The Celebration of Life

April 14, 1963
Rochester

At Easter in our Christian cultures one hears interminable citations of an empty tomb and a risen savior, but if the season is to have authentic meaning for those of us [who view the] resurrection as a theological proposition [rather than] a historical fact, we should make a clear distinction: Easter is not the worship of a dead body, magically restored to animation. Easter is the celebration of life.

In spite of later Christian emphases, the moral inspiration is a more original observance by early followers of Jesus than joy at a material resurrection. The earliest account of the alleged resurrection of Jesus is the fifteenth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. Pal wrote 25 or 30 years before the accounts in the earliest versions of the gospels of Matthew and Luke, and possibly fifty to seventy-five years before the resurrection stories in Mark and John.

Paul made a clear claim that what occurred after the crucifixion was the powerful impact of a great spirit on a group that had been despairing and discouraged. Paul asserted that Jesus appeared to Peter and to the twelve and many others, spiritually. “We are raised spiritual bodies.” Nowhere did Paul claim that a body, dead three days, became animate again. We may be fairly sure that Paul’s religious experience on the Damascus road was one which was inward and subjective. Paul’s statement that the disciples’ experience was like his is a refutation of the idea of a physical, objective restoration of tissues, glands and organic functions.

Not all of Paul’s language has meaning for us. Most certainly most of us would not agree with Paul’s theology. On the other hand, we can make an effort to get back of Paul’s account of his experiences; get back of Christian doctrinal interpretations of the experience of the disciples; and try to discover the moral reality which has endured, despite the cloak of theological elaborations which has been thrown about in the original dramatic events in Jerusalem in that first Holy Week. We will find that it is the celebration of life.

When Jesus was raised, tried and executed, the disciples fled. Peter faltering under pressure denied that he had ever known the majestic man whom he had on a previous occasion called the Messiah.

Execution seems to be a final thing. The affirmation that God would mark even the fall of a sparrow seemed to be mocked by the reality of Jesus’ ignominious fate.

Little wonder then that the world has put a supernatural interpretation on the re-gathering of the disciples. Little wonder that people have felt that cowardly Peter could have been transferred into a spiritual “rock” only by miraculous happenings. When their nerve was restored, the vitality of the early Christians after Jesus’ death was a marvelous thing. They endured persecution; they testified with contagious enthusiasm to the power that Jesus’ way would bring. One of the great mistakes of traditional Christianity at Easter has been to put the religious emphasis on what didn’t happen – the coming alive of a dead body. The proven event – the evidence that life may be celebrated even when everything goes awry – was when a group of non-descript, halfhearted followers of a man they didn’t understand became morally re-born – were brought back from lethargic defeatism; and became courageous pioneers bringing the spirit of Jesus to a world that needed life and needed it more abundantly.

In Paul’s second letter to the people of Corinth, (II 3/6), he tells that “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” To attempt to reconcile the theology of a time when science was not really begun and little was known generally about emotions, is to hold to the “letter” which killeth. But we can attempt to find the spirit which giveth the life that we celebrate today.

Character is spirit. Character can give life and vitality. One can try endlessly to find the materialistic reason why, e.g., Dorothea Dix, weak, sickly and dispirited became transformed by the influence of another spiritual pioneer, William Ellery Channing. Because of that transformation she brought new life and new hope to thousands, literally. Teaching a Sunday-school in a Cambridge, Mass. prison, she became aware of the savage conditions which not only prisoners, but also paupers and the mentally ill had to endure. She traveled; she studies; she came to a deep-seated conviction that within the most violent or disturbed person there was a divine spark. Convinced that this spirit giveth life, she persuaded legislatures in many states to build hospitals and provide care for the mentally ill. Although physically weak, she traveled endlessly amid rough and uncomfortable conditions. She went to Europe, where by the power of her enthusiasm, her dedication and her spirit she was able to win reforms on the Continent. Her body was so frail that she had been expected to die in girlhood; but the spirit gave her such life that not until she was eighty-five did that weary body finally give up. But her spirit never has – wherever there is a concern for the mentally ill – for the sick in mind and heart – wherever there is a prison reform movement that seeks to make men whole, not to make them beasts – there the spirit of Dorothea Dix is giving life and hope.

Spirit is not material. You can’t wrap that character of Dorothea Dix in a package and mail it to your cousin. You can’t do that with the spirit of Jesus either. Like Schweitzer, Dorothea Dix had a reverence for life and all that life could mean when moral distinctions were refined and human values made superior to institutional decay and greed. Easter is a Christian celebration of life when Jesus is seen in such light of leadership which makes moral distinctions important and human values supreme. G.K. Chesterton once said, “The great paradox of all spiritual things is that the inside is always larger than the outside.”

Whatever else may be “spiritual” character certainly is. Character can also be of enormous specific and material assistance. To confirm this you do not need to leap backwards nineteen hundred years. The most dramatic illustration this year was the saga of Florence Klaben and Ralph Flores. The girl was Jewish; the man was Mormon – they united to survive in the wilderness 49 days in sub-zero temperatures, as low as 40 below; 40 of those days were without food; he was injured in the plane crash; she suffered a broken arm and frostbitten toes. After a few days, they could have given up and died. But they persisted; they tried new ways – a crude slingshot and a rude spear failed to get a rabbit, but the SOS painfully tramped out on the snowy hill finally brought rescue.

Character is spirit and the spirit giveth life. Florence Klaben’s words, spoken as she was carried into [the] hospital at Watson Lake are a new hymn to the celebration of life: “I’m alive and the world is my home.” (see LIFE accounts).

They illustrated anew what is an ancient verity: never underestimate character. Character is the lodestone of significant living, whether or not there is any life beyond this one. To maintain that the supreme importance of Jesus to history is that, by his alleged resurrection he demonstrated immortal life, and thus we can feel sure of ultimate rewards or punishments beyond this life, is to demean his contribution to human affairs. The insistence on preserving a resurrection belief because it guarantees life beyond this one is self-centered, even selfish – not to mention unreasonable. It makes any claim of disinterested love for Jesus and his way of life open to suspicion. Shakespeare (Antony and Cleopatra): “There’s beggary in the love that can be reckoned.”

To put a price on character, even a reward of immortal life, is to cheapen it. Character in our relations, one with another, does not presume any guarantee of immortal life. Character does act upon the assumption that within the human spirit there is a spark of the divine; and that by good-will in relationships between people, that divine spark can be made to glow warmly in the here-and-now.

The great abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison was honored at a banquet in London by the English people. Speaking at this banquet, John Stuart Mill, the noted philosopher, said to Garrison, “If you aim at something noble and succeed in it, you will generally find that you have succeeded not in that alone, but that a hundred other good things which you have never dreamed of will be accomplished by the way.” “In his fight for the Negro, Garrison had won a victory for the freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly, had purified the church and struck a telling blow for women’s rights. Now he learned that he had likewise helped the British workingmen in their struggle for civil rights.”

Garrison served as he did, not because of any thought he would be rewarded either in this life or any other. He was move by man’s inhumanity to man; with a display of Christlike character, he fought for his brother man. He was celebrating life, for such a contribution to human living is to be revered entirely aside from the metaphysical questions of the continuance of life after the death of the body.

Last, character is built by sacrifice. Character grows when the motive to enhance only one’s self is forgotten. Jesus said that to save your life you must lose it. This is not the logical absurdity that may seem to be implied. Jesus died on the cross in a sacrifice to be admired, not because it was supernatural, but because it was not. He was loyal to a human impulse that arose out of a deep concern for truth, righteousness and loyalty to his goals. All over the world people are gathered this way with the name of Jesus on their lips. His has become the greatest name. But he is one of a great company for brave pioneers of the human spirit that have always sacrificed themselves for the good of others.

Sacrifice does not solely belong to legends or traditions haloed by the mists of antiquity. It happens in our times too. Meyer Levin, newspaperman and novelist wrote of an instance he discovered in the land where Jesus lived. Ten years before the new country of Israel had achieved its independence, Levin had visited Palestine where Jews who had returned to Zion were slaving long hours and wrestling with painful and laborious obstacles so that the new land could be a homeland for the poor, oppressed hungry Jewish refugees who would come from many lands. In that struggle, Levin met Yehuda. Yehuda was a talented musician. He had shown such hints of genius, that a visiting maestro offered him the chance to go abroad for study. Yehuda refused. Dearly as he wanted to blow into flame the spark of musical genius which flashed within him, he believed that the Jewish homeland needed his muscles more than the European world needed his music. The newspaperman left Palestine about that time. Among his fine memories was Yehuda’s willingness to sacrifice his musical career in order to do his part to help his people.

Ten years later Meyer Levin again visited Palestine. Yehuda was still spending his effort to make the Jewish homeland – which had become the nation of Israel. But Yehuda was no longer digging drainage ditches for irrigation. He was directing a symphony orchestra; he was teaching choirs in a half-a-dozen settlements; he was composing music for Israeli music festivals. In the time that Levin had been away, Levin had written a novel about Yehuda and had been unable to find a fictional solution other than that a musical genius had sacrificed the glorious personal opportunity to create in order to slog in the mud of a new country. But the writer found that sometimes life provides the answers that the novelist cannot perceive. The community had recognized Yehuda’s talent; had taken him away from the shovel and sent him to Europe to study music. On his return he had been assigned to cultural tasks to foster and develop the beauty of music in a new community. He who would save his life must lose it – not in needless self-destruction, but lose it in service of others.

Only in that way can true character build a structure within ourselves and within our communities and nations that will elicit a higher type of national and individual consciousness, coming nearer to the divine we see in Jesus and in other great souls.

After all the resurrection hymns are sung; after all the legend and traditions recited; after all the unessentials are sloughed off the triumphant story of the Easter victory, we will find that we see in magnificent glowing human colors the story of human character that saw not only the highest – but also fulfilled the great demands that life makes upon all those who see life as it is – and also grasp the great dream that can become real- of what life, love and character can be -

And that is why all the great days of the
human adventure are days for the
Celebration of life.