Call to Worship
Yes, our hearts do leap with the spring, and our spirits embrace this season of beauty and hope. Happy Easter friends!
In Christian churches on Easter morning it is traditional to proclaim, AHe is risen!@ I have a different proclamation for us today: AWe are risen!@
In spite of the hatred in the world, we rise to love.
In spite of the violence around the globe, we rise to peace.
In spite of the intolerance by so many, we rise to embrace diversity.
In spite of the warfare and devastation, we rise to hope.May we teach our children the true meaning of resurrection, and may they show us the way to the future.
Meditation
There is so much pain in our world this Easter morning.
The Afghanistan people are digging out of a devastating earthquake while trying to recover from decades of warfare.
In the land where Jesus once walked, Jews and Palestinians massacre each other daily, killing and maiming innocent civilians and ignoring each other=s humanity.
Our sisters and brothers in the Catholic Church are suffering the betrayal of some of their priests who have abused children for many years.
So many more around the world suffer today from persecution, war, hunger, disease, and deprivation.
And here in this church there are those who are grieving, fearful, depressed, and hopeless.
Where do we find hope in such a time and in such a place?
Let us look for hope in the love we have for each other.
Let us look for hope in the courage we show in the face of injustice.
Let us look for hope in the beauty of music and art and spring.
Let us look for hope deep in our own precious hearts where all things are possible.Now let us open our minds and hearts to the place of quiet, to the silent prayer for the healing of pain, and the soft, gentle coming of love . . .
Silent Meditation & PrayerY
Offertory: Theologian and comedian, Woody Allen, addresses the big questions of life as well as the small ones. AMore than any other time in history," he observes, "humankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly."
In this church we are more hopeful than Woody. We believe there is a third way, a way of hope and love and justice. May we all take that path. Let us now receive the offering.
Sermon –
“Why Do We Suffer?”
So this is my last Big Question sermon. Next month Joan will give the eighth and final sermon in the series on ACan Humanity Survive?@
During this year, twelve covenant groups have been discussing The Big Questions on a monthly basis, and I hear that the discussions have been lively. Other groups have also been conversing about The Big Questions, including the humanists, Buddhists, youth group, and there have been monthly chapels on The Big Questions for our children. This has been a congregational conversation about some of the most significant and challenging questions we face as human beings.
Thank God it=s almost over! No, I didn=t mean it that way. But I must confess that these sermons have been some of the most difficult I=ve ever struggled with -- and some of the most satisfying.
In reality the ministerial team deals with the big questions of life in all of our sermons, but these do seem to be bigger than we usually confront. And of course September 11th has been the backdrop to every sermon we=ve given and to all of the discussions. How can we speak of evil, death, suffering and the meaning of humanity without thinking about the 3,000 people who died that day?
Another difficulty is just coming up with the right question. I thought the right question for today was, AWhy Do We Suffer?@ But after pondering it for a while I remembered hearing one of the children in our church school answering that question in a simple and direct way. She said, AWhy do we suffer? Because we suffer.@ Period. That=s a pretty good answer. There is no metaphysical reason. We simply suffer because it=s part of the human condition.
The bigger question in my mind is AHow do we suffer?@ or more appropriate for Easter Sunday is AHow do we bring hope to our suffering?@ Now we have something to sink our teeth into.
And who best to help us find ways to cope and hope than the man Jesus? Before some of you start getting nervous about the J word, let me remind you that there is a distinction between the Christianity about Jesus and the Christianity of Jesus. The Christianity about Jesus is the institutional religion that clings to dogma and creed. The Christianity of Jesus is a transformational spirituality that emphasizes his teachings and how he lived out those teachings. In the same way, Christianity deals with suffering in two radically different ways.
Not too long ago I attended a UU minister=s retreat where the speaker was Rebecca Parker, the president of my alma mater, Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, California. Rebecca is a dynamic speaker who is a Methodist and UU minister.
Rebecca=s message was that there is a dominant theology of suffering in our society we need to be aware of and prepared to struggle against. It's a belief system most of us here have grown up with and have incorporated to different degrees into our lives. It's a path that follows the footsteps of Jesus for a few steps and then wanders aimlessly out into the desert.
This theology of suffering has four characteristics. The first is the belief that suffering is redemptive. Orthodox Christianity teaches that Jesus bore the pain we deserved and thus saved us from damnation. God accepted the most painful and shameful of deaths for the sake of humankind. The message is that we must do the same. We must be willing to suffer for the greater good.
I fear that Andrea Yates responded to that message. Andrea Yates drowned her five children in a bathtub because she is suffering from a serious mental illness. But I also suspect her mental illness was affected by a dominant theology that told her suffering is a natural and even sacred part of her life.
Andrea Yates tried to be a saint, raising five children almost by herself, home schooling them, making everything from scratch, with the assumption that through her suffering she could become more holy. She finally broke down and tried to save her children from damnation by taking their lives. And now instead of dealing compassionately with the reality of mental illness our legal system is sending her to prison for the rest of her life. Andrea Yates should remind us that suffering is not redemptive.
The second characteristic of the dominant theology of suffering is the belief that to suffer is to love. We are told in many different ways throughout our lifetime that the highest expression of love is to suffer. Orthodox Christianity teaches us that the love of God is revealed in Christ's suffering for humanity. We are constantly reminded that great love does not avoid suffering, but is willing to bear it.
There was a story recently in the paper about a woman who was regularly beaten up by her husband. She turned away all efforts to help her, because she believed -- she was taught to believe -- that if she really loved her husband she should be willing to suffer his abuse. That's how she proved her love, by accepting his beatings. This same woman was eventually killed by the man she supposedly loved. Both people tragically believed they were expressing their love through suffering, one by causing it and the other by enduring it. But they should both remind us that love does not require us to suffer.
The third characteristic of the dominant theology of suffering is the belief that silence about suffering is a virtue. Once again Jesus is used as a model of optimum suffering. Jesus went to his death like a lamb to the slaughter. He did not protest. He did not rebel. He accepted his suffering and his death passively. Like Jesus, we are told that if a higher authority wishes us to suffer then we should not protest, but go meekly and be obedient.
I know many of you, like me, have been shocked by the epidemic of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests. It seems that every day we hear more terrible revelations.
I was also surprised that it has taken so long for these crimes to come to light. The victims have suffered not only the agony and humiliation of the abuse itself, but the guilt and shame of feeling that they must keep these violations a secret.
The reason they kept it a secret may have to do with being told B by the church as well as the offending priests -- they must keep silent for the sake of the holy. The message was that it would be a sin to say no to the representatives of God, and it would be a sin to tell the truth. Silence, they were told, is sacred. But let us remind the world never to be silent in the face of humiliation.
The fourth characteristic of the dominant theology of suffering is the belief that the one who is ultimately responsible for suffering is considered to be holy. It is God who requires suffering of Jesus. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son as a sacrifice. God's love is a sacrificial love. And so one who demands a sacrificial love is elevated to a position of holiness.
Rebecca Parker tells a story about a man named Bill who was a sergeant in Korea. Bill was told by his commanding officer to send his men into a battle that he knew would cause devastating losses for little or no gain. Bill openly disagreed with his commanding officer, but eventually he went along with the plan. The result was that most of his squad was killed in the battle, including his best friend who died in his arms.
Bill started drinking soon after that and the next twenty years were a haze. His family eventually helped him recover and get sober, but it was during his recovery that he had to reprocess that agonizing time of his life. Surprisingly, he did not feel guilt and grief over those tragic losses, but instead a deep sense of shame that he had opposed his commanding officer.
To realize that it was acceptable for him to feel grief required that his entire sense of identity be transformed. He had assumed that you were unfaithful if you refuse to fight, if you go by your will instead of God or your country's. He was trained to think that saying no to fighting is like saying no to love -- to being an unloving person. And since his commanding officer and superiors were responsible for the violence being done, they were the holy ones who must be obeyed -- no matter what the consequences.
To keep faith with this theology Bill used alcohol to make him feel that he had succeeded in some small way. It was the alcohol that stopped the feeling of pain -- and it was the pain that threatened to upend his convoluted belief system. He deadened his pain so that he could be faithful to his religion.
The theology taught to most of us in a subtle but extremely effective way is to discount our own personal pain because if we do pay attention to it then our religion and our lives might be radically changed. By denying our pain, we suppress not only our true purpose but the whole range of emotions, including our capacity to feel and experience on a deeper level. It=s like dragging a huge anchor behind us that keeps us stuck in the past so we can never be fully present.
Let us heed the words of Tennessee Williams who said, ADon't look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you'll know you're dead.@
Since this is a day of hope, I -- with the help of Rebecca Parker -- would like to make four suggestions on how to get off the cross and to rise from hope to healing.
The first step is to uncloak the reason for our suffering. In many situations to get off the cross we must first uncover the perpetrator of our suffering. The right and responsibility of the victim is to name the one who has done harm.
Jesus was a man who dedicated his life to uncloaking the truth, even to the point of sacrificing his life. He had the courage to reveal the political and religious frauds of his day, and to speak the eternal truths of all time.
The men and women who are coming forward now and telling the truth about how they were abused by priests are uncloaking a hideous sin within the Catholic Church, and it is this truth telling that will hopefully help to bring healing to the victims and justice to their perpetrators. And perhaps it will bring about badly needed reforms within the Church.
The next step towards getting off the cross is to be open ourselves to pain. Many of us are taught to deny our suffering, to rationalize it away as insignificant. But when we neglect our pain we essentially are dehumanizing ourselves by confirming our own insignificance as human beings.
Elizabeth Kubler Ross says it well in these words: AYou will not grow if you sit in a beautiful flower garden, but you will grow if you are sick, if you are in pain, if you experience losses, and if you do not put your head in the sand. Take the pain as a gift to you with a very, very specific purpose.@
Some of us use our liberal theology to deny and cloak our pain, believing that the resilient, independent, rational, individual can stand up against the world. But none of us can cope by ourselves. We are all vulnerable to the devastation and suffering of life no matter how strong and reasonable we may be.
I read an article recently claiming that many Americans are still suffering post-traumatic stress syndrome from the terrorist attacks. If you are feeling more anxious, grumpy, frustrated or depressed than you were before September 11, then you may be experiencing this malady.
I certainly am. In fact, I don=t know how anyone can=t be experiencing all these emotions. Six months isn=t enough time to bring us back to normalcy. But I also know that the best way to deal with these emotions is to continue to allow ourselves to feel the grief, to give ourselves the time and space to be sorrowful, and to share our feelings with caring people.
By opening ourselves to suffering, we also open ourselves to compassion. I wish the Jews and Palestinians could heed the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow when he wrote, AIf we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each [person=s] life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.@
The image of Jesus nailed to the cross has helped many people to accept and express their pain. Through our empathy with the crucified Jesus we're able to cry out as he did, "Oh God, Oh God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Each of us knows what it means to be on the cross of grief and fear, and like Jesus, we look for a way to rise from pain to wholeness.
And that brings us to the third way to get off the cross, and it is to practice resurrection. Many of us here don't believe in a physical resurrection, but I hope we do believe in a spiritual resurrection. A spiritual resurrection is when hope has grown into healing, when we have gone from seeing ourselves as broken and fragmented to being whole and complete, even though we still hurt. As Helen Keller said, AAlthough the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.@
That spirit of resurrection comes about through what some call grace. We experience grace when we open ourselves to our senses, to the full range of feelings, and to hope. Grace gives us the ability to feel and the capacity to act.
One of those resources for grace is our fellow humans. We need each other when we are in pain. We don't need fabricated answers and superficial salve. We need a presence, a listening ear, a tender touch. We need people who can be present to pain without hiding from it, and without discouraging us from being truthful. We need people who can accept us for who we are.
Finally, to get off the cross we need the power to act. One of the most difficult responses for women who are recovering from abusive relationships is to learn to make decisions. These women must come into the presence of their own power.
The question we need to ask ourselves is not why am I suffering but what creative response can I make in the face of such pain. We need to ask not what are we free from but what we are free for. What can we do? What must we do? What will we do?
To climb off the cross we need to act, to respond, and to reach out. When we are fearful of what might happen, not trusting life, lacking confidence in our own ability, then we are paralyzed by inaction. When we open ourselves to whatever may come, whether it be suffering or grace, then we mobilize our spirit and take action.
The real secret to getting off the cross is in helping others off of their crosses. We are not resurrected bodily from an empty tomb. We are resurrected in spirit when we grasp the hand of another in need. We cannot be transformed alone. We are transformed only with another.
There=s a story of a man who once stood before God, his heart breaking from the pain and injustice in the world. ADear God,@ he cried out, Alook at all the suffering, the anguish, and distress in your world. Why don=t you send help?@ God responded, AI did send help. I sent you.@
It is up to us to not only get ourselves off the cross but to help others to rise to hope and liberation. We do that:
- by uncloaking the perpetrators of suffering;
- by opening ourselves to the pain within and around us, accepting the sorrow and then growing from it;
- by embracing the grace of the world, the people who nurture us, the earth that sustains us, and our own beauty and divinity;
- and finally by rising to act creatively, to reach out in compassion, and to travel with others on their journey from hope to healing.
Let us rise this Easter morning to that challenge.
Amen.
Benediction
In the tomb of the soul we hide in fear from the problems and possibilities of the world.
We retreat from reality and idealism.
But when we are nourished by the beautiful earth, by courageous friends and loving family, by the example of those who have leaped from the cross of persecution,
then we too can roll away the stone of cynicism and rise up to make peace, to bring about justice and to live in precious love with one another. Happy Easter!
Shalom, salaam, blessed be, Amen.
© UUCA 2002
