April 3, 2010

Glynn Cardy & Clay Nelson

Easter Vigil

Before illness struck, Glynn was scheduled to appear on the television show Close Up last night. To help him prepare, the producer sent him a series of questions that might be asked. It was Glynn’s intention to share his answers with you tonight, so I will share them for him. The questions and answers have the feel of a catechism. The catechism was the means of teaching the doctrines of the church to those seeking to be baptized since the earliest days of the church. They have traditionally been in a question-answer format that those who were about to be baptized or later confirmed were expected to memorize. And memorize they did because it was not uncommon for the bishop to quiz them before the congregation at the Vigil. For this night has been the traditional time to welcome and baptize our newest members. It is why we renewed our baptismal vows on this night even though we were also baptizing Nessie.

What is different about Glynn’s catechism is that it is a summary of his beliefs as based on his life-long journey in the faith. While it is important to be familiar with what the church has taught, memorizing them will not change your life. They are statements of traditional belief. Glynn’s answers are his personal beliefs. While important, having beliefs is not the same as having faith. What you believe or think is important only in so far as they help us live a life that reflects how Jesus lived his life. It is our faith that marks us as Christians, not our beliefs. So here is Glynn’s catechism:

Why do you believe in God?

I have experienced a mystical life-affirming power that I would call ‘Divine Love’. This touches my soul. It encourages the best in me. It waters the seedlings of compassion within. It seeks to build connections of mutuality with fellow humans and the natural environment. I know and am known by this love.

Christians experience God in a variety of ways. Some people hear a small inner voice. A few see visions or an ill-defined presence. Some feel the mystery and wonder of the universe somehow reaching out and touching them in a very personal way. Most experience God as a power of love, not dissimilar to what Jesus talked about and seemed to experience.

Most Christians don’t believe in the Divine because they’ve logically thought through the great philosophical and scientific questions of the age and concluded God exists. Rather they’ve experienced something mystical first before delving into rational thought. Not that rational thought is anathema to faith. On the contrary our faith seeks to resonate with our context, and mix with our meanings and understandings.

What does Easter mean?

Easter is the central Christian festival for celebrating the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. In particular it remembers and in many places re-enacts the last days of Jesus’ life and how his followers found new hope and power after his death.

Easter was originally a pagan festival and is named after the goddess of spring. In the Northern Hemisphere it marks the transition from the barrenness of winter into the fertility of spring. All the beautiful wild flowers come out to play.

Christians thought this festival was a great way of celebrating their experiences of life triumphing over despair, liberty over oppression, and love over fear. Relationships of life, liberty, and love are the means and the ends of Christian discipleship.

At their best the add-ons to Easter pick up these themes. Chocolate, a luxury best consumed infrequently and in moderation, is symbolic of celebration. In a number of Christian communities Easter is celebrated with feasting, including all sorts of delicacies. Bunny rabbits as well as eggs are symbols of fertility, the prevalence and power of new life. Bright painted eggs are a wonderful tradition in Orthodox countries.

Did Jesus rise from the dead?

There is a wide range of beliefs within the Christianity community. None of us were there. Some will read the texts and believe that a literal flesh-and-blood Jesus was reanimated from the grave. Others will conclude that the texts are mythic rather than historical in nature, addressing issues of importance for the early Christian community. Still others will say that a number of his disciples, probably over a period of years, had mystical experiences of an apparition-like nature as they sought to come to terms with his death. Those experiences were empowering for them.

For some Christians the resurrection is important in proving that Jesus is divine and paving the way for believers to go to heaven. Other Christians see the resurrection, symbolically or literally, as God vindicating the life and ministry of Jesus – as Jesus now being in God, as God was in Jesus. Still others see the resurrection as a metaphor for the triumph of love and freedom over fear and oppression.

What do you believe?

I believe that Jesus was fully human, and in the fullness and depth of his humanity was his divinity. For me his divinity is not reliant on a supernatural miracle.

If there is any historicity in the post-resurrection appearance accounts then it seems many experienced a temporal post-death presence. This presence was both Jesus and not Jesus, both real and ghostly. St Paul, a long time after the Gospel of Luke’s ascension, equates his experience on the Damascus Road as similar to the experiences of Peter and the other disciples. The picture is not consistent. These accounts are consistent though with other religious mystical and grief experiences.

In focusing on ‘what happened to Jesus’ however we can lose sight of the bigger story, namely what happened to his followers. Through slowly coming together, learning to trust each other despite their weaknesses, being sustained by the memory of Jesus presence – particularly as they ate together, they experienced the Spirit of God moving through and among them, igniting their desire to live out the Jesus vision.

There’s a well-known hymn that has the line ‘He arose in silence’ – a reference also to the imperceptibility of that resurrection event. Its followed though by the resurrection truth in the next line: ‘for the Love [of Jesus] to go on we must make it our song, you and I be the singers.’

What was the point of your Easter billboard?

One of the great traditions of Easter was cracking jokes. Our billboard has a cartoon of Jesus on the cross saying, ‘Well this sucks. I wonder if they’ll remember anything I say…’ Humour can point to both the reality of pain and the will to overcome it with life-affirming laughter. 

The words of the cartoon also remind us that Easter is about more than a rugged cross, a supernatural miracle, or a chocolate bunny. It’s a time to reflect on all the words and actions of Jesus, how he disrupted his world through self-giving love, and how we might do likewise.

The billboard we didn’t put up was one of Jesus crucified with his hands extended in a Y formation and three guys beneath the cross making formations of the letters M, C, and A.

So it’s Happy Easter from all the village people and me.