I Know Her So Well, I Think. I Thought
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
Easter, April 21, 2019
by The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Have you noticed the flowers lately? In the last week it seems there’s been mass bursting forth of flowers from the ground, in trees, and in anticipation of Easter, in the stores. Although the lily, rich in symbolism, is probably the flower most commonly associated with Easter, my late spiritual director often talked about the another flower, the lotus.
The lotus, he told me, starts out in the muck at the bottom of the pond, journeys through sometimes murky waters until it breaks the surface where it blossoms in the light of the sun. It is, of course, a metaphor for life, and more specifically, the spiritual life, and in the case of my spiritual director, who was a Buddhist, the path to enlightenment. More broadly, however, it is a metaphor any journey of discovery, from the muck of confusion toward the light of day, or clarity.
What I like about this metaphor and is particularly noteworthy about it, is it suggests or rather offers no shortcuts from the muck at the bottom of the pond to sunlight beyond the water’s surface. If you don’t embark on the journey, you don’t greet the sun.
The journey, in other words, is essential. There’s simply no avoiding it. And yet in our aversion to the pain of growth, conditioning toward instant gratification, and let’s face it, sometimes pure laziness, we try.
If you have attended Easter service here the last six years, you may have noticed I use the Easter story from Mark’s gospel every year. And it’s not because it is the shortest of the Easter stories in the canonical gospels. Easter is a monumental…THE monumental moment… in the Christian faith, a faith in which Unitarian Universalism has its origins and which remains one our sources of religious insight and wisdom. All of which is to say, as a faith, Unitarian Universalists have lived with Easter for a long time. We know it so well, we think. We thought.
But, as Mary Oliver reminds us in our second reading, we can live with someone (or something) for a long time only to discover, at any moment, there are things we never knew about it or them. Things that might startle or surprise us. Things that make us question how well we really know a person or story and perhaps help us appreciate things once thought familiar anew.
Easter is like that, I suspect, not just for Unitarian Universalists, but anyone who has lived with Easter culturally.
I use the Easter story in Mark because of its potential to startle and surprise, and thus help us discover something we perhaps didn’t realize or know about this story with which we’ve lived for so long. Did you happen to notice anything unusual in the story we heard from Mark?
There’s no Jesus! I mean he’s mentioned, but he doesn’t appear to the women at the tomb. And there’s no later sightings of a resurrected Jesus mentioned. Is that the Easter story you knew?
Here’s the thing, the author of Mark’s gospel did not include or impose any shortcuts on the necessary journey to discover Easter’s meaning. At least not through verse 8 which is as far as I read and which scholars believe is the original ending intended by the author of Mark. A shortcut was added onto Mark’s ending by later author(s) unsatisfied with Mark’s difficult ending; the shortcut of belief.
Thus the later ending tacked onto Mark’s original includes events designed to promote belief in the Easter story: physical appearances of Jesus to his disciples, detailed instructions from Jesus to the spread the good news, and the naming of signs which shall accompany true believers. The author(s) of this later ending may very well have believed they were helping the cause, if you will, but the effect has been change the focus of the Easter story from something we discover by living into it to one we must simply believe in.
And the conclusion too often drawn from that effect is that all it takes to go from muck to sunlight, from confusion to enlightenment, from death to resurrection, is belief. No journey necessary.
What a relief!
No; what a tragic error!
Of course, the appeal of belief as a theological, religious or spiritual shortcut is not hard to discern. Simple or mere belief is relatively easy. It is maintenance free, requiring little attention once adopted. As many of our leading political and indeed religious figures have learned, and our Supreme Court has confirmed, if professed loudly or forcefully enough, it need not even be authentic or sincere.
Belief is a quick and efficient means of sorting and categorizing people. It makes us feel like we belong while allowing us to remain safely, even smugly, in words Dave sang, “On the outside looking in”, confident of our moral superiority.
The drawback of belief as a theological, religious or spiritual shortcut is simple and stark. It is an illusion. When I drive up there from my home in Connecticut there is a point at which I can take several different routes, some of which could be considered shortcuts, but in the end, whichever I take, I will still arrive here, at my destination. What makes belief as a shortcut illusory, is that while time passes and the scenery changes, you actually get nowhere.
Put another way, the lotus, down in the muck at the bottom of the pond doesn’t break the surface simply by believing the sun is waiting to greet it, it breaks the surface by living into the promise of that greeting.
Thus, in his account of Easter, the author of Mark presents a story which is an invitation to live into the promise of the resurrection rather than a list of reasons to simply believe it. For though the author of Mark surely knew long before the 17th Century historian and clergyman Thomas Fuller would opine, “Seeing it believing.” He also knew, as Fuller also observed, “but feeling’s the truth.”
A sentiment only partially observed by the author(s) of the later ending to the gospel of Mark.
Unfortunately, the emphasis on belief carried the day over the centuries and Easter became primarily focused on the supernatural and an afterlife. Thus, the Easter story, a story we know so well, we think, we thought, is a story of diminishing potency in the 21st century, particularly among religious liberals, even Christians.
But it doesn’t have to be.
Easter’s most potent message can be summed up in the words of a song we’ll soon sing together, “Love has already won!”
The challenge and charge of this message is not, Believe it.
The challenge and charge is, Live it.
Belief often marks an ending. Leaving us to think we’ve arrived at some permanent destination with nothing else to do but sail along confident in our belief. That’s a point and challenge made through the song Dave sang this morning, “Outside Looking In.” It reminds us how belief can thwart curiosity and how easily we can employ beliefs as a shortcut to draw final and sweeping conclusions about others, keeping them one dimensional, safely at a distance, and ultimately unknown. And thus, like today’s readings, the song calls us to wonder how well we really know who and what we think we know. In their own way, they’re each warnings of sorts against the use of belief as a shortcut to truth when the long way is the only way that gets us anywhere near truth, lest we remain always and completely on the outside looking in, stuck in place, spinning our wheels. The end.
But Easter is not an ending. It is a beginning. And if the author of Mark saw reliance on belief inspired by physical evidence as an impediment to arriving at the truth or the full truth of the Easter story, that is, an ending, his solution was not to attempt to inspire belief in Easter, but to invite and encourage its discovery in each of us.
Easter then, the promise of new life, we’re reminded, is not something to believe in, but something to live into. It is not an arrival, but a journey we’re called to take; a new beginning.
Writing on beginnings, poet and philosopher David Whyte, notes, “It is always hard to believe that the courageous step is so close, that it is closer than we ever could imagine, that in fact, we already know what it is, and that the step is simpler, more radical than we had thought: which is why we so often prefer the story to be more elaborate, our identities clouded by fear, the horizon safely in the distance, the essay (or sermon) longer than it needs to be and the answer safely in the realm of impossibility.”
And in Mark’s gospel we are indeed presented plainly with an opening to take that courageous step into a beginning which is in fact more radical that we thought and perhaps why later writers and adherents sought a story that was more elaborate, longer than it needs to be, and safely impossible.
And still, it is Easter. “Love has already won!”
But don’t believe it. Live it!
Amen and Blessed Be
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
Easter, April 21, 2019
by The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Have you noticed the flowers lately? In the last week it seems there’s been mass bursting forth of flowers from the ground, in trees, and in anticipation of Easter, in the stores. Although the lily, rich in symbolism, is probably the flower most commonly associated with Easter, my late spiritual director often talked about the another flower, the lotus.
The lotus, he told me, starts out in the muck at the bottom of the pond, journeys through sometimes murky waters until it breaks the surface where it blossoms in the light of the sun. It is, of course, a metaphor for life, and more specifically, the spiritual life, and in the case of my spiritual director, who was a Buddhist, the path to enlightenment. More broadly, however, it is a metaphor any journey of discovery, from the muck of confusion toward the light of day, or clarity.
What I like about this metaphor and is particularly noteworthy about it, is it suggests or rather offers no shortcuts from the muck at the bottom of the pond to sunlight beyond the water’s surface. If you don’t embark on the journey, you don’t greet the sun.
The journey, in other words, is essential. There’s simply no avoiding it. And yet in our aversion to the pain of growth, conditioning toward instant gratification, and let’s face it, sometimes pure laziness, we try.
If you have attended Easter service here the last six years, you may have noticed I use the Easter story from Mark’s gospel every year. And it’s not because it is the shortest of the Easter stories in the canonical gospels. Easter is a monumental…THE monumental moment… in the Christian faith, a faith in which Unitarian Universalism has its origins and which remains one our sources of religious insight and wisdom. All of which is to say, as a faith, Unitarian Universalists have lived with Easter for a long time. We know it so well, we think. We thought.
But, as Mary Oliver reminds us in our second reading, we can live with someone (or something) for a long time only to discover, at any moment, there are things we never knew about it or them. Things that might startle or surprise us. Things that make us question how well we really know a person or story and perhaps help us appreciate things once thought familiar anew.
Easter is like that, I suspect, not just for Unitarian Universalists, but anyone who has lived with Easter culturally.
I use the Easter story in Mark because of its potential to startle and surprise, and thus help us discover something we perhaps didn’t realize or know about this story with which we’ve lived for so long. Did you happen to notice anything unusual in the story we heard from Mark?
There’s no Jesus! I mean he’s mentioned, but he doesn’t appear to the women at the tomb. And there’s no later sightings of a resurrected Jesus mentioned. Is that the Easter story you knew?
Here’s the thing, the author of Mark’s gospel did not include or impose any shortcuts on the necessary journey to discover Easter’s meaning. At least not through verse 8 which is as far as I read and which scholars believe is the original ending intended by the author of Mark. A shortcut was added onto Mark’s ending by later author(s) unsatisfied with Mark’s difficult ending; the shortcut of belief.
Thus the later ending tacked onto Mark’s original includes events designed to promote belief in the Easter story: physical appearances of Jesus to his disciples, detailed instructions from Jesus to the spread the good news, and the naming of signs which shall accompany true believers. The author(s) of this later ending may very well have believed they were helping the cause, if you will, but the effect has been change the focus of the Easter story from something we discover by living into it to one we must simply believe in.
And the conclusion too often drawn from that effect is that all it takes to go from muck to sunlight, from confusion to enlightenment, from death to resurrection, is belief. No journey necessary.
What a relief!
No; what a tragic error!
Of course, the appeal of belief as a theological, religious or spiritual shortcut is not hard to discern. Simple or mere belief is relatively easy. It is maintenance free, requiring little attention once adopted. As many of our leading political and indeed religious figures have learned, and our Supreme Court has confirmed, if professed loudly or forcefully enough, it need not even be authentic or sincere.
Belief is a quick and efficient means of sorting and categorizing people. It makes us feel like we belong while allowing us to remain safely, even smugly, in words Dave sang, “On the outside looking in”, confident of our moral superiority.
The drawback of belief as a theological, religious or spiritual shortcut is simple and stark. It is an illusion. When I drive up there from my home in Connecticut there is a point at which I can take several different routes, some of which could be considered shortcuts, but in the end, whichever I take, I will still arrive here, at my destination. What makes belief as a shortcut illusory, is that while time passes and the scenery changes, you actually get nowhere.
Put another way, the lotus, down in the muck at the bottom of the pond doesn’t break the surface simply by believing the sun is waiting to greet it, it breaks the surface by living into the promise of that greeting.
Thus, in his account of Easter, the author of Mark presents a story which is an invitation to live into the promise of the resurrection rather than a list of reasons to simply believe it. For though the author of Mark surely knew long before the 17th Century historian and clergyman Thomas Fuller would opine, “Seeing it believing.” He also knew, as Fuller also observed, “but feeling’s the truth.”
A sentiment only partially observed by the author(s) of the later ending to the gospel of Mark.
Unfortunately, the emphasis on belief carried the day over the centuries and Easter became primarily focused on the supernatural and an afterlife. Thus, the Easter story, a story we know so well, we think, we thought, is a story of diminishing potency in the 21st century, particularly among religious liberals, even Christians.
But it doesn’t have to be.
Easter’s most potent message can be summed up in the words of a song we’ll soon sing together, “Love has already won!”
The challenge and charge of this message is not, Believe it.
The challenge and charge is, Live it.
Belief often marks an ending. Leaving us to think we’ve arrived at some permanent destination with nothing else to do but sail along confident in our belief. That’s a point and challenge made through the song Dave sang this morning, “Outside Looking In.” It reminds us how belief can thwart curiosity and how easily we can employ beliefs as a shortcut to draw final and sweeping conclusions about others, keeping them one dimensional, safely at a distance, and ultimately unknown. And thus, like today’s readings, the song calls us to wonder how well we really know who and what we think we know. In their own way, they’re each warnings of sorts against the use of belief as a shortcut to truth when the long way is the only way that gets us anywhere near truth, lest we remain always and completely on the outside looking in, stuck in place, spinning our wheels. The end.
But Easter is not an ending. It is a beginning. And if the author of Mark saw reliance on belief inspired by physical evidence as an impediment to arriving at the truth or the full truth of the Easter story, that is, an ending, his solution was not to attempt to inspire belief in Easter, but to invite and encourage its discovery in each of us.
Easter then, the promise of new life, we’re reminded, is not something to believe in, but something to live into. It is not an arrival, but a journey we’re called to take; a new beginning.
Writing on beginnings, poet and philosopher David Whyte, notes, “It is always hard to believe that the courageous step is so close, that it is closer than we ever could imagine, that in fact, we already know what it is, and that the step is simpler, more radical than we had thought: which is why we so often prefer the story to be more elaborate, our identities clouded by fear, the horizon safely in the distance, the essay (or sermon) longer than it needs to be and the answer safely in the realm of impossibility.”
And in Mark’s gospel we are indeed presented plainly with an opening to take that courageous step into a beginning which is in fact more radical that we thought and perhaps why later writers and adherents sought a story that was more elaborate, longer than it needs to be, and safely impossible.
And still, it is Easter. “Love has already won!”
But don’t believe it. Live it!
Amen and Blessed Be
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