"TRANSFORMATIONS"

A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear

Easter Sunday, March 27, 2005

All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana

The most striking commentary on the Easter story comes, I believe, from St. Paul. After reflecting on the story of the crucifixion and then the resurrection of Jesus, he declares poetically the impact of that story in words that have since become profoundly memorable:

"Death is swallowed up in victory.

O Death, where is thy sting?

O grave, where is they victory?"

These words are powerful to me, not because of what they have to say about one person's death and resurrection, but rather because of what they say about his life, and how that life made his death significant. His victory over the grave is not, for me, the story that a man died and was brought to life again. If that were all the story is about, there would be nothing particularly special there.

There are lots of similar stories to choose from. The story of re‑birth or resurrection -- of victory over death and despair -- has been a vital part of nearly all human civilizations, which suggests that this myth speaks directly to something deeply true within human experience. From the Greek myth of Adonis, who was killed by wild beasts and resurrected by his lover Aphrodite, to the Indian myth of the Phoenix, a defeated bird arising from its own ashes, the Easter theme of rebirth and resurrection has been valued among all cultures and peoples and all religions.

But there is something different about the resurrection story of Jesus that has nothing to do with physical death and spiritual resurrection. The real victory of Jesus is that his message didn't die with him. In fact, not only did his message survive his life, the impact of his life and teachings only became stronger with each passing year after he died. If it was expected that death would silence Jesus, the result was quite the opposite. Death became "swallowed up in victory."

All this may not be precisely what Paul had in mind, but there is no one who can question its truth. No person in history has had the overwhelming influence and legacy that he has had. There is probably no historical figure who has had a greater impact on the nature of our civilization today than Jesus has had. His death was transformed into victory.

There are many lessons to be read from the Easter story, and certainly "transformation" is one of them. He began as a humble Jewish man with a special concern for religious integrity. He became an itinerant minister, preaching a simple but powerful message of love and acceptance. He gained a very small but devoted following, until he was arrested because his growing popularity was viewed a threat to the established order. He was executed, a martyr for his convictions. Three days later, his crypt was discovered to be empty, and he is said to have appeared to his followers.

But something transforming happened at that time. The Easter story tells not only of renewed life, but of transformation. When Jesus died, his disciples were in despair and ready to give up on him. They felt his death was the end. But of course he would reappear to them, and according to the story, when he did, he was viewed differently, he was experienced differently by them. A transformation had taken place that gave his disciples a new sense of hope and a new sense of devotion to the cause.

I don't imagine that the original disciples, or even Jesus himself, believed at the time that his life was about the establishment of an entirely new religious tradition. He simply had an important message for his own people of his own time. Yet when the death and resurrection story was being told, it seemed as if the story of Jesus' life became transformed into a new vision for his followers.

Maybe it was the drama of the story itself. Maybe it was the persuasiveness of the witnesses. Or maybe it was the way the storytellers, such as Paul, packaged the message after Jesus was gone (the "spin doctors" we might call them today). But for whatever reason, this simple Jewish itinerant preacher with a simple message of love became transformed into not only one of the greatest religious prophets of all time, but in the minds of millions of followers, he has become worshipped as God's chosen son.

The Easter message is commonly seen as one of renewed life, the resurrection of life beyond death, and that message is appropriate. But it also speaks to us about the transformations in life, about how we can find hope in the fact that life will lead us in directions we cannot always expect.

In some ways, transformation is what religion is all about. Some people seem to think religion involves some sudden and radical transformation -- a conversion experience, for example, which somewhat suddenly re-shapes a person's identity in a radical way. That kind of transformation does happen, of course.

But for many others, perhaps most people, a religious transformation is more gradual. For many, it refers to the piece by piece gathering of insights that over time prepare us to see the world and our own lives differently.

D.H. Lawrence accurately described this kind of conversion or transformation of people by religion. He wrote:

"I believe that one is converted [to religion] when first one hears the low, vast murmurs of life, of human life, troubling one's hitherto unconscious self. I believe one is born first unto oneself -- for the happy developing of oneself, while the world is a nursery, and the pretty things are to be snatched for, and the pleasant things tasted; some people seem to exist thus right to the end.

"But most are born again on entering maturity; then they are born to humanity, to a consciousness of all the laughing , and the never-ceasing murmur of pain and sorrow that comes from the terrible multitude of brothers [and sisters].

"Then, it appears to me, one gradually formulates one's religion, be it what it may. A person has no religion who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together, adding to it, shaping it; and one's religion is never complete and final, it seems, but must always be undergoing modification."

This is how religious transformation comes gradually, and I might add, with deliberate and hard work. I might also add that I have not found a more cogent summary of the Unitarian Universalist approach to religion than these last two lines by Lawrence:

"A person has no religion who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together, adding to it, shaping it; and one's religion is never complete and final, it seems, but must always be undergoing modification."

There is in fact a long Unitarian tradition that addresses personal religious transformation, the long and sometimes tedious shaping and re-shaping of religious perspective. The name the early Unitarians gave to it was "self-culture." To understand the phrase "self-culture," one must first recognize that the word "culture," as it is used here, is akin to what we might understand as "horticulture"; that is, cultivating, caring for, and nurturing the growth of life. "Self-culture," then, refers to the nurturing of one's own character. In an 1838 essay entitled "Self-Culture," William Ellery Channing wrote this:

To cultivate any thing, be it a plant, an animal, a mind, is to make it grow. Growth, expansion is the end. Nothing admits culture but that which has a principle of life, capable of being expanded. Therefore, one who does everything to expand his [or her] powers and capacities, especially [the] nobler ones, so as to become a well-proportioned, vigorous, excellent, happy being, practices self-culture.

It is clear from Channing's essay that self-culture means expanding the mind, looking for new perspective, not remaining content with old ideas. It means welcoming a transformation of ideas, new views which challenge your present tranquility. One who practices "self-culture" is never entirely complacent, but always awake to new possibilities. In Channing's words, "Do not be lulled to sleep by the flatteries which you hear."

Transformation seems to happen when we are willing to challenge accepted ideas, and to be vulnerable to change.

I'd like to illustrate this by going off on somewhat of a tangent that I hope you'll indulge me for a just a few minutes.

The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead has written that, "The essence of life is to be found in the frustrations of the established order."^[i]

Now a group of skeptical, questioning, doubt-raising, radical, card-carrying free-thinkers, like some of us here, might think they know what he's talking about. When it comes to frustrating the established order, especially the established order of conventional thinking, free-thinkers are the proud masters of that craft. If frustrating the established order is an art, they are its Picassos. If it is a science, they are its Einsteins.

There are many progressive-thinking skeptics of orthodoxy who would agree with Whitehead that "the essence of life is to be found in the frustrations of the established order."

The trouble is, that this isn't exactly what Whitehead meant by that comment. It includes the penchant for questioning attitudes, but Whitehead means something much deeper and more fundamental than that by his phrase, "frustrations of the established order."

Whitehead wrote these words in the 1930s, when science was discovering that the laws of nature operated quite differently than it had previously been supposed. His life-long work was an attempt to make philosophical sense out of scientific discoveries which seemed to be inconsistent with common sense, or at least with previously believed tenets of science.

At the end of the last century, Max Planck was a student studying physics. At that time, it seemed that physics had found all relevant answers to all the questions that had been asked the laws of nature. Physics was complete. There were few mysteries left to explore. In fact Planck's professor said to the young student: "Physics is finished young man. It's a dead end street." And with that the professor advised Planck to be a concert pianist instead of a physicist.

He didn't follow his professor's advice. Instead, Planck went on to help discover what is now called quantum physics, a science that made the entire world view of the previous century's physicists obsolete; he opened up a whole new world for discovery. He went on, in other words, to frustrate the established order, for the scientific establishment did not willingly or eagerly or quickly accept his ideas.

But even this is not quite what Whitehead meant by the essence of life being found in the frustrations of the established order. Whitehead was referring, rather, to the content of the discoveries of Planck and other quantum physicists. He was commenting on the fact that, according to this new twentieth century physics, the order that is "the laws of nature" -- that is, the established order of nature -- includes within itself the seeds of its own change. Inherent in the established order of nature is something creative and transforming of that order. Evolution is a striking example of this, showing us that over time, what we understand as the natural order becomes different from what it was. The order of nature transforms itself. But it is not just about the variations of evolution, it is that inherent within nature is something which changes form and offers surprise endings.

Some people might call it "accidents" of nature. Or mutations. Others call it the "creativity" of nature. Whitehead preferred the term "novelty" of nature. But whatever it is called, it means that nature is always in the process of changing, of transforming, of creating something new. That is the sense in which Whitehead claimed that "The essence of life is to be found in the frustrations of the established order." Life doesn't happen without change and transformation.

Nothing in nature is static, said Whitehead. "The universe is not a museum with its specimens in a glass case, he wrote." It is not "a perfectly drilled regiment with its ranks in step, marching forward with undisturbed poise." On the contrary, life in this universe can only be understood as something that is constantly being re-shaped and responding to changes and variations. The orderliness of nature is frustrated by constant change. Change, in fact, means the frustration of order. Nature transforms itself.

This is Whitehead's thinking behind the quote with which I opened: "The essence of life is the frustration of the established order." The essence of life, in a word, is "change" or newness or novelty or creation, whichever word best strikes your fancy. The essence of life is transformation.

Returning now back from this tangent, Jesus was condemned precisely because he frustrated the established order of his day. But any time the established order is frustrated -- whether in the world or in our own lives -- there is an opportunity for transformation. It is not just nature that contains the seeds for its own transformation. So do we.

For Jesus, even death was to be swallowed up in victory, precisely because the tragic events at the end of his life were transformed into a new promise.

The word "transformation" is a fine religious concept. It carries the implication of not only something becoming different, but also a sense of renewal, of rejuvenation, of revitalization. The novelist James T. Ferrell once wrote:

In our youth we wake up expecting that something wonderful will happen to us and that our lives will be changed. This does not cease with youth. Each day remains new and fresh. Each day is a dawn of promise.

It is a promise of gaining some insight, of feeling something deeply, of learning something, of seeing something of the beauty and grandeur that is in the world.

Transformations are not necessarily sudden or dramatic. They are more often gradual and cumulative. But what they are able to do is help us grow and give life more meaning, help us see other perspectives more clearly, and celebrate life more fully. Life's transformations also teach us that change and growth are important to our lives. No matter the circumstances, there is always a hope of new promise and transformation in our lives.

MEDITATION

Please join in the spirit of meditation and reflection with these words of prayer by Jo Ann Silverman

May I, in these moments of meditation, restore the serenity of the soul;

May I accept this awesome mystery, and acknowledge my place in it.

May I know that Faith is familiar only to those who have perceived its light in darker days, and that out of pain compassion is reborn.

May I, in the evening of this existence, still be thrilled by knowledge that is new, and sense the warmth returning at the soft refrain of a half-forgotten song.

May I see, beneath the tumult of the outer scene, the inner vision, where, in Faith, awaits the soul's awakening.

I have gained this gift, so glorious and awesome in its mystery; the miracle is this, that we can transcend pain, and turn to beauty once again.

It is then, in life itself, that we rejoice.

SO BE IT

READING by Marni Harmony

If, on a starlit night,

with the moon brilliantly shimmering,

We stay inside and do not venture out,

the evening universe remains

a part of our life we shall not know.

If, on a cloudy day,

with grayness infusing all

and rain dancing rivers in the grass,

We stay inside and do not venture out,

the stormy, threatening energy of

the universe remains

a part of life we shall not know.

If, on a frosty morning,

dreading the chilling air before the sunrise,

We stay inside and do not venture out,

the awesome cold, quiet, and stillness of

the dawn universe remains

a part of life we shall not know.

If, throughout these grace-given days of ours,

surrounded as we are by green life and

brown death, hot pink joy and cold gray

pain and miracles--always miracles--

If we stay inside ourselves and do not venture out

then the Fullness of the universe

shall be unknown to us

And our locked hearts shall never feel

the rush of worship.

---

[i]. This and all Whitehead quotes that follow come from his book Modes of Thought, 1938.