Resurrection of the Creation ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
Easter Sunday, April 21, 2019
The ancient story tells us that on the day Jesus was crucified, there were two other men crucified beside him. One of them asked Jesus to remember him as he entered his kingdom. Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:43, NRSV)
Now, I always found this passage confusing, because I always understood it to mean that Jesus was telling the other man that they would be in heaven that very day. And yet, all the versions of the story tell us that Jesus rose from the dead but remained present in new and unexpected ways for another 40 days before ascending into heaven.
For reasons such as this we grapple with the Easter story every year, trying to understand the event itself, and its meaning.
In our opening hymn we sang these words: “Christ has opened Paradise.” Did we think we meant heaven? Is paradise just another name for heaven?
But perhaps paradise meant something else. Beginning with the earliest creation myths, from Sumer to Babylon to the book of Genesis, paradise was found here on earth. It was the Garden of Eden. Now, no one was ever quite sure where paradise was physically located. It doesn’t show up on Google Maps. Some thought it might be on a mountaintop – somewhere very remote. Almost always it was believed to be located between four rivers – the Tigris, the Euphrates, and two others, possible what is now the Danube and the Ganges. But the symbolism of the four rivers was always present in early artwork: the living waters, life-sustaining water pouring down from a heavenly source. Paradise was that part of the earth where the dead would go to rest after their lives ended. This was the afterlife: a place set apart but not completely separated from our earthly day-to-day lives.
The authors of our reading this morning, theologians Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Parker, went on to explain paradise this way, writing, “By the third century, the Christian realm of the dead had become a place of beauty and peace. The departed rested close by in a region of earthly paradise, a mysterious dimension of this world with green meadows, streams, and fragrant flowers and fruits. The dead could rest because Satan could not enter, and they no longer had to wrestle with sin, evil, or oppression. They did not, however, rest so far away that they could not visit the living to give advice, comfort, or guidance. In their realm of paradise, resurrected saints were restored to the divine presence and gained spiritual power to assist the living. They were like relatives who had retired from New York to Florida.” (Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of this World for Crucifixion and Empire, Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, Boston: Beacon Press, 2008. p. 58-59.)
Early Christians dedicated themselves to creating Paradise all around them. They decorated their churches with mosaics depicting rivers, meadows, sheep, and people. Jesus was never shown on the cross, but rather was typically shown as the Good Shepherd; young and vibrant, present, participating in life.
Paradise, wrote Brock and Parker, “was earthly life at its best.” And to bring paradise closer, the churches worked to create this realm of joy and delight. Church offered a feast – for the eyes, for the ears, for the taste buds. People gathered for shared meals. They cared for the sick and the poor within their communities. And they shared the ritual meal that we call communion, or the Eucharist, that some still call the Great Thanksgiving. These actions were meant to bring the divine presence nearer, to enable them to participate in the life that Jesus promised; where they would know God, and participate in the realm, the kingdom. The Beloved Community. In these actions, the early Christians committed to keeping Jesus alive in their memories, and also to perpetuate his mission of bringing justice and peace to all people. This community life, and the physical and emotional beauty they created was a form of eternal life, a life of grace, created out of love for Jesus, for his message, and for one another as they worked to create a paradise of peace and justice on earth. It offered comfort; it took away the sting of death through love, through memory, and through a belief that the dead could return, that they were never far. It offered salvation: salvation through love, through caring and being cared for. Christ would open paradise.
Today is Easter. Today is the day when we tell the ancient story of death and rebirth, when we explore all the mystery and the many layers and meanings of this complex holiday. Last week, in preparation for Easter, I asked you to do some soul-searching about your relationship to our earthly home, this Creation, our paradise. I asked you to spend some time thinking this past week about what you might be willing to sacrifice to save our home.
Today is Easter. And tomorrow is Earth Day. And so today it seemed fitting to return to the earliest roots of Christianity in order to give perspective to what we call home, this Creation. When we think of it as a paradise, how does that change the conversation for us? How can we commit to creating ‘earthly life at its best?’
To be in paradise, the early Christians taught us, is to participate. If we think beyond the physical descriptions of paradise – the four rivers, the stars and moon and sun, the trees and flowers, the animals and people, we can imagine a metaphorical paradise as well – created and sustained by us together: kept alive eternally, through all the cycles of life. This is the paradise that Jesus called his kingdom, his realm, the paradise of the Beatitudes – where people acted in love, fought oppression, and nurtured righteousness. This righteousness, what Brock and Parker name ‘ethical grace,’ (Saving Paradise, p. 29) leads to salvation in this life, and helps create life eternal – if not for each of us individually, then for all of creation.
Tomorrow is Earth Day. And so we ask, how does our concept of ‘ethical grace’ extend to our home, our physical paradise?
Last week I talked about how badly damaged our planet is. And I promised you that this morning, on this day of light and gladness, would be more hopeful. And there is hope, but it’s a cautious hope, and it requires our participation. To be in paradise, the Beloved Community, is to participate.
There is hope in our political process, if we are actively involved. For the first time, all of the declared challengers in the 2020 presidential race, of both parties, are openly supporting strategies to protect the environment and try to reverse climate change. The conversation is about details, not about whether climate change is actually happening. Our role is to make sure that the climate issue remains in the forefront of the presidential campaign, and to hold candidates to their promises. We have to be aware, to make our voices heard. We have to participate.
There is hope in our young people, who are beginning to rise up and make their voices heard. How can we support them?
There is hope embodied in the Green New Deal, an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as to address poverty, income inequality, and racial discrimination. (New York Times, “What is the Green New Deal? A Climate Proposal, Explained,” by Lisa Friedman, February 21, 2019). Various aspects of this proposal have been around for some time. But now it is structured in a way that addresses our interconnectedness: that all species are affected, that the impact of climate change will hurt the most economically vulnerable first, and that new jobs must be created that will both address the root problems and will provide living wages to those whose livelihoods are threatened. The Green New Deal embodies the concept of ethical grace, by insisting that all must be included; that for there to be paradise on this earth, we must all participate.
Today is Easter. Tomorrow is Earth Day. And these days are both about hope and about resurrection.
This week George Smith shared a story with the choir and Bob Wech and me about the Randall Thompson Alleluia that the choir sang earlier. Easter is a day for alleluias. We think of alleluias as being full of joy and praise, and yet the Thompson piece is neither. It’s contemplative, perhaps even sad. And the story goes that Thompson composed it in 1940, during the bleakest time in World War II, when it wasn’t clear that civilization would survive the invasions of the Nazis. Thompson wrote it as a testament, to bear witness. Hope can be like that: realistic, even sad, but always encouraging us to look to the future.
And what of resurrection? Resurrection takes many forms. A beloved teacher and prophet appears to his followers and speaks to them, after his death, reassuring them about the future. The lifeless-appearing woods around us begin to take on a faint green hue as buds form. Resurrection, in any form, offers us hope. This week, a beloved cathedral suffered a catastrophic fire, and was almost lost. And days later, it was discovered that the beehives installed on one of the lower roofs of Notre Dame in Paris had survived the fire, and that the bees are alive. What a story for Easter Week – life appearing improbably out of the ashes of destruction: tiny creatures; a small resurrection. And a source of hope. Life will find a way.
Resurrection is hope, alive: hope in our hearts and minds, and in our daily lives. And hope in turn is resurrection: the emotion that is life-giving, that calls us forward to new life, and new possibilities. Hope can be careful, and thoughtful, even tentative, but whether it is found in a piece of music or in a beehive, its presence opens us to new life. Hope resurrects us.
Hope and resurrection: resurrection and hope. Together they tell us that yes, paradise on this earth is possible. Saving paradise is possible. Resurrection of our creation, our beloved home, can happen if we act quickly.
“Today you will be with me in paradise.” The paradise we create together, with righteousness, with ethical grace, with love and care for one another and for all the species that co-create this paradise with us. The paradise in which life seems to end, and then is reborn, transformed into something new.
Today, you will be with me in paradise.
May it be so,
Amen.
