Reading: a story called “The Rabbi’s Gift” as told by Scott Peck (The Different Drum, p. 13)
[Once upon a time there was] a monastery that had fallen on hard times. Once a great order… it had become decimated to the extent that there were only five monks left in the decaying mother house: the abbot and four others. Clearly it was a dying order.
In the deep woods surrounding the monastery there was a little hut that a rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used as a hermitage…. [As the abbot] agonized over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to [him…] to visit the hermitage and ask the rabbi if by some possible chance he could offer any advice that might save the monastery.
The rabbi welcomed the abbot at his hut. But when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him. “I now how it is,” he exclaimed. “The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore.” So the old abbot and the old rabbi wept together. Then they read parts of the Torah and quietly spoke of deep things. The time came when the abbot had to leave. They embraced each other. “It has been a wonderful thing that we should meet after all these years,” the abbot said, “but I have still failed in my purpose for coming here. Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would help me save my dying order?”
“No, I am sorry,” the rabbi responded. “I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you.”
When the abbot returned to the monastery his fellow monks gathered around him to ask, “Well, what did the rabbi say?”
“He couldn’t help,” the abbot answered. “We just wept and read the Torah together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving – it was something cryptic – was that the Messiah is one of us. I don’t know what he meant.”
In the …weeks and months that followed, the old monks pondered this and wondered whether there was any possible significance to the rabbi’s words. The Messiah is one of us? Could he have possibly meant one of us monks here at the monastery? If that’s the case, which one? Do you suppose he meant the abbot? Yes, if he meant anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot. He has been our leader for more than a generation. On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas. Certainly Brother Thomas is a holy man. Everyone knows that Thomas is a man of light. Certainly he could not have meant Brother Elred! Elred gets crotchety at times. But come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in people’s sides, when you look back on it, Elred is virtually always right. Often very right. Maybe the rabbi did mean Brother Elred. But surely not Brother Phillip. Phillip is so passive, a real nobody. But then, almost mysteriously, he has a gift for somehow always being there when you need him. He just magically appears by your side. Maybe Phillip is the Messiah. Of course the rabbi didn’t mean me. He couldn’t possibly have meant me. I’m just an ordinary person. Yet supposing he did? Suppose I am the Messiah? O God, not me….
As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah. And on the off, off chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect.
Because the forest in which it was situated was beautiful, it so happened that people occasionally came to visit the monastery to picnic on its tiny lawn, to wander along some of its paths, even now and then to go into the dilapidated chapel to meditate. As they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed an aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere of the place. There was something strangely attractive, even compelling about it…
Then it happened that some of the younger men who came to visit the monastery started to talk more and more with the old monks. After a while one asked if he could join them. Then another. And another. So within a few years the monastery had once again become a thriving order and, thanks to the rabbi’s gift, a vibrant center of light and spirituality in the realm.
Searching for Saviors
A Sermon Delivered on April 8, 2012
By
The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann
I have another story for you: Once upon a time there was a man who traveled the country comforting the sick, helping the poor, extending kindness to the outcast. He did all this, teaching, preaching and practicing love, because he believed God is love. He died a tragic death. But his death was not the end of the story. It was really only the beginning. The end.
This story has fascinated men and women for two thousand years now. It has been told and retold countless times. Over the centuries it is has morphed and merged with other stories, old and new, gathering ever-new dimensions of meaning. Each Easter story is like a colorful gem inside a kaleidoscope. And if we pick up this kaleidoscope, and peer through its little hole, and if we hold it up to the light, we will each see a new variation, a new colorful combination of shapes and shadows, and pretty patterns. And as we turn the kaleidoscope, even just a little bit, the pieces inside will shift, and a new picture will appear. And if we each take turns looking through the very same kaleidoscope, passing it through the pews, we will each see something different within it.
This year, “Piggy Bunny” (which I read for our children earlier in the service) is a new Easter story for me – the story of a piglet named Liam who desperately wants to be the Easter Bunny. Despite the skeptics surrounding him, he is not dissuaded. He keeps at it, he practices, and does everything it takes to serve as Easter Bunny. And despite appearances, despite looking like a pig in a rabbit suit, in the end everybody believes in him. He is a savior of sorts, spreading Easter egg blessings to all.
* * *
Easter stories are spring stories, stories of new life and new hope. When the days of our lives are cold and dark, our natural impulse is to withdraw into a tiny den, where we hope to find shelter and preserve warmth. Through long winter months we may grow sleepy and stiff, and the shelter that was meant to protect us can become a tomb in which we are trapped. Spring itself is a savior, awaking us from our winter slumber, pulling us out of hibernation, showing us new life bursting forth within us and around us.
* * *
The Easter story of Jesus is set in the ancient Near East. The Israelites are suffering under the yoke of Roman rule, their country occupied and taxed by a foreign power. The Jewish people long for a Messiah, a divine messenger who will deliver them from their hardships. A savior who will mark the beginning of a new age – an age of political and spiritual liberation.
Jesus is one of the countless teachers and preachers traveling through the land, trying to put his faith into practice – to love God with all is heart and soul and strength, and to love his neighbors as he loves himself. He has a small band of followers. Some of them believe he may actually be the Messiah. But there is no consensus. People are still puzzled over who Jesus was, and what his life meant, for years after he had died.
About a century later, a Jewish author named Josephus writes: “[Jesus] was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher… He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. When Pilate, …had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.”
Twenty-some years later, a Roman author named Cornelius Tacitus describes the emerging faith of Christians a “pernicious superstition [that] was checked for the moment [when the death penalty was imposed upon its founder], only to break out once more, not merely in Judea… but in the capital [Rome] itself.”
Whether followers of Jesus or not, what was puzzling to these non-Christian observers was that the stories of Jesus continued to inspire men and women, and his teachings continued to attract. The resurrection story is one attempt to express this ongoing puzzling power.
As Christian theologian John Dominic Crossan sees it, the miracle of Easter is not something that happened three days after Jesus was killed. But rather something that unfolded in the years afterwards. He writes, “What happened historically is that those who believed in Jesus before his execution continued to do so afterward. Easter is not about the start of a new faith but about the continuation of an old one. That is the only miracle and the only mystery, and it is more than enough of both.” (A Revolutionary Biography, p.190)
The authors of the Christian gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, offer four distinct perspectives on the meaning of Jesus, each of them written several generations after Jesus had lived and died. Their stories are evocative and at times contradictory. None of them were meant as literal accounts.
The biblical scholar Marcus Borg gets right to the heart of one issue that rankles the modern mind, namely the story of the empty tomb. What if some folks had set up a video camera outside the tomb in which Jesus was buried? Would they have been able to make a videotape of the resurrection? Borg’s answer is “no,” they wouldn’t have. Questions of whether or not the tomb was empty and whatever happened to the corpse of Jesus is “ultimately irrelevant to the truth of Easter.” (The Meaning of Jesus, p. 130)
For Borg, the historical facts of Easter are very simple: “the followers of Jesus, both then and now, continued to experience Jesus as a living reality after his death.” They experienced visions and apparitions of Jesus.
The resurrection is not the resuscitation of a corpse, but a kind of transformation. There are stories that say Jesus could appear or disappear at will, could walk through solid objects, like doors, and could be heard by one person, but not others in the same place.
The stories I like best, are the ones that talk about how Jesus could be right in front of you, but you wouldn’t know it. In the Gospel of John, there’s a story of Mary Magdalene striking up a conversation with the gardener, after Jesus died. And only after talking for a while, only when the gardener addresses her by name does she realize that he was actually Jesus.
In the Gospel of Luke, there’s a story of two men who are walking on the road to a village called Emmaus. They are joined by another traveler with whom they carry on a lengthy conversation, and who they invite in for dinner that evening. It is only when they sit down together for the meal that they realize the stranger is actually Jesus. Once their eyes are opened, he suddenly vanishes.
The moral of these stories is that the spirit the early Christians associated with Jesus, the spirit of God, the spirit of love, can be present in places and among people we would never have imagined.
It is the same lesson I learn reading the poetry of Walt Whitman, who writes,
| “Why should I wish to see God better than this day? |
| I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, |
| In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass…” |
* * *
Do Unitarian Universalists believe in Easter? Do we believe in Jesus? I think most of us do. But we are generally less concerned with the divinity, and more interested in the humanity of Jesus – a prophet and teacher, whose life embodied a radical vision of love and justice.
Another way to say it is that we don’t consider Jesus God’s only begotten son, but rather all people are God’s children. The spirit of life and of love works within all of us. All of us have access to the divine. Each of us can be a conduit of sacred power. Each of us can serve as savior. Each of us has the capacity to save ourselves.
The Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh’s thoughts on this are very close to my own. He writes, “the Holy Spirit is not just for Jesus alone; it is for all of us. From a Buddhist perspective, who is not the son or daughter of God? …[The Buddha] was human, but, at the same time, he became an expression of the highest spirit of humanity. When we are in touch with the highest spirit in ourselves, we too are a Buddha, filled with the Holy Spirit, and we become very tolerant, very open, very deep, and very understanding.” (Living Buddha, Living Christ, p. 37)
* * *
Sometimes we may be tempted to look at the timeless stories of spring with the attitude of a sober scholar, the historian working to separate fact from fiction, or the scientist who looks at life through a microscope to get every tiny detail right, or who looks through a telescope to clearly see the world both near and far.
And there is a place for all of this. But when it comes to religious truths, my preferred tool of research is neither a microscope nor a telescope, but a kaleidoscope. No single story can convey all there is to say. But a multitude of stories – old and new – can create a mosaic of meaning, that is forever changing as we ourselves are changing, forever offering insight into new truth.
Looking through my kaleidoscope this morning, I am reminded that the Messiah is among us. The person who perfectly embodies the holy spirit of life and love, at this particular moment in your life, may be sitting right next to you, or right in front of you. And so we should treat each other with extraordinary respect.
Looking through my kaleidoscope this morning, I believe in the Easter Bunny. How could I not? Early this morning, as I was putting the final touches on my sermon, she poked her nose into my study, and carefully placed a tiny Easter basket on my desk: a custard cup with a dozen chocolate eggs, and an iTunes gift card. She didn’t have long ears and a bushy tail. But there is no doubt it was her. I have the candy to prove it. And the blessings of love I feel are just as unmistakable.
We are surrounded by saviors. We are surrounded by signs of the sacred. The blossoms of spring, the sun’s warmth, the gentle breeze. All are harbingers of hope and new life.
And perhaps most important of all – the savior may be you. The smile you share, your thoughtful word, your understanding ear, may be the expression of sacred love that transforms someone’s life.
On the off, off chance that you are the Messiah, you should treat yourself with extraordinary respect. Do this, and you may find, the first life you save will be your own.
Amen.
