Unity Church of Dallas - Rev. Townley's Message

A Message from
Rev. Ed Townley,
Associate Minister

Happy Easter Already!

Dear Friends,

Does Easter seem to be coming way too early this year? Didn’t we just get the Christmas things packed away?

That sense of time speeding up is becoming more and more familiar, I think, as our spiritual energy continues to impact our lives in significant, tangible ways. We are less bound by measurements of time and space that once seemed rigid and absolute.

Even within those rigid measurements, though, this is an extremely early Easter. Easter hasn’t been celebrated this early since 1913, and it won’t happen again until 2228 – so appreciate it while you can! Actually – since these facts can become addictive – the earliest possible date for Easter is March 22, which last happened in 1818 and will next happen in 2285.

The reason Easter slides around while, say, Christmas remains fixed at December 25 is that, like Passover, Easter is based on a lunar calendar, rather than the Roman calendar. Easter is set as the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox.

It may be confusing, but it feels right to link the celebration of Easter with the official dawning of spring, instead of to a specific date in history. You can celebrate a birthday as a time-specific event. But you just can’t be that precise about a resurrection! A resurrection is not a separate and unique event, but rather the culmination of a process – a process that is often underway long before we are consciously aware of it, and that leaps to full resurrection glory when we least expect it – while our limited human consciousness is still trying to divide up the check for the Last Supper and decide how much to tip!

I think the early Church Fathers got it right when they linked Easter to the Spring Equinox. Easter, like spring, is an affirmation of eternal Life – a triumphant ‘stepping up’ to a new dimension of realization and expression. It’s too often presented as a return to what was – the Christ of Jesus back in the same physical, familiar, limited body it had inhabited through Good Friday. That’s not resurrection – it’s repetition!

No, Easter to me represents the triumphant Jesus Christ, freed from his mortal limits just as sprouts and buds break joyfully free from their winter hibernations. How great the temptation must have been for Jesus Christ to soar onward and upward and never look back! How great the love must be that led him to make another choice – to stick around a while, to interact with limited human consciousness long enough to invite mortals to realize the point of the entire demonstration – that death is at worst an irritating illusion, and that there is nothing in the experience of moving forward that can possibly justify our fear, or our insistence on holding back.

Resurrection, like spring, cannot be a onetime event. The Allness of God won’t allow that. It is the fulfillment of the very process we are here to experience and express – over and over and over again! – as we go about the spiritual work we are here to accomplish. We’ve allowed ourselves to become very familiar – to relate closely – to the challenges and pain of Good Friday. When we allow ourselves to become equally familiar with the glory of resurrection – as it occurs and recurs in our lives – we will know that we’re really making progress.

And so – from all of us at Unity Church of Dallas – Happy Easter! If you are able, I hope you’ll join us as we commemorate together the final stages of this great creative process through our Stations of the Cross meditation and communion Friday evening at 7 pm, and through our two Easter celebrations at 9 and 11 am Sunday. And wherever you are on the planet -- wherever you are on your personal journey -- my wish for you this Easter is that you feel the challenges of your own life give way frequently to the elevated bliss of resurrection – and that you begin to know and appreciate what a precious, loved and important part you are of the great Creative Purpose we share.

Blessings!
Rev. Ed

Message Date: March 20, 2008