REsources for Living
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You know the phrase it seemed like a good idea at the time? That’s kind of how I feel about our choice of Restoration as our theme to explore during the month that contains both Easter and Passover. At the time, without giving it a great deal of thought, Restoration seemed like an interesting twist on themes that we’ve used in the past, like Resurrection and Transformation. But the more I think about it, the less Restoration seems to fit.
To restore something, after all, is to put it back the way it was before. You restore antique furniture by stripping and sanding it, or maybe replacing worn fabric. But the goal of all that effort is to have something that resembles as much as possible what it once was. When you restore an old house you try to bring it back to what it looked like before time took its toll, refinishing wood floors or stripping peeling paint or replacing rotted siding until the home is restored to its
former glory.
But both Easter and Passover are based in stories about change, about becoming radically new. In the Easter story, the resurrection of Jesus does not mean that he just goes back to roaming around and preaching and healing like he was doing before. The resurrected Jesus appears to his disciples, and then he hands the work of teaching on to them, while he ascends to heaven. Which I think we can agree is a pretty dramatic departure.
The Passover story begins with the Hebrews as slaves in Egypt, and Moses as a baby afloat on a raft in the river. It ends, after a burning bush and plagues and the parting of the Red Sea and the giving of the Commandments and forty years of wandering in the desert, with the Jews as a covenanted people living in the Promised Land. And Moses has died of old age.
Neither of these are stories of restoration, of things being returned to their original state. Unless, of course, you think of their original state in a different way. Maybe from the beginning salvation and re-birth were inside not only Jesus, but also the disciples and the people that they taught. And also the thief who was on the cross next to Jesus. And also Pontius Pilate. And the crowd that called for Jesus’ crucifixion. Maybe the story is a way to strip away all the old layers of “I’m not worthy” and “you are the enemy” to get down to the kernel that was already there—that each of us, beloved and foe alike, is a child of the Holy.
Maybe Hebrew slaves in Egypt already held, somewhere inside themselves, the knowledge that people are meant to be both free and in covenant. That our natural human state is that of choosing for ourselves—in the context of relationships that set ethical limits on our freedoms. Perhaps they just needed the wading and the wandering and the waiting for Moses to come down from the mountain (during which time they messed up pretty royally) to strip away the layers of “there is no way out” and “what I feel like doing right now matters more than my commitments” in order to get down to the kernel they already had of being a free and responsible people.
As Unitarian Universalists we talk a lot about the “inherent worth and dignity of every person.” Inherent means something that is already inside, something that comes with the package. Our worth and dignity is already there when we are born. But it gets covered over with so many sticky layers—oppression and entitlement, self-doubt and inflated ego, the need to please others and the need to triumph over them…the list could go on and on.
Perhaps our job as people of faith is something like taking a heat gun and a scraper to the many layers of paint covering a beautiful wood door frame. The rich grain of our worth and dignity is there for each and every one of us. But it gets covered up in all kinds of dubious colors that seemed like a good idea at the time, from the sickly green of greed and envy to the dull beige of trying to fit in. The dedicated application of compassion and truth-telling and questioning oppressive assumptions lifts away the layers one by one, bringing our worth and dignity more and more clearly into view.
Of course, it’s not a one-way deal. Sometimes it feels like the layers are going on faster than they are coming off. Restoration, like so many things, is a process rather than a result. But it can help to think of the wholeness you are seeking as something that is already there, not something that needs to be built from scratch. Restoration takes effort and patience and attention to detail and a certain amount of imagination. But it begins from the presumption that what you seek is never impossible, because what you are looking
for is already there, waiting for you to reveal it in all its glory.
- REsources for Living - December 1, 2020
- A Fond Goodbye - December 1, 2020
- REsources for Living - November 1, 2020
