We have come to know that many of the elements of the Christian celebration are from ancient pagan spring rituals that were practiced at least a thousands years before Jesus. Some of the ancient symbols persist as well. One is the egg, another the rabbit or hare. Both are signs of fertility. We have to remind our children that although the Easter Bunny may bring the eggs, he is not hatched like chickens. I knew that early in my small Iowa town, where the local hatchery would place fluffy newborn chicks in the store window, even dyeing some of them yellow, pink and green -- Easter eggs with legs.
Since we UUs dispute the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which claims Jesus was God in human form, we tend to emphasize the pagan spring practices rather than the Christian Easter. We also question the gospel story of Jesus' bodily resurrection from the grave. We prefer to recognize his continuing spiritual presence in the world.
Since we are no longer a Bible-centered or Christ-centered faith, traditional Christians consider us anti-Christian, even diminishing us to the level of a sect.
This is hardly so. We UUs pay great respect and honor to Jesus, believing him to be one of the great divine personages of human history, whose example and influence persists to this day. We are reluctant to use the term "Christ," which means Messiah, the Savior of the Jews as prophesied in the Old Testament. We also reject the salvationist theology of Christianity, which states that only through accepting Jesus as personal savior can we be eligible for eternal life. We are also repelled by the idea of a God who would sacrifice his son in order to redeem humankind. We know today that many pre-Christian religions similarly had sacrificial/salvationist beliefs that were appropriated by the early Christian church.
From all this, one can understand why traditional Christians consider us non-Christian. But they are wrong. We are modern, non-doctrinaire, liberal, post-Christians, not anti- or non-Christians.
In our denomination, we do have ministers and individuals who will strenuously claim that we are not Christian. We also have churches and ministers who claim to be non-Trinitarian Christian, and yet address prayers to Jesus and follow many traditional pietistic rituals of the church. They would call themselves liberal Christian Unitarians. For them, Easter is not a celebration of the bodily resurrection of Christ, yet it is an annual event for the praise of Jesus' life and the profound change he brought to humankind.
Among those UUs who proclaim themselves non-Christians, there is often an inclination to belittle the meaning of Easter, hardly mentioning the death of Jesus. Meanwhile, emphasis is placed upon spring, nature, flowers, bunny rabbits and Easter eggs. I once heard of a UU minister who titled his sermon on resurrection "Upsi-daisy!"
How sad. Easter without Christ can be a very shallow thing. I think that many UUs have become smug and elitist in our easy put-downs of Christianity. Oh, I agree that there is much syrupy piety within the modern "pop" religion one sees on TV or hears on the radio -- all of which deserves our scorn. And much of the old Calvinistic emphasis on sin and damnation that still exists within fundamentalism deserves our reproach.
But there exists an intellectual and rational modern Christianity, and we should be careful about lumping all Christendom into one pile. For modern, enlightened Christians, Christ is no miracle maker but a courageous and suffering prophet who lives on in every individual and congregation willing to comfort the poor and the afflicted. And we should take them seriously when they say that they have taken up the cross and are following Christ.
In my role as minister, I know and admire modern, rational Christians. I was once one of them. I am comfortable in their midst, for I know we all work for a better world. Their religious language is not the same as mine, but it is not offensive to me. I do wish, however, that they knew more about my liberal faith. But I feel that much of this is because we UUs do not allow ourselves to work more closely with them, partly out of our discomfort, partly out of our elitism.
Intellectually superior we are not. Nor are we morally superior. As do we, they claim to be rational people of faith. And they do not find it irrational to find their roots in the Bible and their devotion to Christ as their exemplar, and yes, also their savior.
We Unitarian Universalists have removed Christ from our religion and from Easter. To some extent we are the lesser for it. I feel that the image of the suffering and courageous Christ is a powerful and compelling example for all human beings. There is something to be said for Holy Week, wherein the passion and suffering of Christ is remembered, leading up to his death on the cross. Without Good Friday first, Easter has no meaning.
We UUs mostly disregard Jesus' days of conflict, doubt and fear, which he encountered as his enemies plotted against him. Rather than examining the events of Holy Week, we prefer our sunny, flower-filled Easter, without the dark side of Christ's passion.
Passover comes at about the same time as Easter, timed as it also is to the lunar calendar. Unitarian Universalist congregations commonly give recognition to Passover; we would never seek to belittle the Jewish traditions as we do the Christian. Passover is a remembrance of the dark days of bondage and homelessness. And it is not coincidental that in this season, Jews around the world also remember the Holocaust. Jews also have their season of passion.
The Buddha said that all of life is suffering. Unitarian Universalists would agree that life is full of sorrow and pain, but we are often remiss in not addressing this liturgically enough in our worship. We tend to look on the bright side. We also skirt the thought that there is an Ultimate Reality in which an individual might find strength amid the depths of despair. Both Christianity and Judaism are firmly rooted in such faith.
We also should remind ourselves that without Christ, UUism would not exist, nor, for that matter, would the Christian Church. Jesus did not establish the church; St. Paul did. He was the first Christian theologian, according to the title of a book by the Rev. A. Powell Davies, renowned Unitarian minister.
Paul developed the religion about Christ, instead of the religion as preached by Jesus. Paul was the originator of salvationist/sacrificial Christianity, which eventually became the Catholic Church, which claims to be the sole mediator between humankind and God.
And yes, this same Catholic, and later the Protestant, church for centuries committed atrocities and evil in the name of Jesus. Nevertheless, the church did create organized religion, with its thousands of modern-day facets, many of them evil as well. And yet the human religious impulse persists, church or no church, and it will never go away. People will always find ways to express their praise for the gifts of life and the mysteries and miracle of existence.
William Ellery Channing and Theodore Parker, great Unitarian leaders of the first half of the 19th century, spoke often of the "universal" church. Both saw this ideal as creedless, stressing love for humanity, for all creation, and love for the creative power of the universe of which we are a part as well as participant. Parker even went on to state that such an ideal church could exist without Bible or miracle-making savior. Thus did Parker distinguish between the essentials and non-essentials of religion. This statement got Parker in trouble. In no way did he mean that Bible or Christ should be removed from his form of liberal Christianity in the 1840s.
But in the 160 years since Parker, that is what UUism has become today, without Bible or Christ. And to some extent, I feel this has diminished our movement.
Now, I do not advocate that we go back to the Christianity of Parker's day, but I maintain that we should recognize our Christian roots and never wholly remove ourselves from the liberal wing of Christianity. Should we ever do so, I predict that we will become the declining sect that our critics claim we are.
But let us not neglect the fact that first and foremost we are Unitarian Universalists, a creedless and non-doctrinal religious association of free congregations that welcome all individuals who are comfortable with our stated purposes and principles, no matter where each may place him or herself theologically, be it atheist, humanist, mystic, deist, theist or pagan -- or a mixture thereof. We welcome the strength we find in our religious diversity. There is no such thing as an atheist church, an agnostic church, a humanist church, a deist church, a theist church, or a pagan UU church. Any congregation that so proclaims itself has killed the heart of Unitarian Universalism and the promise of the universal church that Channing and Parker envisioned.
The title of this sermon, "Easter Without Christ?," was meant to be provocative. Please be assured that I do not propose that we cease our Easter celebration of life and its springtime rebirth. Nor do I want to do away with the Easter Bunny or Easter eggs. But let us not forget the Christian Easter, nor the man, Jesus, and his suffering and courage which Good Friday and Easter commemorates. Nor should we casually put aside the Christian roots from which we derive our beginnings. And let us not operate separate and aloof from our Christian neighbors, for we have much in common.
But most of all, let us always aspire toward becoming the ideal, universal church, open to all, from which no person may be excommunicated except by the death of goodness in his or her soul.
Easter without Christ? Partly, yes. The resurrected Christ we do not need. But the suffering, loving, compassionate and courageous Christ we should always recognize.
But also, please, let us continue to celebrate the spring, with its flowers, and eggs, and even the Easter Bunny -- chocolate, if you please!
So may it be.
The sermon in a Unitarian Universalist setting is never the last word on any subject, but rather an invitation to further dialog.
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