Reflection #103 (20th April 2025 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)
As I hinted at the top of the service, Easter can be a tricky day for Unitarians, as each of us is likely to sit in a different relation to the Christian tradition. And the Easter story is challenging in a lot of different ways at once. In the mainstream churches there will be much more of a sense of having gone on a journey of preparation through Lent, and the build-up through Holy Week, giving a lot more time and space to linger over the story of Jesus’ downfall and suffering in worldly terms, before arriving at Easter Day and the sense of triumph that goes with the story of his resurrection.
We didn’t have a service on Maundy Thursday, or Good Friday, or Holy Saturday – but we can’t just skip to the end of the story – that’s why our readings this morning have taken us on that journey (albeit in rather an abbreviated fashion). Still, I wanted us to rewind a bit and consider some of the resonances between the horrors of the passion narrative and the horrors of our own times. And I kind-of intentionally didn’t include any scriptural telling of the story in today’s service – let’s work with the version of Easter that we’re each carrying in our own minds and hearts (no matter how sketchy that might be for some of us) – and let’s skip back a week and think about all the events which led up to the crucifixion and resurrection. Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday when he is lauded by the crowds. His turning over tables in a rage and throwing the money-lenders out of the temple. The Last Supper where he instructs his disciples to remember him (and he also predicts that he will ultimately be betrayed). Jesus’ deep anguish as he prays in the garden of Gethsemane and asks to be delivered from his suffering (but ultimately accepts God’s will for him). His betrayal, his arrest, and the scattering of his disciples. Peter denying that he knows Jesus. The trial, by Pontius Pilate, who supposedly gives in to the arbitrary will of the mob, and sends Jesus to be crucified. And then the horrible account of Jesus carrying the heavy cross to Golgotha, being flogged and mocked, and finally put to death. There are a number of sayings attributed to Jesus on the cross but the one that speaks to me is ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’ That sense of – after all this – this holy life – there’s no happy ending – he’s just abandoned to his fate.
For me, the Easter story speaks to all human suffering, be it on a personal, societal, or global level. My guess is most of us won’t have to dig very deep to find resonances in our own lives – times when triumph has turned to disaster almost overnight – when we’ve been enraged by other people’s bad behaviour, unfairness, or injustice, and we’ve lashed out – when ‘the mob’ have turned against us, or a group we belong to, and we’re going to get hurt – indeed when the state itself, the powers that be, the empire, is coming after us – or when we’ve felt betrayed and abandoned by friends or family – or times when we can see we’re heading for some terrible car-crash of a situation and there’s no way out. And I suspect a lot of us feel that way about world events right now – whether it’s the rapid and terrifying rise of fascism, or war in Gaza and Ukraine, or the climate catastrophe – the horrors abound.
In every life, sometimes, suffering and pain arrives at our door, and it can’t be swerved. And in some lives, let’s be honest, it just keeps on coming, life rain downs so many blows. Some people – and some communities (that’s particularly in my mind this week) – get far more than their fair share. We need to acknowledge that suffering isn’t entirely randomly distributed, and a large part of it can be attributed to unjust human systems, and those who profit by those systems, intentionally driving others into desperate circumstances, and persecuting the most marginalised in order to ‘divide and conquer’. Still, suffering and pain come to us all, even the most privileged, and we mustn’t dismiss or discount our own or anyone else’s suffering just because others have got it worse. Human suffering is universal. Bob Janis listed many sufferings in our first reading, ‘Good Friday’, which Brian read for us: ‘those who are witnesses to the death of life and end of love, those who are broken open like crumbs upon the water, those who are sick and crying out, those to whom no music is playing anymore, anyone lost, anyone lonely, all thieves and trespassers… the poor whose dreams are low to the ground enough to be reached by the jackboots, the forsaken under a stormy sky.’ In the end that’s all of us human beings.
So how does the Easter story speak to such suffering? I’ll return to the words of Kathleen McTigue: ‘We are a troubled tribe, we human beings. The unfolding story of our time on earth is clouded with pain and cruelty, with missed opportunities, unthinkable heedlessness, and indifference. It is also marked by the bright notes of decency, kindness, freedom, and courage. Easter proclaims that we each have a part to play in how the story unfolds, if we are willing to wake up.’ Easter is a call for us to wake up.
Now, we can’t rush to resurrection. In the face of suffering our first task is to remain with it, to face it, to endure it, as best we can. As we heard from Anna Blaedel in our second reading: ‘the call of Holy Saturday is… to remain with pain, bear witness to wounds. These are practices of new life, practices opening new possibilities, practices of resurrection. Redemption is encountered… through remaining… in a way that honours both life and loss, gift and grief, fear and wonder. No easy answers. No quick fixes. No superficial platitudes. God meets us in deep, complicated, and messy ways and places.’
So we endure suffering – and I want to acknowledge here that not everybody endures, not everybody survives what life throws at them – but the Easter message addresses those of us who are still here, for now – those who are, somehow, still standing (or perhaps we’re crawling, on our knees, or curled up in the foetal position) – but we are nonetheless still here after the worst possible thing imaginable has happened, and we ask ourselves ‘what now?’ or ‘how on earth do I pick myself up and carry on?’ and then, perhaps, ‘how can I help to make things better – ameliorate suffering – mine and others?’
Let us look to the disciples who are left behind. Mary Magdalene especially, who goes to the tomb, and finds it empty, the stone rolled away. She is distraught. And then someone calls out her name – ‘Mary’ – and she instantly recognises who it is standing there next to her – and she responds ‘Rabbi.’ Kathleen McTigue reflects on the significance of this moment of profound spiritual awakening: ‘When Mary heard her name called, suddenly her eyes were opened to a new reality. She was called out from… her grief and despair, and from within herself she found a new way to see and to understand what had happened to her… the story points to the moments in every life when something within us is called out, called forth, called to a deeper understanding of our world. Easter… is a time that calls us to open our eyes in a new way, to see not just what we expect to see, but perhaps some bright and mysterious truth we could not fathom before, something completely new and unexpected.’ Words on Easter as a call to spiritual awakening from Kathleen McTigue.
As this reflection was coming together I happened to listen to an interview with a Buddhist teacher, James Baraz from the Spirit Rock Meditation Centre, and he dropped some wisdom from the Buddha which seems surprisingly pertinent. He said: ‘suffering is usually what wakes us up’. Not that it always works out that way – sometimes suffering can lead us to shut down, lash out at others, become embittered and circle the wagons – but it might also lead us to become ‘woke’ in the modern sense (a label I am more than happy to claim, though many use it disparagingly) – I’d understand ‘woke’ as meaning ‘awake to the sufferings of others and the social injustices that so often cause that suffering’. Or it might wake us up in the sense of giving us insight into our own part in creating, perpetuating, or unnecessarily aggravating our own suffering, through our own habits of mind (this is quite a Buddhist angle).
As our final reading from Victoria Weinstein reminds us, awakening is not enough, insight alone is not enough: we need to roll up our sleeves and live differently – be the resurrection ourselves – as she says, ‘lay healing hands on the reviled and rejected’, ‘rage for righteousness’, and ‘treat each one so tenderly’. If we are still here, if we are awake to the world’s woes, then we still have a chance to make things better – to help build the Kingdom of God, the Beloved Community, Heaven on Earth. ‘Easter proclaims that we each have a part to play in how the story unfolds, if we are willing to wake up.’
To draw things to a close I want to invite you to join in with a responsive reading – it’s becoming an Easter tradition for us – and an acknowledgement of our varied and uncertain Unitarian responses to the traditional story – the words are in the middle of your hymn sheet and they’ll appear on screen shortly. The words are by Daniel Budd – it’s called ‘We Don’t Know What Happened’ – and I invite you to join in with speaking the responses which are printed in bold.
We’re not sure what happened. But we know what it’s like,
when someone appears in our life whose message we feel offers hope,
whose way of being inspires us with new ways of living.
We know what it’s like when they fall short of our expectations,
or worse, when they are cut down and cast aside
by the forces of hate, bigotry, and closed-mindedness.
We’re not sure what happened. But, we know what it’s like
when someone has grown profoundly into our own lives,
who seems as much a part of our living as our own breathing.
We know what it’s like when they are taken from us,
perhaps prematurely, by unwanted change, or by death,
and the empty place now in our souls is much like an empty tomb.
We’re not sure what happened. But, we know what it’s like
to feel sorrow and loss, despair and grief. We know
the waves of tears and the thoughts of the past which flow through us.
We know that memories and stories begin to fill the emptiness;
we integrate their gifts to us, and our lives are shored up with
a different presence, which will live with us all our lives.
We’re not sure what happened. But, we know what it’s like
to realize, to have it dawn upon us, that what we have known
and loved lives on with us and within us, forever, a part of who we are.
We know that somehow, in our hearts and souls, resurrection is real;
not that of the body, perhaps, but of the spirit — a spirit
renewed, even reborn, in the midst of our lives and our living.
We’re not sure what happened. But, we know there is a difficult hope,
a faith, that through whatever sorrow or grief we are feeling,
there is also a growing sense of grace and gratitude, of joy and thanksgiving,
in the mysterious and abiding astonishment of being fully human.
In this wonder, may we find strength, within our own sense of Easter. Amen.
Reflection by Jane Blackall