For Unitarians, who hold a conception of a strictly human Jesus, a physical resurrection is not possible. No human can die and later live again as that same person. But what if we think of Easter not as something that happens to individuals but as a lesson about life itself? Easter could celebrate an eternally existing spirit of life passed through communities, taking shape in collections of individuals for a time, and then taking new shapes in later times.
On Easter Sunday, Christians celebrate the risen Christ.
Jesus was crucified and died on Friday. Because he died near the end of the day there was no time for his followers to do the work of preparing the body for a proper burial before the Sabbath began at sundown, which forbid them doing any kind of work, according to Jewish law. So, Jesus was laid to rest in a temporary grave: a cave with a stone rolled across the entrance. All day Saturday, his followers mourned Jesus’ death and wondered what would become of them and the movement that Jesus had led.
The Sabbath ended at nightfall Saturday, but by then it would be too dark to do any work at the burial place, so the followers waited a second day, through the long night.
Then at dawn, Sunday morning, some of the followers returned to the cave to attend to Jesus’ body.
Each of the four gospels tells the story of what happened next slightly differently.
In Mark, three women go to the cemetery: Mary, Jesus’ mother, Mary Magdalene, and a woman named Salome. As they walk to the cemetery, they worry they won’t have the strength to roll away the heavy stone that covers the cave entrance, and they hope there will be someone there to help them. But when they arrive, they find that the stone has already been rolled away. Inside the tomb they are alarmed to find a young man dressed in white who tells them that Jesus has risen. He tells them to go tell the disciples that they should go up to Galilee and Jesus will meet them there.
In Matthew, it’s two women: Jesus’ mother, Mary and Mary Magdalene, but not Salome. In Matthew, the women are met at the cave by an angel who dramatically removes the stone by an earthquake and terrifies the guards who were stationed there. The angel tells the women, as in Mark, to tell the disciples about the empty tomb and to go up to Galilee where they will meet Jesus. But in Matthew, as the women hurry away, they see Jesus himself. He greets them. They bow to him and embrace him. And Jesus repeats the instruction that the disciples should go to Galilee.
In Luke, again, it is women who discover the empty tomb. Now it’s the two Mary’s, a woman named Joanna, and some unnumbered “others.” Instead of a young man, or an angel, these women find two men. “He is risen,” they say. And you’ll find him in Galilee. The women hurry to tell the disciples. They don’t meet Jesus themselves. Luke tells us that when Peter hears the news from the women he goes back to the tomb to investigate and finds strips of linen lying about, the cloth that they had wrapped the body in, but nothing else.
In the fourth Gospel, John, it’s Mary Magdalene alone who goes to the tomb. She finds the stone removed and the tomb empty but sees nothing. She then runs back to get Peter and another disciple, John, saying, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t where they have put him.” Peter and John run back to the tomb and find the linen strips lying there. Then they go away again. But Mary, left alone at the tomb, now looks inside and sees two angels who ask her, “Woman, why are you crying?” She explains, then turns around and sees a man who she thinks must be the groundskeeper of the cemetery. The man also asks, why are you crying and who are you looking for? When Mary answers, the man says her name, “Mary” and then Mary recognizes him. It’s Jesus, standing before her. Jesus tells her, not to go to Galilee, but this:
“Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” (John 20:17)
“Do not hold on to me,” is what Jesus says to Mary. “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”
For Christians, Easter celebrates the triumphal day of their faith, the day in which the problem of humanity, ever since the day of Adam and Eve has at last been solved.
The first humans, Adam and Eve, were created to be immortal, you see. Genesis tells us that when God formed a man from the dust, he breathed into the nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being (Genesis 2:7)
We’re told God placed the first people in the Garden of Eden and told them they could eat the fruit of any tree in the garden except not “from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” (Genesis 2:17).
Of course, Adam and Eve do eat from the tree, and God curses them saying, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:19).
Ever since, all the descendants of Adam and Eve, stained by this original sin, have been condemned to death. Three score and ten, or a little more. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
But then, at last, Jesus overcomes death. Jesus, because of his unusual birth never inherited the stain of original sin, and being God incarnate never committed sin while he was alive, so Jesus’ death was entirely unjustified. He paid a price he didn’t owe. So, death couldn’t keep him and after three days he came back. And Jesus’s eternal, divine nature, means that the unnecessary payment he made for sin: suffering on the cross and dying, created an infinite credit that could cover the debt for as many people who needed it.
And so, at last, the problem of death had been solved. Believe in Jesus. Accept the sacrifice he made for you. Win eternal life.
If you think that the problem of life is that we die at the end of it, Christianity offers a solution.
The solution requires believing some things that we know to be physically impossible. The Christian belief to be specific is not that human beings live forever; the belief is that after human beings die, as they clearly do, that they will come back to life later, after the Last Judgment. The idea that human beings have an immortal soul that immediately goes to Heaven after physical death is actually not the orthodox Christian doctrine, but even if it were, that belief comes with its own logical problems. And you also must believe that Jesus is capable of overcoming death on behalf of all humanity, which he could only do if he were some kind of a supernatural being, perhaps God himself.
If you don’t believe in Jesus’ divinity, then the Christian solution to the problem of death falls apart. And makes Easter kind of a dud.
So why do we make such a big deal out of it?
Well, strictly speaking, we don’t.
Easter is a Christian holiday that we recognize, but it’s not a Unitarian Universalist holiday.
We don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus. That’s what makes us Unitarians instead of Trinitarians. Traditionally we believe in one God, or as the famous joke goes, we believe in one God – at most.
But whether there’s one God or none, there clearly isn’t room in our theology for Jesus to also be God.
Traditionally, Unitarians have believed that Jesus is a human being: an elevated human being, a great human being, maybe even the perfection of humanity: a model of what you and I could be, but in kind just like you and me. The human Jesus, then, dies like every other human being. Maybe we will die having contributed something valuable to humanity and the world while we lived, as Jesus did, but he no more than us capable of overcoming the fundamental problem of death itself.
But what if death isn’t really the problem?
If we reject both halves of the Christian salvation formula, both that Jesus is a supernatural savior, and that death is a problem we need saving from, then Easter can be understood in a new way. No longer a dud, but a joyous celebration of a different way of looking at humanity, the divine goals, and the meaning we can make of our mortal lives. Indeed, all of religion can be reinterpreted, not as a scheme to avoid death and live eternally in a different world, but religion as a goad to celebrate the life we have and to make the best of this world.
That’s Unitarian Universalism.
I was walking to the bus stop after choir rehearsal on Thursday, and I had a sudden realization of just how remarkable this life is. Perhaps I was thinking about Easter coming up. Perhaps I was thinking about Gail Natzler’s death a week ago. But mostly I was just feeling the strange marvelousness of walking down the sidewalk, on the surface of a planet and being a form of existence capable of experiencing the wonder of that moment.
I can look, and see, and feel, and smell. The coolness of the evening air. The mass of white flowers bursting from a bush. The night sky opening infinitely above me, an infinity that I cannot perceive directly but can reach with my imagination. The ability to remember the earlier events of the evening and to contemplate their importance and plan for the future. The ability to enjoy music. Despite the destructive elements in humanity, how regular and resilient are other parts of our society: sidewalks, and stores, and folks going about their work on the sewer system under Whitsett avenue, and buses that run up and down Ventura Blvd., because the bus driver is doing his job, and taking other people to their jobs and their families.
I look at that and I don’t see original sin. I see folks doing their best. Struggling. Challenged. Not to minimize the hardship some face, and the deliberate cruelty of some. Evil exists: human evil. But we aren’t cursed. I don’t feel condemned. I feel gifted. I feel gratitude for the incredible ability to experience this universe with the depth that human beings can: friendship, love, beauty, the understanding that science teaches, the thrill of human creations like a great novel or a great symphony, the peace of a quiet walk in nature, the satisfaction of slipping into bed at night and feeling the cool sheets against my skin.
And as I fall to sleep, the knowledge that though I will rest, unconscious, for a time, that I will wake again the following morning. At least for a time.
Not forever. Not for eternity. But for many days, day after day, I will thrill this natural magic of being conscious in this brilliant world.
The fact that life will end for me, eventually, doesn’t feel like problem I need to solve. The fact that I have it at all feels like an astounding blessing.
And I know, that on the day that I no longer wake up to live another day, billions of other people will be waking to their new day, as well as all the countless other forms of life that will live that day and live far into the future, perhaps not to eternity, but for very long. Life goes on. That’s the way of life.
If I felt myself entirely separate from all the rest of life, perhaps that continuity of life would have no meaning for me. “If I’m not there, who cares?” I might say. That I couldn’t be there after my death would only make me feel left out and jealous maybe.
But I don’t feel separate from the rest of life. This is the spiritual goal of connection that I mentioned last week. I feel so completely connected to the everflowing stream of life. Every day of life. To people around the world I care about but have never met. To folks I know by name, and others I only know abstractly. I feel kinship, shared life with them. And to people from the past whose history I know, or whose books I read or paintings I look at. The buildings I walk into. The architect who designed it, and the craftspersons who laid their hands to every square inch. I feel them a part of this world, a part of me, and me a part of them. The laws they wrote and discoveries they made, make my life. And I care equally about the life that will follow mine. I trust the lives of the future will care about me as well, hopefully remembering my life as a blessing. Even after my individual life is long forgotten, I will still be part of that great extant of being. I will always be part of the number of existing things, though the span of my existence will be the past.
That is how I make sense of resurrection and celebrate Easter. Not that “I who have died am alive again today” but “for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes.”
It is that resounding, echoing, “yes”, rolling through all existence, which includes me, currently living, and will include me still in other forms when life moves on to inhabit other beings, that satisfies and soothes me and tells me that death is no problem to solve, but is just the breaks that create the rhythm in the infinite dance.
“The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world…”
One life, forever. Not my little life, and yours, and yours, and then another and a different life popping up and dropping away, but the one same life, “that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.”
And not me now, and then me again, later. But an eternal life that both precedes and follows my small expression. One great life, “rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and death, in ebb and in flow.”
Life doesn’t depend on me. That has it wrong-way ‘round. I join myself to a greater life. “I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.” I am just a single syllable, sung by a divine voice, in an unending song.
“Something always, always sings. This is the message Easter brings.”
The eternal song passed from singer to singer, the melody developing, changing, flowing. Sometimes light and quick. Sometimes dark and slow. Sometimes expressing the sadness of life, the heartache, the solemn truths of pain and injustice. But going on to sing of courage, pride, joy. A beautiful song. A romantic song. A grateful song. A faithful song.
What would the disciples see when they went up to Galilee? Who would they meet?
How wonderful to have one more day of their friend who they thought they had lost, or forty days as it turns out.
But not for forever.
Not for Jesus. Not for us.
“Do not hold on to me,” is what Jesus says to Mary Magdalene.
Let him go.
We must learn to let go of life with faith in the knowledge that the spirit of life will continue.
“I am ascending to my Father and your Father.”
There is one end for all of us. One journey for all of us, whatever portion of the path happens to be ours to walk.
“I am ascending to my God and your God.”
“And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.”