Dead Man Walking

A sermon prepared by Rev. Tim Kutzmark
Sunday, April 8, 2007 • Unitarian Universalist Church of Reading

Watch birth and death:
The lotus has already
Opened its flower.
—Natsume Sosekii

“You can choose to believe it or not, but I still say this whole resurrection story is absurd.”   That is the voice of my friend Ben.  He’s a devout humanist.  He loves science. And he has a real problem with Easter.  Just like many Unitarian Universalists. 

Ben continues: “ Jesus was a cool guy.  I can get into the idea that Jesus lived, and he taught this really radical message. Questioning authority.  Breaking rules.  Subverting assumptions.”   Excited by his own thoughts, Ben speeds on: “Jesus walked into the towns and villages looking for everyone that the religious leaders and the government had pushed down into the ground: women, the aging, people who were sick, people who were poor, people who thought differently, people who loved differently. Jesus found them, defeated, angry and afraid, and said: “Stand up, walk into your life.  There is worth and dignity to be claimed here. Walk out and get it!”  Ben stops for a second, catches his breath, and then says: “But face it—they killed him for that.  It became too dangerous to let those ideas live.  They grabbed him at night, put him through a speedy fixed trial, nailed him to a wooden beam, and left him to die.  And that was the end of that.” 

Ben stares me in the eye: “Easter morning never happened. There is no such thing as a dead man walking.”

No such thing as a dead man walking?  Hmm….

But how about a dead man dancing?

Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen tells this story.  You may know it:

“I had a [young] man come into my practice with bone cancer.  His leg was removed at the hip to save his life.  He was twenty-four years old.  He was a very angry man.  He felt a deep sense of injustice and a very deep hatred for all well people, because it seemed so unfair to him that he had suffered this terrible loss so early in life.  I worked with this man through his grief and rage and pain using painting, imagery and deep psychotherapy.  After more than two years there came a profound shift.  He began “coming out of himself.”  Later, he started to visit other people who had suffered severe losses.  Once, he visited a young woman who was almost his own age, [she had just underwent a full mastectomy].  It was a hot day in Palo Alto and he was in running shorts so his artificial leg showed when he came into her hospital room.  The woman was so depressed about the loss of both her breasts that she wouldn’t even look at him, wouldn’t pay attention to him.  The nurses had left her radio playing, probably in order to cheer her up.  So, desperate to get her attention, he un-strapped his leg and began dancing around the room on one leg, snapping his fingers to the music.  She looked at him in amazement, and then burst out laughing and said,  “Man, if you can dance, I can sing.””

This is what Easter is all about.  It is not about a myth from 2000 years ago.  It is about what can happen in our life, in this moment.  Easter is a choice we make. 

It begins in the graveyards of our lives.  It begins in the hospital rooms, the tombs, the walled places we have built around ourselves, and within ourselves. It begins where we have let something amputate our spirit and our soul.

This is where Easter begins.   But Easter lives when we decide to stand up and strap on our artificial leg.  Easter lives when we begin to walk back into life.  Easter lives when we hear the music and begin to sing and dance, however out of step or out of tune we may feel.  Easter lives in the discovery of an impulse—a power—that seems to reach out beyond death.

It the same impulse that causes the branch to bud, the flower to bloom.  It is the same impulse that causes the human mind to explore the farthest reaches of science, searching for answers, cures, and possibilities.  It is the same impulse that causes one hand to reach out for another.

This is the radical message of resurrection.  It questions the authority of despair.  It breaks the rules of reason.  It subverts our assumptions about the way things must be.   

Author and spiritual teacher Marianne Williamson says:

“The story of the resurrection is where something in the Universe says, ‘Look, you’ve been in trouble before, and I’ve always been there.  There has never been an epidemic that has not ended, even if you didn’t find a cure, because it is too unnatural for it to exist forever.  There has never been a Hitler or anyone like him who has ultimately won the war because it is too unnatural for him to win the war.  There has never been a winter that has not turned to a spring.  There has not been any horror on the earth that has not been ultimately transformed.’  And the Universe is saying: I would love to do the same for you.”

The universe if saying: I would love to do the same for you.

The choice is ours.
What will we believe this Easter morning?

©Copyright 2007 Rev. Timothy A. Kutzmark
All rights reserved.