On Sunday morning at dawn, when the Sabbath was over, the three women came to the tomb of Jesus to anoint his body, a ritual of respect for the dead. They came not knowing how they would gain access to the tomb, how that heavy stone would be rolled away. But still they came because even in death they could not desert him—this man in whose presence they had felt accepted, liberated, loved by God. When they arrived, they found not, as they expected, a massive stone, but instead an empty tomb and a man saying that Jesus had been raised from the dead.

Later, on the road to Emmaus, another two of his disciples were overtaken by someone they thought a stranger. The disciples had left Jerusalem in sorrow and despair. But as Jesus joined them along the road, unrecognized by them, he explained how the Hebrew scriptures should have prepared them for their leader’s death. Later that evening the two invited him to join them for their evening meal. It was not until he blessed and broke the bread that they recognized Jesus. Then, and only then, they turned and started back to Jerusalem in high spirits, telling what they had experienced.

What are we to make of these gospel stories? An empty tomb? An appearance of the risen Jesus on the road to Emmaus? What are we as Unitarian Universalists, grounded as we are in reason, to make of Easter? We can’t take these stories as literally true—there was no empty tomb; there was no appearance on the road to Emmaus—not really. Nonetheless, can we take these stories seriously? Can we find in them something that speaks to our spirits?

Surely, we can take the man Jesus seriously. For beneath the gospels stories there is a historical reality that is worth celebrating, embracing. Jesus was a man whose message deserved to survive his death. The critical study of the New testament reveals that Jesus preached and practiced a vision of radical equality. He was a nobody preaching to other nobodies in a world with huge disparities of wealth and class; a world with rigid boundaries between those who were acceptable and those who were not. Jesus, through his words and his actions, particularly through his table fellowship, broke down all those boundaries of class and property and acceptableness. His was not a message, as is so often thought, of an other-worldly reality, but, rather of how to live in the present as if the world were the way God intended it to be. He ate and drank with those who were outcasts, the most wretched of the wretched. And he made those who would accept him into their company accept those outcasts as well. He made the untouchables, touchable.

Jesus’ vision was of a world where there was nothing that separated one person from another. He said to the outcasts of his world—you are just as deserving of God’s love, just as deserving of the bounty of the creation as the noble and the prosperous; there is no one who is not beloved of God, no one who is outside the pale. Jesus said that if the world were the way that God intended there would be no distinctions between Gentile and Jew, male or female, slave and free, rich or poor—no barriers between God and humanity or between humanity and itself; that, if the world were the way that God intended, freedom, justice and equality would prevail.

Jesus’ vision was radical. It flew in the face of Jewish purity laws. It flouted the Mediterranean system of honor and patronage. But more than that—his vision struck at humankind’s eternal inclination to draw lines, to invoke boundaries, to establish hierarchies of worth and power. And so what happened to Jesus was wholly predictable. His message was simply intolerable. The religious and political authorities had him executed, crucified as the Romans did when they wanted to quell resistance or revolt. And, though we cannot know for sure, anthropologists suggest that what happened to Jesus’ body was what usually happened to those who were crucified—it was left on the cross to be consumed by wild birds and beasts. This was part of the dishonor of crucifixion—that there would be no body left to bury at the end. There was no empty tomb. There was no appearance on the road to Emmaus. Not really.

Does this mean that we Unitarian Universalists have no Easter message? Not at all. Can’t we still see reason for celebration? That this man, in the face of certain death, dared to confront the powers that be, dared to assert that God—the power at the heart of the universe—intended something different for humanity, something different like justice and freedom and unconditional love. If that were all that we could take from Easter, it would be enough to sing alleluia.

Some of us will stop here and rest with the historical Jesus and his message. A message that still calls to us across the centuries, challenging us to break down the barriers that separate humanity from itself. For some of us the historical reality of the person of Jesus will be reason enough to sing anthems of praise on this beautiful spring morning.

But what of those other stories, the stories that were told by Jesus’ followers of his resurrection, of his being raised from the dead? Even if we can’t take them literally, perhaps we can take them seriously and see them as spiritually profound.

To those who had known him, Jesus’ message could not die. To those who had experienced the kind of radical affirmation and acceptance he exuded by his very presence, Jesus was not dead. He lived on, in their hearts and minds. And they experienced him again in the breaking of the bread, that tangible symbol he used to communicate his common hopes for all humanity. Even in death Jesus had not deserted them. And so they could not desert him. His message had to be told, told in such a way that death would not have the final word.

Stories of bodies being resurrected from the dead were not unusual in first century Palestine. Neither were stories of supernatural appearances. These kinds of stories were the ways that people spoke of things worthy of emulation and praise, things deemed of ultimate significance. Jesus’ disciples told these stories about Jesus as a way of witnessing to the fullness of love they had experienced in Jesus’ presence. These stories were the ways they had of asserting that God—the power at the heart of the universe—had been made known to them in the person of Jesus and they were thus transformed. The disciples of Jesus used the narrative devices of their culture—stories of the risen dead—to say that Jesus’ death could not mean the end to faith in life and faith in God’s universal love.

We don’t have to take these stories literally. Nor do we have to make of them what centuries of traditional Christianity has made of them—that Jesus death was a necessary sacrifice in order for humanity to inherit eternal life. But we can take them seriously. Because we know the truth, the metaphorical, spiritual truth, of resurrection. We know that death and betrayal and tombs that imprison the spirit may always be with us. But we know, also, that there will also always be that which says no to death, that there will always be people who find the ways to roll away the stones that imprison the spirit, that there will always be glimpses of a greater reality that transcends injustice and cruelty and despair.

Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “It belongs to the depth of the religious spirit to have felt forsaken, even by God.” What one of us has not felt that way? What one of us has not had times when we felt abandoned by life and love, when we have wondered if we had the courage and the will to go on? And what one of us has not had moments when we despaired of humanity, when we have felt that cruelty and misfortune do seem to rule the day?

But that is not all there is to the story. People do suffer terrible loss, disaster even, but somehow survive. People can experience the death of all those they love, the death of meaning itself, and somehow rise again to experience a rebirth of life and hope. Resurrection is not about corpses rising from the dead. It is about faith—faith that the forces of life and love will prevail. Resurrection is not about being granted eternal life in the hereafter. It is about the faith, the transcendent reality, that each of us is beloved of God, that each of us has a divine contribution to make to this world and that death does not defeat the meaning of our having lived. And resurrection is also about the knowledge that our fate is bound up with the fate of all humanity.

Resurrection happens all the time. There are always empty tombs, always appearances on the road to Emmaus. Resurrection happens every time people—people like us—face our confusion and grief and pick up our stones and walk; every time the human spirit triumphs over fear and pain. Resurrection happens every time we decide to keep on keeping on, to affirm that in spite of the trials and sorrows of the moment, life still has meaning, that life is sill good to live. Resurrection happens, too, every time we affirm a vision of justice and equality; every time we assert that the idea of boundless love for all people has eternal significance. Resurrection happens every time we turn around and set our hearts once again on the promise of Jerusalem.

Resurrection speaks in the language of the spirit and tells us that under the waste of time, under the hoof of the beast, above the broken bones of cities, always there will be something moving, something growing like a flower—something deathless, forever faithful. Do you remember how Houston looked just two months ago? How frozen and barren our gardens and yards? Did you think spring would never come? Look around us now. The flowers that grace our lives today were only two months ago tight hard buds looking as good as dead; today they are azaleas and Easter lilies; red buds and magnolias. A few weeks ago the trees that sway in the breeze were bare silhouettes against the sky. Today they are towers of green. The trees, the flowers, have changed; they were, in fact, born again, resurrected from deep within life’s unyielding force.

The earth that comes to life again in the spring and stories of resurrection speak to us in the language of the spirit, saying that no matter how great the betrayal, no matter what the odds, the human personality can rise above, that what is good and beautiful and true can triumph; that no matter the situation or sorrow, meeting life with courage and dedication to the good, the beautiful and the true is to live life successfully, even in the face of death. There is more to this world than literal fact. There are also matters of faith and hope and love. To take resurrection seriously is to affirm the inexorable force of life in all its splendor and to sense the faithful presence of a love which knows no bounds—a love that moves deep within us and between us, a love that holds us and all humanity in its embrace and will not let us go, a love that springs eternal forever new. Alleluia. Sing praises.