(It may not be what you think or believe today).
Easter is the high holy day of
Christianity and deservedly so. It
defines the relationship between humanity and the divine, life and death, sin
and redemption in a complicated faith story.
Believers hold that God sacrificed his only Son, to take away the sins
of the world, as the ultimate scapegoat, who then ascended to heaven in his
human form. By doing so, he enabled
humans to follow, and participate in everlasting life.
Naturally, other religions don’t share
this view, and, more to the point, are puzzled by it. Maybe you are, too. Monotheists, like Jews
and Muslims, see a vast, impassable chasm between God and humanity. God is other.
The combination of man and God in one being is incomprehensible.
Polytheistic traditions, however,
are very familiar with gods popping down to earth in human form, procreating,
fighting, blessing, miracle making.
Think of Zeus fathering most of the heroes, like Perseus, Theseus, and
Heracles, by young virgins, like Alcmene and Danae. They don’t see anything
particularly unusual about these trips back and forth between heaven and earth,
or of Jesus being both god and man.
What may interest you, and you have
surely inferred this from the readings of the Canonical and non-Canonical Gospels and the title of today’s service, is
that for hundreds of years, people who considered themselves Christians didn’t
believe the Easter story as we currently know it, either. The range of interpretations of Jesus’s death
and resurrection stories encompasses the full range of monotheistic and
polytheistic views – not unlike the range of beliefs represented by Unitarian
Universalists in this or any congregation.