It's Easter Sunday and we're born again!
Forgive me reader for I have sinned. It's been nearly a year since my last confession.
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Our senior minister is on sabbatical so we had a guest preacher this Easter morn - Marylin Sewell. She started off by acknowledging the UU discomfort with Easter. Of the sample of UU Easter sermon titles she listed, "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down" was my favorite. And then she went into the passion story - a story with which I am well familiar - and yet for the first time, I finally understood what the resurrection actually meant.
My liberation theology professor had tried to explain a non-literal interpretation of the resurrection. And I got it - well enough to relay it back - but I didn't really "get" it.
He said that Jesus the human being lived and then died. God, being so moved by the injustice of his death, resurrected Christ in the hearts of Jesus' followers. According to my liberation theology prof, Christ did not exist until the resurrection, and Jesus did not exist after his death. That much I understood. But what I didn't really understand is what it meant to have Christ resurrected in one's heart. Sounded nice but what does it really mean? Until Marylin Sewell.
She went over the familiar story again, of how alone Jesus was in his final hours, how his disciples who had been following him around for three years still didn't get it, how they still thought that he was going to overthrow the Romans and establish a kingship, how they were afraid and ran away and even denied him. Jesus alone had the courage to follow God's will, preaching justice against the authorities, which lead to his death.
And his disciples were in fear and disarray in the hours following his death. And then... the resurrection.
Whatever it was that happened, whatever it was that they experienced, his disciples were no longer afraid... and they understood. They then went out into the world and taught what Jesus taught. They spoke against oppression as Jesus did. And many of them ended up facing the same death that Jesus faced.
THAT is what it means to have Christ living in one's heart. The resurrection is to be "born again" in transformation, a triumph of life over death.
