Practice Resurrection

My father-in-law, Chuck, is a minister. A couple of years ago he was serving as an interim pastor at a small Church of the Brethren congregation. The Church of the Brethren is part of the Anabaptist movement of Christian denominations, equated usually to Mennonite and Quakers, historic peace churches.

Anyway, when Chuck was serving this small parish he found it more conservative and evangelical than the congregations he served most of his life, and he was somewhat reticent to admit it, but it was driving him crazy. We were talking on the phone the week before his Easter service and he was telling us that the CBA had come to town last Sunday, apparently the church deacons invite them every year.

So I had to ask. What's the CBA? Chuck said, "Well, I had never heard of them before either, but I got a call from one of the deacons." He said, "Brother Chuck, all the deacons have decided to wear leather jackets on Sunday, how about you?" And then Chuck said he was confused and said to the Deacon, "Sorry, perhaps I misheard you, but did you say leather jackets on Sunday?"

Then Chuck had to admit he had no idea who the CBA were. "Oh," Brother Johnson said, "the Christian Bikers Association, they are a reformed group of motorcyclists who used to partake in all the Hell's Angels had to offer - if you get my drift - but now they travel around on their motorcycles from town to town, putting on revival services to bring people to the Lord."

Well, Chuck likes the Lord as much as the best of them, but he politely declined the offer of a leather biker's jacket and explained that he would prefer to be in the audience rather than on stage during the revival service.

Chuck said, "It was sight to behold, but a sight he thought he would never see in a church he served. Right up front, dead center of the chancel, was a Harley Davidson motorcycle, with a big gold cross painted on one side and the words 'Riding for Jesus' written over the top."

Turns out a fellow named Junior Bartley was the primary speaker - a man in his upper fifties, easily pushing 250 pounds and sporting a long fuzzy beard and numerous tattoos - the very likeness of the ZZ Top band.

Chuck said, "If you ever wanted to find a preacher that could put the fear of God into you, then surely Junior was your man. There was nothing 'Junior' about him."

Within ten minutes, Junior had the crowd stirred, pumped and right where he wanted them when he gave them the line, "It's almost Easter. Do you believe?" And then over and over he kept repeating, "That's all you have to do, believe. Do you believe that the resurrection is real?! Brothers and sisters, do you believe that the resurrection is real?"

Junior then made an altar call, inviting anyone who felt moved to come forward and pledge their lives to the Lord.

Now you need to know that Chuck has never asked for an altar call in his life.

Indeed the Anabaptist denomination to which he belongs doesn't really believe in altar calls and yet Chuck said that as he sat there, stupefied, a significant number of these Anabaptists from his church went forward to be blessed by Junior.

Chuck said he actually enjoyed the revival service, and without meaning to be condescending, he said that he found the entire event well-intended - there wasn't any degrading of other religions, but overall, Junior mixed humor and joy into his passionate plea for people to come to the Lord.

And yet another part of Chuck was deeply saddened by the whole thing.

"You know, it breaks my heart to see the idea of the resurrection reduced down to some kind of magical key to get into heaven - as if all you have to do is believe and poof! You're in! Resurrection - contrary to Junior Bartley's way of putting it - is not really something you simply believe in, it is something you do!" I got off the phone with my father-in-law and thought two things, that guy is a UU and doesn't know it, but he was also onto something.

"Resurrection is not really something you believe in, it is something you do!" Chuck said.

I have thought about that line many times and keep coming back to it year in and year out. Like many of you, I have heard a lot of liberal interpretations of the idea of resurrection. But there is something about Chuck's way of putting it that seems different to me.

Clearly, we UU's are used to rethinking the way we approach the idea of resurrection. Metaphor has been our primary way of making resurrection more palatable and meaningful to us. We are fond of saying, "Resurrection is not about Jesus literally rising from the dead, it's a metaphor about the return of Spring" or. . .

"Resurrection is not about a miracle that happened to Jesus it is symbolic of the everyday miracles that happen to all of us" or even. . .

"Resurrection is not about the promise of everlasting life, it is about the promise of abundant life."

Now this morning I have no interest in arguing against these concepts about resurrection, but I do want to point out that in each of these cases - regardless of how we define it - the emphasis is on how resurrection is something that happens to us.

Whether it is the gift of Spring, an unexpected opportunity or a miraculous new sense of hope, usually at Easter we talk about the resurrection experiences as gifts we receive. Or to put it another way, in relation to these opportunities for new life we usually choose to see ourselves as grateful recipients, rather than as actors or casual agents who make resurrection happen. With this in mind, I hope it is easy to see why Chuck's line is so striking. To say that resurrection is something "we do" is significantly different than saying that resurrection is something that is done "for us or to us."

If instead one does take the approach that resurrection is something that human beings are called to make possible, then I think that our experience of Easter changes significantly. No longer are we called to simply walk out into the woods with our eyes peeled for the resurrection opportunities that are offered to us, rather we are called to keep our eyes also peeled for the resurrection opportunities that we can make possible for others.

In this regard, I think of a passage in Paul Monette's book Last Watch of the Night, a collection of personal portraits and essays on what it is like to live with AIDS in our culture. Here, Monette is describing what resurrection means to him and how he believes it works. He writes:

"It is not God we should look to for resurrection, it is each other. I learned this when I met 'Ma.' Ma runs a county home in Florida for those dying with AIDS. It is a place where the (so-called) most wretched of those with AIDS are taken to die. Many of these men and women had been abandoned by their families and denied the kindness of many 'traditional' religions.

"But here was Ma, who would wrap her arms around them and not hesitate to caress their lesions. Her raucous guttersnipe's laugh preceded her down the puke-green corridors as the dying perked up to greet her. She came to them completely unafraid of death, honored in fact to be in their presence, which gave them all a bluesy sort of comfort, which seemed, at least for a moment, to bring them back to life.

"Ma worries that I paint too bleak a picture of the county homes. But my own theory is that if it's not so bleak, it's because Ma's presence has changed these places, given them life, and I now have no problem saying that resurrection comes to these men and women, but these are resurrections that are brought there by Ma."

I also heard this similar sentiment once on a PBS special. The focus was on an El Salvadorian bishop, Oscar Romero. During the documentary, a young El Salvadoran woman who was interviewed said, "Bishop Romero was the first priest who did more than tell us to trust in the message of the resurrection. He made resurrection real for us. He fought for our rights. He fought for our land. He fought to make sure our voices were heard. This is what brought our people back to life. His work was the work of resurrection."

Over the coming years, I have no doubt that Junior Bartley of the Christian Bikers' Association will preach many more sermons on resurrection than I will.

But my hope is that when we do talk about it, we talk about resurrection in the same way as this El Salvadorian woman and as Paul Monnette did. With our faith in human action and agency as well as our emphasis on here-and-now salvation, I do think there is something distinctively Unitarian Universalist in seeing resurrection as something human beings do, not simply something human beings believe in or something that happens to them. Just the other day on NPR, they had a story that struck me along this vein as well. Apparently there are two male "co-eds" at Purdue who stand outside the Humanities building every Wednesday for two hours and shout out compliments to all who pass by. That's right. Compliments to strangers they don't know. Things like, "That jacket is a great color on you!" "Those shoes are sporting with that outfit." " I see you got new glasses from last week. Love them!" Sometimes people shout back thanks; sometimes people yell back obscenities, thinking incorrectly that they are being mocked; sometimes people shout back compliments of their own. But for more than two months now, they have stood outside for two hours at a time, through snow, rain, sunshine and fog, to continue this practice. When asked why they did it? One of the fellows said, "There isn't a time I feel better in my entire week, than those days. People come alive with such little effort. I look forward to another Wednesday, as soon as Thursday arrives."

When the story was over I thought those two guys are practicing resurrection. They are pulling some stones away from people's hearts, ushering in a spring, and making Easter an experience.

When the woman from El Salvador says that Oscar Romero made resurrection real for her by working for social justice; when Paul Monnette says that Ma brought resurrection to those struggling with AIDS by offering them her love; when Kate Braestrup in the reading says her neighbors brought the Good News to her with their care; when these two 20-somethings bring others to life by shouting out compliments; I hope we recognize them as our kind of resurrection stories, simply because they talk about a type of resurrection in which we human beings play an active role.

I have a colleague, Rev. Victoria Safford, who gets at this need for us to practice resurrection, because she says every human being can feel like they have stones, weighty immovable objects that block them, keep them from access to life. We all have at times a "dead soul, dead heart, deadened trust in our own essential worthiness, crushed hope, closed mind, clenched fist, cynical spirit, broken dream, burned out passion, dying imagination eclipsed by exhaustion or hard evidence or whatever it is, which puts out your bright light, your love of living." She's right. We all have these, and we all often can't get out of this deep night of the soul without some help. We all need an Easter at times. We all need the experience, thus we should all see the need to practice resurrection with one another.

I want to end with a story that captures how simple and yet beautiful this is, it's from Kate Braestrup again.

She says a couple of summers ago she was driving her two children, Woolie and Zach, to the hospital because they were badly burned from a fire her cousin George had made. He was burning brush and poured gasoline over the top to ignite it. The fire exploded on all three of them.

So there is Kate driving the lot of them to the hospital. While driving she is on the line with 911 on her cell phone. She says the dispatcher kept asking her whether anyone was having trouble breathing. Evidently what the dispatcher knew and Kate didn't was that if George and her kids had inhaled the scalding air at the moment of ignition, the insides of their lungs would begin to swell and shred and they could die very quickly.

So the dispatcher kept saying, "Are they breathing?" And Kate would hold the cell phone up in the air, so the dispatcher could hear the hellish sounds of them crying and cursing.

George was cursing and crying because his burns hurt and because he knew that the fire, which had injured her children, was his mistake, his fault. He was the adult who had decided to use gasoline to start the fire, and his was the hand that struck the match.

George sat in the passenger seat next to Kate and kept saying, "Oh, my God. Oh, hell. I am so sorry. I am so sorry."

Zach was sitting behind his uncle in the backseat. In the middle of his own loud litany of "Oh, God" and "Oh, Hell" he leaned forward, and reached out his burned arm, an arm blistering and shredding before their eyes, and put his burned hand on George's shoulder and said, "It's alright George . We love you."

That dear friends, is practicing resurrection. It's giving Easter! So go, give it away; practice resurrection as often as possible. And be the bearers and givers of the Good News! So be it. Amen.

Kaaren Anderson, Parish Co-Minister
April 12, 2009