Christian observances of the days leading up to Jesus’ death and resurrection. I began to explain to him that while Unitarian-Universalism has Christian roots, Unitarians and Universalists throughout time have had trouble with the whole “resurrection”-thing. Before I got too far into my explanation, though, I realized that he really hadn’t asked me for a theology lesson, or a defense of liberal religion.  He was just looking for a conversation to pass the time while he cut my hair.

 

The silence he offered in response to my explanation confirmed that he was not all that interested in hearing about an other-than-Christian approach to Easter.  Likewise, experience has taught me that many Unitarian-Universalists are not all that interested in hearing about Easter, either.  Why should we be spending time, I have been asked, talking about a “resurrection” that our reason tells us probably didn’t happen?   Well, I don’t intend this morning to drag you through the dogmatic details of a faith many of us have either abandoned or never really accepted or understood in the first place.  And I don’t wish to initiate a debate as to whether or not Jesus literally arose from the dead, because as is the case with most of the events portrayed in the Bible, truth is difficult, if not impossible, to discern.  As my professor in New Testament studies at the University of Chicago used say at the conclusion of every class: “Well as we have seen, some scholars think this.  Other scholars think that.  But when it comes right down to it, we really don’t know.  OK, I’ll see you next time.”

 

No I’m not interested in finding the literal truth of the Easter story, as though that is even possible.  I do hope, however, to raise a question that I find embedded in the sometimes problematic relationship between Unitarian Universalists and Easter.  How might an over-emphasis on the improbability of a man arising from the dead be keeping us from uncovering a greater truth, a deeper metaphor within the resurrection story being celebrated in countless churches this morning?

 

Perhaps the place to begin is to acknowledge that the Easter story like most stories of most religious traditions is a myth.  Now, in its common usage today, the term “myth” indicates something has been made-up…fabricated.  But classically speaking, “myth” has meant something much more complex…the truth beneath the truth—words “spoken with deep, unquestioned authority.”[1] Joseph Campbell, the modern-day guru of mythology, asserts that myths are essential to our lives because they plumb the inner depths of darkness and silence that lie at the heart of the human soul, and that they therefore tell us—through metaphor and symbol—enduring principles of how to be human.  The power of myth, Campbell contends, goes far beyond its literal interpretations to connect us with fundamental aspects of our being that cannot be derived by logic and reason alone.[2]  Similarly Religion scholar Houston Smith has asserted that it is simply impossible to adequately approach any kind of divine truth in the language that we have to deal with the events of this life.  He believes that only through stories and myth and their symbols and metaphors can we reveal the greater truths and understandings of our lives.

 

What are the deep truths revealed by the Easter story, the truths that can speak to us today?  To our modern sensibilities, the notion that someone would rise from the dead seems either absurd or something out of a horror movie.  It makes no sense. But myth is not about everything making sense.  A myth exists to name an existential concern, to present it as a conflict of opposites, and then to offer a resolution that enables us to coexist with the concern.[3] The Easter myth and other resurrection stories, therefore, remain significant because, despite our efforts to convince ourselves that they didn’t or couldn’t happen, we need them.  We need to know that even though the world can seem completely immersed in the forces of destruction, there is always the possibility of renewal…of new life that arises out of the ashes of despair.  When faced with the trials that so often accompany our living, who among us has not wanted to believe that the confusion, or struggle, or pain was not only worth it, but could lead to a greater truth…and some form of salvation…earthly or otherwise? We need resurrection stories because they affirm our lives.  They tell us that the hardships we suffer, the sacrifices we make for our loved ones, and the tears and the trauma we experience when our lives get messy, as they inevitably do, are merely the ground from which some kind of redemption can sprout.

 

But when I talk about our need for resurrection stories, I want to echo the distinction that Biblical scholar Marcus Borg has made.  Borg says that resurrection should not be confused with resuscitation—resurrection is not “the raising of someone from the dead.” Resurrection, he says, is a metaphor for new existence…for something unlike what has already been.[4]  When we talk of resurrection, it is easy to get caught up in the idea of a corpse walking around and miss the greater meaning of how new life is available to us all, sometimes as a direct result of the pain and loss we experience.

 

Not long after my mother died several years ago, the first real encounter with death that I had experienced, I was emotionally raw and, on my bad days, ready to fight with the world.  I remember seeing a movie called “Truly, Madly, Deeply,” in which the leading man came back from the dead to be romantically reunited with his wife. I sat through the movie agitated and uncomfortable.  I had this almost uncontrollable urge to yell at the screen.  “This isn’t romantic because this isn’t real.  This isn’t sweet or heart-warming. People don’t come back like this.  Death is real, this movie is not.”

 

Similarly Jesus’ death also meant something real…something permanent:  the end of his life as others knew it, the end of his hopes, the end of his dreams, and also the expectations that others had of him and for their life with him.

 

And yet, the story says that a transformation took place…something took root in the minds and hearts of Jesus’ disciples, the people who no doubt felt his loss the most.  Somewhere out of the depths of their despair, they were able to reconnect with a sense of hope; they were able to fill the empty space left by his death with the feeling that his death meant something greater.  His death was not an end after all; it was a beginning. 

 

Within the past week, I have helped plan two memorial services. One, in fact, that was held on Friday.  The coincidence of conducting a memorial service on Good Friday, seems too important not to mention. As many of you know, the Unitarian Universalist approach to preparing a memorial service is to gather with those who knew the deceased and elicit stories from their lives together.  This enables the closest family and friends to celebrate the life that was and to reflect on how their lives were touched by their loved one’s presence.  Assembling, coalescing, and then sharing these stories as a single narrative often serves to reveal some deeper truths about the person’s life and, in turn, the lives of those who remain.  The facts alone often create a compelling story of the life that was, but when these facts are mingled and mined for the deeper symbolism and metaphors, when the facts are mythologized we could say, the sacred and divine quality of our shared humanity is often revealed.  I find that meeting with families to plan memorial services is one of the greatest privileges of my work in ministry.  Upon sharing stories of a life that held great meaning for those gathered with me, a resurrection of sorts seems to occur.  The person is not brought back to life, but her life is honored in such a way that the empty space begins to fill with the meaning that she brought to others. 

 

Of course the resurrection I describe is not something limited to a memorial service.  It is an ongoing process produced by the efforts of those left behind to make meaning of their loss.  An ongoing opportunity for resurrection always remains. 

 

I have found a good example of this kind of resurrection in the writing of John Aurelio.  He tells the story of a friend named Emil who had a zest for life that was inspirational to all who knew him.  Aurelio writes:

 

“[Emil]…was a presence wherever he went…. He was hardly ever the center of attention, nor did he crave it.  He simply had a remarkable way of making everyone in the room with him feel special, even the proverbial wallflower with whom he always spent extra time.  He was so full of life it was contagious, even bothersome at times.  At a family cottage on the lake, he would never let the sun go down without an audience.  No matter what people were doing at the time—usually sitting down for dinner or playing cards—he would roust everyone, forcibly if necessary, and herd us outside to watch the sun sink majestically into the lake.  In spite of our protests, we would all take a moment to stare at it in silent and rapt attention.  When it was over Emil would give us permission to go back and continue whatever we were doing…. When he died of a heart attack just before Christmas he left a gaping hole in many lives.  We all knew that someone very special was irretrievably lost to us.  Or was he?  Early the following summer a group of us were gathered at the family cottage once again.  We were all busily involved in whatever we were doing when someone looked out the window and said, ‘Look everybody.  It’s an Emil sunset.’  Without even being summoned we all dropped what we were doing and went outside to watch the blazing sun go down.  No one spoke.  At that moment, we all knew that Emil was actually there with us.  He was present to us because he had left us the sunset as his sacrament and we all knew it and felt it.”[5]

 

 

Like the resurrection story of Emil, the Easter story can remind us that the possibility of renewal exists; for it is in all of us.  We don’t have to look too far to see around us all kinds of  people whose lives, in ways large and small, have been transformed by the discovery that transformation was possible after all…who have found a new existence sprouting up from the muddy ground of their lives.  We know people who have overcome the loss of what was most precious to them in the world.  We also know people who have battled addictions and people who have reached deep inside of themselves to find resilience at a time when their lives seemed most tenuous. Resurrection, then, as Earl Holt has written:

 

“…is not a long ago, unique, unlikely event, but is potentially present in all human life.  It is a promise and a challenge, for it represents the possibility of radical change—transformation— based on a radical sense of hope…. Death threatens us not only at the end of our lives but at every moment, the thousand little deaths of the spirit, the grievances we carry with us, the discouragements and sorrows that weigh us down, the sense of frustration or futility that darken our days and drear our nights.  Easter is the promise that we can be reborn; it is the promise of new life.  It is the assurance that in the midst of death we are in life.  Easter…[therefore] can be expressed in two words:  Life wins.”[6]

 

So this Easter I invite you to roll away the stone and emerge from the tomb that may be holding you back. Spring has returned, the earth is about to sing with abundant new life, and endless possibilities abound.  Resurrection waits for us…it waits for us…as it always has.

 

Closing Words (from Richard Gilbert)

A tomb is no place to stay

Be it a cave in the Judean hills

Or a dark cavern of the spirit.

 

A tomb is no place to stay

When fresh grass rolls away the stone of winter cold.

And valiant flowers burst their way to warmth and light.

 

A tomb is no place to stay

When each morning announces our reprieve,

And we know we are granted yet another day of living.

 

A tomb is no place to stay

When life laughs a welcome

To hearts which have been away too long.