By Rev. Dr. Victor H. Carpenter

Interim Minister

First Parish Church of Dorchester

Remember Yogi Berra's quip, "It ain't over 'til it's over." It's true when you're talking baseball but when you're talking life a paraphrase is closer to reality. Sometimes in life, it ain't over when it's over!

I think of the film "Schindler's List." After it ended, I remember sitting there in silence as the credits rolled up on the screen. The film had ended, but it hadn't ended for me or for a number of people who were sitting there in the theatre.

"Schindler's List" is about a man whose life is changed. He is no saint; he's a war profiteer who is trying to make a quick German Mark during the Nazi occupation of Poland. He's using Jewish slave labor to manufacture military supplies. Then something happens. He sees a little Jewish girl moving through the destruction of the Lodz ghetto and bound for the death camps. Schindler can't continue to live as he has lived. What he does makes all the difference.

When the film was over, it wasn't over for me. I just sat there in silence. I can't speak for the others; maybe some sat in silence because they sensed the power of evil at work in the death camps and in the world at large; the same silence we experience at the sight of a child starving in Rwanda, or the victims of a suicide bomber in Israel. That is certainly one explanation, but it's not the only one. I can only speak for myself, but my own silence was of a wholly different order - it was a kind of tribute. My silence was a sign of respect for the power at work in Schindler's life which was more real, substantial, palpable than the forces of death which are graphically depicted in the film.

"Schindler's List" is a stunning testament to the truth that even in a situation where death seems all but absolute, there is a transformative power set loose in the world &emdash; and finished isn't finished.

I offer my experience of "Schindler's List" as a means of opening up the message of Easter which is fundamentally about an ending which is actually a beginning.

We should start at the beginning. Traditionally the Easter story begins with Mary Magdalene going to the tomb in which the body of Jesus had been placed following the crucifixion on the preceding Friday. Mary operates on the same assumption that we all commonly proceed from, namely that endings are final and we should get on about the business of giving the dead a decent and orderly burial. Mary is engaged in what Emily Dickinson called "the solemnest of industries; the sweeping up of the heart, and putting love away."

We can relate to Mary and her "grief work," we have been there. But suddenly it all gets very strange...the physical and the metaphysical get scrambled together; suddenly other-worldly beings appear; suddenly the dead Jesus appears to come to life.

What the gospel is trying to assert in this incredible story telling is that love is more powerful than death. It's a truth that is virtually impossible to explain by any rational step-by-step account and I don't think the gospel story succeeds in its attempt to convince us. But what is undeniable is that Mary's spirit is lifted by her personal experience of love's continuance. For her love is stronger than death. Sorrow is not the last word. Finished isn't final. And this discovery is not unique to Mary. In fact, it's universal. It belongs to all of us.

The profoundly valid truth of the Easter experience is that it dramatizes the process by which every human being achieves wholeness and enduring connectedness with the larger reality of life itself by way of the pathos that is the common lot of our humanity. Loss, pain, grief are hallmarks of the human condition. First we recognize and accept our own pain, then we link ourselves with the larger experience of the race, and then do we become stronger, more aware, more wholly alive.

I'm not suggesting that we seek out suffering for the good of our souls. No need to do that. We have all been wounded and we have all- advertently or inadvertently - wounded others.

Most of us spend our entire lives running away from the pain of that wounding and never experience the deepening of self-understanding - the kinship with others that comes from working through the suffering. We just want it to be over, done with, finished. But finished isn't final.

The Easter experience reminds us that there is more life, new and renewed life, to be achieved on the other side of the sounding, crushing, demoralizing, death-dealing experience.

The elements of the Easter story are unique, but the truth to which they point is deep in the collective human consciousness: that new life is awakened in those who have the courage to work through painful endings - and who then, go on to encourage others to accept and believe in life's transforming power.

This is the message that I take from the Easter story, however large our vision of reality, it is not large enough to contain all the truth and all the power of love working in the world.

At the beginning I cited "Schindler's List" as an example of this totally unexpected and unpredictable transforming power. Now I call another witness: Reynolds Price whose remarkable book, A Whole New Life, tells about his struggle with cancer.

In 1984, a tumor was discovered in his spinal cord. Surgery and radiation caused him loss of control of his lower body. The book should be required reading for doctors and for ministers because of its unflinching description of the feelings and frustrations that accompany such an experience.

Price discovers that he has been called to live "a whole new life." Striving to be the person he was before the cancer was a futile exercise. When he finally accepted the challenges after cancer, he discovered a new life.

He tells of experiences along the way. In one a vision of Jesus appears to him in the lake of Kinnereth, the Sea of Galilee.

"Jesus silently took up handfuls of water and poured them over my head and back till water ran down my puckered scar. Then he spoke once, "Your sins are forgiven." To which Price responded, "It's not my sins I'm worried about. Am I also cured?" Jesus turns to him and says, "That, too."

The cancer has not killed Price, but the experience of pain has been tremendous. He looks at his life: "a realistic estimate included paralysis, dependence on others, untouchable pain, and the absence of work." He thinks, "maybe I'd really been tricked by my "vision." Death would solve at least the other quandaries. So he cries out, "How much more do I take?" And he hears a voice that says one word, "More."

Where does he get the strength to endure" For Price the answer is in Jesus' presence. The transformative power that converts his ending into a new beginning. He writes: "no prior taste in my old life had meant as much as this new chance at a washed and clarified view of my fate."

I want to use the word "resurrection" to describe Price's experience but I hesitate. In such circumstances the idea of "resurrection," a word which could excite the imagination, has the reverse effect. We associate the word with the resuscitation of the dead rather than awakening the living. And Jesus' ministry and his life were dedicated to empowering others; awakening them; calling them to life. "Resurrection" should indicate his spirit and his ministry at work in our own lives.

Resurrection should be resurrected. It should be practiced! And I'm grateful to poet Wendell Berry for doing just that by the simple verbal trick of placing the word "practice" in front of it.

"Practice resurrection" a great phrase; a great challenge. The object is not to awaken the dead but to alert the living to the possibility of whole new lives calling for our endorsement and response. The phrase is a wake-up call.

I came across a story that makes the point:

Four travelers were at a conference. They stayed talking too long and were late in arriving at the local airport. Grabbing their bags from the taxi they raced through the terminal. One of them, in his haste, knocked against a table on which a local girl had some items for sale. Being late and not wanting to miss the flight they ran on, cleared security, arrived at the gate just before it closed. As they dashed across the tarmac to the waiting plane, one of them stopped, said farewell to his colleagues and returned to the terminal.

He went back to the table that had been jostled and discovered that the girl was blind. Some of the jars that she had been selling were broken. He helped her clean up as best he could and then put some money in her hand and said, "Here's $50 to cover the cost of whatever is broken." As he walked away, she called after him, "Are you Jesus?"

May her question be ours of people we meet and may people ask it of us.