I really appreciate friends who let you know when you've used a word over and over again or once too often. They don't go so far as to say "give it a rest." It's more like: "have you noticed how often you say 'I confess'?" And then they attribute it to your roots in Catholicism. I confess that for years I did spend too much time in the confessional. But that's another story or sermon.

Jan Abbott in the most discrete and affirming way let me know that I am given to use "resonate" rather frequently. She's absolutely right. And the more that I look into the meaning of the word, the better and more interesting it becomes. I'm not going to subject you to the whole theory of resonance because I don't presume to understand it myself. The little that I do grasp is that it's a theory of hearing according to which we're attuned to different vibration rates. We are more or less sympathetic to sounds depending upon the rate of their vibrations. I hope I haven't offended any authorities on resonance in the congregation.

Vibrate is a synonym for resonate. I find that I vibrate with certain things that I read or hear. Like one day I walked by an interesting collage hanging in the gallery upstairs. There was a quote of Einstein's woven into the picture. It read: "People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." I know as much about physics as I do about the theory of resonance. Still I resonated with this quote and was delighted to discover it in Gary's book, Science and the Search for God. Better still he gave the context in which Einstein was moved to write these words. It made me appreciate Gary for being an author, for making Einstein more accessible.

I know that I've told this story in a previous sermon, some of you may remember. In 1955 when the great physicist learned that his closest friend Michele Besso had died, he wrote a letter of condolence to Besso's sister and son. Einstein wrote, "Now he has departed this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

Gary confesses in his book that a part of him kindles to these thoughts while still another part agrees with an Einstein that can't imagine that the individual survives the death of his body. I love the word "kindle". It reminds me of resonate and vibrate!

I kindled to the words of Unitarian Robert Hardies, senior minister of All Souls Church in Washington D.C.. He was commenting on the story in Luke's gospel about the women who went to the tomb after the crucifixion of Jesus to prepare his body for burial. They were met by two angels who asked the women "why do you look for the living among the dead?" Hardies is caught by this question. He suggests that we spend much of life, like the women at the tomb searching for ways to draw life out of death. This is how we go on living and ultimately this is what resurrection is all about, salvaging the living from among the dead, discovering a new path after arriving at a seeming dead end, finding hope in the midst of despair.

Robert Hardies believes that the real reason that Easter is the most crowded Sunday of the year at Church just "may be because we know what the message is going to be. It's the same every year. The message that life can emerge from death. The assurance that hope can be squeezed out of despair. The good news that joy will rise up again like the morning sun over the horizon of our sorrow." Hardies says we need to be reminded that we can find the living among the dead.

Whether people interpret the story of the resurrection literally or metaphorically they can find common ground in the area of meaning. This is the position held by John Dominic Crossan, former co-chairman of the Jesus Seminar and premier Jesus scholar in the world today. Last month Crossan debated with Anglican Evangelical scholar, N.T. Wright. The question at issue was whether the resurrection of Jesus was an historical event or theological interpretation, in other words literal vs. metaphorical interpretation. One thousand attended the debate held at a seminary in New Orleans.

Crossan along with scholars like Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong see a strong political dynamic in the message and activity of Jesus. Once when a T.V. interviewer looking for a 'sound bite' asked Crossan to give a summary description of Jesus, he said: "He was a Mediterranean Jewish peasant with an attitude." One of his twenty books is entitled Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. He does not see the authority of Jesus founded on a literal resurrection, rather he finds it in the power of his message, power based on sharing, on forgiving, on feeding, on including everyone around the table, on reacting with dignity and non-violent resistance to external threats. There is power enough in this message to transform a world of injustice and violence into a world of justice and peace.

I'm especially grateful to this biblical scholar for a remark that he tossed off a few years ago. It was picked up and repeated approvingly by a colleague and prominent scholar Marcus Borg. I remember when I first heard it I resonated with it even though I didn't presume to understand what it meant. I found it oblique or just a little sneaky. It was one of those times when I had to wait for the meaning to emerge from experience – in this case a painful and dark experience. It made me appreciate the idea that no one is ever ready to experience Easter until he or she has spent time in a dark place without a glimmer of hope.

Crossan's remark had to do with another resurrection story in Luke's gospel, the Emmaus story. According to Luke the same day that the angels asked the women why they were searching among the dead for the living, two disciples took off for Emmaus, a village about seven miles from Jerusalem. They needed to get out of town. All their hopes had been dashed. They had thought that Jesus would liberate Israel.

As they discussed the tragic events of the past few days they were filled with despair. A passer-by asked them what they were debating between themselves and why their faces were so gloomy. They could hardly believe he didn't know and said that he had to be the only person staying in Jerusalem not to know!

The story goes that after the disciples told the stranger about what had taken place, he in turn helped them to find meaning in the suffering of their hero. Jesus had stood with an oppressed people and suffered the consequences not unlike twenty centuries later when Martin Luther King supported the striking sanitation workers in Memphis or Archbishop Oscar Romero when he spoke out on behalf of the persecuted Salvadoran peasants. Both King and Romero were frequently threatened with death. Both saw their suffering as redemptive of the violence of injustice. Two weeks before his assassination, Romero said in an interview: "I do not believe in death but in the resurrection. If they kill me, I shall rise again in the Salvadoran people." This has been true of all three men, they have risen again in their people.

Whatever the stranger said to the two disciples, by the end of their journey they begged him not to leave but to stay with them for a meal. The story goes that when he had sat down with them at the table, they recognized the stranger in the breaking of the bread at which point he vanished from sight.

As with the other resurrection stories, there are people who find meaning in the metaphor of Emmaus, who do not see it as an historical event. John Dominic Crossan is one of these. "Emmaus never happened, it's always happening."

Several years ago the meaning of these words came home to me thanks to a devastating experience. It was one of those times when I couldn't bear the way that I felt toward those responsible for causing what seemed to me a terrible injustice, for crushing the hopes of people I loved. I wrestled with feelings of resentment and bitterness. I wanted instant vindication. My efforts to gain perspective on my suffering vis-a-vis much greater calamities: 9/11, earthquakes, etc were of no use. I went to sleep that night praying for some relief, for the grace to forgive and be forgiven. The next morning the words came to me. I don't remember when I had last thought of them: "Emmaus never happened, it's always happening." They suddenly made sense like a koan, a paradox used in Zen Buddhism. This kind of paradox is used in training monks to despair of an ultimate dependence upon reason to force them into sudden intuitive enlightenment.

Not that I could claim enlightenment, only my heart was lighter, not as heavy as the night before. Different wisdom traditions have various ways of dealing with suffering, different metaphors for coping with crushing disappointment and pain. In the Islamic mystic tradition of Sufism there is a saying, "Overcome any bitterness that may have come because you were not up to the magnitude of the pain that was entrusted to you. Like the mother of the world, who carries the pain of the world in her heart, each of us is part of her heart and therefore endowed with a certain measure of cosmic pain. You are sharing in the totality of that pain. You are called upon to meet it in joy, instead of self-pity. The secret: offer your heart as a vehicle to transform cosmic suffering into joy."

The idea of having a certain amount of pain entrusted to me is not a necessarily comfortable thought. But then I resonate with the idea of the mother of the world who carries the pain of the world in her heart and each of us being part of that heart. Being called upon to meet our share of the pain of the world in joy instead of self-pity. Sounds like salvaging life from death. It sounds like finding a way to draw vitality out of death.

I had a visit from a former student while I was writing this sermon. She had been a dream of a student, a privilege to have in class. She comes from a family of teachers and has begun her own promising career in education.

At present her second year of teaching college has been interrupted by an acute form of cancer. She is undergoing heavy chemotherapy to fight the disease. Without a shred of self-pity, she told me of how she marvels at the way her body, which is delicate to begin with, is able to regain its strength after being wiped out by a week of aggressive treatment. She still has a number of weeks to go. Her friends marvel at how strong she is being in dealing with a catastrophic illness. I am inspired by all that she tells me she is learning about living in the present, the insights about her life that she is salvaging from this experience.

For one thing since she has lost her hair, she calculates that she has gained 8 hours a week. Imagine, she says, what women could do with 32 extra hours a month. Her boyfriend, who is already beginning to lose his hair, shaved his own head to be in solidarity with her. I'm wondering why I don't follow suit. During my years in religious life it was a very liberating experience. Then I worry about hurting the business of cosmetology. Our Cambodian daughter has her own salon in Colchester, not to mention Stephen's salon down the street. Bill isn't too big on the idea of my shaving my head but I don't want to use that as an excuse. I remember Carol MacDonald shaved her head when her good friend Sheila Callan was going through chemotherapy. But she looked more glamorous than ever. She doesn't have big ears like I do. Maybe I should take a poll of my community, the indispensable matrix of enlightenment.

This is another one of those ideas with which I resonate a lot, the idea of community being the indispensable matrix of enlightenment. It's validated by the meaning that emerges from my experience of small group ministry. When we sit in a circle and break the bread of our own experience, our own lives, it's a little like Emmaus. We recognize a larger purpose, a larger presence within and among us. We come to a deeper understanding of ourselves as we share the struggles, the stuff of our lives. We are often surprised by the meaning that emerges and even more, the energy that is generated simply by our listening deeply to one another. Once again the experience causes me to resonate with the cryptic saying that:" Emmaus never happened. Emmaus is always happening."

We are never at a loss for reasons to feel gloomy. This is why we gather week after week seeking to find deeper meaning for our lives in the company of a supportive faith community, seeking to grow in courage and compassion for ourselves and for our world. May it be so.