When Death Becomes Life
If you were here via YouTube Live or in the sanctuary last Sunday, you heard a message from our guest speaker that probably surprised you, and may have upset some of you. You probably expected to hear about Habitat for Humanity. Perhaps, fitting the theme of the month, some remarks about how homeownership, and the sweat equity Habitat requires of potential homeowners, transforms lives and families and communities. Instead you heard a decidedly Christian Palm Sunday sermon. I am ultimately responsible for every worship here at UUCS, and I apologize for the harm this unexpected sermon, not entirely in line with our theology, may have. I will be gathering a group of members to help me develop guidelines to provide potential guest speakers to help avoid similar situations in the future. Let me know if you’d like to be included in that conversation.
It makes sense to me, as jarring and frustrating as Mr. Samples’ choice of sermon was, that he believed it would be well received. For most people the word ‘church’ is synonymous with ‘Christian place of worship’. And though the majority of Unitarian Universalists in the 21st century do not identify as Christian, the origins of our faith are firmly rooted in Christianity, many of our buildings, including this one, look like or once housed Christian churches, our orders of worship are typically Protestant, and many of our hymns are Christian tunes with new words written by or for Unitarian Universalists.
From the outside, we appear Christian. But our history, our theologies, our social justice works, and our radical inclusivity set us apart as a distinct faith. Social justice work and inclusivity alone or even together are not enough to set us apart from other faith traditions. Many Christian and non-Christian faith communities proclaim a preference for those at the margins of society, engage in the same social justice work we do, and practice the same radically inclusive hospitality we do. But taken altogether our history, our social justice work, our free and abundant welcome of all who seek to join with us, and our theologies, especially our theologies, set us apart.
If we were to create a side by side comparison chart like you see on insurance ads or mobile phone service sites, with one column headed Mainstream Christian Theology and one column headed Unitarian Universalist Theology, and rows labeled Trinity, Jesus Fully Human, Jesus Fully Divine, Afterlife, Heaven, and Resurrection, here’s what we’d find:
Trinity, Fully human, Fully Divine, Afterlife, Heaven and Resurrection would all be checked in the Christian column. Only Jesus Fully Human would be checked in the Unitarian Universalist column. Trinity would be blank, and probably Resurrection, too, while Afterlife and Heaven might have question marks instead of check marks or blank boxes.
The Resurrection row–with the check mark in the Christian column and the blank box in the UU column–might seem like the row to discuss in detail today, Easter Sunday. After all, the ancient story recounted throughout western Christianity today tells of one who lived and died and lived again–resurrected. And we, Unitarian Universalists disbelieve. We dismiss. We debunk. We point to even more ancient stories telling of other resurrections–Ishtar, Horus, Dionysus, Ostara and Cybele–as proof that the story of Jesus’ resurrection isn’t real, doesn’t hold meaning, isn’t a day worthy of celebration.
But I think the only thing more futile and nonsensical than trying to prove, through reason and logic, that which must be taken on faith–ie the bodily resurrection–is trying to disprove, through reason and logic, that which must be taken on faith–ie the bodily resurrection. I think the truth or falsehood of the story of Jesus’ resurrection doesn’t matter much. I am much more interested in the Afterlife row, with a check mark in the Christian column and a question mark in the Unitarian Universalist column.
Most Christians believe that there is permeability to the life death boundary. That there is an afterlife, that heaven exists, that Jesus certainly died and rose again to live on the third day.
Most Unitarian Universalists, on the other hand, believe that the passage from life to death is a one-way street. That we live and then we die. Full stop. That’s what I believe. Or, more accurately, I believe we can’t know anything else about life and death for certain. We can’t know if there is an afterlife. We can’t know if there is heaven or not. But we believe that revelation is not sealed–that there are things we don’t yet understand, things that science and nature might yet uncover, and that evolving and expanding human thought might yet understand. That’s why I put question marks in those boxes instead of leaving them blank.
(I say most Unitarian Universalists and most Christians, because neither group is a monolith. Some individual people in each group would check, leave blank, or put question marks in different places in our imaginary grid.)
As a student of Unitarian Universalist history and theology, I put a question mark in the Afterlife box blank in our imaginary grid because, again, that’s where most UUs fit on the subject. Yet, as a human being, a lifelong Unitarian Universalist, as a minister, a former hospital chaplain, as listener to and carrier of human stories, I could just as easily, in my own personal grid, put a checkmark in the life after death box.
Because it's a tricky business, this life and death thing. A cocoon looks like death, but gives birth to life. Soil may be full of rocks or clay or sand or roots, but brings forth life. Seeds and bulbs look like death, brown, crinkly, dry and hard, but give birth to life. Bare limbs and branches look like death, but bring forth life. And, of course, the story tells us that Jesus was dead but lived again.
As I said just a moment ago, I don’t think the factual truth about the first Easter matters very much. What does matter, and why I believe it is important that we celebrate Easter, even as mostly non-Christian Unitarian Universalists, is that throughout our human lives, along the way from birth to physical death, we encounter many spiritual deaths, and then our spirits rise to live again after death. I have witnessed life after death. I have heard the stories of people who have told me, echoing the words of e.e. Cummings in this morning’s anthem, “I who died am alive again today”.
Parents whose spirits died as they lost more than one child to miscarriages and stillbirths, and then came to life again when they carried a child to term and gave birth to a live baby who grew into a thriving child, teen, adult. People whose addictions to substances or gambling killed their spirit and brought their bodies near to physical death who came to new life in recovery. People for whom incarceration was a spiritual death, who emerge from prison as though from a tomb, to new life. People whose spirits die as their bodies are all but destroyed by physical and sexual abuse, who birth themselves into new life through time and hardwork, with therapists, support groups, judges, advocates as midwives. People who experience betrayal or abandonment by a life partner as the end of life, who experience rebirth with an embrace of vital solo existence in the company of chosen family. Or people for whom the failure of an enterprise or loss of a career into which they poured their education, savings, and years, decades of work, is the end of the only life they've ever known or wanted, whose spirits come to life again with the discovery of a new vocation possible only through surrender to the death of dreams.
All of these and more are like so many deaths at Golgotha, Good Fridays of human experience, followed by the still, chill, lifelessness of the tomb, and only then the human, contemporary Easter Sunday of the soul, as our spirits emerge into life after death. This is why we celebrate Easter, even here, even as mostly non-Christian Unitarian Universalists. Not in celebration of a man who died on a cross and may have risen from his tomb to live again, long ago and very far from here. Rather in celebration of our life after death, miraculously, here and now, again and again and again.
Death becomes life when we hear the living call our name–the ineffable living beyond all death–and we follow the voice back to life. Growing new green skin over the ravages of whatever had sought to destroy our spirit completely but failed in the end. Sending forth from the hollowness of what we were, who we were, blossoms of the exquisite beauty of who we are becoming, because we who have died are alive again today. Alleluia. Amen.