What Lies Within
A Sermon Given Easter Sunday at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
on April 16, 2017
by The Reverend Craig M. Nowak
About a month or so ago, my husband and I were walking to our car after having dinner at a restaurant in Wallingford, CT. It was a little chilly so we were walking kind of fast when suddenly, we both stopped dead in our tracks. There, before us was a site so wondrous, so tantalizing, we didn’t even need ask the other of his interest. There in all it’s confectionary glory was a cupcake store! Naturally, we went inside to sample the selection. Once inside we discovered another marvel. An old fashioned candy shop with all the “forgotten” candies of my childhood and before…Mallomars, Sugar Daddies, Squirrel Nuts, Chuckles, Pixy Stix, Bit-O-Honey, along with an assortment of those wax bottles filled with liquid, candy necklaces and cigarettes, candy buttons and one of my favorite blasts from the past, atomic fireballs.
If by chance you’ve never had an atomic fireball, it’s round and hard like a jawbreaker but bright red with a spicy hot cinnamon outer layer that leaves your mouth feeling raw, kind of like certain Cajun foods.
I remember these candies well from my childhood…eagerly unwrapping one, popping it into my mouth. Within seconds I’d be moving the candy side to side in my mouth as the burning sensation intensified, then I hold it in my teeth for a moment just to stop it from touching my skin and let my seemingly throbbing tongue cool off. Once in a while I just had to spit the thing out altogether when it was too hot.
On the surface, this trip down memory lane, as it were, may seem to have little to do with Easter, but in fact, it emerged out of time spent reflecting on my own experience of Christianity. Which it turns out, has many parallels to the experience of other Unitarian Universalists. Particularly those who grew up in one Christian faith or another. The most widely shared experience, it seems, is that of being hurt..some use the word wounded… in some way by Christianity. And indeed it occurred to me, that for some of us, Christianity has been experienced like one of those Atomic Fireball candies. It burns. And for some Unitarian Universalists, it still does to this day.
Intensifying our sensitivity is that often, when some of Christianity’s most vocal advocates speak in the public arena it is hard, if not impossible, to discern in what is said the spirit of Jesus’ teachings.
Rarely do we hear anything but a proclamation or defense of the religion about Jesus…, that is, of dogma and theological orderliness.
Where is the religion of Jesus? The truth spoken…indeed…lived by the man these proclamations and defenses purport to exalt and defend? The truth, Theodore Parker described as simple in conception, but at the same time, challenging in practice. Which, when lived actually defies the rigidity and tidiness dogma insists upon or seeks to impose.
Consider the challenges posed by the religion of Jesus with which people of good will struggle as reflected in the hymn “O Young and Fearless Prophet”, which we sing shortly. The hymn, exalting and echoing the teachings of Jesus, calls us to service to one another, countering mob mentality, and acting with humility. Now there’s a challenge for our time! Imagine… to act with humility…a veritable sin in zero sum game culture.
The challenge continues. As the hymn also speaks of transcending those things that divide us: hatred and prejudice, lust and greed and condemns the corrosive effects of nationalism. It also calls us to reject material excess; excess that leaves our sisters and brothers impoverished and lacking the basics…
It is a call to radical hospitality such as was scoffed at by the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, for which the truth of the myth is a warning: societies driven by greed and who neglect the most vulnerable of their members will ultimately be laid to waste…a story eerily relevant in our own age and for people of every political, religious and ideological stripe.
Curiously, “O Young and Fearless Prophet” closes not with a plea for Divine intervention to clean up the mess we’ve made, but with a courageous prayer. To be called out of ourselves. A “challenge above our noisy day”, so goes the hymn, to lead us forward in right relation with God and each other. It is above all else, a prayer for awareness.
Jesus, his teachings abundantly reveal, was a man of profound awareness. “Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? And do you not remember?” (Mark 8:18) he is said to have asked his disciples on occasion when they failed to grasp the fullness or depth of what he was saying. His challenge to them was to always to seek what lies within…to discern the truth beneath the surface.
Indeed, this challenge extends to our own engagement with the Easter narrative as Unitarian Universalists, however close or distance our own theological resonance with Christianity.
To the modern mind, the Easter story presents significant challenges. Although arguably the least “supernatural” of the four canonical accounts of Easter, Mark’s telling still defies logic, if taken solely at the surface level. Almost automatically, our minds want to know…Who moved that huge stone? Who is the person the women encounter inside the tomb? Where is the body? These are what we might call surface questions. Surface questions demand explanations often at the expense of deeper engagement. And these are often answered one of two ways…denial or dogma. Neither get us very far and both miss the point.
In considering the Easter narrative, truth is not found at the surface, that is, it is not discerned by reading the story and asking surface questions. Rather, truth is what lies within. The story is in fact a pathway to take us below the surface. And so if we follow the path, what do we find?
Most significantly, we encounter different questions. No longer do we ask, “Who rolled away such a big stone?” but, “What does it mean that the tomb was found opened?” I know from my own experience when I try to close the lid on something too large for the container I’ve place it in, the lid doesn’t stay shut for long. Which further begs the question, What was in that tomb that couldn’t be contained, even by death?
And not only death, but death deliberately brought about by the most brutal, torturous, degrading, mentally, spiritually and physically violent method, both literally and symbolically, the human mind could dream up. A method whose goal was nothing short of total and complete annihilation. Our deepest existential fear enacted in the flesh by the ruling authorities. And which Easter reminds us, was a massive failure.
The Easter narrative tells us the tomb was not only found open, but empty. Jesus’ body was not there. Instead he is described as being raised and on his way to Galilee. Here too at the surface of the story are questions which differ from those below the surface. Below the surface, our questions aren’t how is this scientifically possible, for example, for the body to be gone or walking about, but what might it mean to describe a person as not only risen but active among the living after death? Which is to say, are there ways in which we experience a person’s presence apart from the physical and to such a degree as to describe him/her as nevertheless living among us?
The answer for the Gospel writers and a whole lot of other people in the decades and centuries after Jesus’ death has been and continues to be yes.
And it would seem, and indeed be necessary in the long term, that we’re talking about more than the fond memory of man people knew and loved. For no one living today has any memory of the personality of Jesus, of what he was like to be around. Not even the Gospel writers themselves knew Jesus personally. And so we, like they, have basically two ways to “know” him. The teachings and sayings ascribed to him in scripture and the varied creedal statements and dogmas which evolved and changed in the decades after his execution.
The former is what is sometimes called the religion of Jesus. And initially, it was, so far as Biblical scholars can discern, Jesus’ teachings, not the theological claims of Jesus’ nature, that proved a potent force in the lives he touched. Teachings which in time spread…finding a new and ever widening audience hungry for an alternative way of living and being in the world. A radically different orientation…away from an existence rooted in brutality and fear toward a life embodying peace and love. A life that triumphs over death…death expressed and experienced as violence, oppression, and hatred. A life every bit as radical today, I might add, as it must have seemed to people in the 1st century. And a life even death could not extinguish nor a tomb contain.
For the early Christians then, it was the depth, power…and truth of the ways or teachings of Jesus which survived his violent, bloody execution. Indeed, the potency and resiliency of these as experienced by his followers was such that he was said to be resurrected…alive to and among them, giving rise to the written Gospels in the decades that followed and eventually the creedal statements which form what is often referred to as the religion about Jesus.
Thus, our Unitarian forbearer, Theodore Parker, referred to the way, the life and the teachings of Jesus as “the permanent” in Christianity. And it is in these, which Parker summarized as, “the divine life of the soul, love to God, and love to man,” that the truth of Christianity resides, not in its doctrines of which Parker wrote, “nothing changes more from age to age.”
And so we return to the place where we began, the Atomic Fireball. It is worth remembering beneath the hot spicy layer, which wears away over time…the candy contains a sweet center. An experience we’d miss if we discarded it too quickly. Indeed, we risk losing a certain depth of spiritual richness when we too quickly discard or dismiss Christianity (or any religious source for that matter), like an Atomic Fireball candy that seems too hot to handle, initially. The Easter narrative reminds us religious truth is rarely discerned at the surface.
Lest we are content to squander the spiritual wealth of our religious inheritance, let us joyfully and deliberately address the growing hunger for spiritual depth in religion and society by resolving this Easter to venture past the surface of things, that we might discover what lies within…reminding ourselves and each other, that truth- the permanent - is often obscured by the transient. And thus may we release what is perishing and embrace what is eternal.
Happy Easter!
Amen and Blessed Be
A Sermon Given Easter Sunday at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
on April 16, 2017
by The Reverend Craig M. Nowak
About a month or so ago, my husband and I were walking to our car after having dinner at a restaurant in Wallingford, CT. It was a little chilly so we were walking kind of fast when suddenly, we both stopped dead in our tracks. There, before us was a site so wondrous, so tantalizing, we didn’t even need ask the other of his interest. There in all it’s confectionary glory was a cupcake store! Naturally, we went inside to sample the selection. Once inside we discovered another marvel. An old fashioned candy shop with all the “forgotten” candies of my childhood and before…Mallomars, Sugar Daddies, Squirrel Nuts, Chuckles, Pixy Stix, Bit-O-Honey, along with an assortment of those wax bottles filled with liquid, candy necklaces and cigarettes, candy buttons and one of my favorite blasts from the past, atomic fireballs.
If by chance you’ve never had an atomic fireball, it’s round and hard like a jawbreaker but bright red with a spicy hot cinnamon outer layer that leaves your mouth feeling raw, kind of like certain Cajun foods.
I remember these candies well from my childhood…eagerly unwrapping one, popping it into my mouth. Within seconds I’d be moving the candy side to side in my mouth as the burning sensation intensified, then I hold it in my teeth for a moment just to stop it from touching my skin and let my seemingly throbbing tongue cool off. Once in a while I just had to spit the thing out altogether when it was too hot.
On the surface, this trip down memory lane, as it were, may seem to have little to do with Easter, but in fact, it emerged out of time spent reflecting on my own experience of Christianity. Which it turns out, has many parallels to the experience of other Unitarian Universalists. Particularly those who grew up in one Christian faith or another. The most widely shared experience, it seems, is that of being hurt..some use the word wounded… in some way by Christianity. And indeed it occurred to me, that for some of us, Christianity has been experienced like one of those Atomic Fireball candies. It burns. And for some Unitarian Universalists, it still does to this day.
Intensifying our sensitivity is that often, when some of Christianity’s most vocal advocates speak in the public arena it is hard, if not impossible, to discern in what is said the spirit of Jesus’ teachings.
Rarely do we hear anything but a proclamation or defense of the religion about Jesus…, that is, of dogma and theological orderliness.
Where is the religion of Jesus? The truth spoken…indeed…lived by the man these proclamations and defenses purport to exalt and defend? The truth, Theodore Parker described as simple in conception, but at the same time, challenging in practice. Which, when lived actually defies the rigidity and tidiness dogma insists upon or seeks to impose.
Consider the challenges posed by the religion of Jesus with which people of good will struggle as reflected in the hymn “O Young and Fearless Prophet”, which we sing shortly. The hymn, exalting and echoing the teachings of Jesus, calls us to service to one another, countering mob mentality, and acting with humility. Now there’s a challenge for our time! Imagine… to act with humility…a veritable sin in zero sum game culture.
The challenge continues. As the hymn also speaks of transcending those things that divide us: hatred and prejudice, lust and greed and condemns the corrosive effects of nationalism. It also calls us to reject material excess; excess that leaves our sisters and brothers impoverished and lacking the basics…
It is a call to radical hospitality such as was scoffed at by the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, for which the truth of the myth is a warning: societies driven by greed and who neglect the most vulnerable of their members will ultimately be laid to waste…a story eerily relevant in our own age and for people of every political, religious and ideological stripe.
Curiously, “O Young and Fearless Prophet” closes not with a plea for Divine intervention to clean up the mess we’ve made, but with a courageous prayer. To be called out of ourselves. A “challenge above our noisy day”, so goes the hymn, to lead us forward in right relation with God and each other. It is above all else, a prayer for awareness.
Jesus, his teachings abundantly reveal, was a man of profound awareness. “Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? And do you not remember?” (Mark 8:18) he is said to have asked his disciples on occasion when they failed to grasp the fullness or depth of what he was saying. His challenge to them was to always to seek what lies within…to discern the truth beneath the surface.
Indeed, this challenge extends to our own engagement with the Easter narrative as Unitarian Universalists, however close or distance our own theological resonance with Christianity.
To the modern mind, the Easter story presents significant challenges. Although arguably the least “supernatural” of the four canonical accounts of Easter, Mark’s telling still defies logic, if taken solely at the surface level. Almost automatically, our minds want to know…Who moved that huge stone? Who is the person the women encounter inside the tomb? Where is the body? These are what we might call surface questions. Surface questions demand explanations often at the expense of deeper engagement. And these are often answered one of two ways…denial or dogma. Neither get us very far and both miss the point.
In considering the Easter narrative, truth is not found at the surface, that is, it is not discerned by reading the story and asking surface questions. Rather, truth is what lies within. The story is in fact a pathway to take us below the surface. And so if we follow the path, what do we find?
Most significantly, we encounter different questions. No longer do we ask, “Who rolled away such a big stone?” but, “What does it mean that the tomb was found opened?” I know from my own experience when I try to close the lid on something too large for the container I’ve place it in, the lid doesn’t stay shut for long. Which further begs the question, What was in that tomb that couldn’t be contained, even by death?
And not only death, but death deliberately brought about by the most brutal, torturous, degrading, mentally, spiritually and physically violent method, both literally and symbolically, the human mind could dream up. A method whose goal was nothing short of total and complete annihilation. Our deepest existential fear enacted in the flesh by the ruling authorities. And which Easter reminds us, was a massive failure.
The Easter narrative tells us the tomb was not only found open, but empty. Jesus’ body was not there. Instead he is described as being raised and on his way to Galilee. Here too at the surface of the story are questions which differ from those below the surface. Below the surface, our questions aren’t how is this scientifically possible, for example, for the body to be gone or walking about, but what might it mean to describe a person as not only risen but active among the living after death? Which is to say, are there ways in which we experience a person’s presence apart from the physical and to such a degree as to describe him/her as nevertheless living among us?
The answer for the Gospel writers and a whole lot of other people in the decades and centuries after Jesus’ death has been and continues to be yes.
And it would seem, and indeed be necessary in the long term, that we’re talking about more than the fond memory of man people knew and loved. For no one living today has any memory of the personality of Jesus, of what he was like to be around. Not even the Gospel writers themselves knew Jesus personally. And so we, like they, have basically two ways to “know” him. The teachings and sayings ascribed to him in scripture and the varied creedal statements and dogmas which evolved and changed in the decades after his execution.
The former is what is sometimes called the religion of Jesus. And initially, it was, so far as Biblical scholars can discern, Jesus’ teachings, not the theological claims of Jesus’ nature, that proved a potent force in the lives he touched. Teachings which in time spread…finding a new and ever widening audience hungry for an alternative way of living and being in the world. A radically different orientation…away from an existence rooted in brutality and fear toward a life embodying peace and love. A life that triumphs over death…death expressed and experienced as violence, oppression, and hatred. A life every bit as radical today, I might add, as it must have seemed to people in the 1st century. And a life even death could not extinguish nor a tomb contain.
For the early Christians then, it was the depth, power…and truth of the ways or teachings of Jesus which survived his violent, bloody execution. Indeed, the potency and resiliency of these as experienced by his followers was such that he was said to be resurrected…alive to and among them, giving rise to the written Gospels in the decades that followed and eventually the creedal statements which form what is often referred to as the religion about Jesus.
Thus, our Unitarian forbearer, Theodore Parker, referred to the way, the life and the teachings of Jesus as “the permanent” in Christianity. And it is in these, which Parker summarized as, “the divine life of the soul, love to God, and love to man,” that the truth of Christianity resides, not in its doctrines of which Parker wrote, “nothing changes more from age to age.”
And so we return to the place where we began, the Atomic Fireball. It is worth remembering beneath the hot spicy layer, which wears away over time…the candy contains a sweet center. An experience we’d miss if we discarded it too quickly. Indeed, we risk losing a certain depth of spiritual richness when we too quickly discard or dismiss Christianity (or any religious source for that matter), like an Atomic Fireball candy that seems too hot to handle, initially. The Easter narrative reminds us religious truth is rarely discerned at the surface.
Lest we are content to squander the spiritual wealth of our religious inheritance, let us joyfully and deliberately address the growing hunger for spiritual depth in religion and society by resolving this Easter to venture past the surface of things, that we might discover what lies within…reminding ourselves and each other, that truth- the permanent - is often obscured by the transient. And thus may we release what is perishing and embrace what is eternal.
Happy Easter!
Amen and Blessed Be