The ancient accounts of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ will be proclaimed with joy and conviction from Christian pulpits Sunday, but for Rev. Homer Jack the Easter commemoration is a time to ”swallow hard” and acknowledge to his congregation in Winnetka that ”this is a moment when Unitarians do not give leadership.”
Easter is, of course, the most sacred festival of the Christian calendar. And it is a day of special complexity for the Unitarian Universalist Association, a 180,000-member North American denomination that traces some of its early roots to European Christianity but has long since abandoned most fundamentals of the faith, including the belief in the physical Resurrection of Jesus.
Even so, there are signs that the explicitly Christian themes of the Easter story–the divine promise of eternal life and hope in the face of grave despair–are likely to be given more careful and respectful treatment by Unitarian clergy this year.
”Many Unitarian ministers can be smart alecks and distance themselves from their culture,” said Rev. Jack, the minister of Winnetka`s Lake Shore Unitarian Society. ”I think it`s important to understand the reality and usefulness of the myth behind the holiday and not desecrate it either with commercialism or debunking.”
In New York, Rev. F. Forrester Church of All Souls` Unitarian Church will delve straightforwardly Sunday into the ”question that Jesus` death poses to each of us: Are we living in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for?”
Rev. Church, the 37-year-old son of the late U.S. Sen. Frank Church (D., Idaho), contended that the most vibrant and growing Unitarian congregations no longer are gathering for Easter services ”around the Easter bunny and celebrating the fact that spring had come again and the flowers popped up from their husks in the garden.”
Increasingly, he said, Unitarian pews are being occupied by people who are ”coming out of the secular world, seeking not to believe less but to believe more. They are seeking a deeper understanding of their own lives and death.”
And the Easter observance, even for doubting Unitarians, is an
”emblematic” religious feast that assists a person in responding to the
”dual reality of being alive and having to die,” said Rev. Church. ”My own interpretation of the Resurrection is that Jesus is, indeed, resurrected in the hearts of his followers, and the church truly becomes the body of Christ.
”More important than the question of the literal Resurrection to me,”
he said, ”is the question of whether or not the spirit of Jesus will be resurrected again this year in the hearts of His followers.”
For Rev. Edgar Peara, the Unitarian minister at New Trier Universal Religion Church in Wilmette, the Easter festival can stir non-Trinitarian hearts as a potent ”symbol of humanity`s desire for eternal life.”
Even many non-Christians, said Rev. Peara, ”want to celebrate . . . the reality that life is eternal. Easter gives us inspiration and confidence to keep working for everything that Jesus` life represented, which is that no matter how many times truth is crushed to earth, it rises again.”
The recently elected president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, Rev. Bill Shulz, conceded that some of his denomination`s adherents find Easter a ”difficult” and perplexing holiday to observe, not unlike attending a party at which the guest of honor is someone you don`t know.
But the 36-year-old Rev. Shulz said Unitarianism clearly is moving toward an ”appreciation of Easter as something more than a celebration of the Earth`s natural rhythms and renewal of nature,” which now renders passe the
”old gibe that most Unitarian Easter sermons are titled `Upsy Daisy.` ”
