3-21-13 Skagit UU - Easter

OOS
Gathering Song (Come, Come Whoever You Are)
Chalice Lighting
Opening Words - “Thank you Mother Earth” by Susun Arrow
  Thank you mother earth Thank you sister water
  Thank you for my birth Thanks from your sons and daughters
  Thank you brother sun Thank you air in motion
  Thank you everyone Earth air fire and ocean.
Welcome and Introductions
Hymn #1 - #397 “Morning Has Come”
A Time for All Ages - Amaterasu
Joys & Sorrows
Offertory
Meditation by Rev. Victoria Weinstein
Hymn #2 #266 Now the Green Blade Riseth
SERMON - Roll Back the Stone
Hymn #61 Lo, the earth awakes again
Extinquish Chalice - (see below) unison
  The circle is open yet unbroken. 
  May the peace we have found here be ever in our hearts.
  Merry meet, and merry part, and merry meet again.
Closing Words
Closing Circle Song

Sermon
Hoof and horn, hoof and horn
All that dies shall be reborn
Corn and grain, Corn and Grain
All that’s cut shall rise again*.

I’d like to tell you a story... this story is drawn from Christian and Nazarene gospels, modern scholarship, and universal truths.

Our story begins as the Jewish people are kicked off of their ancestral lands (again). This time the conquerors are the Romans. Their temple, has been destroyed. They are scattered,  with little hope. The hope for the prophesized savior during the years of occupation had failed. The Messiah! They had pinned their hopes on a warrior who would overthrow the Romans. But 40 years ago one savior’s campaign ended with his death on a cross. And then just recently another messiah has died in an armed insurrection.

A group of scholars lives among the scattered groups of exiles. These scholars and storytellers, who call themselves The school of Mark, feel responsible for the spiritual health of their people. They want, desperately, to find a way to give hope. They seek for it in the life of Jesus, the wandering, pacifist, teacher. (They knew that focusing on the militant leader would just draw more oppression from the Roman government.)

They listen to the stories people tell one another. They read the letters of Paul. And they write their own version of the story. It tells of Jesus’ life, teachings, and death. And then, at the end, there’s a tantalizing little bit, something unexpected, that happens after his death.

Here is how it is told in “The Message” bible. This part begins three days after Jesus is declared dead and put into a tomb, a cave. His apostles and family had taken Friday and Saturday to observe their traditional religious day of retreat, rest, and renewal.
“Chapter 16, Verses 1-8 When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so they could embalm him. Very early on Sunday morning, as the sun rose, they went to the tomb. They worried out loud to each other, “Who will roll back the stone from the tomb for us?”
Then they looked up, saw that it had been rolled back—it was a huge stone—and walked right in. They saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed all in white. They were completely taken aback, astonished.
He said, “Don’t be afraid. I know you’re looking for Jesus the Nazarene, the One they nailed on the cross. He’s been raised up; he’s here no longer. You can see for yourselves that the place is empty. Now—on your way. Tell his disciples and Peter that he is going on ahead of you to Galilee. You’ll see him there, exactly as he said.”
They got out as fast as they could, beside themselves, their heads swimming. Stunned, they said nothing to anyone.”

And there, the gospel, as written by those scholars from the school of Mark, ends.

What? Jesus just got up, rolled back his own stone, and wandered off to do, well, we aren’t sure what he’s headed off to do. But he clearly wasn’t interested in staying in the cave!

I love the way this story leaves out the details about the resurrection. There are no details about coming back to life. No proof. No grisly showing off of wounds. The rest of the story is left for us to create.

Maybe that is exactly what the writers intended! Perhaps the hearer was expected to fill in the end of the story themselves — specifically, with themselves. Jesus may have risen, but suffering and persecution remained realities for Mark’s community. Mark’s readers may have been expected to complete the gospel themselves by living their lives as Jesus had taught. They would create the rest of the story.

The Rest of the story. Paul Harvey was popular on the radio when I was in High school. He would tell most of a story, then go to a commercial break. Then come back with “The REST of the story.” Back in the centuries following the writing of the gospel of Mark, Matthew, Luke, John and others wrote about Jesus showing up and talking to Mary Magdalene, to Peter, to Paul, and to all the disciples. They wanted the REST of the story. In their stories Jesus promises the kingdom of heaven is coming….soon, to a community near you. Not later, but paradise right here, and right now. And he charges his followers to make that happen! YOU are the resurrection and the life!

Nine centuries later, those stories got rewritten again, and more stories were told. But that is the REST of the story according to those folks. What is the REST of the story according to you?

Jesus’s death and entombment CHANGED his followers’ faith in Jesus. They had to completely revise all their expectations. All the earth was made anew. The time in the tomb changed Jesus. One understanding is that he changed from his human self to his divine self. Loss changes people. And invites us to write our next chapter. The earth is made new.

The Jewish people lost their homes and their routines; Jesus’ family lost a loved one; His followers lost their hopes that a savior would magically make everything perfect; I imagine that for each person who went through those times he or she lost the old definition of who “I” am… These sorts of losses are not unusual. Human beings have been experiencing these changes since the beginning of time.

We are experiencing loss and change now. The last few years have been hard for too many of us. We have been experiencing losses as a planet, as a people, and as individuals. You know these things, you need only check your facebook feed, or watch TV and there is an endless parade of change, oppression, loss, death… It can get incredibly overwhelming. Honey bees, dying. Transgendered people being told they can’t use public restrooms. Gay youth kicked out of home and living on the street. The list goes on.

A friend of mine dug herself her own cave. In her back yard she escaped from the usual pre-teen troubles, and the dislocation of her mother’s terminal illness. Each day she dug, and finally had a room sized hole in the back yard, covered with boards she found at neighboring building sites. It was her retreat, her womb. It was her private space where nothing changed while all was changing around her. This cave of silence cushioned her in the soft, fragrant earth, and forgiving coolness, until she was ready to emerge once again. Luckily her father understood her need to take breaks from the family home while it was filled with pain and loss. Those retreats allowed her to return.

There are times when we will find ourselves in the cave. Maybe the cave is of grief. Maybe it is silence. Maybe solemnity. Maybe rage. But we must rest into the cave, as the seed sinks into the soil, in order to emerge once again. We emerge... Changed. All the earth is made new.

The cave is there for us in times of heartbreak, grief, and bereavement. The cave is there for us like the earth receives the grain when planted.

But sometimes that place of retreat and healing can feel like a trap. A breathless, weighty, vacuum. A place without Air.

As Musician, DOMINIC OUVRY sings:
Roll, roll, roll back the stone
Let me breathe ...
Breathe the sweet air once again

For some of us that enclosed feeling is more than enough to drive us back out into the light. For others the cave is seductive. There are so many reasons to stay inside.

When you’ve been deep inside yourself, coming out can feel risky. You can feel as fragile and as tender as the first tiny green-leaf in spring. But, look around. You have companions! Others who have had similar experiences, whether it was last week or ten years ago. Others who have retreated. Others who stayed inside during the long, dark, cold winter. Others have emerged as tender and fragile as you.

Maybe you are wondering “what’s the point?” I want to know the rest of the story before I start living the next chapter. Rumi promises: “As you start to walk out on the way, the way opens.” You will write the rest of your own story.

You may ask, who am I to write my story? I’m not perfect yet. Who am I to share myself with the world. You are perfect just as you are at this moment. St. Theresa of Avila invites you to roll back your stone, and to bloom.
 (she says)
“We bloomed in Spring.
Our bodies are the leaves of God.
The apparent seasons of life and death
Our eyes can suffer; but our souls, dear,
I will just say this forthright:
They are God...”

You may find the courage to come out of your cave simply because you have no other choices. You surrender to what is. That willingness to accept and start the new journey: that is grace.

I imagine that Amaterasu’s friends tried to remind her that she was of value, and that for her own sake she needed to stop punishing herself for something that was someone else’s wrong-doing. Maybe this time, that is what lures you out of your cave. But that didn’t do it for her.

What lured Amaterasu out of her cave was the promise of joy and mirth. What invited Amaterasu into her next chapter was the promise of paradise and the promise of being her full shining self and sharing that with others.

This is what sustained those early Christians. In the first ten centuries as Christianity was emerging there are no pictures of a Christ on a cross. There was no focus on death. There was a joyful focus on paradise. And that paradise wasn’t about the “after-death” heaven. That paradise was the one that was being created in the here and now.

The loss is not most important. We must give ourselves permission to retreat and renew, and then it matters what we do next. Write the rest of your story. Write the rest of our collective story. Create paradise, create the world we dream about. It takes every one of us. Each one of us becoming our full and shining selves. Every one of us connecting with another.

So. Roll back your stone. Maybe you’ll find out who you really are! See who walks with you. Discover the next steps. Your heart and soul will be changed during the period of retreat. Then as you emerge, you will be welcomed. All the earth shall be made new.
When our hearts are saddened, grieving or in pain,
By love’s touch You call us back to life again;
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green**.

You don’t have to roll back your stone just once. You have to do it over and over and over. Every year, every season of loss. Every time you sink down into your cave. You must roll back that stone anew. The earth does it with the spring.
Now the green blade rises from the buried grain,
Wheat that in the dark earth many years has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green**.

A savior isn’t going to show up and do all the work for us. We must roll back our own stones and rise for the sake of the love that he taught. We must retreat, change, then return, renewed, to the work that must be done. We don’t need a savior “out there”, be he Buddha, or Jesus, or be she Harriet Tubman or Elizabeth Warren. “YOU are, we all are, the resurrection and the life.”

We owe it to ourselves. We owe it to one another to treat each person we meet tenderly. Every person we meet is a walking miracle, just blooming. Each person is embodied in the green leafy aliveness of god. Perhaps just this morning she or he made the personal effort to make it back from heaven, or maybe from hell, but certainly from death, to be by our side***.

It may take a while to figure it out. But, what glorious shining light and joy when we can finally roll back the stone.

*Pagan traditional. no known author.
**Hymn in "Singing the Living Tradition"
***From a meditation by Rev. Victoria Weinstein