"Easter Sermon"

READING

"The House of Gathering"

Poet May Sarton was a Unitarian Universalist. She wrote this poem towards the end of her life.

If old age is a house of gathering,
Then the hands are full.

There are old trees to prune
And young plants to plant,
There are seeds to be sown.

Not less of anything
But more of everything
To care for,
To maintain,
To keep sorted out,
A profusion of people
To answer, to respond to.

But we have been ripening
To a greater ease,
Learning to accept
That all hungers cannot be fed,
That saving the world
May be a matter
Of sowing a seed
Not overturning a tyrant,
That we do what we can.

The moment of vision,
The seizure still makes
Its relentless demands.

Work, love, be silent, speak.

SERMON

Handing out wildflower seed packets on Easter Sunday was not the ritual that Norbert Capek envisioned when he created the Flower Festival for the church in Prague so many years ago. He introduced the Flower Festival in June, when the long winter was finally over and flowers were blooming. Many American Unitarian Universalist congregations have adopted this custom for Easter, however, because flowers are a symbol of the season.

Capek's intention was to affirm the individuality of each person and the beauty of our diversity when we gather together in community. It's a good affirmation, and central to our faith; it always will be. A multitude of flowers is a good image for it.

Easter is a time, however, to reflect on the specific themes that we draw from the Christian and earth-centered traditions and celebrate this time of year. It is a time to reflect on new life, on growth, and even on rebirth. Each year these themes take on new meanings for us. Sometimes they even suggest new symbols.

Taking home a single flower from the collective arrangement is a fleeting act - too fleeting. Many of them don't even make it home, withering instead on the dashboard. I find it difficult to take meaning from the spectacle of a dying flower in my car on Easter Sunday.

Seeds are a better symbol for this holiday than a delicate, though beautiful, bouquet of flowers Seeds are much more resilient. Seeds we can plant, seeds birds will eat, seeds we can save, until we are ready for them to grow.

We mean no disrespect to Norbert Capek in our adaptation of his ritual. He preached a living faith, not a dying one. And no one's faith could have been more resilient than Capek's, who ended his life in Dachau.

Easter is a good time to revisit our faith and to celebrate it with any symbol we can imagine. Seeds represent the potential for growth and renewal that exists in every living thing. What we see in nature, we may also find in ourselves.

Seeds remind us of the human capacity to overcome obstacles, to learn, to heal, and to start over if necessary. We place our faith in this capacity. That means we trust it, we work at it, and we celebrate it every day of our lives. We may be beautiful and diverse as flowers, but we are much stronger. Inside each of us is a tough little seed of faith, a faith that can handle anything.

In a book titled "Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World," author Linda Hogan vividly describes the strength of seeds. "In Japan," she writes, "there were wildflowers that grew in the far, cool region of mountains. The bricks of Hiroshima, down below, were formed of clay from these mountains, and so the walls of houses and shops held the dormant trumpet flower weeds. But after one group of humans killed another with the explosive power of life's smallest elements split wide apart, the mountain flowers began to grow. Out of the crumbled, burned buildings they sprouted. Out of destruction and bomb heat and the falling of walls, the seeds opened up and grew. What a horrible beauty, the world going its own way, growing without us. But perhaps this, too, speaks of survival, of hope beyond our time."

Perhaps it also speaks of the human potential to survive what would destroy us. And it gives us hope that we will not always be the ones who destroy. Seeds can outlive even our own worst impulses.

Seeds carry forward what we cannot finish. In her poem "The House of Gathering," May Sarton addresses the growth that takes place in the later years of life. "The hands are full," she writes, with "more of everything to care for." There is abundance in all we must do – and maintain, she admits, "but we have been ripening to a greater ease." "We do what we can."

May Sarton offers us a positive image of aging: coming to terms with our limitations is a developmental step; it is ripening; it is growth. We cannot do everything we wish. Yet there is untapped potential in "learning to accept that all hungers cannot be fed." And we become reacquainted with the elemental truth "that saving the world may be a matter of sowing a seed." It is the small but powerful acts that make a difference. "Work, love, be silent, speak," she writes. Sow seeds.

Faith is an attitude of trust in what we cannot know for certain or ever understand fully. Yet we place our faith in what gives life, some of us even in its benevolence. Just as we plant a seed, and cover it with dirt, and give it water, something else happens to that seed to turn it into a plant. Its power is beyond us. Yet have faith that what we plant will grow; even outlive us, carrying forward our good work.

May Sarton must have been a gardener, for she wrote a lot about things that grow. I used her words to open the service today: "Help us to be the always hopeful gardeners of the spirit who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth as without light nothing flowers." What makes things grow is something beyond our comprehension, but it is also something we know, something as familiar and obvious as darkness and light.

What is buried in darkness comes to birth, new life. The Christian story of Easter tells of Jesus emerging from the tomb, reborn and eternal. Christians find inspiration in this image of death giving way to life. It helps during dark times.

Everything living needs light as well. The long-awaited lengthening days of spring nurture flowers. They also cheer up people, who live more closely with the rhythm of the seasons than we tend to remember. Seeds remind us that we need darkness and light to live and to grow.

Seeds live forever. Or almost forever. The shelf life on some packets I've seen is an eternity compared to how long it takes to grow them.

But the real eternity that seeds contain is that when they grow, they produce more seeds. They belong to the cycle of living and growing, a cycle that encompasses everything, even death. Flowers wither, but their seeds fall to the ground, someday to sprout, take root, and bloom again.

Easter is a time for seeds. Of all the images of eternal life the season may have given us, and religions may worship, seeds belong to everyone, whatever their tradition. Seeds belong to life, as we all do. What we see in them, we may discover in ourselves. Their strength and resilience, their potential for growth, their hope for the future, their life that has no end. All this is ours, as it is for seeds; all this is life, in which we find our faith.

References used to prepare this sermon include May Sarton, "Collected Poems 1930-1993" (New York: W.W. Norton Company, 1993) and Linda Hogan, "Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World" (New York W.W. Norton Company, 1995).