THE FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH OF HONOLULU
A Unitarian Universalist Congregation

"THE RIP IN THE CURTAIN OF THE TEMPLE"
Sermon by Rev. Mike Young
(Preached Easter Sunday, April 7, 1996,
at the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu.)

I am really unhappy with Newsweek and Time Magazine this past week. They scooped me. For all these years they have completely ignored the stuff that I was taught in theological school because it was too controversial. They pick THIS week to decide that you can handle it ! Suddenly, only after I schedule this sermon, they decide to reveal some of the Biblical scholarship that has been the routine fare of mainline theological education for fifty years. Still, there were some things they left for me to cover.

Tucked into the story of the death of Jesus of Nazareth is one of the most incredible images in all of religious imagery. Jesus has just died. The narrator says there were earthquakes, the rocks were rolled away and graves were opened, saints got up and walked around and talked to people in town, and the curtain of the temple was torn from top to bottom. For years, even as a Baptist hearing the story every Easter, that little line, "and the curtain of the temple was torn from top to bottom" went in one ear and out the other. One day that image grabbed hold of me.

I said, "Wait !" I said "whoa!"

When you're trying to communicate to the next generation the powerful transformative experience that happened to you, you might well create a dramatic, mythic story. It says, right there in the text, "This was written that you might believe." Those first century Christian had been "grabbed" by an incredible special moment of liberation to new possibilities. How do you communicate that "grabbedness" to a bunch of snot-nosed kids who weren't there and who probably think you're exaggerating anyway? How do you tell that story with enough drama to grab their imagination? You use things like earthquakes and bodies getting up out of the grave. You use images like the empty tomb, and the Master, AS IF a revivified corpse, getting up and walking around. You reach for symbols that will somehow carry over to them the amazing realization that-- whatever it was that happened to this man, what he gave us, the way he turned us on--that all of that didn't, couldn't die.

But why that crazy image of the torn curtain? It's the kind of detail that suggests either a powerful symbol or an actual fact the significance of which has gotten lost.

The curtain of the mobile temple used in the wilderness, and the one in Solomon's temple is described in great detail in the Old Testament. The version of the temple that was there in Jesus' day was a somewhat mediocre attempts to copy Solomon's temple. Although there are no descriptions of that curtain, it is generally presumed that it was something like the ones described in the Old Testament: a really thick, heavy curtain that separated what was called the "Holy of Holies" from the place where the average Jewish worshipper could go. The Holy of Holies was the most sacred spot in all of Judaism. This was the place where the high priest went only once a year for a brief ceremony that only he and Yahweh saw. This was, symbolically, at least, the place where the Lord God dwelled.

That is the image. The curtain which separates that which is holy from that which is secular, mundane; that divides what is of supreme and ultimate importance from that which is ordinary. That curtain, ripped from top to bottom !

Whatever you make of Jesus of Nazareth, the insight reflected in that image is astounding. The image suggests that there IS no boundary between what is holy and what is ordinary; that there IS no separation between the sacred and the secular. There IS no such thing as special days on which you are supposed to behave properly and regular days on which it's okay to do all those other things. There is no specialness that is not characteristic of every moment of every day, every relationship and every experience. There is no stranger out there with whom it is okay to suspend the ethical rules. There is no part of your life that is insignificant. And whether it began, as the gospel writers would have it, with that moment of crucifiction, that moment when something special happened to the community; or whether that symbol simply describes what is already and always was the case anyway is immaterial.

One of the pieces that makes us uneasy about this dramatic story is the whole idea of an empty tomb, of somebody getting up out of the ground, the drama that was used to communicate whatever the experience was. In classic form we have taken our poetic imagery and we have literalized it and then used it as a club to bat each other on the head with: "You're not a good enough Christian. You don't believe sufficiently literally." This is just as off the mark as saying, "How could you believe that superstitious nonsense ?" There is something happening there in that story, however, that gets completely missed when we get locked up with worrying about whether the literal truth of the story ought to be swallowed or not.

What did those first century Christians mean by "he is risen"? Did they mean an empty hole in the ground, an empty tomb, the kind of thing that you see in the movies that are made about Easter? Or did they mean something else? When you look at the literature on its own terms something interesting begins to happen.

The oldest piece of literature referring to the resurrection is not Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. Those are the books quite openly written to make people believe. The oldest references to it are in the letters of St. Paul and it's an interesting situation. Here's St. Paul. He gets a letter from the young church he has started in Corinth. The people in Corinth say, "Hey, another apostle passed through and he didn't tell the story quite exactly the same way you did. Are you a real apostle or are you a fake one?" This whole section of the letter in 1st Corinthians is St. Paul defending his legitimacy as a sure enough apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is trying to persuade them that he is just as good an apostle as those who happened to be there with Jesus when all of this happened; because, of course, Paul came afterward. Among the arguments that he offers is that he also experienced the risen Jesus.

The phrasing is interesting. He lists a series of appearances of the risen Jesus (First Corinthians 15:3-8): FIRST to Cephas, who is called Peter. The twelve (actually it was eleven, since Judas had just hung himself.) 500 brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive. (We'll come back to that one.)
James
All the apostles (Unmentioned in any of the gospels.)
Finally he says, "And then, as to one born out of joint with the times, he appeared also to me."

One of the things that's interesting about that list of appearances is that it's a different list than you find in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It's a different list than you can manage to somehow sort out of all four of them. Each presents their list as if complete, yet they simply do not match. And where are the women, who figure so prominently in the gospel versions of the resurrection and then quietly disappear from the rest of the New Testament story ?

Remember that the whole argument here is that Paul's experience of "the risen Jesus" is just as good as the appearances to the others. If St. Paul's experience of the risen Jesus isn't just like the experience of the rest of those apostles, then indeed Paul is confessing that he's a second hand, second class, second team, at best, maybe even a fake apostle. For his argument to have been persuasive, his experience of the risen Jesus had to have been understood by those first century Christians as of the same sort as the appearance to everybody else. If everyone knew that the appearances of the risen Jesus were experiences of a revivified corpse, St. Paul wouldn't have used that language and that argument.

What is one to make of the fact that concerning the most dramatic core event of Christianity there is this much lack of clarity ? Apparently there were a lot of stories being told and passed around. But one of them sticks out like a sore thumb: the appearance of Jesus to 500 people at one time. Wow! If Jesus had appeared as a revivified cadaver to 500 people at one time, the Roman historians would have written it down. Josephus would have told us about it. You would think that somebody would have mentioned that there was this rather strange event that occurred down there in Palestine about 34 AD.

Nothing. Nowhere in the whole New Testament is there a breath of a mention of that revivified corpse appearing to 500 people at one time. Not, that is, unless you understand as I believe those first century christians did that the experience of the followers of Jesus in the upper room--the event called Pentecost--is the kind of event they meant when they spoke of experiences of the risen Jesus. It was an experience of the spirit coming upon a whole group of Jesus' followers, and they went out and spoke in tongues. That is to say, they were swept up in religious ecstacy.

Have you all been to a "speaking in tongues" service at least once? You really ought to experience it. Speaking in tongues is absolutely fascinating. I was raised a Baptist--an American Baptist, not a Southern Baptist, so we didn't speak in tongues. There were a few churches nearby that did and I visited them. I did attempt speaking in tongues on one occasion and you'd be surprised how easy it is. When you get sufficiently excited and caught up in it, you can babble the nonsense syllables wonderfully.

St. Paul, again in that same 1st Corinthians, says, "You guys, when you're speaking in tongues you have to get things under control here. We can't have everybody speaking in tongues at once. When you're going to be caught up with ecstasy, you not only have to take turns, you have to be sure that there's somebody there to translate."

You know what that does to spontaneity and ecstacy ?

The whole point of the series of appearances, as rehearsed by St. Paul, is the kind of an experience an appearance of the risen Jesus was. We know what St. Paul's experience was. It was not the experience of a revivified corpse. That experience on the road to Damascus was, indeed, an ecstatic experience. He was caught in internal conflict, guilt and consternation over the persecuting that he had been doing of Christians. The spirit of those Christians had finally gotten through to Saul. He fell off the horse, heard the voice, saw the lights, and was blinded. We know what kind of an experience that was. The story is told three different times.

Paul's experience of the risen Jesus was a qualitatively different experience from being encountered by a revivified corpse ! And he says it was the same as the experiences he lists off.

For me, it makes a difference what I am being asked, in understanding and responding to the teaching of that incredible first century rabbi. I am not being asked to believe six impossible things before breakfast because that's not what those first century Christians were talking about. They weren't talking about physical miracles. They were talking about response. How do you respond to knowing what you ought to be doing and aren't doing? How do you respond to seeing the stranger and knowing that you can respond and it would be terribly inconvenient? How do you respond when the challenges of life come to you and it is so easy to shut down, turn off, not feel, not see, not hear?

Easter has to do with the celebration of a teacher who managed somehow to get us to respond, to cut through the neat separation of things into the sacred over there that we do on one day and everything else over here that we do the rest of the time, the neat separation between the appearance that we put on for everyone else and the reality that we know lies behind those masks. A teacher that tore from top to bottom that curtain that separated the Holy of Holies from the place of the people.

That's part of the reason why Easter is so awkward for us. It is not about believing the correct things, though we would rather it be that. It is not about accepting a literal miracle, the story turned into mythic narrative to convince those who weren't there. That we could dismiss, or return to its proper perspective. No, what is so awkward about Easter is it calls us to respond.

[From the Easter Communion Service]

OFFERING OURSELVES
That which is most ultimate in the life we share together is to be found in the commonest moments of our everyday. The sacred is the mundane made transparent. There is the holy, whose transforming presence in our lives is sought and celebrated. Our epiphany is no holy mountain high and lifted up; but in the daily round of care and pain transformed to joy by sharing. Our spiritual sustenance is not to be found in words or symbols. Our spiritual sustenance is to be found in community. It is that caring concern, one to another, that we understand as the sacred. This is what sustains us, empowers us, and enriches our lives. We are sustained in serving and being served. We offer ourselves, and invite one another, to participate in this celebration of the life we share together.PRESENTATION OF THE ELEMENTS

The symbols of our sharing are bread and water, diet of the despised and forsaken. Prisoners' fare. For until all are free, none are truly free; and what we hold in common is our common brokenness. But these will do. Bread and water. They are enough to make a beginning.

Water is the ancient symbol of life, the primordeal medium out of which life emerged. The blood in our veins is still salty from that ancient sea; and we are still dependent upon its cycles of sea-mist, cloud, rain, stream and river back to stream again. Uniting all of life within its cycle.

Bread is the ancient symbol of sustenance, of that which supports and maintains life. Not cake, or steak; but bread--the common things that keep life going. Bread, living grain transformed by living yeast to feed life's continuing transformations.

The symbols of our sharing are bread and water. Prisoners' fare. To choose to share them is to choose one another; to choose life whole. You may choose to partake of this; you alone and you only. Even as only you may finally inhabit and define the you who will be. But you may not partake of it alone. This cup of water, loaf of bread, is ours together. It is the water of life that sustains us only when poured out on behalf of each other. It is the bread, the common moments reaped and sifted, the common elements of our lives broken open.

To share these together is to take hold of your aloneness, and, in the giving and receiving of our common moments, our spilled out days, mold them into a whole that is ours, yet always given unto us.

CELEBRATION OF COMMUNION

We have tasted the sweetness of that common wholeness; some of us, the bitterness of loneliness. For some of us this is a celebration of what we have known together over many days and seasons. For some, this is a celebration of our hope and our hunger. For all of us and to each of us it is a promise and a trust.

Take. Share. Serve ye one another.

Receive from our hand through one near at hand this promise. Give to us, to the one nearest, that which has been entrusted to you.

Give unto each other of what you are all that can be received; for you were born to give and to be given, and,unlike these cups, the water in your vessel hides no bottom.

May your brokenness be healed, your common moments filled with joy.

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