HOPE IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS
A Homily for Easter and Passover

© Rev. Joy Atkinson 2009
Mission Peak Unitarian Universalist Congregation
April 12, 2009

Reading: Hope is the Thing with Feathers, by Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune
without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Homily: Hope is the Thing With Feathers

Hope - the thing with feathers, which perches in our souls, the candle in the darkness - is the one thing that can bring us out of the depths of despair, cynicism and negativity. For both of the holidays we celebrate in this season - Easter and Passover - hope is a significant theme. In the Passover story, once God intervenes to free the Israelites from slavery under the Pharaoh's grasp, they set out for the journey to their homeland. The journey was long, and they sometimes fell into despair, as we all do in our life journeys. Yet hope drove them onward, and they finally succeeded in creating a new life for themselves.

The Easter story begins with hope, as Jesus triumphantly enters Jerusalem, bringing his message of radical love, but it soon sinks to the depths of despair as he is betrayed to the authorities, and then is summarily tried, convicted, sentenced to death and cruelly executed by Roman justice, all in a matter of days. Hope seems as far away as it can be as he dies on the cross, feeling abandoned and alone. But, as the story is told, on Easter Day he rises again, and. with him, hope is resurrected.

Many, though not all, of our Christian brothers and sisters celebrate that story of rebirth today as a literal truth. Many others, and many of us Unitarian Universalists, see the story symbolically: Jesus rises again by living on in the good work of his disciples, and in the message of love and peace that he brought to a broken world - a message that has echoed down through 20 centuries. The story, whether seen as literal or symbolic, is one of hope for new life, hope that can pierce the darkness of loss and despair, and triumph in the human soul.

Significantly, both Easter and Passover are celebrated in Spring, the season of hope, when the days lengthen and the earth fulfills its annual promise of new life.

But there is a chill in the air this spring [of 2009]. We watch the news with deep sadness as senseless violence continues in many trouble spots in the world and in our own towns, as people continue to die in Iraq; as religious intolerance, hatred and bigotry continue to blemish our world; as oppression continues in places like the Sudan. In our modern world, brutal oppression of this kind is at least harder to hide from the world than it was in the days of Pharaohs and Caesers.

But as Emily Dickinson says of hope: "I've heard it in the chillest land, and on the strangest sea." Even in the darkness of war and unrest, hope can be found. Voices of reason call out for change, and many people take the risk of raising their voices above the din, and working for peace and tolerance, economic justice and freedom from oppression. And slowly, the world turns, one person, one group at a time, toward the light.

So in this springtime of returning light, may peace break out the world over, and transcendent love replace the old hatreds that divide people. May spring come, again and again, within us, bringing the freshness of new life, of birth and rebirth. May hope be continually reborn, dispersing the clouds of cynicism and despair. May seedlings of new life continue to arrive in our lives, reminding us that hope, the thing with feathers, that little bird, still sings the tune without the words, and never stops, NEVER stops...at all.

Benediction - An Easter Blessing

The dew that touches the morning garden awakens our hearts, preparing us for our own resurrection. The sprouting of seeds deep in the soil is the eruption of miracles. The rose-hued morning sun is the face of God. The unfolding of the flowers is the opening of the tomb. May we and all the earth, on this Easter day, be born anew!

Words on Easter, Passover and Eggs

Reading from Walden by Henry David Thoreau:

Every one has heard the story which has gone the rounds of New England, of a strong and beautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf of an old table of apple-tree wood, which had stood in a farmer's kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut, and afterward in Massachusetts - from an egg deposited in the living tree many years earlier still, as appeared by counting the annual layers beyond it; which was heard gnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of an urn. Who does not feel his faith in a resurrection and immortality strengthened by hearing of this? Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at first in the alburnum of the green and living tree, which has been gradually converted into the semblance of its well-seasoned tomb - heard perchance gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of man, as they sat round the festal board - may unexpectedly come forth from amidst society's most trivial and handselled furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last!

I do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all this; but such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

Easter and eggs have been linked together from the beginning. Long before Easter was a Christian holiday, when it was a widespread celebration of spring and the rebirth of the god or goddess of spring, people painted eggs and gave them as gifts. People long ago recognized the egg as a seed - a little container of potential life - and it became a symbol of fertility and rebirth. Eggs were put in the soil when planting crops, to insure a plentiful harvest. Eggs were hung on maypoles, and on trees at the summer solstice, or at New Year celebrations, back when the new year began in spring. The eggs in the trees were a symbol of the renewing power of nature. (Today we will create our own egg tree. You, both children and adults, are invited to color the paper eggs in your order of service, and place them with the tape provided on the large paper tree in the back of the meeting hall.)

At the Passover Seder table there is always an egg, a symbol of spring. As I saw on my recent trip to Egypt, an egg can be seen floating above images of the Egyptian Pharaohs - a symbol of the hope for resurrection and eternal life. This symbolism makes the egg a fitting symbol for the Christian Easter story as well, when the resurrection of Jesus is celebrated. The tradition of egg-rolling (with sticks or spoons) that is practiced in many parts of the world on Easter day is said to symbolize the rolling away of the stone from the tomb where Jesus was lain.

Out of the tomb, new life. Whether you believe that Jesus actually rose from the dead or not is not even the point. His gentle spirit and message of hope for humankind did rise again, as millions have followed his teachings over the centuries. And it has been so with many of the great teachers of humankind - from Mahatma Gandhi to Martin Luther King, Gautama Buddha to Jesus. These and other great leaders have brought to all of us the gift of hope.

Easter is about hope, about new beginnings and new life. And the egg, still a part of Easter celebrations the world over, is the symbol of new life, a new day dawning, the resurrection of hope in our hearts. Passover too is about hope - about the promise of freedom and a new life, even though that freedom was hard-won after years of struggle. Here is a poem by the Rev. Lynn Ungar, on the struggle and reward of the Passover story. It begins with a quote from Exodus 12: 7, 13:

Then you shall take some of the blood, and put it on the door posts and the lintels of the houses...and when I see the blood, I shall pass over you, and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.

They thought they were safe
that spring night when they daubed
the doorways with sacrificial blood.
To be sure, the angel of death
passed them over, but for what?

Forty years in the desert
without a home without a bed
following new laws to an unknown land.
Easier to have died in Egypt
or stayed there a slave, pretending
there was safety in the old familiar.

But the promise, from those first
naked days outside the garden,
is that there is no safety,
only the terrible blessing
of the journey. You were born
through a doorway marked in blood.
We are, all of us, passed over,
brushed in the night by terrible wings.

Ask that fierce presence,
whose imagination you hold.
God did not promise that we shall live,
but that we might, at last, glimpse the stars,
brilliant in the night sky.

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