Resurrexit

Resurrexit

An Easter Sermon, Countryside Church, Unitarian Universalist

April 17, 2022

The Rev. Dr. C. Scot Giles

Pleased To Be Here

I am delighted to be in the pulpit on this Easter Morning, and I express my gratitude to Rev. Hilary for giving me this opportunity on her final Easter Sunday at Countryside Church.

My sermon is title Resurrexit, an old Latin form of the word “resurrection.” This is my re-thinking of the classic resurrection mythology that has emerged from the Christian tradition. As many of you know I base my Unitarian Universalism on a radical reading of scripture that horrifies most people of conventional beliefs, but which I find helpful.

Of course, as Unitarian Universalists, we have a different take on such things. While our movement emerged from the Judeo-Christian tradition, we grew beyond it and incorporates insights from many religious, spiritual practices, philosophies (both theological and secular), anthropology and other disciplines. 

Our holiday celebrations generally cleave to the cultural calendar in the United States, but we celebrate the festivals and insights of many traditions here, and the symbolism of Easter as we know it may include the resurrection story about Jesus of Nazareth, but also includes the pagan traditions of antiquity, and we celebrate the insights they offer as well.

In fact, we sometimes mix these things together in a way that is confusing for our young people. When I was in theological school the professor for religious education, the Rev. Jean Starr Williams, told a story about something that happened to her. I believe the story is original to her, although I’ve since heard others recount it too. She told of asking a member of the church school at First Unitarian Church in Chicago (which at the time was across the street from the school) about the meaning of Easter. 

The young person looked at her with a big smile and informed her that Easter was when Jesus came out of his tomb, and if he saw his shadow that means we would have six more weeks of winter. Not good. 

However, it is the resurrection story that troubles me. 

If we were to ask most people about the central claim of the Christian tradition, almost all of them would respond that it is the claim that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead, and that therefore death is not the end, and all can look toward an afterlife of some sort.

I disagree that is the true meaning of the story of resurrection.

Even if Christianity were to disappear, I think the story of the empty tomb on Easter morning would still have a place in the deeper psychology of our culture because of the psycho-spiritual way the human mind works when we suffer loss.

The Story Is Not Unique

Despite the fact that many would say that the claim of a resurrection after death is unique to the Jesus story, that is not in fact correct. 

The belief in a resurrection of the dead occurs in Islam as well as Christianity, but that only scratches the surface. 

In ancient Babylon, the agricultural god Tammuz also was said to have risen from the dead.

In ancient Egypt, the god Osiris was resurrected, and the Pharaohs claimed to be descended from his son, and decorated their sarcophagi with images of Osiris in the hope that the Pharaoh would also rise from the dead.

The great religious anthropologist Sir James Frazer in his authoritative book on Comparative Religion, The Golden Bough recounts resurrections of the ancient gods Baal, Melqart, Adonis, Eshmun and Dumuzi as well as Tammuz, Jesus and Osiris. 

Ancient Greek religion recounts no fewer than seven other resurrections. Even in Buddhism - a religion that has no concept of a God or a well-defined afterlife, there are legends of spiritual leaders who returned from the dead. The Bodhidharma was said to have returned from the dead, and the Chinese Chan master Puhua told the story of a man named Fake, who was said to have risen on the third day after his death, when his coffin was found empty.

The folklore of Hinduism contains many resurrection stories. In the epic Ramayana, there is even an account where the god Rama commands the resurrection of a large number of — monkeys.

Shaman, Pagens and Heathens, both ancient and modern are quick to point out that nature resurrects itself every Spring after the decline of Fall and the seeming death of Winter.

And this is not to mention the stories of Zombies, Vampires or the people who have their dead bodies frozen in the hope that science will find a way to resurrect them in the future.

There is actually very little that is unique in the resurrection story of Jesus of Nazareth.

That’s not what I think is important in the idea of a resurrection. Because in my life I have experienced resurrections, and so have you.

Stuff Happens

When I was in training to become a chef I managed to burn a tray of pies. In fact, I didn’t burn them. I incinerated them. I completely forget they were in the oven until the smoke alarm went off. In Biblical tradition it was a burnt offering.

I mentally prepared myself to get fired. But the Executive Chef came over and looked at me and the tray of pastry - really a tray of ashes at that point - and said, “Don’t worry. Stuff happens.”

Stuff happens. You know about stuff, right? Our life is rolling along and then, unexpectedly, everything goes to blazes. We get fired. Someone gets sick. Our kid gets picked up by the cops. The IRS says they have a few questions about our tax return….whatever….

Bad things happen to good people all the time. In ancient days if something bad happened to you, the religious leaders assumed that meant you had sinned or were a bad person.

Psalm 1:3, says:

“(Faithful people) are like trees planted by streams of water,

which yield their fruit in its season,

and their leaves do not wither.

In all that they do, they prosper”

The Book of Proverbs is even more direct in Proverb 13:21:

“Misfortune pursues sinners,

but prosperity rewards the righteous.”

The problem with these verses is that what they say is manifestly untrue. Faithful people do not always win. Prosperous people are not always righteous, and being righteous is no guarantee of prosperity. I can understand why people would want to believe that because it makes life seem fair, but only a naive and superficial person would think that belief is actually true. 

We do not have to look far to find examples of healthy and wealthy reprobates, or examples of poor people who obviously and sincerely do their best to be good to others. 

As time went on, it became obvious to the ancient scribes that the original writers of the Psalms and the Proverbs were full of it. In fact, the Book of Job (a book about the unearned suffering of a good person) had to be written as a corrective. Bad things do happen to good people. And everyone screws up some of the time.

The Dark Night of the Soul

In the 16th century there was a Spanish mystic named St. John of the Cross. He was a Carmelite friar who was a student of St. Teresa of Avila, another great theologian. A poet, he wrote a book-length poem called the Dark Night of the Soul.

According to St. John of the Cross, the Dark Night of the Soul was a phrase that captured all the hardships that people typically experience in their lives. And everyone experiences some, because Stuff Happens.

He believed that there were several steps that one went through as one dealt with whatever Dark Nights of the Soul came into one’s life. However, the proposition St. John of the Cross wanted to advance was his belief that dealing with problems was the way one advanced spiritually. 

He believed every great spiritual figure had become great by working through the hardship when really Bad Stuff happened to them.

Psychotherapists have known for a long time that people are shaped more by the bad things that happen to them than the good. Good stuff is easy. It doesn’t call anything into question - our beliefs, lifestyle, philosophy, personal presentation, etc. go on without interruption because there is no reason to believe they are not effective if everything is going well.

However, as we encounter problems and hardships we have to adapt to change. If things are not working we need to figure out what might work better. 

With feedback from the world calling what we do into question, we alter who we are, and what we do, looking for a better path. 

That is what the Dark Night of the Soul is all about. You encounter a problem. That makes you change. With a bit of intelligence and maybe some luck, the change improves things. You come out the other side of the Dark Night a better person.

Stuff happens. We all undergo Dark Nights of the Soul. But they can make us better.

The Stages of Loss

In 1969 there was a Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, working at the University of Chicago Medical Center (a place where I personally trained as well). On the basis of working with people who knew they were terminally ill Kubler-Ross proposed a model for how human beings deal with the experience of loss or the expectation of loss. 

She believed that there were five stages a person went through when trying to cope with any loss, or any anticipation of loss. The states were:

• Denial - You can’t believe a loss will happen;

• Anger - You get mad that you have to deal with this. Because it’s unfair!

• Bargaining - You attempt to make sense of the loss, or find some way to try to control it;

• Depression - You become sad as you realize that you can’t control the situation as completely as you would like; and finally

• Acceptance - You bow to the inevitable and realize that the loss will be something you have to go through.

Kubler-Ross’s model quickly become popular, and you could even take a pricy training to become certified as a Bereavement Specialist (never underestimate the power of therapists to figure out how to make a buck). 

The initial understanding of these stages were that they were a prescription. At the time she first proposed them the mental health community seized upon the stages as if it were infallible. There was something wrong with you if you didn’t go through the Stages of Loss in the precise order. 

I recall watching one doctoral student object to what a patient had said. The student’s objection was that the patient shouldn’t be depressed, because they had not been angry first.

Kubler-Ross’s model has been challenged in recent years, but it does still have value. We know the stages are not absolute, nor is the order of them. But as a rule of thumb, when a person deals with a loss of any kind - any kind of Dark Night of the Soul - generally speaking those five stages will be involved somehow. So I believe Kuber-Ross was more correct than she was wrong when she did this pioneering work.

Resurrexit

But I think that Saint John of the Cross was also correct. He was correct about the Dark Night of the Soul opening one to personal growth and spiritual wisdom as one moved through it. And this is the hidden meaning in the world-wide mythology of resurrection.

When I student at the University of Chicago Medical Center I noticed that people dealing with loss, or just people dealing with the reality the Stuff Happens, did often go through something like the Kubler-Ross stages. But I think Kubler-Ross stopped her study too soon.

You see, when a person has suffered a loss or a reversal - Bad Stuff - they work their way toward acceptance. But that is not the end of the matter. I noticed that after some time posses, and it can be as much as a couple of years, something else happens. 

The very best qualities of the people we’ve lost, or the important learnings from the job or relationship that ended, begin to show up in our lives.

As an example. I used to care very little about poetry. Heck I was a philosopher and a logian. I didn’t do those word games. But growing up I had a close friend who loved poetry. She was forever quoting it, and I sometimes had difficulty figuring out when she said something if that was her original thought, or if she was quoting a poem.

That relationship ended, as many relationships do. I experienced loss. Then, about a year later I noticed that poetry began to interest me. These days I’m fond of poetry. 

What happened is that one of the best parts of the person who was no longer in my life - her love of poetry - began to assert itself in me. Her love of poetry resurrected into me after the relationship ended.

I’ve seen this now many times. People find that their personalities or habits start to take on the good things about a deceased romantic partner, or a partner who had moved on and was no longer around.

This is a special gift that people bestow upon us as they exit from our lives. They take any bad habits or bad stuff with them, and frequently we’re glad that is gone. But the best things about them don’t disappear. Instead, those things start to find their way into our lives. 

The best qualities of the people we have cared about will resurrect themselves into our lives in time when we have suffered a loss. I think this is the deeper meaning in the resurrection mythology.

The bad that people do dies with them, but the good somehow remains, showing up in the lives of everyone who knew them in some way. This is how we grow as spiritual beings - we benefit as the best parts of others we have lost are resurrected into our lives

I had a church employee who was chronically late for work at a congregation I served when I was a parish minister. The lateness really burned me because I knew his wife always made it a point to be punctual. They divorced. He missed her. Within six months his chronic tardiness vanished. He became as punctual as she had been. 

This works for situations too. 

If one gets fired, or quits a job, you will find that if there was anything good about that job, it will start to show up in your present-day work habits. You may become more focused or organized. Whatever was good about the situation resurrects into your life. 

Stuff happens. We all experience Dark Nights of the Soul, but resurrection is real. No, it’s not about dead bodies walking around. It’s about personal growth and personal change. Resurrection happens in our minds and hearts.

The empty tomb on Easter morning is a symbol of this psycho-spiritual reality.

In the reading today, the disciples of Jesus were said to have walked on the road to the village of Emmaus, and met someone they’d never seen before. But as they talked they found in that new relationship a resurrection of the energy they had only previously enjoyed in the presence of their rabbi Jesus. 

So they said “he is risen.” And I believe he was. He was resurrected into their hearts because that is what the human mind does after a loss. The best - of people or situations - lives on by manifesting in us with a new power. 

Resurrexit. Bad Stuff doesn’t take the good out of the world. Instead, the mind does it’s spiritual alchemy and the good stuff goes inside of us.

There is an empty Easter tomb. It represents all the loss we have experienced ourselves. It’s empty, because whatever good it contained is making it’s way into our hearts and minds.

And that’s my Sermon. Blessed Easter.

Amen.