This Spring is there something worth a celebration of the newness and the arrival of good in your life? Has a needed, wanted person come back into your story? Do you need to go get someone from the underworld (like Persephone in her story)? Please don’t let our current political climate, our climate change, our horrible treatment of many who are so disadvantaged, steal all you joy. Please don’t give all your joy away to the worthiness of our struggles. Spring is a reminder that it cannot stay winter forever.
We must cope with a constant element from our tribal past and our ancient religious traditions. Both the God of the Jewish people and the Roman Gods required sacrifices to offer favor and atonement for the wrongs done by humanity. Jesus in the Christian story is the ultimate sacrifice, and poor Persephone is given in marriage to the Underworld, and in many versions of this story she has no say in the matter.
Who are we sacrificing, in an attempt to make things better? This is ancient, tribal appeal to appease tribal deities. Does your most holy require human sacrifice still, and if so, why?
I want to offer this Easter season that we tell the Gods that we have given enough innocent blood for what we thought would make things better. We are no longer willing to do so. We want to offer up some stuff we can do without on the altar.
We will give up our need to seek tribal revenge on ancient grievances and we want to offer flowers to the Goddess of Forgiveness if she will have us. We want to seek resolution for our family feuds. That would include the entire family.
We want to find our old Mother Goddess who birthed humanity, before the Father God arrived and pushed her out of the story. Mother we want to offer our humble recognition of being one family of humanity.
Mother help us get there. We have some siblings who have taken over and it’s not working.
This Easter we want to honor our striving to come back to life with the ability to forgive and love like we mean it. Maybe love so intently that death can’t stop the good we had in mind, nor the connection we feel.
This Easter we want to be so loving that we are made strong in our ability to stop acts of unlove and hate. Mother, help us to do it as though we are restoring and resurrecting something so great that we have never seen in our human family.
Mother, help us, one to another choose love and choose the best way out of winter, out of our justified fear, out of our of cold heartedness and into warmth that enlivens our relationships and strengthens our best collective and individual selves.
Rev. Duncan Teague
(Excerpted from Easter Sunday sermon, April 16, 2017)
Such beautiful words!!