EASTER SUNDAY, April 8, 2007
Rev. Libbie Stoddard
I sometimes think that Easter is the
most complicated of all holidays. For
one thing, it isn’t always on the same date, like Halloween, or Christmas. In fact, it isn’t always in the same
month. Someone once gave me a list of
Easter dates from 1950 to 2000 – and the earliest Easter was March 25 – in
1951; the latest was April 26, in 1981.
Some years ago a newspaper columnist observed that there are two things
about Easter that hop; the bunny and the date. ” Easter, he noted, “is
celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after
March 21, the vernal equinox.”[1] But that is the predicted date only after
several centuries of religious and clerical argument – and even now, not all
Christian churches celebrate Easter on the same date.
And: my personal wondering -- Easter
is spring, and birth and rebirth and brightly colored eggs rolling down
hill. What would it be like to live,
say, in Australia, and celebrate Easter as the winter closes in? Or do they celebrate it when they have
spring? If you have friends or
relatives in the southern hemisphere, ask them!
But: what shall we do with
Easter? For some of us Easter is the
day of the memory, the celebration of Jesus’ rebirth, his being fully alive
after his death on a cross; and, the renewal of his ideals of justice and
fellowship and care for all people. We
each could use that reminder, and not just once a year. For others of us, Jesus was one person among
many, over more centuries than we might care to count, who spoke with courage;
and some of whom died at the hands of
others, as Jesus did – and those deaths continue in our time. And Easter as a day of renewal for us all –
a day to renew our hopes and dreams; to be, in our own ways, re-energized,
reborn. One of my colleagues, Bruce
Clary, spoke of Easter in that way:
On the desk in my study is a small
aquarium, the home of my pet Siamese Fighting Fish, whom I call “Gefilte.” He is great company. Sometimes, preoccupied with my work, I sense
his presence and look up to find him staring at me. We have great fun sharing connectedness between worlds.
One day I found him lying flat on
his side at the bottom of his little desktop world, pale and lifeless. The day had quickly turned cold and I
suspected the sudden drop in temperature did him in. I quickly tried to revive him by wrapping his tank and shaking it
lightly. He stirred at the motion,
began to swim, and soon his brilliant blue color returned. We had done: an eastering….
It did not take long after their
visit to the tomb for the disciples to realize what they had to do. They had to own the gospel of love for
themselves and act it out among others, if Jesus meant anything to them. If Jesus had died for them once and for all,
they would have just had to sit sheltered and comfortable, while the world
ached on in brokenness. But instead
they exercised their faith with their restless good news.
There are a lot of times
when we are tempted to sit by the empty tomb, wondering and waiting for
miracles. But easter is a working, and
there’s a lot of eastering we can do when we become aware: of our connectedness
with all things, and how fragile that connectedness can be. One might say that with easter as a verb,
rather than as a noun, we become co-creators with the divine. There’s the touch of eternity in it, not
bound to a single event.
And Clary
concludes by saying:
I invite you to the happiness of
this good news – and to the joy of eastering.[2]
Easter as a “working,” a connecting,
a rising to the occasion, we might say.
Walking, a couple of days ago, as the rain poured down, I tried to make
a mental list of things that rise; flowers, water levels, anything with yeast
in it, our spirits, in the minds of some the dead, birds, ragweed and poison
ivy, what else? Gas prices, frogs, cost of living, sunrise.
We often think of easter and spring as
a time of birth and rebirth, and those are, in Clary’s theme of easter as a
verb, as a working – those are work. When we think of birth, and giving birth, we usually think of the
woman. But what of the child? What might it be like to emerge from warmth
and all needs met, through a narrow passage, into light and not-so-much
warmth? And what is light,
anyway? What is a blanket, a
diaper? What are these half-bony,
half-soft things that lift and hold me?
Some religious groups have taken the
phrase “born again” and use it in a way that makes many other people
uncomfortable. But I would like to
suggest that being born-again is our daily demand. It is to be renewed; to discover, to re-see, take joy in. As the emerging infants experience their
amazing transitions, for which they have no words, so we have the ability to
emerge daily, to ask questions of the world: what do I feel; what should I do;
what, this day, renews me? Is it a
sunrise? The birds at the feeder? The first snowfall, and the last remaining
pile of snow in the shadow of a building?
Scrambling for a title for today’s
sermon, so that Janie could put it out in her announcements, I said, “What
Grows, Renews.” But the opposite is
also true: what is renewed, grows.
Crops gathered, seed sown; and fields are green again. Not all human relationships can be kept
alive or be renewed, but we can experience growth when we acknowledge a need or
time for closure. And we can realize,
remember, that seeds do not grow until their outer coverings have cracked open:
a coming-forth, a birth, a renewal.
Easter – eastering – is a time and way of
exploration. One of the parts of the
story of Jesus that is sometimes easy to forget is that when his disciples
first met him on the road, after his death, they didn’t recognize him. [3] It was only after he sat at the table and
“broke bread” with them, that they knew who he was. Then, as the story according to Luke says, “He vanished out of
their sight.” I don’t read this so much
as actual fact, but as the way it happens in our own lives. We also do not recognize, or know someone,
until we have “broken bread” – shared a meal – or ideas, or dreams – with him,
with her. And: that, often, we see what
is true, important, necessary, or good – and then it vanishes; we must seek it
again, bring it to life in our lives again; make it green and growing, once
again. Give it birth, and re-birth.
So how shall we do our eastering. In the midst of our very real busyness, our
professionally-full schedules, our ever-more complex family life – not to
mention, all AARP’s ever-bright suggestions for our senior years – how shall we
do our eastering, our renewing, our re-birth for ourselves and the world… Most
of us here are not farmers: maybe not even have a backyard plot; but how about
a potted plant? To watch what grows, is
green, and gives back in strange ways: my Christmas cactus ignored that winter
season entirely, and is in full bloom for Easter. We are not Jesus; but remember that in his lifetime of preaching
justice and compassion, he did not travel far from home; for us, at whatever
season, highway cleanup and paper supplies for the local food pantry are
easterings. And none of us may run for
president but we can vote our hopes and desires. The world is made up of small acts, one on one. Think back to
Luke’s story of Jesus not being recognized until he sat and ate with his friends. Friends, or a friendship that rises from the
occasional or unexpected connection -- one that has depth and meaning despite
its brevity – that becomes an easter, eastering, story. Some of you may remember my mentioning, last year about this time, meeting a woman
in the Laundromat, Friday after Friday, for six or eight weeks, she with her
crossword puzzle book, and I with a paperback novel. We got to talking. Her
husband was retired, but in Oswego for some short supervisory work. They now live in Indiana, where I had lived
for almost eighteen years. And then it
was her last Friday, a year ago, and so goodbye. I was thinking about her six or seven weeks ago as I went into
the Laundromat, and there she was – she with her crossword puzzle book – and I
with my paperback. So:
conversation! And finally came the day
she said they would be going back home to Indiana, and mentioned that a house
near her was being purchased by someone from the town in Indiana where I had
lived for almost eighteen years, very likely a person whom I know, and who will
remember me. Suddenly the woman reached
out her hand and told her name; I took her hand, and told her mine, and we
exchanged addresses, both of us curious about her new neighbor. A long story, but an Easter story, a
flowering, renewal, an unexpected greening of the spirit.
Easter is meant to be a season, a
time, of joy. And part of that joy is
sheer fun: dyeing eggs, baskets of plastic grass with candy, gathering with
family and friends. But that joy is
braided, or at least intertwined, with a sense of birth and rebirth, of what
brings us, urges us, to growth. Despite
this week’s snow and cold, willow trees are showing change of color along their
branches; down by the water, bushes edging Lake Ontario are reddening; spring
bulbs are showing green, their flowers bravely opened; what, we may ask, should
ask, (is) where does our greening get its color and courage from? And then we can respond; in joy, in love, in
depth of spirit, let us celebrate every part of Easter, and our renewed
eastering. In silence for a moment,
think where your greening, your easter, comes from….
Silent
meditation.
Congregation
was invited to respond with their thoughts.