And he went in to tarry with them.
And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight…
And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread.
And that is the story of Easter.
SERMON
I have come to think that the center of Jesus’ message is what is called the Great Commandments, to “love God and neighbor as self.” I have come to think that the center of Jesus’ life as a spiritual companion with whom we are walking, are the words of Matthew 11: 28-29: “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” And, I have come to think that in an act he performs during the Passion story lies the meaning and reality of resurrection.
A few years back a popular Bruce Willis movie, “The Sixth Sense,” had as its premise that a little boy possessed a sixth sense that allowed him to see dead people. Dead people populated his world and interacted with him as completely as did people who were alive, and they did so in order to resolve some incomplete portion of their lives using his help. During the course of the movie the boy gradually became aware of this with the help of the Bruce Willis character, who, along with the audience, comes to the terrible realization that he interacts with the boy because Willis himself is dead. It was a stunning portrait of the discovery of mortality, which in my mind accounted for the movie’s popularity.
The movie was a modern twist on the Road to Emmaus story. The interaction of a living, breathing person with a dead person resolving something incomplete in that dead person’s life, as the storyline of a narrative on human mortality. It’s a powerful, memorable story. It can be read as a horror movie. It can be read as a supernatural thriller. Or it can be read as a statement on human nature; that when we realize our mortality we can discover and experience possibilities over which death has no dominion. When we know we are dying then it is possible for us to love.
The movie’s appeal was not because it is possible see dead people but because we are all mortal, and the limitations of our lifetime are discovered by us on a variety of different levels in a variety of different ways. The relationship between limitation, discovery, possibility, and love has been our Lenten journey.
This Lenten Season we have been on an extraordinary journey to discover dimensions of our existence previously unsensed by us. We have looked to the experience of certain individuals who, despite having been deprived of one of the five human senses, have nonetheless experienced a breadth to human existence and the human condition that is extraordinary. We’ve taken this journey in a time and culture of sensual excess. And we’ve taken this journey not to discover the individuals’ experiences as examples of courage in facing the loss of sight, hearing, seeing, tasting, or touching. We’ve been on this pilgrimage not to see these people as having faced down the impossible, of living without one of their senses. This has not been an occasion to ponder, “Why these people and not me?” although all of these readings would be reasonable and understandable. We have tried to look at these accounts not as fascinating anomalies, but to understand the depth and complexity of all human experience. We’ve forged this other path this Lenten Season to broaden our understanding of human experience, that our own sympathies might expand and we might experience existence as broadly as our witnesses have. We have taken this journey to deepen our sensitiveness to things divine by opening ourselves up to a more expansive, more liberal experience of existence.
And we complete this spiritual journey today with the story of Easter. This part of the journey begins where sensation ends. Jesus dies. He loses all five human senses and dies. But, like anyone’s death we do not and cannot have an account as he experienced it. The dead do not speak and cannot tell us what we long to know. Unlike all the other accounts during our journey this Lenten season, when someone loses all their senses and dies it is an experience that leaves no trail. We cannot know what the dead experienced. We can just tell a story. And it will be a compelling, alluring story because we cannot know what was experienced, but we long to. That’s why that particular story has been portrayed in so many different ways, from medieval Passion plays to the recent Mel Gibson movie. There is no way for us to know what Jesus experienced as he experienced it. Yet, our deepest yearning is to know. Because we also know we will have our own experience, too.
So it is only possible to glean some understanding of Jesus’ experience, and our upcoming experience, using common sense. Common sense, the sixth sense, which is so blatantly absent in much religious thinking. Dead people do not walk again, but our five senses are also subject to being fooled because existence is always broader and deeper than what we as individuals experience it to be. Thinking is critical and reasoning is both proper and necessary, but life’s deepest truths are the results of experience, not speculation or scholasticism. Religion is not about whether there is meaning in this world, but declaring what meaning there is that lasts.
It is fair and true to say, I think, that the quintessential lens through which the evangelical Christian views the world is the same lens through which he reads the whole New Testament: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." Thus, for the evangelical Christian the meaning of resurrection is found in this phrase. The quintessential lens through which the Penecostal Christian views the world is the same lens through which she reads the whole New Testament: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but shall have everlasting life." Thus, for the Penecostal Christian the meaning of resurrection is found in this phrase as well. The quintessential lens through which the Lutheran Christian views the world is the same lens through which he reads the whole New Testament, the Apostle Paul's statement: "But the righteous man shall live by faith." Thus, for the Lutheran Christian the meaning of resurrection is found in this phrase as well. And, finally, I would offer that the quintessential lens through which we as Unitarian Universalists view the religious enterprise and undertaking and read the New Testament is Matthew 11:28-30: "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." The meaning of resurrection is found in this phrase as indicative of the life Jesus led. It is a statement about how to be free. And it is rooted in common sense.
It would be interesting for us to pass out printed copies of this Jesus passage to movie goers heading in to see Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ! For, what is it about Jesus' yoke that is easy and what of his burden is light? If he carried upon his shoulders the sin of all humanity, THE ultimate yoke or burden, would that be easy or light? By his own admission his yoke and burden must be something other than church doctrine. But, what yoke or burden does he really carry? He eschews material accumulation, although he does not engage in an ascetic, other-worldly life. He tells the rich young man to give up material possessions and walk with him. He lives and moves in his society and culture but does not live by its codes, rules, and expectations. He announces that unlike social and economic appearance, the first of his day will be last and the last will be first. He is religious, but is not a part of the religious establishment of his day. He talks to God like a child to a parent and culls from the massive index of Jewish law the commandments to love God and neighbor as self as the Law's fulfillment. He does not officiate at ritual sacrifice or ceremony, collect monies for the Temple, or oversee a synagogue as its Teacher or its most righteous witness of faith. For living in this manner he is condemned and executed by the masses, Roman governmental officials, and the religious leaders of his own faith. His execution is unfathomable in its horrible suffering and cruelty. With all these things to think upon and his execution to consider through the experience of our senses, how can it be that his yoke easy and burden light? But then again, our senses can be fooled. There is more to the experience of sense than his bodily suffering. Life’s truths are more than the product of speculation and scholastic, critical thinking, for individuals experience them everyday.
All of Jesus’ suffering is an easy yoke and a light burden compared to the alternative! It is living in freedom compared to living in bondage. To live by the material things of this world, instead of by the spirit, is a harsh, damning, formidable yoke. To live by the demands of the social order, instead of a love for all souls, is a cripplingly formidable burden. To live by religious doctrine, ritual, rite, pomp and circumstance, and by religion’s rigid moral and ethical oughts, instead of by one's immediate experience of, and connection and relationship to one's Creative Parent, is to subject oneself to a suicidal yoke. Religion can so easily be slipped around our spiritual shoulders as a burden that smothers the spirit and suffocates the capacities God created in human being.
Even through his physical suffering Jesus’ message rings true. Do not take on this yoke, but take on and wear an easier, lighter one. Live by the spirit and not by things of this world, and one will see what is truly yearn for. Until one lives in the spirit, refuge in all kinds of things of this world will be sought. Don’t be fooled! Anything else is a heavier burden and a harder yoke. Live by a love for all souls and one will avoid the pitfalls of the social and economic categories by which we decide who is and is not a "child of God." Until one seeks to live inside of this kind of love we will treat one another inequitably and unjustly. And live not by religious rite, ritual, doctrine, or by moral and ethical systems, but by faith, that God is as immediate to you as a Loving Parent, and as close a blood relative to all peoples everywhere. When we live this way we are living in the Immediacy of a Loving Spirit that overturns the social, economic, and religious order that we have put to this world. It is to step onto a path of freedom that exists in existence as surely as any order human beings have created. It is to dwell in the Kingdom of God. And that is an easier yoke and a much lighter burden.
Thinking about it critically and reasonably is proper and good. But thinking is not living, and being scholastic is not living religiously. Experience, especially religious experience, is not about whether there is meaning in this world, but declaring what lasting meaning there is in what human beings do.
Life itself can be told and lived as a horror movie. Life can be told and lived as a supernatural thriller. Or, life can be told, read, and lived as a story about human nature made in the image of God; that when we realize our mortality, our humanity, we can discover and experience possibilities over which death has no dominion. When we know we are human and are dying, then it is possible for us to love.
It's a matter of faith because it depends on how the story is told. The issue is never whether humanity sins, but the narrative of how sin is to be redeemed or overcome. If the story is told that Jesus' sacrificial suffering and death was an act of love through which humankind's sin was atoned for, that is one way to tell the story. That kind of telling places a gallows at the center of existence. That is, the redemptive act is the willing sacrifice of Jesus going to the cross to save humanity by changing God’s mind concerning everlasting punishment. The story told that way will insure that humanity's fascination with death will remain the shackles with which we live and are bound.
I think there is a deeper story of love and redemption here, which is the source of the life affirming power of the narrative. In the midst of a suffering that was unjustified and undeserved, brought about by the two supreme forms of human power, government and religion; and in the midst of being abandoned and denied by those who knew him and loved him; utterly alone, his body wracked with pain and anguish, abandoned even by a God whom he thought could save him, “My God why hast Thou forsaken me,” Jesus did not lose hope. Instead, he freely performed the one human act through which God could appear in such a situation. Jesus forgives. “Forgive them, they know not what they do.” That demolishes the gallows at the center of existence and replaces it with a heart. That act redeems. That becomes an act that reaches out to connect him to those who have denied him and fled, the only kind of redemptive connection that could survive his death. It is the one act that redeems the tragedy inherent in the exercise and gross misuse of all human forms of power. Forgiveness completes Jesus’ life, so that he does not need to be like a dead person in The Sixth Sense movie. He does not need to walk the earth in order to reconcile some incomplete portion of his life. He is free. Life is complete through forgiveness. Life is fulfilled through love.
And after his death there appeared a man who sat down with his followers when they invited a stranger to share their meal. And when they asked the stranger to break bread with them, and the stranger did, there was a powerful stirring among the followers of Jesus as they looked at one another. Each one of them remembered that together they had broken bread with Jesus when he was alive. He had told them that the love that is God is most visibly present in the fellowship around a table where food is being shared. And they looked at the stranger, and though they did not know who he was or whether his intentions were honorable or harmful, they shared their meal with him. By sharing their bread in love with a stranger, they felt Jesus’ spirit present with and in them, to love their neighbor as themselves; to love all souls; to love God. They felt forgiven for all they had done. And they felt the powerful demand to extend forgiveness to others. And it was in the spirit of true human fellowship that one, then another, cried out, “He lives.” His spirit still dwells among human beings. God is with them and real to them. And then they remembered Jesus’ last words, and the last act that he performed before he died. He forgave, and he loved. And they rejoiced with exceeding great joy, and set out to tell others of the good news. There is a power over which not even death has dominion. There is love.
AMEN.