Life is a Tragedy Full of Joy

Sermon of Easter Sunday, April 3, 1994
by Richard S. Gilbert, Parish Minister
First Unitarian Church of Rochester, New York

A first grade teacher once asked her eager young students about the meaning of Easter, and the hand of a little Episcopalian boy shot up. "I know," he said confidently, "Easter is when we put up a pine tree and decorate it with lights, wrap presents for each other and sing lullabies to Baby Jesus."

“No,” said the teacher, “You’ve got Easter confused with Christmas. Does anybody else know?”

A little Roman Catholic girl’s hand shot up. “Easter is when you fill the house with the smell of cooking turkey, watch football all day, and give thanks for all our relations who come for dinner.”

“No,” said the teacher, “someone must understand the meaning of Easter.”

A little Jewish boy in the class thought he might know. “Is Easter when we decorate the front of the house with American flags, go to a big parade, and shoot off fireworks all night?”

“No, no, no!” cried the teacher, “Doesn’t anyone know?”

Finally, the Unitarian Universalist child in the class raised her hand. “Easter is when we remember how, after a 3-year ministry in Galilee, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, was put on trial for being a troublemaker, was crucified on a hill with two thieves, and finally buried in a cave.”

“Yes! That’s right, Suzie” interrupted the relieved teacher, but then Suzie finished, “And then after a couple of days the rock gets rolled away. Jesus comes out, and if he sees his shadow, there’ll be six more weeks of winter!”

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Adults, like children, sometimes have a hard time identifying the meaning of humanity's holy days and religious rituals. For instance, why is it that Unitarian Universalists who deny the historicity of the resurrection find in Easter a special celebration?

There is, in fact, nothing very unique about the story of the resurrection - such stories were common in the ancient world. . . . . . . .

The preeminent Protestant theologian of this century goes even further. Paul Tillich wrote about the women who found the tomb empty on Easter morning: "The sources of this story are rather late and questionable, and there is no indication of it in the earliest tradition . . . Theologically speaking, it is a rationalization of the event, interpreting it with physical categories that identify resurrection with . . . the presence or absence of a physical body." . . .

Our leading Unitarian Universalist theologian, James Luther Adams, interprets Easter by telling a provocative story of the Greek gods having a party on the top of Mount Olympus. As they partied, they could see another god climbing up, staggering under the weight of a cross he was carrying. He reached the top and fell across the table. Needless to say, he ruined the party. The fun-loving gods were replaced by a god who suffers.

What is the meaning of this for Unitarian Universalists? Is life a tragedy or a celebration, or some combination of the two, in which case, how do we find the balance? The meaning of Easter for us, I believe, lies not in endless and futile disputes over the resurrection, but in the deeper meaning of the relationship between the joy of Jesus' ministry and the tragedy of his crucifixion.

The consensus of scholars is that without the crucifixion - fact, so far as we can tell - and the resurrection - a story told by his followers - Jesus would have been a forgotten first century prophet. And that is too bad, because the story of the cross is only one part of the prophet from Nazareth. The tragedy of his death at the hands of the powerful tends to obscure the meaning of his life as a prophet whom "the people heard gladly." After all, Jesus' teachings constitute the "gospel" - which means simply - good news.

We tend to forget that the full meaning of tragedy is not simply the failure of human plans or the cruelty of fate. Tragedy grows out of the good. Tragedy is our human fate - the ultimate tragedy is that however much we love life, we die.

That is the irony of the human condition. We are born, strive mightily to achieve great ends, love deeply, suffer pain bravely - and for what? To die! - No, to live! The irony of our human fate is that which has given us greatest joy when it is present, gives us greatest pain when it is absent. No one has ever suffered the tragic loss of a loved one without first having experienced the joy of their companionship. Without the joy of life, there is no tragedy in death. Life, I conclude, is a tragedy full of joy.

One of my esteemed ministerial colleagues once wrote a critique of the oft-used phrase - the celebration of life - calling it a bromide. "Religion," he wrote, "is more than a mindless jumping up and down about how super it is to be alive. I do not celebrate life when I pray at the graveside of a young mother or wait through with the despair of a family in a hospital emergency room. How inaccurate, unfeeling, even blasphemous. You don't uncork champaign and shout hallelujah for life all the time. Sometimes you just try to endure it, in pain. Mature religion reminds us of an ethical dimension and a tragic dimension which the phrase 'celebration of life' does not contain. . . . . . ."

I was deeply disturbed by that essay. Clearly, he had a point - if the celebration of life is simply jollity and partying and partaking of the goodies of life. But the celebration I have in mind is living life as a resounding YES to existence - not despite all the pain and suffering we experience - but with them as a part of the rich mix that makes life meaningful. Without the finality of death, life would be an eternal bore, because we would have all the time there is and no sense of urgency to live life with verve and will, and creativity.

No, when I stand at the graveside, hold the hand of a suffering soul, listen to protests at the unfairness of existence, I still believe life is to be celebrated. Without our love for one another, without the joy of human health, without courage in the face of adversity, there would be no tragedy. As the prophet puts it, "the deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain."

While in New York City last weekend I enjoyed The Kiss of the Spider Woman, a Broadway musical about life in a Brazilian jail. There, a gay man incarcerated on a trumped-up charge, and a political revolutionary developed a deep and caring relationship even as they were assaulted by their captor's tyranny. The kiss of the Spider Woman was a metaphorical device of hope amidst despair. The kiss from this lovely lady meant both love and death. The gay man, in the end, refused to betray the secrets of his cell-matets by identifying co-revolutionarie on the outside - and paid for it with his life. He was shot in the head by the prison warden for his courage.

The musical then erupts in a voluptuous dance in which all the play's characters come to life as members of a theater audience, while the young man and the spider woman engage in their dance of life - and death. In the end she kisses him and he dies - but the whole play is a celebration of life - of human courage in suffering. One leaves the theater, not morbid, but exuberant at the capacity of the human spirit to celebrate life in the face of suffering and death - which is what we are called upon to do all the time.

A somewhat more subdued life celebration was recounted by author E.B. White as he described his cancer-stricken wife, Katherine, as he puts it, "planning the planting of bulbs in her garden in the last autumn of her life . . . There was something comical, yet touching, in her bedraggled appearance . . . the small hunched-over figure, her studied absorption in the implausible notion that there would be yet another spring, oblivious to the ending of her days (which she knew perfectly well was near at hand), sitting there with her detailed chart under those dark skies in dying October, calmly plotting the resurrection." (Of spring.)

That is what we are called upon to do - plot the resurrection - not the resurrection of the body in outer space - but the resurrection of the human spirit in inner space. We do it - we celebrate the joys of this life - in the sure knowledge that our days are numbered. Life, we know, is terminal. None of us will get out of it alive! And that is tragic, is it not? Or is it? Shall we then cease our celebration of life?

Every day - despite the chirping of birds in the early springtime air, despite the brave little green stalks of crocuses poking their way toward the sun, despite the inevitable roll of the great spinning earth, despite the rhythmic changing of the seasons, despite the lengthening days and the warming sun - we are one day closer to our final meeting with fate.

And that would seem to be tragic - and it is - the thought of leaving these ectasies may burden us with the finitude of our lives. But it also is cause for celebration. Spring won't take NO for an answer. While we are here there are delicious morsels of living to taste, and we do ourselves no favors by failing to taste them - we savor them all the more because we know the banquet is not endless.

Life, then, is a tragedy -- full of joy. Even beneath the dark death of winter we know spring is about to explode. It comes with life and singing and also with the sure death that comes when the seasons cycle around the sun - for summer, fall and winter will follow inexorably. We, too, will cycle through our seasons of the soul - and one day there will be no more springs. But now, spring beckons and we must not miss the chance to celebrate its coming - even though we know our springtimes are numbered. Because we know they do not go on forever, there is all the more reason to rejoice now.

Poet e.e. cummings captures my joy this Easter morning: "i thank You God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural -- which is infinite - which is -- YES!"

presented by Betty Golding
4/15/01