Where are you in the story?

Unitarian Universalists are very diverse in what we believe. Some of us are Christian, some are Jewish; we are atheist and earth centered. I grew up UU, in a humanist congregation, so I knew about Easter baskets and egg hunts, but I had never heard about the pascal mystery. I didn’t know that if you grew up in the Christian tradition, churches start telling the story of Easter 40 days ago, all the way back on Ash Wednesday, and all through Lent.

For Christians, this week, Holy week, began with the story of Palm Sunday, of Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem, surrounded by a procession of followers laying palm branches across his path.

On Thursday evening they remember the story of the last supper with Jesus and his disciples, the washing of his disciples feet, the first communion ritual. On Thursday we remember Jesus waiting in the garden of Gethsemane, when he is the only one who knows what is coming, and he prays from his heart to “take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done." That is the night of the betrayal by his friend Judas, and the night of Jesus’ arrest.

On Friday, A lot of sad and scary things happen. As the apostles creed says: “He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead.”

Saturday of holy week, is a time of sadness and waiting. All the people who loved Jesus as a friend, a son, a teacher were broken-hearted and discouraged.

And so on Easter Sunday, when they rolled the stone away from the tomb, and found the tomb empty, they were afraid, but when Jesus appeared and spoke, there was a profound joy and amazement. (The kind of Joy that you feel only when your heart is already broken open by hard and sad things.) The celebration of Easter is not just the story of Jesus, but is also a hopeful message for all people that even after betrayal, and suffering, and death, resurrection is possible.

And so on a normal year, observant Christians follow that journey all the way through the month of lent, they celebrate the people coming together on Palm Sunday, the bitter sweetness of the last supper of Jesus with his Disciples, the anxious moments of Jesus in the garden. They retell the Good Friday Journey by following the stations of the cross. On Holy Saturday, they remember Jesus laying in his tomb, and on Easter the joyful resurrection, That whole story, taken together is called the pascal mystery- the mystery of suffering and hope, the mystery of death and rebirth.

But today we are all living inside of another story, and we don’t know how the story goes because we’ve never lived through a pandemic before. Maybe you don’t feel like a butterfly emerging from her cocoon this morning. But remember the Easter story actually has all the feelings inside it- not only the joy and hope of resurrection, but all the feelings that lead up to that day. My friend Rev. Jennifer said she felt like for her it is holy Saturday, like we were still waiting quietly in the dark tomb for rebirth, or maybe we are like Jesus friends feeling sad outside the tomb.

Where are you in the story this morning? I bet for some people this feels like Good Friday, because they feel hurt and weary right now, because the cross they are carrying feels too heavy. Maybe when you saw crowds cheering those buses of medical workers headed off to NYC it felt like Palm Sunday. I think for me it feels like Maundy Thursday. Here I am in my home with my family, cooking together and feeding each other, worried about what might happen next. Where are you in the story? … Remember, whether today feels like Thursday or Friday or Saturday, Easter is coming. Hope still exists even if you can’t feel it right now.

For those of us that aren’t Christian, we can just look out our window to see the same story unfolding. This was a hard winter for lots of plants, but still the green is returning, Where I live in Ithaca, some of the trees are starting to bud, the daffodils are blooming. I have a plant called a Lenten rose, and this winter a chimney fell on it. Then the masons who took down the chimney piled bricks on it and dragged the heavy bricks away. This poor plant had literally one stem and half a leaf remaining by the time the ground froze in December. In those first warm days of spring, it shot up a new start, and then we had a hard freeze and it died back. I watched all this drama out the window all winter, and was powerless to do anything but hope. Today it has 3 big stems with leafs, that are a bit bedraggled, but it keeps sending up new growth. I go to my window each day- “you can do it!” I think to my little plant friend. So whether today you feel like you have a pile of bricks on you, or you are in the dark of winter, we take a moment to share “what hope looks like”. Thanks to everyone who took the time to send in their photos of hope- click here to see what brings us hope.