Easter, Passover - Measure of Man's Potential

March 26, 1967
Plainfield

Easter, Passover - Measure of Man's Potential

The human family has always responded to the changing seasons. Spring, when new shoots of growth break through the crusty earth, has been the occasion of renewed joy and hope - new attitudes as well as new attire. When the time for the singing birds is at hand again, we look to brighter horizons, breathe fresher air.

The Christian churches resound today with their joyous affirmation that "Christ is risen." A little later, Jewish families will celebrate Passover, a solemn, grateful celebration of liberation from bondage. Most of us here would make a distinction between historical fact and Christian myth, between historical fact and Hebrew legend. We would be inclined to believe that Easter and Passover are transformations of pre-historical rites of Spring. At more abstract, or more theologically interpretive levels, the transformation of the ancient rites of Spring associate special acts of God with liberation from bondage and with victory over death. But however we may individually hold these ceremonies, something happens in our blood, our bones, our hopes as we become newly aware of the fertility of the earth and the worth of the human venture.

After brief references to these transformations as measures of man's potential, I would like to speak briefly of the importance of assuring man today neither with naive optimism nor disheartened pessimism, but rather with realistic hope. Considerable dependence will be placed on poetic words as expressed variously by those of unlike vision.

Passover represents the new life of the Children of Israel as they took the hard road to freedom in the Exodus from Egypt. In the old legend, the hand of death struck the first-born of the Egyptians, passing over the homes of Hebrew slaves. Because there was no time for dough to set, the families hurrying to walk the freedom road baked unleavened bread - thus that enduring symbol. The ancient nature festival has been uplifted to a memorial for freedom. But bitter herbs are on the table to remind the celebrants of the humiliation and degradations of slavery. Each one who takes the Passover ceremony seriously asks himself, "What is freedom? What does freedom demand from me?" Passover is a measure of human goals and human persistence even when conditions are cruel.

Easter (the name is that of the Saxon goddess of Spring) similarly transforms the rites of Spring into ceremonies that honor that which is good and excellent in human effort. That millions believe literally that which is mythical about dead bodies reviving and supernatural stone-rolling should not entirely prevent us from an appreciation of the high human aspiration interlacing the stories of Christian Holy Week.

The followers of Jesus discovered that his death could not prevent them from bringing the message to all their world. The disciples discovered in their own experience that although the public execution of their Master was a fright-filled shock that scared them for awhile, courage could be recovered by faithfulness to the ideas and behavior which they had learned in brotherhood [in the] community led by Jesus. They found self-realization and high purpose for living not only in the example of Jesus but also in their own experience of sacrifice and suffering for that which they believed of greatest importance.

In the myth of God becoming man there shines through the doctrinal fog that which is common to all great religions which have provided understanding: Man must take responsibility for man. As Thornton Wilder wrote, “Every good and excellent thing stands moment by moment at the razor edge of danger and must be fought for.” (quoted, American Scholar, Spring 1967).

Whether one can feel uplifted by any literal believing of miracles at Passover or Easter does not alter the opportunity to be moved by the symbolic expressions of man’s potential ability to resist oppression, to march to liberation, to overcome the fear of death and persist in his efforts even after good men are crucified. Hope in the human potential for courage is to be derived from the ancient heritage of religion, no matter how one may evaluate the precise historical accuracy of literary and doctrinal embellishments added by faithful believers.

How shall we evaluate today the potential of the human enterprise? What is man? What is he becoming? Where is man? Where is he going? Are the signs to be read hopefully or pessimistically? Under a silver-flecked Asian night some 2300 years ago, a poet, not unknown, asked (8th Psalm):

“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,
The moon and the stars which thou hast ordained,
What is man, that thou art mindful of him?
And the son of man that thou visiteth him?”

One can be a rather naïve optimist and count on the words of the hymn we sing now and again, by John Addison Symonds (1880):

These things shall be – a loftier race
Than e’er the world hath known shall rise
With flames of freedom in their souls
And light of knowledge in their eyes.

They shall be so gentle, brave and strong
To spill no drop of blood, but dare
All that may plant man’s lordship firm
On earth, and fire, and sea, and air.

...

Nation with nation, land with land,
Unarmed shall live as comrades free;
In every heart and brain shall throb
The pulse of one fraternity.

New arts shall bloom of loftier mould,
And mightier music thrill the skies,
And every life shall be a song
When all the earth is paradise.

One can be a pessimist as was William Butler Yeats when he wrote those ominous lines he called “Second Coming”:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the second coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of the Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight; somewhere in sands of desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

One can be realistic, be neither pessimist nor optimist, but what James Farmer called once a “popsimist,” and lines called The Face of Man by Stanton A. Coblenz (NY Times, 5/8/61) may suggest this mood:

“The face of man, while old perspectives change
From ox-trails to the clanging motor street,
Has scarcely altered in a minor range
Since plunderers burned the halls of fabled Crete.
The head of Khafra, fixed in fadeless stone,
The Hermes of divine Praxiteles,
Are such as even you and I have known,
Unravaged by the raging centuries.

“And in the mind whose movements mold the face,
Though forms of thought rotate like women’s styles,
No change is clear since men of Helen’s race
Roared down as pirates on Aegean isles.
Meanwhile quicksilver science domineers
A world new hours transform like ancient years.”

The catalogue of man-made problems is far too threatening to permit the slightest measure of unqualified optimism. But the accomplishments of man are of sufficient quality and promise so that unadulterated pessimism would be as disassociated from reality as naiveté.

Man stands on the brink of disaster unless he gains political as well as scientific control over the devices he has made. Man stands before the gate of unparalleled opportunity to radically diminish the sum of human misery in the world, if wisdom and courage can be brought to bear on ways to provide and maintain such relationships between men and nations as will recognize the rights and aspirations of all members of the human family.

Many people prophecy that the people of the world will destroy themselves by some stupid aggression, mistaken retaliation or silly accident. This is entirely possible – given present trends, one can begin to use the word, “probable.”

Also we live in a world where, increasingly, transactions occur in larger dimensions. Where once we shopped the corner grocery store, now we tour the supermarket – seldom do we know the clerk; never do we meet the owner. We meet national political candidates through an electronic tube, not a street parade. We may be an IBM punch card at our job as well as on the Social Security records. This increasing largeness will continue and expand.

But a portion of my hope, personally, is that we can build new ways of person-to-person encounters and meetings. The small-group [discussion] in areas of religious understanding, political affairs, educational issues, recreational enjoyments – these I believe are increasingly vital to both the effective expression of conviction and the healthy survival of our personal selves.

If we are to be popsimists – we must never forget that man lives on bread. This is what the world-wide revolutions are all about. People who never had bread now know there is bread in the world. Not for long will they tolerate the starvation of their children.

Just as vital, man does not live on bread alone, but on recognition of his dignity, acknowledgment of his human rights and admission to the councils of the world. This too is what the revolutionary peoples are seeking.

The two goals of bread and spirit will not be easily achieved. We who have bread will have to overcome our anxiety that in helping the underprivileged we will lose our surplus and our place in the pecking order. We are human; we not only fear the enveloping chaos, but also we fear a loss of our own material goods. Like the young man Jesus confronted, we too might turn sadly away if we were advised to yield our possessions for a more abundant life.

What is man? We may still believe there is a road which avoids both naïve optimism and fatalistic pessimism. Enough people will come realize the dignity and worth of every individual – that, in tune with the transformed symbols of Spring, Easter, and Passover, we can achieve liberation even though the modern Exodus may demand courage and vision which will stretch fully our strength and will; we can overcome fear of death if the goals of the way of freedom, fellowship, and human dignity convince our minds and capture our hearts.

[Editor’s note: the following introductory lines are crossed out: “I have found renewed strength in two affirmations with which I shall conclude. First, some lines written by a young teacher a few years ago, which I prize:”]

Sum of the Parts (Bette Berman)

“Thinking realistically, we know for sure
That Man, the product of the ages, Man
is nothing more than the result of words
of those he’s heard, of those he’s read,
And what he’s seen:
No mental chastity has given birth
To intellectual discoveries.
Yet we should not despair,
For from our wealthy heritage
The elements resolve perpetually
Into unending formulae,
And countless combinations form our thoughts
That other men have known for centuries,

Seeing what is new to us
And learning what was once unknown,
We then become the whole and something more.”

And finally, lines which so artistically and powerfully fit my attitude toward life and the future that for me, they are the superbly pertinent message for an occasion when the rites of Spring are transformed by the American rural experience to authentic appraisal and authentic hope for all that we humans are and can be – “Birches” by Robert Frost:

“When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter, darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust –
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for so long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows –
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father’s trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And no so carrying the trees away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim and even more above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So I was once myself a swinger of birches.
And I so dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the trees could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.