Homily for
Sunday, April 27, 2014
Graves Chapel
I
know this isn't supposed to be show and tell, but I really want to share this
little book with you today. It is called The
Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes, and when I open it up, the name
printed inside the front cover is that of my dear aunt, Mabel: Miss Estes. The
little inscription tells me so much. My aunt Mabel is the one from whom I
inherited my calling to be a teacher. Mabel began her teaching career in the late
1930s at the Wolftown Elementary School.
After teaching in Wolftown for a few years, she moved to Northern
Virginia and taught kindergarten and first grade in Fairfax County for many
years.
After
she passed away and I got her house ready to sell, I found this little book
among her things and just had to keep it. I have vivid memories of her reading
this book to me--more than one Easter--when I was a child, and it remains one
of my favorite picture books. The fact that it is labeled "Miss Estes"
to identify the owner tells me that my aunt must have read this little book to
her students, and I bet some of them loved it as much as I still do.
The
rabbit of the title is first described in the story as "a little country
girl bunny," and maybe that's one reason why Mabel and I both found this
story appealing--we both began our lives as little country girls born right
here in Graves Mill. Ultimately,
though, the humble origin of this little rabbit is not what this story is
about. It's a story about Easter.
In
this story, we learn there are five Easter bunnies, not just one. As a little girl bunny, the main
character announces that she wants to grow up to become one of the five Easter
bunnies, but the big white rabbits and the tough Jack rabbits all laugh at her
and tell her to "go home and eat a carrot." They tell her to forget her dream. And, for a while, she does forget. She grows up and gets
married and has 21 little baby rabbits. Being very organized and a very good
mother, she has a happy home, and she teaches her little ones how to help with
all the household chores and how to behave appropriately.
One
day she hears that a new Easter bunny has to be selected since one of the five
current bunnies is going to retire. Try-outs for the job will be held at the
Palace of Easter Eggs where the wise old Grandfather Bunny will choose the new
Easter bunny. The selection is based on several important criteria: Every
Easter bunny must be wise and kind and swift. Our little country bunny, who with her large family has
given up on the idea of becoming an Easter bunny, decides to take her 21
children with her to watch the try-outs. Who knows? Maybe one of them will grow
up to be an Easter bunny! Well,
since I hope you may decide to read this book someday to your children or
grandchildren, I won't tell the rest of the story. Suffice it to say that the
country bunny learns that an Easter bunny not only has to be swift and wise and
kind, but also brave and self-sacrificing.
Sometimes
these days I hear people grumbling about the commercialization of Easter, about
the silliness of Easter bunnies and dying Easter eggs. Since the rabbit and the
eggs have sadly become, for many Americans, the only part of Easter they still
observe, I sympathize with such grumbling. It is a real shame that we often
seem to have forgotten the true meaning of Easter. It is also a shame that most of us, even we Christians,
don't fully appreciate the lessons about Easter that the rabbit and the eggs
were originally intended to illustrate.
The
tradition of the Easter rabbit began centuries ago in Germany, among the early
Lutherans, who associated with the Virgin Mary the legend of a hare who could
lay eggs and mother many offspring while still a virgin. This Easter hare, or
"Osterhase," can be seen in medieval paintings, illuminated
manuscripts and other art placed next to Mary and the infant Jesus. The legend
became custom, and German children would prepare nests of grass inside their
bonnets or caps so that the Osterhase would have a place to lay her eggs,
delivered to good children on Easter morning. This custom, now evolved into our
Easter baskets, was brought to our country in the early 1700s by the
Pennsylvania Dutch.
And,
you may ask, what is the source of the colored eggs? Catholics, Lutherans,
Episcopalians and other orthodox churches traditionally fast during Lent. In medieval times, to preserve any eggs
from being wasted during the fast, they were boiled or roasted. Often they were
painted to separate them from fresh, unroasted eggs. On Easter morning, when
the Lenten fast was broken, the painted eggs were a special treat.
These
two Easter traditions, passed down now for centuries, symbolize some basic
elements of our belief in the Resurrection. Jesus died on the cross to save us, and he arose from the
grave to give us the promise of eternal life. The life-giving productivity of
the Easter hare is a perfect representation of that abundant life promised to
all of us. The colored eggs, consumed at the end of the Lenten fast, illustrate
how our faith is life-renewing. Easter is celebrated in springtime in the
Northern Hemisphere, where these traditions originated in Europe and where we
live in America. Easter and its celebration of the Resurrection, like spring
and the greening and blossoming of the earth, remind us that life is
everlasting. The very fact that these centuries-old traditions are still
carried on every Easter, as if bringing those Easter baskets out of the attic
or a closet is itself a kind of resurrection, is a powerful reminder for us and
for our children that life is eternal.
Today,
the second Sunday in the season of Easter, we have two lessons in the words of
Peter, apostle and founder of the church.
Peter reminds the early Christians that Jesus Christ not only taught us
how to live our lives--"You have made known to me the ways of life;
you will make me full of gladness with your presence"--but Jesus has also
illustrated for us how to overcome death.
Alleluia indeed! As Peter proclaims to the crowd [in Acts 2:22-32], “God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was
impossible for him to be held in its power.” Let me repeat that: It was impossible for death to hold
Jesus in its power.
In
his first letter, Peter writes, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great
mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection
of Jesus Christ from the dead... Although you have not seen him, you love
him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice
with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of
your faith, the salvation of your souls."
Theologian
Richard Rohr explains how our faith offers us the blessed assurance of eternal
life in this way: It seems that we
are born with a longing, desire, and deep hope that this thing called life
could somehow last forever. It is a premonition from Something Eternal that is
already within us. Some would call it the soul. Believers would call it the
indwelling presence of God. It is God in us that makes us desire God. It is an
eternal life already within us that makes us imagine eternal life.... God, by every religion’s best definition, is love (1 John 4:16). What follows, of
course, is that if we are God’s creatures, then love is what we are too, at our deepest core and final
identity. When we live consciously within this love, we will not be afraid to
die, because love is eternal, and that core self is indestructible. “Love never
ends” (1 Corinthians 13:8). [endquote]
Jesus said we must become like little children if we
want to enter the kingdom of heaven. I think he meant that we must have the
all-trusting faith of a little child to believe in that much love. Maybe the children in our lives, and
the inner child in each of us, can allow bunny rabbits and painted eggs and the
joy of Easter morning to strengthen our faith in the resurrection--and in God's
love that made it possible.
AMEN.
