as preached April 20, 2025 at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston
Conventional Christian theologians sometimes refer to the death and resurrection of Jesus as the Easter event. They claim its uniqueness. They argue, in the words of Paul Tillich, that his execution on the cross and resuscitation in the tomb constitute “the center of history in which beginning and end, meaning and purpose of history are constituted.”
We Unitarian Universalists largely take a different view. I often tell a joke at this time of year that explains the situation. It comes from the Unitarian Universalist theologian Forrest Church. He said, “Easter remains an awkward holiday for Unitarians. The trumpets sound, we all sing, and Jesus is not resurrected–at least not as God’s only son. So, what are we doing here? Why even bother?”
Easter provides the meaning and purpose of history. Why even bother?
I suspect that if you are joining us today then you fall close to the position of why bother. You likely do not take the Easter event as the center of history. Instead, you might hold it be a special spring celebration–a time to enjoy family, wear nice hats, dye eggs, spot the occasional adult dressed up as a bunny, and hunt for candy. It may be the day on which you enjoy your annual Easter ham or, alternatively, a fancy vegetarian repast. But it is only one festive gathering out of many–held in its coequal way with all of the other celebratory events of the year, imbibed with no more or less metaphysical weight than any other communal affair.
That is not to strip Easter or any other holiday of significance. It is to challenge their uniqueness. This was the point that the nineteenth century atheist Kersey Graves made in his infamous The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors or Christianity Before Christ. He replied to those, like the author of the Gospel of Luke, who claimed that when “the stone had been rolled away from the tomb” the center of history had been uncovered. He wrote, there have been “[s]everal systems of religion essentially the same … as that religion now known as Christianity. … Many of them” contained deities who “were ‘crucified for the sins of the world … And … ‘rose from the dead.”
To those who argued that Jesus was the only way, Graves said, “such a resolution would necessarily preclude … [an acquaintance] with the history of any other cases of crucifixion that might have occurred before that of … [your] favorite Messiah.” And then he detailed some sixteen deities whose mythological deaths were not dissimilar to Jesus’s demise.
He counted 346 parallels between stories that Christians told about Jesus and those that speak of Lord Krishna. Both had their births divinely foretold. Both were conceived by miracles. Both were human and divine. Both were depicted as part of a triune God. Both rose from the dead and went up to the heavens. Both… Three and forty-six is a long list.
Graves noted that the Apostles Creed and the Nahua in what is now Mexico made similar claims about the man from Galilee and Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god. The creed maintained “he descended into hell; / on the third day he rose again from the dead.” The Nahua–who sometimes get called the Aztecs–thought that time was not linear. They believed it was cyclical with the world caught in cycles of destruction and recreation. After the previous version of the world was destroyed, they believed, Quetzalcoatl had descended into the underworld and recreated humanity, which had been reduced to nothing but bones, by shedding his own blood. He eventually ascended into the celestial realm from which he was predicted to inevitably return.
Lord Krishna, Quetzalcoatl, Graves also observed that the teachings attributed to Jesus were not particularly innovative. He placed them alongside those of the Essenes, a Jewish sect founded by a mysterious Teacher of Righteousness perhaps as many as two hundred years before the advent of the Christian Messiah. The philosopher Philo noted that they taught, “It is our first duty to seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” The Gospel of Luke has Jesus making the statement, “But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well”–the things in question being moral goodness or righteousness. In all Graves counted sixty parallels between sayings of the Essenes and those attributed to Jesus.
He was not the only one to make such an effort. In more recent years, the theologian and biblical scholar Marcus Borg documented numerous parallel teachings between those ascribed to Jesus and those connected to Buddha. One said, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” The other, “Let us live most happily, possessing nothing; let us feed on joy, like the radiant gods.” One said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” The other, “One who acts on truth is happy in this world and beyond.”
Truth, that is what is at stake in all of this. The argument that Easter represents, “the center of history” is based on a belief that there is one ultimate truth to be found in the wide universe. The observation that Jesus was one of many mythological saviors to be discovered amongst the world’s religions suggests that there are many.
I want to explore the significance of this with an oblique reference to the nineteenth century philosopher and sometime Houstonian Stephen Pearl Andrews.
I call Andrews a sometime Houstonian because White people drove him from our city over his steadfast advocacy for the abolition of slavery. He thought that society is something that we are constantly recreating and reconstituting. Its shape, its structure, and the understanding of what it means to be a human that they imply are changing all the time. He opposed political reactionaries who felt that society had a natural, fixed, order with a well established hierarchy. They used such claims to justify slavery.
In contrast, Andrews held that no one person was intrinsically better than any other. He understood that the horrible institution of chattel slavery was not natural or, as many slave masters argued, divinely sanctioned. He knew it was something that people had created. This meant that it could be dismantled and replaced with something better. Slavery could be abolished and freedom brought into being.
Andrews was probably a lot of fun to spend time with. He claimed that parties–the sorts of events with macaroni and cheese, collard greens, and, perhaps, a few shrieking children that many of us will be leaving this sanctuary to enjoy–represented the “highest type of human society.”
At a good party, he observed, “Groups are formed according to attraction. They are continuously broken up, and re-formed.” What he called “mutual deference” is the order of the day. The event, in other words, is voluntary and people free to converse, or not, with who they choose. There is an undercurrent of respect present.
Now, I know that the introverts amongst us probably regard such events with terror. But I enjoy them and marvel at the acts of generosity and community creation that can emerge when things get festive. That is not to say that bad things do not happen at parties or that it is not possible to have a bad party experience. I once got cornered at a drinks thing by someone who on for great length about the evils of putting fluoride in drinking water, and he did not even have the decency to be Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
But there is a reason why Diane di Prima’s “No Problem Party Poem” is one of my favorites:
wine on antique tablecloth no problem
scratchy stereo no problem
neighbor’s dog no problem
…
absence of more beer no problem
…
figuring it all out no problem
giving it all up no problem
giving it all away no problem
devouring everything in sight no problem
what else in Allen’s refrigerator?
what else in Anne’s cupboard?
what do you know that you
haven’t told me yet?
no problem. no problem. no problem.
No problem, Emily Dickinson famously instructed the poets of the world to “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.” The truth I have been after with my slanted references to Stephen Pearl Andrews and Diana di Prima is that the why bother of Easter is that celebrations give life meaning. They are opportunities to craft connections. They form the living stuff we call community–the networks and sinews that bind each to all, the very matter of religion.
Jesus seems to have also been a fan of parties. He is depicted in the Christian New Testament as responding to “absence of more beer no problem” with the spontaneous production of wine. Krishna addressed the issue of “scratchy stereo no problem” with flute playing that was so compelling that it inspired all around him to break into dance.
Can I get a Hallelujah for deities that like a good party? Hallelujah!
Hallelujah, I have shared with you in the past is a mash up of two Hebrew words. It combines “hallel”–to praise–and “jah”–signifying God. We might interpert as a way of saying “praise being” or “praise life.” It is an expression of gratitude for spirit filled worship.
So, in honor of divinities who like festivities let us have another Hallelujah!
Divinities who like festivities, two of the most significant things about Unitarian Universalist theology are that it is pluralistic and that it rejects certainty. Pluralism is the understanding that no one religion has an exclusive grip on the truth. The Transylvanian Unitarian theologian Imre Gellerd described our position this way, “We are convinced that God has sent a redeemer for humankind with each really great … [human being]. Lao Tzu, Confucius, … Buddha … and Mozart were redeemers.” The “circle of revelation … [keeps] opening,” he said.
Here at First Unitarian Universalist we say that we widen love’s circle. We seek religious truth where we might find it. This has led Paul Rasor to name our tradition as a “faith without certainty.” We are committed, in his words, “to open-ended inquiry and the realization that truth is not given once for all time.” It is something it is continuously discovered and constantly reshapes what it means to be human.
If you doubt this consider what might be the most significant news of the year. It could potentially be the most important discovery of my lifetime. Do you know what I am talking about?
This past week a scientific team announced that they found what look like signs of life in the atmosphere of planet K2-18b. It is about 120 light years away. There they have detected the presence of at least of two molecules associated with life. On Earth, dimethyl sulphide and dimethyl disulphide are only produced by living organisms, specifically marine phytoplankton and bacteria.
The team’s lead researcher, Nikku Madhusudhan, has described the significance of the potential discovery this way. If it is verified it will be “a very important moment in science, but also very important to us as a species,” he said. “If there is one example, and the universe being infinite, there is a chance for life on many more planets,” he continued.
Life elsewhere in the universe, to the increased possibility of that, can I get a Hallelujah?
Hallelujah, praise being itself, being which may well more plentiful than we had ever previously imagined. I will be grappling with the theological significance of such a finding for the balance of my years. It certainly upsets the notion that the Easter event was “the center of history.” But I am not sure it challenges Forrest Church’s “Why even bother?”
The answer to his query, implied in Graves’ work and Andrews celebration of the festal, is that any human gathering can be imbued with deep significance. We bother with Easter not because it is the only time to find “meaning and purpose.” We trouble it because it is a time in which we can uncover meaning and purpose.
A time, not the time, let me tease out the political consequences of that observation for a moment. We are beset by a regime that insists it possesses the only way to politics and economics. The regime’s leader echoes the messianic notes found in some passages in the Christian New Testament. He has said, “I alone can fix it.” He claims that there is a singular way to be a citizen of this country–support his regime or else be branded a traitor. He is deeply opposed to institutions that cultivate the pluralistic approachs to the pursuit of knowledge. I am wearing a Harvard tie this morning because I am proud of my alma mater’s efforts to stand up for academic freedom. The basis of a democratic society is the recognition that no one us has a unique grasp on truth. It is the understanding that truth changes over time.
To put it into religious terms, it is the admission that for a lot of people Easter is a good party. But it is not the only party, the only holiday, worth celebrating. There are plenty of others. No one event can claim to be the center of history.
This should give us great hope in these times. The regime wants us to think that the course of history is settled and that the path has already been drawn. But the protests that took place across the country yesterday and the protests have been held throughout the month should remind us we can always gather to celebrate the possibility of bringing a better world into being. Often times our celebrations provide a foretaste of what that world might be like. On a plaza in front of city hall it is possible to glimpse a world in which all people are honored, where society is organized so that everyone has enough, and human rights are universally honored.
Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen’s trip to El Salvador to see Kilmar Abrego Garcia should likewise give us hope. Garcia, you might recall, was wrongly deported by the regime and placed in a notorious Salvadorian prison. The regime has done everything it can to keep him there and to prevent anyone from seeing him. Van Hollen’s success at visiting him is a reminder that Congress is a co-equal branch of government and that if it stirs it can do much to check, and even rollback, the regime.
Chris Van Hollen, Diana Di Prima, Kersey Graves, Buddha, the Essenes, Quetzalcoatl, Lord Krishna, and Jesus, in the end my sermon has a very simple message. There is no center to history. There is no definitive event. Everything is changing all the time. At any moment, there might be a scientific discovery–life amongst the stars–that changes our understanding of what it means to be human. In any place, someone might unveil some new religious truth that prompts a re-examination of how we live and what we worship. At any party, we might experience delight. Easter today, the mundane Monday tomorrow, are imbued the possibility of changing the world.
To that can I get a final Hallelujah?
Hallelujah and happy Easter!
