Today is the most important day of the year. Today is that Christian holy day called Easter. With all the pagan fertility traditions it has inherited, all the suspect theology associated with it that would have us believe that good comes from violent death, with all the accretions of ecclesiastical tradition through the centuries, no, millennia; when it comes right down to it, Easter is the celebration of life returning when all was thought dead. 

Easter is the ultimate affirmation of hope. 

This affirmation of hope for life even when faced with the reality of death is so important, so universal, that we find it in similar guises in religious stories and myths from around the world and across the arc of time. The story of Demeter and Persephone in ancient Greece, Isis and Horus in the valley of the Nile, John Barleycorn in Britain and so many others express the need for this urgent and universal affirmation of hope. 

As individuals, as communities and as cultures, we need hope. We need ways to sustain hope, and to birth it again when it seems to have died. Faith that life will return, that the great journey of “capital L” Life will continue, that is the hope we so greatly need in the depths of our souls. 

The Reverend Jane Rzepka has written words for the occasion of Easter. I think they not only help us understand this holiday, but speak to our situation, here, in this congregation, at this time. Rev. Rzepka writes:   

We have wintered enough,
mourned enough,
oppressed ourselves enough. 

Our souls are too long cold and buried,
our dreams all but forgotten,
our hopes unheard. 

We are waiting to rise from the dead. 

In this, the season of steady rebirth,
we awaken to the power so abundant, so holy,
that returns each year through earth and sky. 

We will find our hearts again, and our good spirits.

We will love, and believe, and give and wonder,
and feel again the eternal powers. 

The flow of life moves ever onward
through one faithful spring,
and another,
and now another. 

May we be forever grateful.

Alleluia!

Amen. 

[Jane Rzepka, Senior Minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Larger Fellowship, from Singing the Living Tradition (#510), published by Beacon Press.] 
 
How do we affirm hope? How do we maintain and live out our belief that “The flow of life moves ever onward through one faithful spring after another?” How do we roll aside the stone that has kept us imprisoned in dark tombs, that prevents us from living and breathing and walking in the warm spring sunshine? How do we regain the ability to talk and touch and be with our human companions? What does it take for us to come back from the dead? How do we reconnect with those “eternal powers” that inspire and enliven us after we have been through the dead of winter? 

First, we might ask, “How does one know if one is dead?” If we seek a renewal of life, we need to know the difference between life and death. So if I wake up some morning and wonder whether I am dead or alive, how can I tell? 

When one of us, or some of us, or all of us feel stuck in the dark, we are dead. When one of us, or some of us, or all of us cannot summon the will to move or act, it suggests we are not alive. When one of us, or some of us, or all of us lose the capacity for creativity and mutuality, it is a big clue that we are not living. When one of us, or some of us, or all of us haven’t the ability to care any longer, have no desire; that, I would say, is when we are dead. 

And what are the signs we hold faith that life will return? The gathering of a community here represents hope. If we did not have hope, we would not have come. We come here hoping for something; maybe hoping for hope. 

When someone chooses to unite in membership with this community, we see hope. The children among us represent hope. The hours upon hours of volunteer work to sustain this congregation represent hope. The unshakeable commitment shown in the pledges of money to support the work of this congregation testifies to hope. 

The many, many times these last months when one of us has sat and talked, or mostly listened, to a friend in loving, respectful care, we have been acting out of our hope. When friend has the courage to speak to friend words that feel difficult to say, or dangerous, but that are the truth; that is faithful living in hope of reconciliation and renewal. 

On this Easter Sunday, 2009, I can proclaim, and you can proclaim, “Sugarloaf Congregation of Unitarian Universalists has hope! We have faith that vitality will always renew itself, whatever tragedies may befall us.” And we can proclaim that this country, and this world, have hope; whatever tragedies may befall us. 

Listen, then, and know with me: 

We have wintered enough,
mourned enough,
oppressed ourselves enough. 

Our souls are too long cold and buried,
our dreams all but forgotten,
our hopes unheard. 

We are waiting to rise from the dead. 

In this, the season of steady rebirth,
we awaken to the power so abundant, so holy,
that returns each year through earth and sky;
[and, we might say, through us.] 

We will find our hearts again, and our good spirits.

We will love, and believe, and give and wonder,
and feel again the eternal powers. 

The flow of life moves ever onward
through one faithful spring,
and another,
and now another. 

May we be forever grateful. 

Alleluia! 

Amen. 

And Blessed be.