Varieties of Easter Experience

April 6, 1980
Lakeland
Easter

Varieties of Easter Experience

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 are more vital than new attire. When the time for the singing of birds is at hand, we look to brighter horizons, breathe fresher air.

The Christian churches resound today with joyous affirmation that “Christ is Risen.” Earlier this week, Jewish families celebrated 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 more persuaded that Easter and Passover are transformations of pre-historical fertility rites and celebrations 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.

In Florida, we are not as conscious of the change in seasons. Nevertheless, when we open our senses, Spring is here. The heavy, languorous fragrance of the citrus blossoms has permeated our air. This week, I saw my first snake of the season, and the weeds are reaching to the heavens. However, individually, we may appraise or perceive these Jewish and Christian rites of Spring, something happens in our blood, our bones, our hopes. We become newly aware of the fertility of the earth and the worth of the human venture.

Passover represents the new life of the Children of Israel as they traveled 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 the Hebrew slaves. Because there was no time for the dough to set, the families, hurrying to walk the freedom road, baked unleavened bread – thus that enduring symbol. The ancient nature festival had been uplifted to a memorial of freedom. But bitter herbs are on the Seder table to remind the celebrants of the humiliations and degradations of slavery. Every one who takes the Passover Seder seriously asks himself/herself, “What is freedom? What does freedom demand of me?” Passover is a measure of human goals and human persistence even when conditions are cruel.

For a long time I have believed there was not much new that could be said about Easter. My own attitude is a blend of paganism and humanism. Christians choose among several beliefs:

1)That Jesus Christ literally died on the cross and physically arose from the dead, thus fulfilling God’s plan of salvation.
2)That the Resurrection, while not literally true, is a convincing and inspiring Christian myth that conveys the deepest meanings of life and death.
3)That Christian Easter is a transformation of the ancient rites of Spring and [a] redefinition of Passover, creating a myth that was particularly Christian and yet at the same time, had universal appeal.
However, I came across a different emphasis in a book published recently, THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS, by Elaine Pagels. That insight is that the resurrection stories have a political base. [CJW note: Not so much a discovery as supportive evidence for what many have believed.]

It has been well-known for centuries that there were numerous gospel stories that were never accepted by the early Church leaders because these accounts did not cohere with the Christian salvation doctrine. Therefore, there had emerged somewhere about the middle of the second century CE an official and authorized New Testament Canon. Among the many accounts of Jesus’ life and death that were rejected were the so-called Gnostic gospels.

Gnosticism, to oversimplify, meant “to know” because of inner inspiration – one knew the Divine not by creed or holy book, but by inner revelation. The way to salvation was self-knowledge. Early Christian writers attacked Gnosticism as heresy. Because the Gnostic gospels were almost entirely suppressed and destroyed, most of the knowledge of Gnosticism came from attacks on it in official Christian literature. So knowledge of Gnostic gospels and literature was derived largely from those who attacked it.

But, some 30 years ago in the Egyptian desert, an Arab discovered an earthenware jar containing more than 50 papyrus texts, some dating from the beginnings of the Christian era. [CJW note: just as important as Dead Sea Scrolls] Translations and publication have been slow for several reasons.

The weight of these Nag Hammadi gospels (named after the place where they were found) is to reinforce the position that there were strikingly different perspectives and accounts in early Christianity.

There is fascination in some of the Gnostic gospels. They speak of the feminine as well as the masculine as the nature of God. They question the Christian fundamental notion that “original sin” marred the originally perfect creation.

But today, I want to refer briefly to what Dr. Pagels writes about the controversy over the resurrection of Jesus. The orthodox adopted a literal view of the resurrection even though, even then, there were other theories and explanations.

[CJW note: READ READ – P 6:-]

THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS is apparently being widely read. How much the questions posed will penetrate the rigidities of Christian orthodoxy is speculative. Probably not much.

Nevertheless, it is a current addition to the age-old library of the varieties of the Easter Experience.

Easter (the name is that of the Saxon goddess of Spring) [bears similarity] to Passover – behind the adornment of alleged miracles, [it] transforms the rites of Spring into ceremonies that honor that which is good, excellent, and hopeful 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 and the Passover Seder.

However their experience later hardened into doctrinal rigidities, 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 the community led by Jesus. They found 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 incarnate in a person there shines through the doctrinal maze that which is common to all great religions which have provided understanding and motivation: the human person must take responsibility for persons and human values. 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 or not one can feel uplifted by any literal believing of miracles at Passover or Easter does not alter the experience of being moved by these symbolic expressions of actual and potential human ability to resist oppression, to march to liberation, to overcome the fear of death and to persist in effort even when good women and men are crucified – as they are in every age and time. Courage is 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.

What is the human potential today? What are persons? What are we becoming? Are the signs to be read with hope or pessimism? Under a silver-flecked Asian night some 2300 years ago, a poet, now 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 relax in the words of the hymn we sing now and again by John Addison Symonds:

“These things shall be, a larger race
Than e’er the world hath known shall rise
With flame of freedom in their souls
And light of knowledge in their eyes.
...
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 in the early thirties he sensed the coming of fascism and wrote the ominous lines called “Second Coming”

[CJW note: READ]

Or, one can be neither as optimistic as Symonds nor as pessimistic as Yeats, but what James Farmer once called a popsimist.

The catalogue of human problems is far too threatening to permit unqualified optimism. But human accomplishments have been of sufficient quality and promise so that unadulterated pessimism would be equally naïve.

The human family is not far from the edge of disaster unless it gains political as well as scientific control over the devices and technology that have been created. The people of earth stand before a gate of opportunity to diminish substantially the sum of human misery in the world, if wisdom and courage can be applied to ways to provide and maintain peaceful relationships between nations – relationships which will comprehend the rights and aspirations of all members of the human family, and respect, cherish, and preserve our home, planet Earth. But we must walk through that gate of opportunity.

Many prophesy that the people of the world will destroy themselves by some foolish self-seeking aggression, mistaken retaliation, or stupid accident. This is entirely possible – given present trends, some use the word “probable.”

But if we are to be popsimists – the unforgettable condition is that the people of the earth live on bread. This is what wold-wide troubles and unrest are about. People who never had bread now know that there is bread in the world.

Just as vital, we do not live by bread alone, but on recognition of all people as having dignity, rights, and admission to the councils of the world. This, too, is what the deprived peoples are seeking, no matter what labels we plaster on them.

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 have-nots, the disinherited, we will lose our surplus and our place in the international pecking order. We are human; we not only fear the enveloping chaos, but also dread 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 the human venture? Is there hope? We may still believe that there is a road which avoids both heedless optimism and fatalistic pessimism. I believe enough persons will come to realize the dignity and worth of every individual. There is hope that in tune with the transformation of the symbols of Spring, Easter, Passover, the Celebration of Life, we can contribute to liberation even though the modern Exodus may demand measures, courage, and vision which will stretch our strength and will.

Some twenty years ago, a young, bright schoolteacher in the congregation I then served, gave me a poem which she had written at this season. I have read it often. Betty Berman wrote lines she called SUM OF THE PARTS:

“Thinking realistically, we know for sure
That (man and woman) product of the ages,
are nothing more than the result of words
of those they’ve heard, and of those they’ve read,
And what they’ve 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 formulas,
And countless combinations form our thoughts
That others have known for centuries.
See what is new to us
And learning what was once unknown,
We then become the whole and something more.