HOME
SUNDAY SCHEDULE
NEWSLETTER
CALENDAR
DIRECTIONS
LEADERSHIP
PROGRAMS
OUR BELIEFS
SERMONS
ABOUT US
CONTACT US

The death of Kamato Hongo of Kagoshima, Japan last fall went unnoticed by most people except for the fact that she died at the age of 116 - at the time, the world's oldest person.

Hongo was born in April of 1887, married in 1914, had seven children, and lots of grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.

She died with her sense of humor still quite active, and on the day of her death, she performed a little hand dance peculiar to her native region in Japan.

But forget she's 116. Here's the interesting part: When she was 110, she had a hip operation, and after the operation, her sleeping habits began to change. She would sleep an entire day, which was then followed by being up for an entire day.

When she died, she was sleeping for two solid days, followed by two days of staying wide awake. For the five years before her death this was her custom.

Here's a lady who obviously had discovered her sleep number. What's our sleep number? Our Resurrection Sleep Number is 275 We'll get to that in a few minutes.

Sleep numbers. That's the gimmick one major manufacturer of mattresses uses to sell its sleeping systems - mattresses that promise to reduce pressure points, provide for proper spinal adjustment, let you sleep on a hard surface while your spouse sleeps on a soft one, and such a sleep system can be yours for an enormous amount of sleep number dollars.

Kamato Hongo had no trouble sleeping, and when she died, you could say she entered her final rest. She went to her eternal sleep.

In fact there is a long tradition in which sleep is a metaphor for death, and the sleep/awakening cycle a metaphor for resurrection. Shakespeare records a befuddled Hamlet pondering his existence in his famous "To be or not to be" soliloquy:

To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: aye, there the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.
(Hamlet, III.1.61-68)

The Unitarian poet William Cullen Bryant regarded death as something akin to lying down on the couch for a nap. Thanatopsis is his most famous poem, and it was written when he was 16 y4ears old. The closing lines go like this:

So live, that when thy summons comes to join/ The innumerable caravan, which moves/
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take/ His chamber in the silent halls of death,/
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,/ Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed/
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave/ Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch/ About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

Easter morning is a reminder that Jesus, too, died. His body took on the appearance of sleep. They laid him in a tomb, on a slab of rock. Who could sleep on something like that?

In fact, the story goes, there was no mattress, no tomb, no grave, with a sleep number so pleasant that could keep Jesus, the Son of God, asleep forever. "Vainly they watch his bed," writes the hymnist - who then provides the chorus: "Up from the grave he arose, with a mighty triumph o'er his foes."

It is important to say that there have been a lot of disputes over the centuries about the literalness or the physicality of the resurrection. You can see more information in your order of service about this.

But on Easter, we do celebrate the life and teachings of Jesus. An orthodox understanding of what we celebrate would include: Jesus' victory over Sin; over Satan, over Death.

A Universalist understanding is that we celebrate Jesus' commitment to his spiritual life. Remember the word sin means "estrangement" and Jesus was not estranged from his spiritual life.

We too are called to have a spiritual life; to commune with our higher power or our inmost self, we all have different names for this. But we know it is important to live out our values, and when we do live out our values, we are not estranged.

Furthermore, instead of a victory over "Satan" we affirm our journey toward victory over self-centeredness and unexamined capitulation to popular culture.

Jesus was offered various temptations by Satan- to test his Father's love, to perform silly miracles, and to grab power by ruling over the world. Jesus refused those things.

Similarly, we are tempted to test the patience of our loved ones, to focus on self-destructive things, and to exult in self-centeredness.

Instead of a physical victory over Death, we celebrate life. We say: "to live in hearts that love is not to die."

We can imagine a small picture of a loved one in our hand, and close our fingers around this, and we have a piece of this person who means so much to us. And as long as we remember them, they live.

When we love someone, even after they are gone, that someone is still alive, we resurrect them in our mind, and we learn from their example.

We celebrate the life and ministry of Jesus and we celebrate his presence in our lives,

We know Jesus was not asleep. He had no sleep number. He was an awakened, enlightened being. His life & ministry remind us to avoid indulgences in a sleep number and to get out of bed and encounter the world.

His ministry encourages us to climb off the mattresses of comfort and convenience.
His life tells us to throw off the bed sheets of apathy.
His example urges us to throw off the robes of discouragement and despair.

Let us instead go forth into the morning of a new day - of promise, of hope, of mission. For that is the calling of the Christ whose awakening from sleep we celebrate each year.

And that Resurrection Sleep Number?
It's 275 in your hymnal: Joyful is the Dark.

 Home   Sunday Schedule   Newsletter   Calendar   Directions   Leadership   Programs   Our Beliefs   Sermons   About Us   Contact Us