Easter:  Spring, Joy, and a Rising Hope

Comments by the Rev. Susan Manker-Seale, Elisabeth Bailey, Karla Brockie
March 31, 2002

Welcome to this Celebration of Life!
Welcome to this Easter Day!
We come with joy and with hope,
That our sorrows and worries can be
Put away for a time,
Exchanged here for a smile and a sense of peace.
Easter is the greatest symbol of hope,
Going back in time like a palimpsest,
Layers beneath layers
Of humanity's celebrations of rising hope,
From the earliest rites of spring after which
This holiday is named:
Eostre, the great earth goddess;
To the Christian celebration of the
Rising of Jesus from the dead.
The celebration of Easter
Is the celebration
Of life rising again from Winter,
Of joy rising in our hearts
Of hope rising in all the world
That the celebration of life will
Win out over death
In all the land
And in every heart.
Welcome to this Celebration of Life!
Welcome to this Easter Day!

The chicken and the egg. Which came first? As we enter our silent meditation, I ask you to ponder this age-old question. No, just kidding! This egg can turn into a bird, or breakfast, or a holiday treat, or art. These days you can get eggs any time of the year, but that's a relatively new thing. For most of human history eggs were delicacies that you found in the spring, searching through grass and brush, looking for new life. Finding an egg meant finding hope for the future; after a long winter with sparse food, an egg was a powerful source of protein and calories. It provided hope for continued and renewed life. We don't have to search for eggs for food any longer, but the thrill of the find stays with us, and we paint eggs or fill plastic ones so children can participate in this ritual that dates back farther than dates go back.

There is a new definition of the Easter egg that I imagine some of you know and some of you don't. When I was getting ready to speak today I looked up Easter eggs on the internet, and over half the hits I got were about DVDs and computer software; technically speaking, an Easter egg is hidden information. It's something you seek out, a bonus that you need to think to look for or you'll never see it.

As for the more traditional egg, however, different cultures have developed their own ways of decorating them. Crimson eggs, to honor the blood of Christ, are exchanged in Greece. In parts of Germany and Austria green eggs are used on Maundy Thursday, which was this past Thursday. Slavic peoples decorate their eggs in special patterns of gold and silver. Several people in our congregation have been learning pysanky, the Ukranian tradition of decorating eggs. Faberge eggs originated as Easter eggs designed for the tsars of Russia.

When I was little, my mother and I always decorated an Easter tree. We would clip a few pussy willow branches from the backyard, put them in a bud vase, and hang small painted wooden eggs from it. She told me it was a Swedish tradition. As an adult I found out that it was a Swedish pagan tradition, dating back beyond Christianity to when Easter was a celebration of Eastre, the goddess of spring. Decorating that tree was my favorite thing about Easter. I also looked forward to the chocolate.

As a congregation we look forward to thinking about new beginnings, to coming together in community. In addition, Easter is always an excellent time for hats. Bunnies and Jesus and techno-colored grass can all symbolize Easter. But to me, the egg is the best symbol. It means hope, the unknown potential of the future, life regenerating. It can come in different sizes but most eggs look about the same. But this small, hidden thing, can turn into just about anything. It can be a chicken or an ostrich or a platypus. We all come from eggs. I came from an egg. The children in this congregation came from eggs, and they are the hope of the world.

(Show water in glass jar) Look at this water. People in this room have been collecting this water for about five years or so now. It comes from sacred places, places they have loved to visit or to live, places with memories that bring joy and peace. For years now, people have brought this water to share with us during the Water Ceremony services in September. It comes from lakes and oceans, from rainfall and snowfall and waterfalls, from kitchen taps and garden hoses. It contains particles that have been around as long as the earth has had water, and that, of course, is a very long time. Think about that -- where some of this water might have been!

(Pour water into dedication bowl) Water is a sacred element. It is essential to our being, and to all of life. When we think of Spring, we think of the rains that replenish the earth and enable the flowers to blossom and the trees to turn green. Here in the desert, it usually rains in late February and early March, though we haven't had much rain this year it seems. Just some thunder the other night. Do you remember? And a few drops. But it usually rains enough for there to be lots of flowers by now. The palo verde trees break out in brilliant yellow blossoms, all over, so that in the desert, April is known as the yellow month. Are they blooming yet? Have you noticed?

Long ago, water became a symbol used in the celebration of Spring. In ancient times, water was thought to be magical. Picture an ice cube. Now let it melt. How amazing! How could something that is so hard one moment be liquid the next? It must have great powers, the people thought. Ancient philosophers called water the "first of the elements" and "mother of all things," and ancient myths picture creation as taking place in a watery womb.

Long ago, people would bathe in water in the Spring, splashing each other and hoping to get good luck and good health. Later, Jewish people thought that running water could carry away one's sins or bad deeds, and at the new year, which happens in the Fall, Jews would perform a rite they called Tashlich, casting crumbs into running water, representing their misdeeds being carried away for the year. Still later, Christians used water to wash away sins in a rite they called baptism, believing that would bring spiritual rebirth. Today, people still baptize their children with water in many Christian traditions. And water is blessed on Easter Day.

We Unitarian Universalists don't believe that children have sins to wash away, but we still use water in the ancient tradition of blessing one another and of welcoming. After all, water is a symbol that goes back thousands of years and more, and it is so much a part of all life that there is no better symbol of Spring that we could use.

Today, we are privileged to use this special water to dedicate two children to our community. Will Desiree and Dominic and their parents please come forward?

(Child Dedication)

Comments: "Bread and a Rising Hope" 
by Rev. Susan Manker-Seale

This has been a difficult year for us, for the world. Perhaps it is difficult always for many people, but this year, we in the United States have experienced a great tragedy that has brought deep sorrow and fear into lives which were otherwise content in the world. We witnessed the attack on the World Trade Center, have heard of people who died or were injured, and everywhere we have experienced the repercussions of that. We have been angry and afraid, and wanting justice to be done, yet we have also been fearful of what our own retaliation might mean in the world. What even greater tragedy might we be embarking upon? And we watch the news of the wars and live in tension, anxiety, and sometimes despair.

This Easter there seems to be a greater need for hope to rise in us. This Spring, the flowers and the sunshine, the returning rains which have yet to come, can remind us of the continual cycle that is life. It always has been that at the end of winter, be that a winter of Earth's seasons or a winter of one's soul, there is a Spring, there is a renewing, a starting over. Out of the cold and dark, there rises warmer days and longer light, perhaps filling us up with hope in the way the sap rises in the trees.

One of the greatest stories of hope is the story of Jesus and his resurrection. Many Christian people believe that Jesus died and, three days later, rose from the dead on Easter Day to bring salvation to all the people of the world. Unitarians and Universalists, mostly don't believe in such a story, but even the Christians among us believe there is an important message in the story of Jesus rising. It is the great story of hope that people have held and still hold that we will somehow overcome the bad things we do and rise into goodness and mercy.

Today, we break bread in celebration of the rising hope that is Easter, that is Spring. Yes, Christians celebrate communion on Easter, sharing bread in remembrance of the teachings of Jesus, to love one another and to love your god. And Unitarian Universalists celebrate communion in many churches. We here, in our congregation, acknowledge our Christian heritage, but we also celebrate the earlier meanings of bread as a symbol of Easter. Bread is called the staff of life, and in its many variations, is the foundational food of people the world over.

Today, we break bread and share its sustenance in remembrance of our interdependence with all the peoples of the Earth, with all of Earth itself. As we eat this bread, may we remember those who plow the ground, who plant the seeds, who tend the wheat, who harvest and winnow the grains, who grind the flour, who mix the dough, who watch it rise, who bake the bread, who sell the loaves which meet our lips this day. It is an analogy for all those who serve us in unseen ways. It is a celebration of how we must remember that we are all interdependent, and that what we do to one, can affect us all.

We need such symbols of hope, whether of Jesus rising or of bread rising. Let us remember those who have no bread to eat this day, or any day, and remember to allow ourselves to become a part of a rising hope in the world:  to heal and not to harm, to help and not to hinder, to bless and not to curse, to serve you, spirit of freedom.

Easter is a celebration, and dance is an ancient expression of celebration. Dance is a connection to the sacred, from meditative and measured to frenzied. Some examples are the Hopi corn dance, and Sufi's spinning. In ancient Britain, the Morris dancers put bells on their legs and brought back the spring with rowdy leaping and clacking of sticks. Our own experiences with Dances of Universal Peace in RE this year have been a window to spiritual practice.

Dance can be the result, or cause, of joy of life. One of my favorite films is "Billy Elliot", about a boy who's very self percolated up through his dancing, and blossomed forth-- he said, "It's like electricity running through me." Dance can be a language of encounter between people-- Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, jitterbugging, the tango in the film Moulin Rouge. One of my favorite activities is contra dancing, a folk descendent of English country dancing, which gets a whole roomful of people spinning with one another in turn to the rhythm of traditional tunes played by fiddle and mandolin and foot stomping. We're going to finish today by dancing joyfully, led by Susan ("Alalalala lalalalaleluia," shake another hand!).

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Northwest Tucson