Easter Sunday with the Unitarian Universalists

2025-04-20

I am not a Christian, and so Easter has never been much of an event for me, aside from a
basket full of chocolate, colorful hard-boiled eggs, and a nice family dinner. I look forward, in
fact, to a lovely lamb stew on my side of the border in a few hours. My most vivid memory of
Easter occurred when I was nine or ten years old at the home of my godfather. I worshiped his
daughter, Adele, five or six years older than me who would willingly and easily shout down her
father in any argument. That year, she loudly argued why playing Jesus Christ Superstar on
repeat all day long was better worship than Sunday mass had been. Hosana, Heysana, Zana,
Zana, Ho. Did you know that the word “Hosana,” purportedly shouted at Jesus as he entered
Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, means “Save us”? “Save us.” Save us from what?

I know that I am not the only Unitarian Universalist somewhat confused about the meaning or
the relevance of Easter. I heard that wondering in several casual conversations this week. Here
is one answer. Within the Christian heresy that is Unitarian—one god, not three, not a trinity—it
was God the Father that persisted. Once that idea emerged, there was a lot of theological
debate about the nature of Jesus. Now, “theological debate” generally means trying to figure out
the nature of god, the essence of god’s being. So, when Unitarian thinkers over time confronted
the question of Jesus, here are some of the ideas they came up with: Jesus was simply another
manifestation of the father, a face of god, so to speak. Or that Jesus was a divine being, but just
a little below the divinity of god, kind of like an angel but more divine than an angel. Or, that
Jesus was a man but a special man, given the special task of mediating between divinity and
humanity. Or, that Jesus is an exemplar, that his story is not so much about the nature or
essence of god but about how human beings ought to live in the world with each other, an
ethical model, so to speak. This last one, I think, is one that might resonate for many of us.
Jesus who seeks to cure the sick, who feeds the hungry, who sits down with the sinners and the
tax collectors and the women, who flips the tables of the money-lenders, and stands silently,
resistantly, in the face of the politicians and the rulers.

But even if that last idea does resonate, we do still have to contend with the horrors of so-called
Holy Week, with the humble ride into a city held in oppression, turned into a spectacle of
desperate hope, ending in persecution and a state-ordered execution. Of course, I am putting a
slant on the whole story. For Christians, Jesus’s death on the cross is ordained by God,
regardless of which human actors—the Jews, the local collaborators, the Roman Empire—some
might feel inclined to blame. Jesus’s death leads to resurrection of the body, ascension into
heaven, so that human sins may be forgiven. I am obviously doing slight service here to the
complexity of Christian faith and belief. But that is not my story to tell.

Whether for forgiveness of sins or not, the story of death and resurrection has been welded on
to other stories, both older and newer. Easter is also and always a pagan story as well, of a
spring returning after a winter of cold and want. Easter is a story of new life, and so as
Christianity coalesced, as it so often did, it linked itself to pagan celebrations of other gods and
goddesses. Still, I have never been comfortable with this linkage. Spring is life renewed, rather than a dead body revived. Plants are not dead but resting, and dead animals do not become live
ones. The re-emergence of hibernating animals must have caused some consternation, though!

So how do we celebrate, or commemorate, Easter in times like these, as the people we are? As
Jesus rode into Jerusalem, the people cried out Hosana, save us. And what did Jesus do?
Jesus did what Jesus had been doing all along—he resisted the Romans and their minions. He
refused to answer their questions. He refused to bow to their oppressive version of reality. He
even refused to be named by his own followers as their salvation. And he was killed for it. That
is a harsh lesson, dying for what one believes in, for the way one lives. No wonder they cried
Hosana, save us.

So how might we authentically commemorate Easter in these times? And what are our days like
these days? “Each morning we listen for what is breaking —the sound of a thousand tragedies
fills the air [. . .]. We watch, worried if we turn away even for an instant, it will all crumble the rest
of the way.” Yet living in fear is simply unsustainable. Sometimes, we turn away and live in a
false reality, our rose-colored glasses very dark indeed, our blinkers both activated and ignored.
Or, we break down. We turn to substances to help us escape. Or, we become embittered and
despair. What will sustain us? What will feed us so that we might both enjoy and enliven this
one life of which we are certain, the promise of a heaven here, only here, in this moment in
time? That sweet story this morning, a bunny in search of Easter, whatever that is, that story
gives us some idea. It begins with a self-involved desire for some mysterious, undefined
“something,” then, very tangibly built with the assistance of others until Easter becomes a lovely,
substantial “something” that is best used, most meaningful, by giving it away, by sharing. “If
you're grateful, you are willing to share, you are enjoying the differences between people. And
that changes this power pyramid under which we live.” Mutuality, rather than selfish pursuit.
“Power with” rather than “power over.” Hosana, save us from ourselves.

In the Christian story of Jesus, “when faced with an enemy, he responds with love; when faced
with an offense, with forgiveness. The kingdom of God he proclaims is focused on the poor and
imprisoned, on the lost coin, the lost sheep, the lost son, on the outsider and the outcast, the
least among us. When God ‘rules’ in this kingdom, the rule is ironic, unruly, unroyal: the last are
first, the insiders are out and the outsiders are in, a topsy-turvy [kingdom] that makes no sense
in the eyes of [this] world.” That is a world I would like to live in—one where the value of each of
us is assumed by all of us, automatically and without reservation. One where I can hold such a
thought, I can live by means of it, even if my neighbor does not. One where our relationships, all
of them, intimate and more distanced, are maintained because we never forget that everything
is inextricably bound up, entangled, with everything else. One where we all work with and for the
thriving of all. A messy place of constant renewal and renegotiation, gratefully conceived. A way
of living humbly, returning again because we know we are imperfect and every new voice
means widening the circle and reworking the plan. I know it sounds like a dream, friends, like a
fantasy for children. I am ok with that. I want it anyway. I pray you do as well. Hosana, save us
from our selfish selves.

Yes, friends, life as we know it is crumbling. And yet, “Forget with me for a moment. Take an
unguarded breath” for [. . .] “the world needs your attention here, too.” The earth is forever
turning. New life is springing up out of the cold ground, seeming like a miracle, natural after all
though prepared for and tended. Yes, the life we know is crumbling and yet the life we know is
also emerging, as it always has and does, even when we are not watching. Let us widen our
gaze, soften the focus of our intense awareness of all that is going so wrong around us, and
sometimes within us and among us. We don’t know what will happen between our countries. We
don’t know when or even if the current and objectively horrible attacks on democracy in the US
and across the globe will end. We don’t know whether you will elect a new government that will
make way for the thriving of all the people within your borders, if a newly elected government
will live up to its promises. We do not know which spark of resistance will ignite a conflagration
of change and what that change will ultimately look like. We might desire a specific future. We
might even pretend a specific future will exist because we want it to exist. But we don’t know.
And we have to live with that. Hosana, save us from our blinded selves.

Our desires for a good world are important, and we struggle to imagine a good world if we
cannot lift our heads out of the news cycle and its devastation and look at what is and always
has been good—mutual aid, laughter and pleasure, music and painting, dancing and singing,
time with our beloveds, fancy Easter clothes and comfortable blue jeans. Beauty of all kinds.
The emergence of spring, even and perhaps especially a slowly emerging spring, reminds us
that life goes on. Stories of resistance—of triumph and tragedy—remind us that human beings
persist under all sorts of conditions, conditions often much less than optimal. We who are
comfortable, want our comfort to continue. And why wouldn’t we want that—not only for
ourselves but for our children and for our friends and neighbors and hopefully—if we are very,
very good, and that is a struggle for me, maybe for you, too—hopefully, we want that for our
enemies, too. Yet, let us fall not into being a people of “hope and a prayer.” Our thoughts, our
desires are not enough. We must build the world we want to live in, even if there is no
guarantee that that world will become. Just remember how very many ways there are to build
the world about which we dream. Hosana, save us from our timid selves.

Shortly, we’ll sing a hymn that is a favorite of mine. It comes out of the Anglican tradition,
although English 18 th -Century mystic and poet William Blake was not a high church believer. But
he did believe in the healing power of Jesus, though he never drew a crucified Christ. He drew
Jesus as a lamb and the lamb as Jesus. He drew Jesus as living waters. In the hymn
“Jerusalem,” which is actually the prelude to his epic poem Milton which explores the questions
of inspiration, beauty, and truth, Blake asks questions: Is God present among us? Could a city
of goodness and holiness exist in the same place as the degradation of human lives? And he
answers—that he will bring all the skills that he possesses to help bring such a world into
being—the skills of thinking, the skills of communicating, the skills of sharing, the skills of art.
May we also bring all the skills we have—all the making of love and beauty and companionship,
all the solidarity for justice and equity and freedom—to build a world where all lives are truly
held sacred.

We have gathered this morning to hear some of the old stories, sustaining stories made new in
the context of our days—stories of return and renewal, stories of “the courage and strength of
those seeking freedom in the past,” stories “which reminds us that love is our greatest
challenge.” Sustained by the ever-returning rhythms of nature, by the prophetic example of
ancestors in working for freedom, and by the necessity of humility as we seek to live lovingly,
may we continue to build the community, within our walls and in the hurting world, that makes
proper room for all of us, providing all of us, everyone one of us, with the care we need and for
which we so long. May it ever be so.

Rev. Rita Capezzi