By Rev. Rebecca Bryan
This morning we come together for as many reasons as there are people in this sanctuary. We come to celebrate Passover, Easter, and spring. We come to uphold family tradition of church on Easter morning, and we come to explore what it means to be spiritual people. We come with broken hearts, searching hearts, and loving hearts. However we come, we do so, I hope, with open hearts.

This year Passover began on Good Friday. Today we are two days into the eight-day festival of Passover and one month into spring, although we may wonder about that. We are at the end of the Christian tradition of Holy Week at the heart of the Paschal (pronounced Pas-kel) story on Easter morning.

Easter, known in the languages of Greek and Latin as Pascha (pronounced Pas-ka), comes from the Hebrew word Pesach (pronounced Pes-ach). Pesach, or Passover, honors the story of the Israelites’ journey out of slavery into freedom. The word Pesach is most commonly translated as “pass over,” though in the Babylonia Aramaic translation it means “to have compassion for.”[1]

Developing a compassionate way of being is a spiritual skill encouraged throughout all world religions, including religious naturalism and humanism. We often think of compassion as relating to how we feel and act toward other people. An equal, if not more, important component of compassion is self-love.

Like many truths, this is taught in the world religions and less commonly taught in our day-to-day lives. When the Dali Lama came to the United States in the 1990s, he was asked if meditation would cure self-hatred. “What is self-hatred?” he asked. He had never heard of such a thing.

Jesus taught us to love our neighbors as ourselves. The Buddha taught self-love when he said, “… with a boundless heart of loving kindness, hold yourself and all beings as your beloved children.”

Too often we are taught to be aware of all that is wrong with us, as if by focusing on our weaknesses, we will be motivated and successful in changing them.

In his book The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion, Christopher Germer says that we need to shift our mindset from curing ourselves to caring for ourselves.

What if, in order to save ourselves and the world, we must love ourselves for who we are, just as we are? The kind of self-love and self-compassion that I am talking about costs no money. It is not about lattes and fancy cars. It is about a deep-down, full-hearted knowing that you are loved, loveable, and worthy. Regardless. In spite of. Always.

Sufi mystic Jalal Ad-Din Rumi wrote, “You suppose you are the trouble, but you are the cure. You suppose that you are the lock on the door, but you are the key that opens it. It is too bad that you want to be someone else.” We learned the same thing in our story of the stone cutter this morning.

Jesus’ message was about love—radical, nonviolent, all-encompassing love; love that works for justice and compassion in the world. It has to begin with love for ourselves.

We are no strangers to the tombs of life. We know hardship, depression, addiction, and injustice. We know what it feels like to be falsely accused, misunderstood, and powerless in the face of evil, loss, and wrong doing. We know the tombs, and we must also know the resurrection:

the resurrection of hope after long periods of depression, laughter after what feels like an eternity of grief, openheartedness in a world full of defended, close-hearted people

the resurrections of our lives, season after season, day after day, time after time

the resurrection that says, “Yes!” to love, life, and purpose.

I invite you now to reach under the tissue boxes at the ends of your pews. There you will find little, round mirrors. Take one and pass the others down the aisle so that everyone has one. For those of you seated in the balcony, the ushers are there with mirrors to pass out to you. If you are in the lower level and do not have one, please raise your hand, and an usher will bring one to you.

AFTER EVERYONE HAS A MIRROR

I invite you to take your mirror up and look at your face. Look into your own eyes and remember Jan Richardson’s blessing that Sophia Lyons read to us this morning:

Beloved.

Comes like a mercy to the ear that has never heard it.

Comes like a river to the body that has never seen such grace.

Beloved.

Comes holy to the heart aching to be new.

Comes healing to the soul wanting to begin again.

Beloved.

Keep saying it, and though it may sound strange at first, watch how it becomes part of you, how it becomes you, as if you never could have known yourself anything else, as if you could ever have been other than this: Beloved.

There is a core of goodness, of light, and of love inside of you, inside of us all, that is always there. It is there regardless of what happens in our lives or how others perceive us or treat us. It is there beneath our shame, our fear, and our doubt. In our tombs and resurrections, it is there.

Self-love – practice it daily.

Amen and Blessed Be

Happy Easter. Happy Passover. Happy spring!

[1] https://www.ou.org/torah/machshava/tzarich-iyun/tzarich_iyun_the_meaning_of_pesach/