Idle Worship
Easter Sunday
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Storrs
April 17, 2022
Rev. Craig M. Nowak
I came across something scary, truly frightening recently. Photographic evidence that in a magical time long ago, known as the 1970’s, parents used to dress their children in horrific clothing, a red blazer and pink plaid pants in this case, and drag them to the mall, to see…wait for it…the Easter Bunny! Well, not the real Easter Bunny, but an adult dressed up in a freaky bunny costume. Now, I must have blocked this memory out of my mind because I don’t remember Easter as a particularly scary holiday growing up. But there I am in this photograph, my hair still the straw blonde it was until it turned brown at about age ten, dressed in awful, garish clothes, sitting on the lap of a giant bunny! I ask you, how much scarier could Easter be?
Apparently quite a bit.
Just ask Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, the three women who, according to the author of Mark’s Gospel, the earliest of the canonical Gospels, “fled from the tomb”, that first Easter morning, so seized by “terror and amazement” that they said “nothing to anyone.” The end.
Of course, it may not seem that scary to us, first, because we know that didn’t remain the end for long. You see, after this version of the story was written, a later author tacked on a much longer and supposedly more satisfactory ending to the original, which goes like this…
9 [Now when he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. 10 She went and told those who had been with him, as they mourned and wept. 11 But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it. 12 After these things he appeared in another form to two of them, as they were walking into the country. 13 And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them.14 Afterward he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at table, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. 15 And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. 17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18 they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”19 So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. 20 And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.]
Hmm. Interesting.
It seems even back then, a time often sentimentalized and subsequently dismissed as a mythic age of faith and miracles, seeing was believing or rather more accurately, believing required seeing.
Today we’re more inclined to pick apart the story not for evidence of a risen Jesus, but to demonstrate that its more or less nonsense, at least from a scientific perspective. Both efforts however, whether sincere or cynical, rob the story of its real power.
The thing is, by focusing our attention on questions and explanations related to Jesus’ literal, physical whereabouts after death, we avoid terror and amazement altogether, and settle comfortably into a sense of relief and resolution arising from external confirmation, regardless of whether we ultimately believe or deny the event.
Easter, is thus rendered anti-climactic and the ham bone from Easter dinner is more likely to experience new life in soup later in the week than anyone gather round the table for dinner or seated in the pews of churches around the globe on Easter morning.
But what if the whole point of the Easter story is not to prove resurrection, but to engender it?
Remember, the women who show up at the tomb, like all of Jesus’ followers are in despair. Their whole world, all their hopes and dreams have been crushed, extinguished by the force of what the Jesus scholar Marcus Borg called, “the Domination system”, essentially the way of the world, not merely the Roman occupiers. It’s all over for them as far as they know. And so, these woman are fully expecting to see Jesus’ body in that tomb. That would be normal. But when they enter what they encounter is not normal. The body is gone.
Now, anyone who has ever watched, read, or heard a story, book, or movie where people stumble on an empty grave knows the response is invariably shock…terror and amazement. So why are we so surprised this is the response of the women in the Easter story? They arrive at a sealed tomb and find it open and empty! Of course they’re shocked…afraid…amazed!
In ending the story with the women fleeing seized by terror and amazement, the author of Mark, having made this shocking revelation of the empty tomb, in effect turns to us as if to ask, “Now what?”
And haven’t we all wondered, “Now what?” when everything around us has seemingly collapsed or things fall apart? You can be sure the people of Ukraine are. Migrants at the border are. And transgender youth around this country are.
But we don’t ask, “Now what?” We ask, “What happened?” As if we didn’t just read that something we believed impossible has happened. Of course, what we really want is proof. And so it’s added by a later writer(s), promptly removing us from participation in the story through the imagination dulling power of literalism. Now there’s an ending not with terror and amazement, but with Jesus sightings all over the place. And he’s popping up all over the place, scolding followers, and giving instructions, just like he did before he was crucified and the whole affair becomes about gathering evidence to satisfy the mind we already have.
And yet, Mark’s Gospel began with a call, “Metanoia!”, the Greek word usually translated as repent, and which means to go beyond the mind you have…to push past conventional understanding…beyond literalism and toward imagination.
This is crucial in contemplating the gospels, Jesus, his teachings, and Easter. Indeed, sticking with the mind we have literalizes the Easter story into meaninglessness or worse, idle worship. That is, lazy, passive worship, where the miracle of resurrection is reduced to a physical event people spend hoping and praying a lifetime for to be done to them after physical death.
Thus belief in a religion about Jesus overtakes faith in the religion of Jesus.
This is perhaps why another story from the gospels where fear is present is easily overlooked. At first glance the descent from the cross and burial of Jesus as described in our first reading from John’s gospel this morning seems like a relatively minor story. Indeed, it appears little more than a transition from one major event, the crucifixion, to another, Easter morning. A closer reading however suggests otherwise.
That Joseph of Arimathea was able to petition Pilate to take and bury Jesus’ body and Nicodemus could afford the greater than usual quantity of costly spices used for the burial reveals these men had considerable influence and means, which perhaps offers a reason, in part, as to why the text also makes a point of noting they were ‘secret’ followers of Jesus. They were afraid of losing their position and influence.
In any event, in the story Jesus is dead. He’s been executed in a horrific, humiliating manner reserved for the alleged worse of the worse of his time. Soon birds and other animals are going to start picking his body apart and what remains of him will be tossed into a common grave.
It makes perfect sense then to the mind we already have for two of his followers to want to honor and preserve their friend and teacher with a proper burial and to even go overboard, perhaps out of guilt for remaining secret followers while he was alive or as an attempt to try and compensate in part for the horrific nature of his death.
Now, the care and expense these men take to ensure Jesus a proper burial, rather than the one his manner of execution would have normally fated him to, is often cited as evidence of Jesus’ kingship, theologically speaking.
Further, that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus were secret, Jewish, followers of Jesus, has been used to place theological emphasis on belief in Jesus, the Christ.
But is this really a story as simple as two men seeking to give a proper burial to a deceased teacher they denied in life or, conversely, one that was meant to communicate what would only later become part of the orthodox theology of Christianity?
Maybe not.
For if we go beyond the mind we already have, we’re invited to imagine, what else might these men have been up to? What else, if not Jesus’ body, were they interested in honoring and preserving that they feared might be lost if left to rot, so to speak, on the cross or in a common grave?
“Truth”, the noted Unitarian minister Theodore Parker observed, “is entrusted for the time to a perishable Ark of human contrivance. Though often shipwrecked, she always comes safe to land, and is not changed by her mishap.”
Might these men have acted in the service of truth?
Indeed, throughout John’s gospel Jesus is understood as the incarnation, the living embodiment of truth, truth in the flesh, so to speak. It is then not too hard to imagine that in reverently honoring and preserving, indeed protecting Jesus’ body, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus are honoring, preserving, and protecting the truth he represents from not only being shipwrecked, to borrow Theodore Parker’s metaphor, but lost at sea.
Come Easter morning the tomb is empty.
And the three women who discover it, the author of Mark tells us, are so seized by terror and amazement that they tell no one about the empty tomb.
What he doesn’t tell us is what’s next, at least not originally.
That the gospel writer leaves for us to answer for ourselves. He’s left us a story that tells us resurrection, new life, is possible and, in relating all that preceded Easter morning, even tells us how. He’s done his job.
And so the question remains for us, “What’s next?”
Our answer, of course, will depend on whether or not we believe the empty tomb tells the story of the body of a man risen from the dead 2,000 years ago or a body of truth through which we may find and live life anew each day?
One makes for idle worship: un-compelling and easy, if not a little boring, asking nothing of us other than firm belief in the things that satisfy the mind we already have. The only thing scary about that is how many choose it over and over again.
The other draws us to the edge of new horizons, calls us to question our certainties and exercise faithful doubts. It promises adventure rather than ease, eschewing moralism in favor of mercy and rigid literalism in favor of imagination. Taking us far beyond the mind we already have, it promises to seize us with the terror and amazement that is Easter, of life lived anew.
May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be
Easter Sunday
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Storrs
April 17, 2022
Rev. Craig M. Nowak
I came across something scary, truly frightening recently. Photographic evidence that in a magical time long ago, known as the 1970’s, parents used to dress their children in horrific clothing, a red blazer and pink plaid pants in this case, and drag them to the mall, to see…wait for it…the Easter Bunny! Well, not the real Easter Bunny, but an adult dressed up in a freaky bunny costume. Now, I must have blocked this memory out of my mind because I don’t remember Easter as a particularly scary holiday growing up. But there I am in this photograph, my hair still the straw blonde it was until it turned brown at about age ten, dressed in awful, garish clothes, sitting on the lap of a giant bunny! I ask you, how much scarier could Easter be?
Apparently quite a bit.
Just ask Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, the three women who, according to the author of Mark’s Gospel, the earliest of the canonical Gospels, “fled from the tomb”, that first Easter morning, so seized by “terror and amazement” that they said “nothing to anyone.” The end.
Of course, it may not seem that scary to us, first, because we know that didn’t remain the end for long. You see, after this version of the story was written, a later author tacked on a much longer and supposedly more satisfactory ending to the original, which goes like this…
9 [Now when he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. 10 She went and told those who had been with him, as they mourned and wept. 11 But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it. 12 After these things he appeared in another form to two of them, as they were walking into the country. 13 And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them.14 Afterward he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at table, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. 15 And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. 17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18 they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”19 So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. 20 And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.]
Hmm. Interesting.
It seems even back then, a time often sentimentalized and subsequently dismissed as a mythic age of faith and miracles, seeing was believing or rather more accurately, believing required seeing.
Today we’re more inclined to pick apart the story not for evidence of a risen Jesus, but to demonstrate that its more or less nonsense, at least from a scientific perspective. Both efforts however, whether sincere or cynical, rob the story of its real power.
The thing is, by focusing our attention on questions and explanations related to Jesus’ literal, physical whereabouts after death, we avoid terror and amazement altogether, and settle comfortably into a sense of relief and resolution arising from external confirmation, regardless of whether we ultimately believe or deny the event.
Easter, is thus rendered anti-climactic and the ham bone from Easter dinner is more likely to experience new life in soup later in the week than anyone gather round the table for dinner or seated in the pews of churches around the globe on Easter morning.
But what if the whole point of the Easter story is not to prove resurrection, but to engender it?
Remember, the women who show up at the tomb, like all of Jesus’ followers are in despair. Their whole world, all their hopes and dreams have been crushed, extinguished by the force of what the Jesus scholar Marcus Borg called, “the Domination system”, essentially the way of the world, not merely the Roman occupiers. It’s all over for them as far as they know. And so, these woman are fully expecting to see Jesus’ body in that tomb. That would be normal. But when they enter what they encounter is not normal. The body is gone.
Now, anyone who has ever watched, read, or heard a story, book, or movie where people stumble on an empty grave knows the response is invariably shock…terror and amazement. So why are we so surprised this is the response of the women in the Easter story? They arrive at a sealed tomb and find it open and empty! Of course they’re shocked…afraid…amazed!
In ending the story with the women fleeing seized by terror and amazement, the author of Mark, having made this shocking revelation of the empty tomb, in effect turns to us as if to ask, “Now what?”
And haven’t we all wondered, “Now what?” when everything around us has seemingly collapsed or things fall apart? You can be sure the people of Ukraine are. Migrants at the border are. And transgender youth around this country are.
But we don’t ask, “Now what?” We ask, “What happened?” As if we didn’t just read that something we believed impossible has happened. Of course, what we really want is proof. And so it’s added by a later writer(s), promptly removing us from participation in the story through the imagination dulling power of literalism. Now there’s an ending not with terror and amazement, but with Jesus sightings all over the place. And he’s popping up all over the place, scolding followers, and giving instructions, just like he did before he was crucified and the whole affair becomes about gathering evidence to satisfy the mind we already have.
And yet, Mark’s Gospel began with a call, “Metanoia!”, the Greek word usually translated as repent, and which means to go beyond the mind you have…to push past conventional understanding…beyond literalism and toward imagination.
This is crucial in contemplating the gospels, Jesus, his teachings, and Easter. Indeed, sticking with the mind we have literalizes the Easter story into meaninglessness or worse, idle worship. That is, lazy, passive worship, where the miracle of resurrection is reduced to a physical event people spend hoping and praying a lifetime for to be done to them after physical death.
Thus belief in a religion about Jesus overtakes faith in the religion of Jesus.
This is perhaps why another story from the gospels where fear is present is easily overlooked. At first glance the descent from the cross and burial of Jesus as described in our first reading from John’s gospel this morning seems like a relatively minor story. Indeed, it appears little more than a transition from one major event, the crucifixion, to another, Easter morning. A closer reading however suggests otherwise.
That Joseph of Arimathea was able to petition Pilate to take and bury Jesus’ body and Nicodemus could afford the greater than usual quantity of costly spices used for the burial reveals these men had considerable influence and means, which perhaps offers a reason, in part, as to why the text also makes a point of noting they were ‘secret’ followers of Jesus. They were afraid of losing their position and influence.
In any event, in the story Jesus is dead. He’s been executed in a horrific, humiliating manner reserved for the alleged worse of the worse of his time. Soon birds and other animals are going to start picking his body apart and what remains of him will be tossed into a common grave.
It makes perfect sense then to the mind we already have for two of his followers to want to honor and preserve their friend and teacher with a proper burial and to even go overboard, perhaps out of guilt for remaining secret followers while he was alive or as an attempt to try and compensate in part for the horrific nature of his death.
Now, the care and expense these men take to ensure Jesus a proper burial, rather than the one his manner of execution would have normally fated him to, is often cited as evidence of Jesus’ kingship, theologically speaking.
Further, that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus were secret, Jewish, followers of Jesus, has been used to place theological emphasis on belief in Jesus, the Christ.
But is this really a story as simple as two men seeking to give a proper burial to a deceased teacher they denied in life or, conversely, one that was meant to communicate what would only later become part of the orthodox theology of Christianity?
Maybe not.
For if we go beyond the mind we already have, we’re invited to imagine, what else might these men have been up to? What else, if not Jesus’ body, were they interested in honoring and preserving that they feared might be lost if left to rot, so to speak, on the cross or in a common grave?
“Truth”, the noted Unitarian minister Theodore Parker observed, “is entrusted for the time to a perishable Ark of human contrivance. Though often shipwrecked, she always comes safe to land, and is not changed by her mishap.”
Might these men have acted in the service of truth?
Indeed, throughout John’s gospel Jesus is understood as the incarnation, the living embodiment of truth, truth in the flesh, so to speak. It is then not too hard to imagine that in reverently honoring and preserving, indeed protecting Jesus’ body, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus are honoring, preserving, and protecting the truth he represents from not only being shipwrecked, to borrow Theodore Parker’s metaphor, but lost at sea.
Come Easter morning the tomb is empty.
And the three women who discover it, the author of Mark tells us, are so seized by terror and amazement that they tell no one about the empty tomb.
What he doesn’t tell us is what’s next, at least not originally.
That the gospel writer leaves for us to answer for ourselves. He’s left us a story that tells us resurrection, new life, is possible and, in relating all that preceded Easter morning, even tells us how. He’s done his job.
And so the question remains for us, “What’s next?”
Our answer, of course, will depend on whether or not we believe the empty tomb tells the story of the body of a man risen from the dead 2,000 years ago or a body of truth through which we may find and live life anew each day?
One makes for idle worship: un-compelling and easy, if not a little boring, asking nothing of us other than firm belief in the things that satisfy the mind we already have. The only thing scary about that is how many choose it over and over again.
The other draws us to the edge of new horizons, calls us to question our certainties and exercise faithful doubts. It promises adventure rather than ease, eschewing moralism in favor of mercy and rigid literalism in favor of imagination. Taking us far beyond the mind we already have, it promises to seize us with the terror and amazement that is Easter, of life lived anew.
May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be