Beyond Words
The Rev. Dr. Matthew Johnson-Doyle
Early Service, April 24th, 2011


Readings

Mark 16:1-9

When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2 And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3 They had been saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?" 4 When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. 5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. 6 But he said to them, "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you." 8 So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

In Time of Silver Rain by Langston Hughes

In time of silver rain
The earth
Puts forth new life again,
Green grasses grow
And flowers lift their heads,
And over all the plain
The wonder spreads
Of life,
of life,
of life!
In time of silver rain
The butterflies
Lift silken wings
To catch a rainbow cry,
And trees put forth
New leaves to sing
In joy beneath the sky
As down the roadway
Passing boys and girls
Go singing, too,
In time of silver rain
When spring
And life
Are new.

Exultet for Easter by Mark Belletini

Litany: We Rise in Gladness Again

We come, in this season of silver rain, of new life and butterflies,
to the end of a time: winter; and the beginning of a time: spring. As the rain falls, the grass grows greener, and birds sing with worm-finding joy, it is time:

We Rise In Gladness Again.

The season of Lent comes to an end. Though many of us might not participate in such ritual, we know the feeling; the feeling of introspection, the feeling of laying aside bad habits, the feeling of longing for a new life. And now, we are ready, and so:

We Rise In Gladness Again.

The world we live in is imperfect. It suffers from war, and hate, and division. The skies burn and the rivers are stopped up. People go hungry, and some are hurt for another’s supposed pleasure. And in full knowledge of this reality, we dream of a better world. We commit ourselves to justice, and we work for it each day. We see acts of compassion, acts of courage, and we know that it doesn’t have to always be like this. It is with such hope that

We Rise in Gladness Again.

We lift our eyes to the heavens, and our feet feel the pulsing of the earth. We are amazed by stars and laughter, by budding life and the songs of human hearts. There is so much to be awe-struck by. There is so much wonder, and we don’t have to have the words, we don’t have to have the answers, we just breathe in and out and

We Rise in Gladness Again.

On this day, millions round the world celebrate the victory of love over death. They celebrate a miracle, the resurrection of a child of God, the way-shower. Some of us celebrate that miracle too, and have faith in its truth. Others are unsure. Like the women who came to the tomb, we too might be afraid. But now is a time to lay aside cynicism, to lay aside fear, and to simply listen, see, touch, smell, taste – feel the power of the old story, the hope and the truth in the heart of it, and then, to sing:

We Rise in Gladness again.

Message: Beyond Words

Note: The sermon is an oral event. This manuscript may not reflect the exact spoken words. If you want to hear what was actually said, you can purchase a CD of the sermon in the church office. © Matthew Johnson-Doyle, 2011.

You know how it goes.
There’s a thought that’s bouncing around in your head,
in your heart,
but you can’t quite figure how to say it,
can’t quite get your arms around it.

And then you read someone else’s words,
and you’re like – that’s it!

It’s both exhilarating and deflating.
The poet Ric Masten says he doesn’t go to poetry readings
because he doesn’t want to feel like the caveman
carving a stone wheel,
only to look up and see some son-of-a so-and-so
go peddling by on a bicycle.

This is the experience I have reading Mark Belletini.
He’s said it just the way I need to hear it,
this Easter Morning.

“When some argue for heaven,
and others argue for earth,
for the life of me I cannot comprehend the seriousness of the debate.”

“Accident and miracle seem to see each other’s face
in the mirror of my heart,
and so I rise in gladness again
and sing the marvel that everything is!”

That’s what I’m talking about.

It’s Easter Morning, and we come to celebrate –
but what, exactly?

This is a struggle not just for us, I have to tell you.
Mainline Christian Churches worry about this,
and the Christian Church has worried about this for a long time.

The leader, the prophet, the holy rabbi,
has been executed for challenging the Roman colonial power.
He is, frankly, one of many troublemakers whom the Roman’s
put up on a cross to die in the hot sun,
an example to all those who would dare seek freedom.
Just another revolutionary, perfunctorily tried, and left to die.

Though this is perfectly predicable to political scientists,
to his followers, this is unexpected.
The parts of the gospels where Jesus predicts his own death,
those were written after the fact, of course,
and inserted to ease the shock, to explain it.
But at the time, the followers were disoriented, confused.
Denial is a stage of grief,
so it’s no wonder Peter couldn’t bring himself
to admit it.

I wasn’t there.
Was the stone rolled away, and the body gone?
I don’t know,
and neither does anyone else.
I do know that the gospel of Mark ends as we read it today –
with mystery, with fear, with the next chapter unwritten.
Later, folks add stories of sightings and such,
but the original ending is this:
an empty cave on a hill.

The early Christians didn’t agree on what Easter meant,
or what happened.
They didn’t agree on who Jesus was, either.
Some thought he was a human being, anointed by God,
and raised by God after his death.
Some thought he was God himself,
come down to walk among us,
and thus impervious to death – he simply returned to heaven.

Some thought he was God’s son, sacrificed by God,
like Abraham was ordered to do to Isaac,
but like Isaac, Jesus is spared in the end.
Others thought that he was a human being, and someone – Joseph of Arimathea, who donated the tomb,
or a band of grave robbers, or who knows,
someone stole the body.
And some thought that he was a human being, and the story about the empty tomb was nothing but fiction, a fairy-tale of a disappointed people.
And plenty of folks said that
who Jesus was is a mysterious secret,
and what happened on Easter is a mysterious secret,
and only the initiated can know the truth,
if anyone can know it.

I wasn’t there and I don’t know.
And, I agree with the Rev. Belletini:
it doesn’t really matter.
What’s real, what’s important, is beyond words.

I’m a Daoist by nature,
and so I agree with the words of the ancient Chinese Sage,
Lao-Tzu, who put it this way:

Tao is beyond words and beyond understanding.
Words may be used to speak of it, but they cannot contain it.

Therefore, he continues, to see beyond boundaries
to the subtle heart of things,
dispense with names,
with concepts,
with expectations and ambitions and differences.

Indeed.

It’s Easter Morning, and we come to celebrate.
Who cares if we don’t know what exactly.
We give thanksgiving, we rejoice, we hope.
We rise in gladness again.

The meaning of everything is jumbled together.
Understanding religious holidays,
well, its like archeology,
uncovering layers and layers,
and where do they stop,
or is it simply turtles all the way down?

The Easter holiday remembers an event tied to Passover.
Passover tells the story, as we discussed last week,
of the exodus of the Jewish Slaves from Egypt,
but scholars have surmised that Passover is actually built
on an ancient spring planting festival,
when all the crops were in,
folks would come together to celebrate spring and new beginnings.

And our traditions around Easter borrow from a pagan European festival,
Oestra, the Spring Equinox,
when the Pagans of Northern Europe would celebrate new life,
with the symbols of fecundity and sexuality:
eggs, rabbits, flowers on the altar,
a communal feast shared with friends and neighbors.

It is the time of silver rain, when new life comes to us as a joy,
and these holidays cannot be unraveled,
their meanings separated – and why should they be?

Some say it is all an accident, and they give thanks for the earth.
Some say it is all a miracle, and they give thanks for the heavens.

“But today, on Easter,
for all my education and life experience,
I cannot tell which word is which.
Accident. Miracle.
They seem to see each other’s face
in the mirror of my heart.”

This isn’t just about poetry,
this isn’t about throwing up our hands and saying, alas, we do not know.
This isn’t about trying not to offend anyone,
or speaking to the great theological diversity in this room and in the world.
Though those points are all important.

This is actually a critical point about life, theology, and meaning.

We Unitarian Universalists are products of the modern age:
the age of enlightenment, in which progress seemed around every corner,
and we felt we’d soon understand everything.
That’s the way it was in the 18th and 19th century,
when the frontier was open, reason was queen,
and the encyclopedia defined all we knew to be true.

This era began to end with the philosophy of Nietzsche
and began to sink on an April day in 1912,
when 1500 souls perished south of Newfoundland
and the hubris of invincibility became apparent,
and this age of reason was mortally wounded in the trenches of Europe a few years later.
It twitches now and then,
not least in us who might believe
that only if everyone could think things through,
we’d solve all our problems and get along.

But we know that’s a fiction, too,
and that how we feel is even more important than how we think,
and you can’t explain everything.
We know, now, that you can’t measure velocity and position at the same time,
for to look at one changes the other,
and we know now that there is more knowledge,
culture, and stories
than will ever fit in an encyclopedia,
and we know that some things are beyond words and concepts.

Hope is one of those things.
Life is one of those things.
Divinity is one of those things.
Love is one of those things.

We could argue about what they mean,
and what happened once upon a time,
or we could simply give thanks,
for green grass and silver rain,
and memory and hope and miracles great and small.

I don’t know about you,
but between arguing about things we’ll never know,
and celebrating mystery,
the celebrating sounds more fun.

Between arguing about whether Easter is about spring
or about Jesus,
on one hand, or just enjoying the all-jumbled up holiday of life,
I’d choose enjoying.

This is also how I feel about Christianity, to tell you the truth.
Unitarian Universalism is deeply rooted in its Christian heritage.
The Unitarian part of that heritage speaks to the one God
(and in opposition to the Trinity),
it celebrates the ethical teachings of Jesus,
God’s gifts of reason,
and the mystical one-ness and connection of everything.
The early Unitarians didn’t want to be called Unitarians;
they said, simply, we are Christians.
Or, if you must classify, liberal Christians.

The Universalists,
who break off from the Baptists and the Methodists,
are deeply committed to the vision of a loving God
and a loving Christ,
a love so powerful, so radical, so inclusive,
that it overpowers all sin and failure,
that all beings shall be, in the end, restored unto the holy,
and it is this doctrine, this vision, of Universal Salvation,
from which our Universalists fore-bearers took their name.

Thus, here we are,
a non-doctrinal movement named after two doctrines.

For some time,
many of our churches left aside their Christian heritage.
It was all part of this modernist impulse,
this fiction that everything was to be rational and secular,
that mystery, and wonder, and things beyond words –
well, that these things were to be left aside
on our journey to the glorious pure city of clarity.

Christianity is making, now, a comeback among us.
We’re embracing our history instead of running away from it.
We’re willing to talk about God and that many of us
find God’s love to be a powerful force in our lives.
We’re willing to talk about Jesus,
not just as a powerful ethical teacher and example,
but as, for some folks, a continuing presence in their lives.
We’re willing to serve communion on Maundy Thursday.

This makes some of you really happy.
It makes some of you a little nervous.

I know.
It makes me both happy and nervous too.

I remember that I am not asked, and neither are you,
to believe, affirm, or participate in any ritual with which you cannot, in good conscience, assent to.
This is the foundational impulse of our tradition, and it hasn’t changed.
Full Stop.
This hasn’t changed.

And I know that if we say we draw wisdom from all the world’s religions,
then we can’t very well ignore the religion of 1/3 of the world,
and our own history.
For there is wisdom and power and truth here,
for those with open ears and eyes.

It makes me happy because I have felt the spiritual power
in this faith, in this love, in this tradition
of the followers of Jesus of Nazareth.
It makes me happy because that radical love,
of Jesus, of God,
that love motivates me and others to stand for justice,
to hold out hope despite everything,
to struggle, to sacrifice, to give for the sake of something greater,
it is power, it is strength, it is beauty.

It makes me nervous because I know that words have power,
and these words:
God, Church, Jesus, Sin, Salvation, Truth, Love,
these words have been used to wound,
to control, to punish, to exclude, to murder.
These words have power,
and these wounds, I know, still hurt.

We live in this in-between space.
Between the longing for power and love,
and the knowledge of how it can be twisted, malformed.
Between hope and fear.

We live in this in-between space,
as Barbara Johnson said,
Easter People in a Good Friday World –
which is to say, we long for abundant generous loving life,
but the world we live in is hurt and wounded and fearful.

And here is what I know,
here is what I feel in my bones:
we don’t move our Good Friday world into Easter,
we don’t rise in gladness again,
by classification, by understanding, by doctrine or dogma.

No, we move from Good Friday to Easter
through mystery, through presence,
through loving without good reason,
through hoping without good sense,
through faith without all the answers.
We get there beyond words.

So much wonder, power, realness of the world,
happens below the surface.
The poet Marge Peircy reminds us that
more than half a tree is spread out in the soil under your feet,
that connections are made slowly,
and sometimes they grow underground.

This is true of all that is holy and worthy,
I am convinced.

The words we use to talk about it,
the stories we tell,
the rituals we perform,
these are like the veritable tip of the iceberg,
while the bulk of the thing,
the thing that will bring down hubris,
is underwater.

So I don’t know what Easter is all about.
I can’t explain, exactly,
what happened on a hillside outside Jerusalem
almost 2000 years ago,
and I can’t tell you how the festival of silver rains and new life
got melded into this remembrance of resurrection,
nor can I tell you who God is,
and what she looks like.
I don’t have the words to explain away love,
and I can’t string sentences together that will justify hope
in the presence of trouble and despair.

Some things are beyond words.

Maybe, then, we could put aside our arguments,
with others and most of all with ourselves.
We could breathe in and breathe out,
and rest in the mystery.
Know that this day, this celebration,
is good and happy news.
Life is true, and love is real, and the world turns to spring,
just as we turn to life,
just as we turn to one another and to beauty.
Hope feels right, and that’s enough today.

Some things are beyond words,
and that’s enough for me to rise in gladness again,
for I have felt the presence that disturbs with elevated thoughts,
and I have felt the power of the sprit in my bones,
and I didn’t have the words,
but it was real,
and that’s enough.

It’s more than enough, really:
it’s more than we can grasp,
more than we can process, more than we can slice and dice.
And isn’t that a good thing?
Isn’t it a good thing that we don’t have it all figure out,
isn’t it a good thing that some questions provoke not answers,
but more questions, and more beauty?
Isn’t it a good thing that we don’t have to choose:
miracle, accident,
but can let heaven and earth dance together,
live together in our heart,
sing together,
be together.

Sing together.
Sounds good to me.