Fumble in the endzone

I made it through the Easter Triduum, the powerful sequence of services from Maundy Thursday through Good Friday to last night's Great Vigil of Easter. All the liturgical stuff was in place. But sadly, the spirit is willing but the flesh is week. And so last night's sermon nearly spoiled everything. Instead of awe and joy I felt indignation. One of our priest associates, call him Father T, is a good liberal Protestant in his leanings. As chaplain of a high school with students of many religious backgrounds, he's intuitively ecumenical. But not on Easter, not this way!

What he did was retell the gospel story of the women at the tomb, weaving in a poem:

The breeze at dawn
Has secrets to tell you
Don't go back to sleep
You must ask
For what you really want
Don't go back to sleep
People are going back and forth
Across the doorsill
Where the two worlds touch
The door is round and open
Do not go back to sleep

It's a nice enough poem, and not inappropriate to Easter morn, I suppose, and links up to the wind - breath - spirit which Ezekiel is told to prophesy to in the reading on the Valley of Dry Bones.

What am I saying? It's completely out of place! It's by Rumi, the great Sufi mystic. As a Sufi, he will have revered Jesus, but won't have believed in the resurrection. Why should he? But then, Father T seemed to be saying, we needn't either. Who needs the son and the spirit when we've got the Sun and the Breeze? It's a new day, and it's really all about you. Its meaning lies in "what you really want"! Don't press the snooze button! Puke. Can't we be Christian just this once?

If giving an ecumenical sermon for the Great Vigil of Easter, why not bring in the Jataka Tales, the stories of self-sacrifice of the prior lives of Gautama the Buddha? Although there are awkwardly many of them - six hundred! - at least these are stories of death and rebirth!