"Timeless Themes "

READINGS

Yes, it hurts when buds burst. Why otherwise would spring hesitate?
Why otherwise was all warmth and longing locked under pale and bitter ice? The blind bud covered and numb all winter -
What fever for the new compels it to burst?
Yes, it hurts when buds burst,
There is pain when something grows and when something must close.

Yes, it hurts when the ice drop melts.
Shivering, anxious, swollen it hangs, gripping the twig but beginning to slip -
Its weight tugs it downward, though it resists.
It hurts to be uncertain, cowardly, dissolving,
To feel the pull and call of the depth, yet to hang and only shiver -
To want to remain, keep firm - yet want to fall.
Then, when it is worst and nothing helps, they burst, as if in ecstasy,
the first buds of the tree
When fear itself is compelled to let go,
They fall in a glistening veil, all the drops from the twigs -
blinking away their fears of the new,
Shutting out their doubts about the journey,
feeling for an instant how this is the greatest safety,
to trust in that daring that shapes the world.

Karin Boye

From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the spring.
The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.
But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.

Yehuda Amichai

SERMON

When did it begin, this setting apart of traditions, this unraveling of festivals once so closely intertwined that they each told part of the other's story? Yet nothing separates people like Easter does. Even we Unitarian Universalists have to ask ourselves whether Easter applies to us.

"The Easter Bunny doesn't come to our house," a Jewish woman said to me the other day. It's a sensitive subject. Last Sunday I went to hear the "St. John Passion," the magnificent Bach chorale depicting the last days in the life of Jesus. As John tells it, Pontius Pilate might have been inclined to spare Jesus, were it not for the crowd of angry Jews clamoring for his death. The Gospel narrative may have told this story, but the early followers of Jesus remained Jews themselves, and they celebrated Passover. They probably never read John. Easter did not become an official Christian holiday until the fourth century. The Council of Nicaea codified Christian practice and theology, validated the resurrection, and instituted the Holy Week, culminating on a Sunday.

Yet Easter is closely related to Passover, and both are rooted in earlier festivals celebrating the arrival of spring. The word "Easter" comes from the Northern European languages, and it refers to the season of the rising sun. "Passover" evolved out of Middle Eastern spring festivals, including one honoring the first grain of the harvest with the baking of unleavened bread, and "pesach," a feast that included the sacrifice of a lamb.

As the story of the Hebrew people was written in Genesis and Exodus and came to be read as history, these spring observances took on another layer of meaning. The "pesach" feast merged with the dramatic episode in which the Hebrew people were "passed over" by God, protected from his wrath, and lived to attain their deliverance from Egypt. As they fled, the story goes, there was no time for the bread to rise.

The layering of traditions does not stop there. The story of Jesus is derived from these narratives as well. For the Gospels refer to him as the sacrificial lamb, and the Last Supper may well have been a Seder. The resurrection itself has pagan roots. Just as the sun returns with the arrival of spring, the Son of God arises from the dead.*

Even a cursory look at these holidays demonstrates how deep and complex the relationships are. Yet theology and religious institutions have driven them apart, making them nearly unrecognizable to each other. The Easter Bunny doesn't visit at Passover, unless you happen to be, like many of the families in our community, combining different religious traditions into one household. In my family, the Easter Bunny - my Jewish grandfather - delivered halvah from the Bronx, while my mother cooked a big Easter dinner.

The story Patricia Polacco tells about the children who make friends with Mr. Kodinsky and sell Pysanky eggs at his store is a depiction of Christians and Jews helping each other during Easter time. Mr. Kodinsky is an orthodox Jew with concentration camp numbers on his arm. Eula Mae Walker is an African American Baptist. Her grandchildren and their friends find Mr. Kodinsky to be a gentle and generous ally in the quest to buy Eula Mae her Easter hat. In a friendly and diverse community, human relationships override religious differences.

Whether the Easter Bunny comes to your house or not, you share more religious heritage than you may realize. Which is why Unitarian Universalists enjoy the season too. Even though we diverged from traditional Christianity many years ago when we rejected the belief that Jesus was the Son of God, we still resonate to the timeless themes of Easter, Passover, and their earth-centered roots. They still speak to us about our lives.

Consider spring. Not the Los Angeles spring that is a plague of pollen, afflicting us with allergies, but the spring we await throughout all the dark months of winter. The spring with its early morning bird song, late afternoon daylight, and stirring new growth in the ground. Even here, deciduous trees pop new light green leaves; the year-round palms and ficus look grungy and world-weary next to them.

The poem I read earlier looks at spring as a bud does. "Yes, it hurts when buds burst," writes Karin Boye. "There is pain when something grows and when something must close." New life may come around each year, but it doesn't come easy. New life is a struggle.

Most of us have lived long enough to know that our lives go through seasons too. Through dark winters we wait and hope for our own new life to emerge. With "all warmth and longing locked under pale and bitter ice," to use Karin Boye's image, we can forget what we must do to come out of that shell. Some years we don't make it. But like buds we too can break through, transformed. Spring reminds us that we will. That is something to notice - and celebrate.

Another poem, by Israeli writer Yehuda Amichai, teaches another lesson about spring. "From the place where we are right," he says, "flowers will never grow in the spring. The place where we are right is hard and trampled like a yard."

You don't have growth by being too sure of yourself. Hard-packed earth, set in its convictions and purposes, yields nothing new. "But doubts and loves dig up the world like a mole, a plow," Amichai writes. You must be stirred up to blossom.

These are fresh images for any of us to grab onto as we emerge from our own private winters. Most of the life events that cause us to grow also give us pain or uncertainty, physical or emotional discomfort, or both. We forget - we always forget - that this is true. Yes, we also grow from joy and affirmation, the way all growing things thrive when nurtured and cared for. But renewal involves loss, leaving something behind, facing our fear of the unknown, and wanting the future more than clinging to the past.

So it was with the Hebrew people when they left Egypt. As the story goes, they fled in a hurry, faced harrowing threats, then languished in the wilderness, unhappily. They endured hardship and doubt, and rebelled against their leader, Moses. But all this turmoil eventually yielded a great spiritual tradition, gathering the Hebrew people into one strong community.

Karin Boye's poem speaks of buds bursting in spring. She also writes about ice melting: "Shivering, anxious, swollen it hangs, gripping the twig but beginning to slip . . . . It hurts to be uncertain, cowardly, dissolving, To feel the pull and call of the depth, yet to hang and only shiver . . . ." For ice to turn to water is a natural process, yet her words remind us that change causes fear and resistance. To let go and to fall require trust: "trust in that daring that shapes the world."

The story of the life and death of Jesus has deeply affected people because it is a story of trust and reassurance. Easter is a celebration of that message. It tells us that whatever uncertainty we may face, all will be well. The buds will burst open, ice will turn to water, and people everywhere will do the same: grow and change, live and die - yes, even die, and all will be well. The cycles of the season always come back to spring. There is always new life.

Most of us understand the holiday in this way, without its theological trappings. Rather we see it as a complex tapestry of religious expression, timeless themes, interwoven from every source: nature, history, mythology, and stories that have inspired people for thousands of years. Though we may not see ourselves in any one of these traditions any longer, we too have a story to tell about the season. It says that we see more to bring people together than to drive them apart. And in our world today that is the most hopeful story of all.

*This material is nicely summed up in "Easter," a pamphlet from Starr King School for the Ministry and published by the Council of Liberal Churches(Unitarian Universalist), 25 Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 1956.