Spring and its holidays have so many layers of meaning. Passover and Easter grew out of ancient earth-based recognitions of spring and its festivals celebrating fertility and the return of warmth, light and life. On top of this nature-related layer, the Passover and Easter stories place representations of the self-identity of Jews and Christians. Jews as people delivered from slavery into freedom; Christians as people delivered from the everlasting effects of human sin into reunion with God. Over the layers of nature and self-identity the stories place a layer of theology, purpose and meaning. Both stories have redemption as a theme. Redemption, in its Christian conception, refers to forgiveness or absolution for past sins and protection from eternal damnation. The word redemptio is the Latin Vulgate rendering of Hebrew kopher and Greek lytron which, in the Hebrew Bible means generally a ransom-price. Forgiveness and protection through paying a ransom. Did the Egyptians pay the ransom for the freedom of the Jews? Did the Jews also pay it with years of desert wandering? Did Jesus pay a ransom? Why did these events take place? Deliverance happened, ultimately in the stories, through the actions and the love of their God.
Just as the holidays have layers of meaning, so too do our rituals and celebrations around them. In this congregation we recognize both Passover and Easter, even though Unitarian Universalism wholly belongs neither to a current strand of Judaism nor Christianity. Even though we each hold varying ideas and beliefs about the literal truth of either story. On Friday night we held a Unitarian Universalist seder. Today we mark Easter. Why? Because, on one layer, many of us come from Jewish or Christian backgrounds and to a greater or lesser extent we own those backgrounds as important to our personal identities. Part of being Unitarian Universalist means we do not leave our past history at the door, but rather find ways to keep the parts that have meaning to us. On another layer, Easter and Passover occupy a place in our culture. Do you color eggs? Eat chocolate bunnies? Buy matzoh and macaroons? On yet another layer we as UU's are committed to finding and learning from the teachings, the symbols and the messages of spring rituals, of Easter, of Passover. So we can rejoice with the coming of spring. We can recommit ourselves to the abolition of slavery in our world. We can tap into the hope carried to us by rebirth and resurrection.
We can struggle with the layers of violence and sacrifice and suffering that also exist in these holidays. Easter comes because Jesus died on the cross. Although innocent himself, theologically he became a sacrifice in order to atone for human sin. He knew agony. He spent time in the realm of hell and after three days rose from the dead into everlasting life. Easter rejoices in the resurrection and Good Friday mourns the death. Passover comes because the Jews were slaves in Egypt and God sent Moses to tell the Pharaoh to let his people go. When Pharaoh refused, (because God hardened his heart), God destroyed the Egyptian crops, the livestock, and finally even the people themselves before the Jews crossed the Red Sea and left slavery behind. The Passover story notes the destruction and counsels Jews not to rejoice or triumph in it. However, the violence and sacrifice and suffering in both stories astounds and repulses and frightens me. While it might be explained, or at least examined, in its historical, social, literary, and religious contexts, and certainly neither Christianity nor Judaism ignores it, and indeed many Christians and Jews have their own struggles with it, nevertheless the linking of deliverance, of redemption, with such a violent birthing troubles and confuses me mightily. There was a time in my life when I wanted nothing to do with either holiday because of the violence. Today, though, it seems more complex. Easter and Passover give rise to two important questions. First, how can human beings bear this world of suffering, sacrifice and destruction? Second, how might we Unitarian Universalists live in such while redefining deliverance, redefining a redemption that doesn't promote more violence and devastation? Are deliverance and redemption possible without violence? What would redemption even mean in such a world? Could we create a redemption of forgiveness, of turning away from those past behaviors that brought about such suffering, and turning toward restoration of justice and peace in every level of relationship?
Our Easter and Passover theological reflection takes as the starting place the seeming contradiction, or paradox, of our interdependence, our need for one another, and our capacity for violence against one another, dragging whatever we understand as god into sanctioning, and even perpetrating that violence. Violence breaks the bonds of interconnection. We know that. Many of us have first-hand experience of that and we carry around the scars. "Violence can do more than grieve our hearts. It can shatter our faith, shake the ground of our beliefs, and reveal the cracks in our theology." (Rebecca Parker, " Through the Rubble" in Blessing the World)
The stories that say violence brings about redemption, that say suffering will ennoble you, have to be rethought. Our own Universalist history illustrates this. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, as Universalism began to fashion itself as a liberal Christian movement, John Murray, one of the main bringers of Universalism to this country, taught that the death of Jesus on the cross redeemed all of humanity, a radical idea for its time, but one which is now current Christian theology. In the 18th century Protestant thinking, and particularly Calvinist doctrine, claimed that Jesus' death only redeemed some of humanity. Universalism departed with that to teach universal salvation; salvation for all. However, Murray's younger Universalist contemporary, Hosea Ballou, differed with Murray's teaching. Ballou rejected the idea of redemption through sacrifice and death because it contradicted his understanding of the God in the New Testament as above all else a loving God. Therefore Ballou proclaimed universal salvation, not through death and sacrifice, but through the love of God for all humanity. Furthermore, since love is the divine gift, we human beings are called to live in a way that takes part in the gift. Thus Universalists became advocates and leaders in many social justice movements.
Although Universalists moved away from it, redemption through violence is a notion deeply entrenched in our culture, and in the world, and it is still supported by some religious thinking. Might brings right. God is on our side. We will triumph with greater violence. You'd think by now that we would have learned that we don't triumph just because our armies, or our economies, won a war, or invaded a country and toppled a government, or gained control of the natural resources. Yet peace seems weak and ineffectual. Compromise and negotiation a self-defeating waste of time. The human imagination is limited by the human habit of resorting to violence. "We must grieve the history and present reality of violence sanctioned by religion and advocate for a different vision of God. We must voice an alternative understanding of how life can be saved. We need to be saved from rather than through violence." (Parker, " Through the Rubble")
Often we Unitarian Universalists have placed our hope in the future. Even as we look to such a future, we must be honest with the present, with the past. The individual and collective effects of violence are horrific. Lives and livelihoods are destroyed. Whole areas of land are devastated. Living beings die, while others are left, orphaned, to make it without community or family. People shut down, they live in fear, they repeat on others the brutality perpetrated on them, they turn to harmful substances to ease the pain, they suffer health repercussions, generations repeat the cycles over and over again. The individual and collective effects of violence are horrific.
Yet at the same time something in us longs for wholeness, happiness, peace and freedom. We long to end this suffering, but we don't know how, or even if that is possible. For reasons unknown to me, destruction and violence exist as an integral part of nature. They exist in human nature. I would appear foolish if I stood here and said we can create a world without violence. We live with our own violence but we also live with something more than that. Kendall Gibbons wrote, "We participate perforce in a story where death has the final word - everywhere except in our hearts. When we live fully, we live both stories: the real world in which lions eat oryx calves at every opportunity, and the resistors of oppression end gasping upon the cross, and that other realm, the kingdom of the heart, where love and innocence arise from the tomb, and the lion lies down with the lamb. . . . we necessarily live and move and have our being in both worlds."
How can we live honestly with the violence of our natures and of the world around us? By not denying its presence or minimizing its effects. By looking at the consequences of it and continually asking if this is helpful; if this is moral; if this is worth it. By constantly asking, Who benefits? "Alfred North Whitehead observed that there are times when violence is a last resort in personal or national defense. He also reminded us that the most violence can do is to stop something, like a violent aggressor, but it can never create. It can never bring peace into being. It can never repair what has been lost." (Parker, "Through the Rubble") How can we bear the violence of our natures and the world around us? By remembering that we also long for peace. That there lives in our hearts another realm of freedom and love. Redemption means living in and from that realm to as great an extent as possible. Redemption means rebuilding in a different image. Step by step; stone by stone; word by word; gesture by gesture; brick by brick. "Care for the world is closely linked to the understanding that life is a gift. Once that link is severed, neither grace nor justice has a chance. . . . When trust in (the gift that is life) is lost, an ethic of responsibility becomes a matter of willpower alone and cannot be sustained." (Parker, "On This Shining Night" in Blessing the World)
Remember the teaching of our Universalist forebears “ that life is a gift. That at the core of the universe there is love. Whether it goes by the name of God, or nature, or science, or the desire of a species to survive. Some life force, or principle, or inner evolutionary drive, wants us alive; something draws us to health and communities, and finding purpose and making meaning. It 's hard to put it into words. My words are those of Kahlil Gibran who described it as "Life?'s longing for itself." This is the gift. Do you believe that life is a gift? That we respond to beauty by affirming life? That we can be surprised? That something, however you name it, something holds us, sustains us, transforms us? That it is there when we are confused and frightened and in pain? That when we feel that we are not enough, we cannot bear up, we are helped by love? This is the gift. Because of this gift and our connection to it, we can look clearly at the world, we can see our violence for what it is and what it is not. We can see what needs to be saved and we can find communities of people to undertake this redemption work together. Here is the complexity of the Easter and Passover stories. Underneath the violent death and sacrifice lies the love of God. The love of God for the Jews. The love of God for humanity, according to which Jesus died and atoned for human sin. That is fundamental Christian doctrine. It is the cornerstone of the historical relationship of the Jews to God. Even those stories of death and sacrifice have love at their base. This is why we cannot just throw them away. They speak to the paradox of the love in life that keeps us going and the violence that continually mars it.
How do we partake of the gift of life that is love and use it to create an ethic of responsibility and to fashion a different relationship with our propensity for violence? How do we redefine redemption as a turning toward restoration of justice and peace on every level, from the individual to the national to the planetary? By living an ethic of love ourselves. Rebecca Parker, a UU theologian, writes of that. ("Through the Rubble?" and, for the last sentence quoted, "Cornerstones.")
"Love speaks out in the face of injustice and oppression." What, for instance, do we say about the continuing genocide in Darfur? The lack of access to health care for so many millions here in this country? The ever increasing gap between rich and poor? What do we say? And do we say it out of a desire for justice for those oppressed and out of a desire for justice in the lives of those who oppress?
"Love tends the wounds inflicted by injustice . . . and offers compassion in the presence of suffering." Love does not run away, although it does define appropriate limits. Love recognizes that those who do harm are harmed themselves. Compassion recognizes that the seeds of violence live in each of us. We delude ourselves when we point the finger at others in our superior complacency. Are there people toward whom you hold grudges, or to whom you owe an apology? Love tends the wounds, a battlefield medic.
:Love builds communities of inclusiveness and friendship that break the barriers of oppressive social norms.:Who is welcome in our community here? Do we make enough space " literally and figuratively" for those who wish to enter? Does the welcome table have extra plates at the ready? At our seder on Friday, which was wonderful, we had 65 or so people here. When it came time for dinner a few people expressed the concern that we did not have enough food, and requested that I say something. I asked everyone to be mindful, as we filled our plates, that we all had to share what was out on the table. And, as you might guess, we had food left over. Communities of inclusiveness. "Love affirms the goodness of the world . . . .(it) directs us toward creating abundant life here and now for all earth's creatures." Affirming the goodness does not mean closing our eyes to that which is not good; it does, however, mean that we commit ourselves to fostering and promoting the good. Choosing a spirit of abundance over one of scarcity.
"We know the manifestations of love: protest, compassion, generosity, community, inclusiveness, reverence. . . . We need to proclaim the message of love with our lives, embody these values n our religious communities, and actively work to create a society that rejects violence as the path to redemption. . . . Faithful solidarity with one another on this planet is the only power that is stronger than violence. . . "
Let the spring season and its holidays teach us about redemption and violence both. Today, on Easter Sunday, during Passover week, let us wrestle with the paradox of our capacity for violence and our need for one another. Let us redefine redemption through our affirmation of the gift that is life. The gift that can be named love. Let us hold onto that gift and let it manifest in our lives, inspiring us toward an ethic of responsive justice. Redemption means forgiveness, protection from the repercussions of our violence, not because others paid a ransom for us through sacrifice and death, but because we ourselves turned away from such. We turned toward love. We turned toward protest, compassion, generosity, community, inclusiveness, reverence. We accepted the gift and we unlocked its power. Will this redeem us and the world? Not once and for all, but over and over again? I think so. Maybe I'm correct about that; maybe I'm not. But I have to try it. Just as the daffodils reach upward through the earth at the base of the cherry tree in my backyard, so some force in me reaches toward love. May it be as poet Phillip Larkin wrote, "What will survive of us is love." Happy spring.