When I told my mom I was preaching the Easter sermon at my church, she got very excited. She did, after all, have high hopes that her son would one day become a well-respected, successful Southern Baptist minister who would make her duly proud. Oops. Still, she was excited; that is, until I told that this sermon was particularly challenging since so many in the congregation were not Christian. There was a long pause, and then she asked, "Well honey..." I love it that she calls me "Honey" now. "...what sorta church is this?" Can I get one of you to call her? That she hasn’t just written me off as a bad egg is a tribute to the good Southern octogenarian lady.

So today, the highest, holiest day in Christendom, this Christian Unitarian Universalist is going to invite you to consider the possibility that, from the Biblical perspective, the resurrection of Jesus has no theological significance whatsoever, that, contrary to the claims that are being made this morning the world over, it isn’t even a religious event, and that, furthermore, it is not an assault on reason, but is rather, something quite other, and as such, just might have particular importance and power for rational, logical, sensible people like us.

For the early Christian church, the identity of Jesus as the Messiah and his redemptive power were established by his sacrifice on the cross. There was no inherent need for a resurrection to establish or even validate the early Church’s understanding of who Jesus was and what he came to do.

It’s true that in other places in the Bible the resurrection was used as evidence to prove the concept of eternal life, and the apostle Paul in his first letter to the church at Corinth makes quite a big deal of it, but that element is all but missing from the accounts of the gospel writers. And you’ve got to cut Paul a little slack. I mean, when your followers are being thrown to lions and such, you’d like to offer them a little something in return, wouldn’t you?

One of my favorite Christian theologians, Frederick Beuchner, makes a very interesting distinction between resurrection and eternal life. Here’s what he says:

"Immortality means death-proof. To believe in the immortality of the soul is to believe that though John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave, his soul goes marching on simply because marching on is the nature of souls just the way producing butterflies is the nature of caterpillars. Bodies die, but souls don’t.

True or false, this is not the biblical view, although many who ought to know better assume it is. The Bible speaks of resurrection. It is entirely unnatural. We do not go on living beyond the grave because that’s how we are made. Rather we go to our graves as dead as a doornail and are given our lives back again by God (i.e. resurrected) just as we were given them by God in the first place, because that is the way God is made. The idea of the immortality of the soul is based on the experience of humanity’s indomitable spirit. The idea of the resurrection is based on God’s unspeakable love."

Frederick Buechner: Wishful Thinking

Before I do so, however, I must give credit where credit is due. For a seed to sprout and grow -- whether it’s a sugar snap pea seed or the seed of a life changing realization -- there must be adequate soil and the right conditions. Sometimes this takes years. For there to be really good soil, somebody has to collect the manure -- the shit -- pile it up, mix in other essential ingredients and then, wait. Jan and I have been partners for 14 years. She started this long and difficult and often painful journey with me and has stayed on at great personal cost. Without her, without her sacrifice and faithfulness, what I am about to tell you almost certainly could never have happened. Jan’s is the untold story of one who has sown where others have reaped and as prologue, I wish to acknowledge her and express my eternal gratitude to her and for her.

I know I’ve told this story before, so please bear with me again, since it is cogent to the point I am trying to make. At about 8 years old, I was standing on the playground of my elementary school wistfully watching the Brownies march to the girl scout hut, when I turned to a male classmate and asked quite innocently and genuinely, "Don’t you wish you could be a Brownie?" The look on his face told me that not only did he not share my dreamy reverie; but that this was something I had better keep to myself. Furthermore, in my town, one of the worst insults one boy could hurl at another was to call him ‘butcher.’ Now if someone called you butcher in an insulting way, you would be more inclined to question the person’s sanity than to take offense. However, in the small southern town in which I was raised there was one of those men who was so unmistakably gay he might as well have been born pink. Guess what his last name was. Yes, it was Butcher, and, young though I may have been, I somehow knew that he and I were related, that we were of the same tribe, and that that if anyone ever found out who I really was, I would share his fate. So at about age 7 or 8, I put Meredith in a closet, and began telling myself the story that if they ever discovered my true identity or if they even suspected, my very survival would be at risk.

Now I’ve said before that children are often good observers but poor interpreters, but I think in this event we’re going to have to give this seven-year-old credit not only for shrewd observations but a fairly accurate interpretation of the realities of the time and place in which she lived. Can you imagine what they would have done to an 8 year-old male child who insisted she was really a girl in Mississippi in the 1950’s? That’s a memoir I’m glad not to be writing.

And so, for the next 40 years, while Meredith lived inside her tiny closet, that’s pretty much the story I told myself and so, when I did finally come out, rather than discard it, I simply changed verb tenses. Now, instead of: If they ever find out who I really am, my survival will be at risk, I told myself: If they ever find out who I was, my survival will still be at risk.

But then, I came to this church, and I got invited to the women’s group, and since I was fairly certain that you were not mistaking me for what in trannie circles is called a GG -- Genetic Girl -- this invitation constituted a direct contradiction of the story, which did not allow for this many or this kind of exceptions. Oh sure, there would always be a few people who loved me regardless, but in mass? And in an intimate, exclusively female setting? Such a thing was simply not on the menu of possibilities. So I maintained a reasonable level of resistance, until one particular Sunday, Jodi insisted that I walk with her from her house to the next women’s group meeting at Jean’s house, and so, because Jodi’s...well, Jodi, over the objections of my survival instincts, I agreed. Only later did I learn that the topic for sharing that particular night required bringing a photo of myself at about age 12. There are no childhood photos of Meredith, but coincidentally (Have you ever heard the saying that coincidence is simply God’s wish to remain anonymous?) coincidentally, my mom had sent me a slew of old photos just a month or so earlier, and I found this one. Does this look like a little girl to you? No, but I can assure you there is one in there. So, that night -- now, in open rebellion against my survival instincts, which were working overtime to forestall my imminent destruction -- I took this photo to the meeting and when it came my turn, I put it on the table with all the other photos of the little girls, and steeled myself for what would surely happen. It didn’t, of course, but then, I couldn’t be too sure. Maybe, instead of outright rejection -- which would, after all, be really bad form for a group of liberal, enlightened UUs -- you might ostracize me slowly; probably you would just never invite me back. So walking back to Jodi’s after the meeting, I explained to her about the story and why trusting your acceptance was so hard for me, and she reached over, and she took my arm, and said (I remember her words exactly) "Meredith, we want all of you." We want all of you.

And the stone rolled away.

What Jodi said in behalf of all the women of UUP was: You know the story you’ve been telling yourself for the past 40 years? You know, the one that says if anyone ever knows the truth about who you are they won’t accept or want you. Well, at least in our case, it’s wrong. Of course, as you can imagine, my response to hearing this was to be overjoyed and filled with relief. Right? Of course not. Upon hearing that the story I’d been telling myself for 40 years was wrong, my response was -- and I think I might have actually said this -- "Excuse me."

So what makes this a resurrection story? While I am enormously grateful for your acceptance, that was not the source of my first nor my strongest emotion. The most powerful emotion, and the one that consistently overwhelms me utterly, is that of being forgiven. I felt forgiven.

That’s what the resurrection of Jesus was. It was the miracle of forgiveness. Think about it. Jesus and the disciples had been together day and night for three years. They had eaten together, walked together, bathed together, slept together, talked together, argued together, been hungry, thirsty, cold, hot together. He was their teacher, their guide, their mentor, their friend, and yet, in his greatest hour of need, every disciple abandoned him. At least Judas had the honesty to just out and out betray him. In the end, it was every man for himself. Not only that, with the execution of Jesus, every disciple knew they were marked for the same. These were dead men walking. So what transformed this experience of terror and guilt into one of victory? Why didn’t the others follow Judas into depression, despair and even suicide? I think it was forgiveness. That, I believe is what made this, like mine, a resurrection experience, because when we are willing to risk annihilation -- physical, spiritual or both -- and when guilt strips us of every illusion of our own goodness, and then, we are met by unqualified, unmerited, unconditional grace...well, those are the conditions in which resurrection becomes one of the miraculous possiblities.

Now I admit that’s a bit of a tricky interpretation, since nowhere does Jesus actually say, "Look, it’s okay. I forgive you for running out on me."

But then again, none of you ever said that to me either. You never said, "We forgive you for betraying your true self by impersonating a man all those years. We even forgive you for being born male in the first place," something I only recently realized I assumed was somehow my fault -- the classic victim’s guilt. I doubt any of you ever imagined saying such a thing. What you said was: "Come, join us. You are, after all, one of us," which is exactly what Jesus said when he said, "I’ll meet you in Galilee. There we can be together again." You didn’t forgive me, because you didn’t think there was anything there that needed forgiving, but don’t you see, that just amplifies my gratitude, since I’d been wearing that guilt like a hair shirt for 40 years? It is impossible to convey in ordinary words the power of that experience.

So, what might this understanding of the resurrection as an act and experience of forgiveness mean for us?

Well, if nothing else, I hope it gives you a way to look differently at Easter not as an assault on reason and credulity or some theological attempt to prove something improvable or even as a particularly religious event but rather, as evidence of the power and the possibility of forgiveness to transform us and even our world.

Consider the most obvious and visible evidence for resurrection -- Spring. Now take your normal gratitude for the coming of spring, and add to it the element of forgiveness. First, think about the manifold ways we have abused and misused this incredible planet for our greed and selfishness, recount to yourself the litany of wretched things we have done it and then imagine daffodils and plum blossoms, the song of the red-wing and the titmouse as visible, audible signs of the earth’s forgiveness. Doesn’t that amplify your ordinary gratitude? Doesn’t it move you to want to do more to be worthy of the earth’s unmerited grace and be a better, more grateful steward of her manifold gifts? It does me.

Or politically, what if in response to 9-11, instead of going to war we had forgiven our enemies? Or better still, what if we had asked their forgiveness. Of course, some would say that our enemies would have taken this as a sign of weakness, but what more could we have done to demonstrate our weaknesses than the current situation? Could a strategy of forgiveness and repentance have been worse?

And, closer to home, what might happen if, instead of gloating over the ignominious end of the Bush administration and touting forever their manifold failures, we chose rather to forgive them? What might that do, if not to them, to us? Might that have transformational power we have not considered?

More personally, what if at the point of your deepest wounding, your own betrayal of your true self, you applied the balm of forgiveness? Might that not be as powerful a resurrection experience for you as the one the disciples had? And would it be any less miraculous? I think not. I know not, for you taught me that.

In closing, I’d like to invite you into a short time of meditation, and in this time, I invite you to bring to mind a place of deep wounding, your own, our nation’s or our planet’s. Call to mind whatever wretched thing you or others have done -- real or imagined -- and then, imagine giving or receiving forgiveness, and while you do this, I will ask Kevin to play a recording of a song I’m sure you all know.

(Meditation with "Amazing Grace")