The Religions Of Easter

April 11, 1982
Lakeland
Easter

Easter is the celebration of re-birth. The spring festivals of ancient times were joyous because the good earth again sprouted with grain, green, buds and blossoms – life would survive for humankind whose sustenance depended on that resurrection of vegetation!

Christians transformed the ancient rites of Spring, Passover (Pesach) to a particular theological scheme of salvation, based upon the life and death of Jesus, blending myth and legend into a faith that provides consolation and hope to hundreds of millions since the early days of the Christian church.

If one believes the Christian orthodox theological propositions, Jesus was God and that he came to life and left the tomb after being dead from Friday afternoon until Sunday morning. This “miracle” of resurrection proved to the believer that Jesus had paid the debt of original sin which every person inevitably inherited but which no human could pay.

The Jewish Passover, a different transformation of the rites of Spring, added dimensions of human freedom and human dignity. They celebrated the Exodus from slavery in Egypt, the perils and privations of years of wandering until the promised land was achieved.

Many of the old religions of the ancient Asian and Mediterranean worlds have claimed their savior was killed and resurrected from his burying place. Attis, Adonis, Osiris, are but three of many examples.

Take the Greek myth of Prometheus, who was punished by the Gods for bringing fire to the human family. The usual myth tells that Prometheus was bound to a rock while vultures gnawed at his living body. But there is a more ancient story of Prometheus, which tells how he was nailed to an upright beam of timber. This older story tells that “He was said to be an immortal god, a friend of the human race who did not shrink even from sacrificing himself for their salvation.” [Editor’s note: quote appears to come, from Chambers’ Encyclopedia Art, Prometheus, quoted in BIBLE MYTHS, Thomas William Doane, p. 192]. He is said to have been nailed up with arms extended on Mt. Caucasus near the Caspian Sea. Also it was said that Prometheus’ crucifixion, burial, and resurrection was acted in pantomime in Athens, 500 years before the time of Jesus.

Consider Baldur The Good, most beloved of ancient Norse mythology. Due to the plotting of Loki the evil god, Baldur is slain by an arrow made of mistletoe. He lies dead for 40 days, but at the end of that period he awakens and rules again. He was called the “Son of Man.” An ancient prophecy says, “The fields unsown shall yield their increase. All sorrows will be healed. Baldur will come back.”

Of the famous physician Aesculapius, the Roman poet Ovid wrote:

“Hail great Physician of the world!
All Hail!
Hail, mighty infant! Who in years
to come
Shall heal the nations and
defraud the tomb.
Thy daring art shall animate
the dead
And draw the thunder on thy
guilty head.
Then shalt thou die; but
from thy dark abode
Shall rise victorious and be
twice a God.”

There are numerous other examples of dying-rising savior gods of ancient times. Bacob [?] and Quetzalcoatl of the ancient Mayan/Toltec pre-Columbian religions of Central America; Mithra, the Persian savior, Samhain of the ancient Celtic religion, Marduk of the Phoenicians.

There are many religions of Easter. All seem linked to the rebirth of vegetation and the vernal equinox when the light of the sun increases in duration and warmth. Peoples, for longer centuries than history knows, have feasted, rejoiced, and hoped in the rebirth of growing things – an answer to death.

The many religions of Easter personalize the never-ending yearning of the human spirit that there will be a rebirth of that which will sustain us. I am one of those who is unable to personalize re-birth in the form of a particular dying-rising savior god. But there can be a re-birth of spirit that may save the world’s people from extinction.

The thread of such extinction is authentic. Will the Falkland Islands be for this decade what the assassination at Sarajevo was for World War I? Will the lovely Caribbean Islands and the steaming jungles of Central America be the womb of the final world war? I reflect now and then on William Butler Yeats’ “Second Coming.” Most of you know it, but I remind you of it because the poetic insight seems more fearsome than when he wrote in 1933:

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 Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
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
Wind 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 towards Bethlehem to be born?

Easter (the many religions) symbolizes a triumph of the human spirit over tragic defeat. But it is nothing short of a fantasy to believe that Easter celebrations are going to save the world. Survival depends on the intelligent enactment of the principle of the oneness of the human family. The peoples of the world, with reason, fear nuclear destruction [in] world that refuses to accept the brotherhood / sisterhood of the entire human family.

The notorious Madam Polly Adler once said bitterly, “when society doesn’t understand a problem, it conveniently forgets all it preaches about the brotherhood of man.” The powerful of the world are always tempted to sacrifice morality for power.

Max Lerner called attention to the American myth of John Henry, the hero of unsurpassed strength. Yet John Henry broke his heart when he competed with the pile-driving steam hammer. This is an allegory warning us that we will permit big technology to dehumanize us at great peril. Once again the long lines of jobless people are reminding us that there are times when the machines master us. The idle lathes, the deserted assembly lines and the growing fear demonstrates our failure to make full use of the tools we have made.

The triumph of fair human relationships is more vital than the conquest of outer space.

There is a painting by a modern artist, the late Reginald Marsh, which portrays in sensuous colors a massive giant, dressed in rich robes, sitting on an imposing throne. His blank, callous face discloses not a spark of mercy or goodness. One rough hand is twisting the hair of a lifeless, prostituted womanhood; under the giant’s feet is trampled the body of a broken young man. In the lap of the giant there are bags of gold. This is Mammon. On his head is what first appears to be a winged, golden cap. Yet on closer study we see that this cap is a pair of donkey’s ears.

In creative imagery, the artist showed that in spite of worldly treasures and power that Mammon has acquired, he is just a fool. The potential abundance of life has been thrown away for the lifeless acquisition of gold and the crushed bodies of persons sacrificed for power and wealth.

Is that the end? A re-birth of hope may still be affirmed. There is a growing intensity of conviction that the nations must turn away from the path to nuclear destruction.

Two items from Thursday’s papers may be labor pains for a rebirth of hope: Prominent doctors from 31 nations urged .... (The Ledger 4/8, p. 17A: “Doctors urge U.S., Soviets, to end nuclear arms race”)

That same day: (Miami Herald, p. 1A: “4 ex-officials ask U.S. to shift strategy and pledge no first use of nuclear arms”).

That these former hawks could take this stand is remarkable. Many, I for one, have stood for more than this – a nuclear freeze, and nuclear disarmament. Thousands, perhaps millions, of our citizens have urged these positions, not to speak of considerably anti-nuclear feeling surfacing in many nations of the world.

There are signs of a rebirth of hope. An old friend and colleague once wrote,

“To be reborn – in any sense to know the meaning of resurrection – is to sense within the creative power for good that one possesses – to take the keys of the world that lies in one’s own hands – and to open the door that leads to the challenge and prospect of climbing the stairs to higher and finer levels of experience, of knowledge and understanding! It is thus that we roll back the stone of darkness and despair – and glimpse the morn of a new awakening. It is thus – when we put aside our old selves and take the venturesome leap of faith in life’s goodness – that we enter into the meaning of the life eternal!”

Dr. Carleton M. Fisher
First Universalist Church
Wausau, Wisconsin

Such is our hope – creative power.

I would conclude by making a contrast between Yeats’ foreboding pessimism with Countee Cullen’s “Rendezvous With Life”:

“I have a rendezvous with life,
In days I hope will come
Ere youth has sped, and strength of mind,
Ere voices sweet grow dumb.
I have a rendezvous with life,
When spring’s first heralds hum,
Sure some would cry it’s better far
To crown their days with sleep
Than face the road, the wind and rain,
To heed the calling deep.
Though wet nor blow nor space I fear,
Yet I fear deeply, too,
Lest death should meet and claim me ere
I keep life’s rendezvous.”