An Embodied Message: Easter, Passover and Ramadan
Rev. Diane Rollert
Unitarian Church of Montreal, 9 April 2023
This is my 17th Easter with you, and I’d like you to know that this reflection is not from my archives, nor has it been written by a chatbot. Fear not, I’m not going that way! Not yet.
I recently read an article lamenting the number of churches that are closing down across Canada, not only in big cities but also in small rural communities. (A shout-out to Marlo for sharing this article with the Board’s executive team.) This is a great loss to Canadian society, the author writes.
These churches were once the hub of community activity: the place where people went in times of need, in the midst of a tragedy or a winter storm; the place where soup was ladled out to the unhoused, and where Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous could find a free home where they could offer desperately needed meetings any day of the week.
Some of these buildings have survived for almost two hundred years. But their membership has aged as well, until there’s no one left to physically or financially care for them. Church buildings are being abandoned or converted into condos and fitness centres. Multiple congregations are combined into one, or simply fold, never to be replaced.
After reading the article, I wrote to the Exec: Yes, this is very sobering. We’ve definitely been seeing these developments for many years. I give thanks daily that the Unitarian Church of Montreal is doing as well as it is.
This past week, as the ice storm hit on Wednesday, so many people in our congregation and surrounding communities were without power. A million people! I was already in New York City to celebrate Passover with my cousins, so we missed the storm. But I was in contact with members of our staff and leadership early Thursday morning, who immediately asked if the building could be opened to the public. Thanks to the many volunteers who came forward, we were able to make a quick decision. Yes, we’d stay open until 9 p.m. each night.
The reports I got back were inspiring. It was a team effort. Hot beverages. Maple donuts. An Internet café set up in Phoenix Hall with power bars on the tables. I still don’t know the names of everyone who stepped in, but I know big thanks go to Melani Litwack, Julie Golick, Stas’ Mackiewicz, Marlo Turner Ritchie, Trevor Juhl, David Horan, Abram Friedland and many others. (If you were here, maybe you can identify yourselves now. Thank you!)
In these moments, how grateful I am that we have this building, that we have this community, that we can mobilize so quickly to support each other and our neighbours. This is what it’s really all about. This is the blessing of being a spiritual community that welcomes and nurtures, inspires and challenges, and takes action in the world. What better message could we offer for this day? You as a community have embodied, truly embodied, why it matters to be here as a community of faith. You recreated the miracle of the loaves and fishes.
As I think about the Easter and Passover message I want to share, I think of the challenges of this time we’re living through. In my own personal world, the places where my ancestors came from are in violent turmoil. On the Ukrainian Catholic side, war is raging not far from the village where my grandmother was born and lived until she was 13. On the Jewish side, well, there’s Russia, Poland, and Israel. I can’t even begin to break down for you my disappointment in the Israeli government, which I feel more acutely than ever.
At the end of the Passover Seder, the ritual meal that the commemorates our flight out of slavery in Egypt, we say, “Next year in Jerusalem.” We speak of never remaining silent while there are still people who are oppressed or enslaved anywhere in the world. We speak of Jerusalem as a symbol of peace, but it is so far from that right now.
I think of our friend Chef Atena, who has shared with us the tragic situation in Iran. Young women are being imprisoned and killed for taking off their veils and for standing up for their human rights. She and I have lamented together the tension between the Muslims who live here in freedom, yet are targeted by our society for choosing to wear a hijab or otherwise visibly declare their faith, while women in Iran are brutally losing their rights to choose not to.
Let me add to the mix the members of the Christian right in the country of my birth, the United States, who are expressing their faith by taking away the rights of trans people, and the rights of women and all people to make decisions about their own bodies and reproductive health. These are people who are going to church today to celebrate the resurrection of Christ; who see the Bible as upholding white supremacy over Black, Indigenous and People of Colour; who value the right to buy and carry guns more than they value children’s right to go to school without fearing they will lose their lives. These are people who have turned the teaching of Jesus on its head, taking money from the poor to give to the rich.
Yes, I’ve heard the argument that all that is wrong in the world is due to religion. But I am a religious person. I am a pastor and a minister. I don’t take this responsibility for my faith lightly. I see both sides of what religion can do. It can be used as an excuse to exclude and harm others. But it can also be a place of love and justice, of welcome and shelter, just as we provided shelter this past week. Just as one of the local mosques opened its doors to the community to offer warmth and to share information about Ramadan. Just as synagogues and other churches opened their doors.
I see Christians who are trying so hard to live by the message of Jesus’s life, of his care for the poor and the marginalized people of his time. What would Jesus do if he saw the state of the world today? I believe he’d be shocked by the way his name is being used to oppress those whose rights he would have surely defended.
I see Muslims who are working for peace in everything they do. I see Jews who are rising up against tyranny in Israel, who are standing side by side with disenfranchised Palestinians.
This is my message for Easter, Passover and Ramadan this year. We who are progressives, whether we are humanists, secularists, or co-religionists, we need to fully embody our beliefs. We need to get louder. We need to find each other and make common cause for human rights and for peace. We need to continue to live by acts of kindness, goodness, love and acceptance.
We need to go back to our sources, whether our sources are prose, poetry, music, art or scripture. We need to remind ourselves of the ways of being that can truly save this world and each other. We are here to honour this earth, to honour humanity, and to raise our children to be the inheritors of peace.
So let us hold in our hearts all that is possible in this season.
(now the ears of my ears awake
and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
May we live the teachings of Jesus.
May we long for the prophet Elijah and the coming of peace.
May we remember the words we sang earlier from Dayoona Nayeesh, a song written by a Muslim and a Jew:
Let us live in peace.
Let us live in inner peace.
Let us weave our dreams together.
Let us die in peace.