March 23, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Easter Day

Once someone approached a disciple of the Muslim mystic Naqshband said, “Tell me why your Master conceals his miracles. I have personally collected data that shows beyond doubt that he has healed and helped people by the power of his prayers. Why does he conceal this?”

“I know exactly what you are talking about,” said the disciple, “for I have observed these things myself. And I think I can give you the answer. First, the Master recoils from being the centre of attention. And secondly, he is convinced that once people develop an interest in the miraculous, they have no desire to learn anything of spiritual value.”

I have a strong suspicion that those who see Easter primarily as a paranormal miracle miss out on its spiritual truth.

It’s like the joke of when God and St Peter teed off at the local course. God went first, giving a mighty swipe and slicing the ball off into the rough. Just as the ball was about to hit the ground, a rabbit darted out of a bush, picked it up in his mouth, and ran with it down the fairway. Suddenly a hawk swooped down, picked up the rabbit, flew with it over the green, and then dropped it. The rabbit landed on the green, the ball popped out of its mouth, and rolled into the hole.

St Peter turned to God in annoyance and said, “Come on now! Do you want to play golf or do you want to fool around?”

And I would say, does the Church want to continually fool around portraying the central message of Easter as a miraculous revivification of a dead man with transcendent saving implications, or does it want to play the game of real life where people hurt and seek hope, and where the spiritual is daily bread not heavenly banquets?

Indeed I find the annual fixation on a supposed suspension in 33 BCE of the realities of life and death to be dismissive and derogatory of the passion and commitment of many men and women, including Jesus, who have railed against oppression, political or religious, and have paid for that with their bodies. I believe in a real Jesus, a real man, who really loved, who really suffered, and who really died. It is because he was real that he has meaning for my life.

The resurrection of Jesus is a symbolic way of talking about the power of hope to persevere, undefeated, despite all that death can throw against it. It is a symbolic way of talking about the power of love overcoming the forces of hate. Resurrection is found, not in a busted Jerusalem grave, nor in a dead man walking, but in the lives of ordinary people.

People like Paul of Tarsus. Paul was a guy who found no conflict between his ancestral faith and killing some theological deviants called Christians. He was a first century equivalent of George Bush – going to church and approving of water-boarding.

Then Paul had a mystical experience of God. Not unlike how people today have experiences of God. The beyond impacts on the now, and one feels humbled, awed, and called. It’s an experience that knocks us off the horse, the course, we’ve been pursuing. Then slowly, in the company of forgiving deviants, those Christians, Paul found a convergence between that experience and the late Jesus of Nazareth. The intersection was at his heart. Paul’s heart came back from the dead. Paul was resurrected.

Then there was Peter. Mr Rock who cracked. In fact the whole rock thing was a bit of a joke. Peter regularly and repeatedly was the disciple who didn’t get it – the dumb fisherman. He didn’t understand why Jesus had to be so confrontational. He didn’t understand the first being last thing. He certainly didn’t understand the non-violent thing. If you are going to fight then brawny guys like him are handy to have around. He’d be useful.

And that’s really the nub of the matter. A big dumb Galilean fisherman who regularly gets his words and feelings tangled up isn’t all that useful to a non-violent egalitarian revolutionary movement. Or so he thought. Peter couldn’t leave his role, his identity premised on physical strength behind. It had him hooked.

Then there was the rooster. Why on earth should a rooster crow in the late evening? There’s nothing like a hammering of guilt to crack you up. Mr Rock wasn’t exactly Mr Solid Support. He, like the other guys had, turned and ran.

The resurrection of Peter happened slowly and painfully. He was with the others, fearful, when they began to feel the power of hope and love return. It was recorded in dream/apparition language – that power speaking to their fears, breathing Jesus’ mauri into them, overcoming their self-doubts, and restoring the table fellowship they had had with each other. It was also the language of commission, calling them all to live out the Jesus message.

To cut a long story short Peter found that he was useful. His job, his size, and his physical strength weren’t the circumference of his identity. In time he would courageously speak, lead, and encourage the post-Easter Jesus movement. His inability to understand Jesus, his betrayal, and guilt, gave him huge empathy and humility as a leader. He was of use. He just had to be resurrected.

Then there was Mary – Mary who didn’t turn and run; Mary who stayed true to the end; Mary who loved Jesus, and was loved in return. She had some issues – not the sex/prostitute thing that a pope and others fantasized about – but mental ill health. Seven demons was first century code for seriously loopy. Yet with Jesus she found her true self. She came to trust, love and forgive herself. In his company she found her life-force, her power.

The crucifixion almost killed her. For she saw her power intimately connected with Jesus’ power. She couldn’t imagine life without him. Once that connection was broken she surmised her health, and heart, would die. It is no surprise to find her in our reading today in the Jerusalem graveyard.

Every resurrection/restoration encounter we have will be unique. The numinous comes to us, touches us, in our individuality. As Paul persecuted so he experienced salvation by being nurtured by those he persecuted. As Peter denied three times so he heard a resurrection call three times. In a similar way Mary who had an intimacy with Jesus in his life, experiences resurrection in an intimate encounter. Using the dream/apparition style the text portrays an exchange of her being called by name. Mary is told not to hold on to the past, but to walk in her own power into the future. Her heart can stand alone and not falter. The demons of disease, despair and doubt are gone if she doesn’t let others define or demean her.

A number of religious traditions use the imagery of a container and its contents. The container of the Easter message is the biblical and extra-biblical appearance stories, and the theological language used to express the fact that Jesus followers experienced his life living on in their midst after Golgotha. The compilers of the New Testament saw no problem in putting contradictory post-Easter appearance accounts side by side in the Bible. They didn’t expect readers to take them literally. Likewise this mythical, metaphorical language is found in our favourite Easter hymns. This language is not meant to be taken literally. After all the Easter stories and language were merely the containers of truth, not the truth itself.

The content of the Easter message is the individual and corporate experience of spiritual transformation. These are the individual stories of moving, like Paul, from being a hard man to being a heart man; from being locked in a role and identity, like Peter, and then finding a new one; from being judged and discarded by society, like Mary, to being loved and learning to stand tall. Empowered individuals undergirded the movement for social and spiritual change that was the early Church. That movement was the ‘resurrected body’ of Jesus. This was and is the truth of Easter.

When talking about containers and contents the religious masters would point out our tendency to confuse the two. Believing in the truth of Easter has been erroneously assumed to mean believing in the literal reappearance of Jesus in a bodily form after his death. That is the 1st century metaphorical container. Rather the truth, the content, of Easter is the lived experienced of a changed heart, and a changed community. It is the experience of hope, and the power of that hope to persevere.

The truth of Easter is not verifying and believing events in the past, but being saturated in love and soaking others. The truth of Easter is not allegiance to the structure, doctrines, and decisions of the Church, but hearing the music of joy and hope in your soul and joining the chorus. The truth of Easter is not Jesus rising from the dead but whether we will arise and overthrow the powers of hatred and despair. The truth of Easter is not what someone else did or does, but whether we will feel, join, and act to bring the transformative love called God into our lives, community, nation and world.