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.”

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.

The Geography of Hope

April 14, 1968 (Easter)
Plainfield

The Geography of Hope

"We must drive into the heads of men the full consciousness of moral responsibility that comes with the knowledge that there will never be a God unless we make him." George Bernard Shaw wrote these words (quoted by Christian Century, 10/16/63) and he would certainly be astounded to discover that a new trend in Christian theology is remarkably like Shaw's challenge. I would like to speak of this theological trend, "the theology of hope" which derives from the Death of God theology; discuss whether or not there are grounds for hope; and consider whether or not the Christian theology of hope has significance for Unitarians and Universalists.

Easter is a season of hope, whether accepted as ancient pagan celebration of the renewal of life or Christian rituals of the resurrection of the crucified Christ. But hope has a geographical meaning. Is the map of hope drawn of this world or another world? Hope can be worldly or other-worldly.

Historically, Christian hope, based on the old story of salvation, has been other-worldly. The true believers were convinced that Christ died for their sins on the cross, was buried and on the third day rose from the dead. Furthermore, he would one day come again and by his supernatural powers overcome the forces of evil and redeem those chosen to be saved. Heaven was their destination – an other-worldly salvation hope. Such a hope relied not at all on any on any power or strength available in human resources. As one representative Christian theologian put it, "Christian hope does not rest on an idea but on the living person of Jesus Christ, risen from the dead. He alone can guarantee an inheritance which is imperishable. By his resurrection, Christ laid the foundations of hope in eternal life and delivers us from the calamity of hopes which are for this life alone."

But in our age, a new theology of hope may be emerging in Christian theological thought which should be of interest to us. The new theology of hope seems to be a consequence of the "Death of God" theology which, like a wave, rolled and has now somewhat receded in avant-garde Christian circles.

The death of God theology has various expressions and its advocates differ somewhat from each other in their interpretations. But generally, [because of] the displacement of values from the sacred to the secular world, the philosophy of existentialism which proposed that the only assurance we have is our present existence with no authentic basis for any supposed purpose, individually or corporate in the universe, the problem of how to discover any goodness in God when the problem of human suffering has been so vast and unexplainable, in the face of assigning positive meaning to the word "God," some Christian thinkers proclaimed that God was dead.

The theology of hope seems to be accumulating some force as another wave. The movement originated in Europe among some young theologians both Catholic and Protestant. Although there are variations in the thinking, generally they hold that God is one who does not exist but is coming to man, God is not yet, but is to be. One cannot speak of God existing in an age when evil is so widespread and when the world is known in scientific and technological ways rather than in religious terms.

Think how much kinship there is in holding that god is "He who is to be" with Shaw’s statement that "there will never be a God unless we make him."

Central to this theology of hope is the geography of hope. Man is to be redeemed in this world, not another world. More than that, it is a religious task to change the world, not just to interpret it.

Now whether this new theology of hope will be more than a discussion among theologians remains to be seen. Many times so-called advanced thinking does not seem to reach the millions who sit in pews. I am not concerned today with talking again about the causes for belief or disbelief in God. My feelings and thoughts that lead me to affirm the creative process in the Universe are not dependent on any variety of Christian dogmatics.

But in such a time as this, do we have grounds for hope in the human venture? Although there may be a glimmer of light in the murky shadows of the Vietnam War, the process of peace negotiations will be neither brief nor easy, but prolonged and difficult. The renewal of fierce hostilities and re-escalation of bombing is undoubtedly geared to a hair-trigger sensitivity. Not only devious intentions but human blunders on either or both sides could again escalate the war, perhaps hopelessly.

The cities seethed in blood and fire as some persons in the ghettos struck back in anger at the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Is there any hope that the U.S. can be redeemed from racial conflict which not only will be fatal to our cities but also kill our dreams?

Yet there is hope, and the geographical charts of hope are maps of this world. Hope is more than yearning for what is not. Hope is desire for what is not yet real, accompanied by the expectation that one day hope can be fulfilled. Hope is belief that goals can be achieved. Hope is conviction that though the goal may shine afar, it can be reached by following maps in this world, not in some other-worldly heaven entirely dependent upon a Christ crucified, risen, and coming again.

The obstacles are formidable. No one conscious of our world in disarray, our nation in torment, can assume an air of easy optimism. The events of the past 10 days are grim confirmations of the findings of the President's Commission on Civil Disorders, which is seemingly ignored by most persons who have the political power or influence to initiate the massive, immediate steps to begin to put an end to the underlying causes – despair, defeat, indignity, discrimination, injustice.

Any hopes must be conditioned by an awareness of the reality of violence at home and abroad. But also hopes may be buttressed by the knowledge that most unrest is caused by the "revolution of rising expectations." Our world has a potential of abundance never before possible for the human family. Even more than the potential abundance of food and fiber for all is the potential for individual fulfillment through the freedom to chart one’s way. In spite of the constraints of modern mass culture, the prospect for such individual power can be glimpsed not only by the favored and affluent few, but also by the unfavored and poor.

So there is hope. There can always be hope – and I remind you of James Thurber’s exquisite parable which you heard, The Last Flower.

Now many Unitarians and Universalists may yawn when they hear of the theology of hope in Christian thought. "We’ve always had maps of this world, we’ve never had an other-worldly slant," – this would be generally agreed. Universalist theology, in its early days at least, had an other-worldly direction. All souls would be saved. But more than 100 years ago, Universalist churches organized reform societies within their churches, and Unitarian salvation has always been concerned with character and progress on this earth.

Our Service Committees have been concerned not with missionary conversions but human need without reference to whatever religious belief's those in need may hold. We asserted the goodness or the potential growth towards goodness of every human being.

These characteristics of our Unitarian Universalist heritage are not recited complacently. We fall short of our pronouncements. This heritage of ours is a most difficult goal to live up to. We are not immune from inertia. We are not exempt from the stymie caused by strong differences about how our beliefs in character, reform, progress, should be applied.

There are grounds for hope in the human venture. It is idle to speculate the degree of significant involvement we will have individually or as a group in the promotion of the social changes which must occur if disaster is to be prevented. The great scriptures of mankind were not written to inspire men to courageous, creative acts which would help the human venture. Rather, the courageous, creative acts of persons were the inspiration for great scripture.

So it will be with old and new teachings of hope for the people of the world. Amid the troubles of the past week when people died in the cities, I remembered the story told by Sam Levenson, the stand-up comedian whose humor sometimes reflects serious social thought. It's a parable – or a fantasy – but I believe it to be poetic expression of hope for the human family.

The story has the setting of Heaven. At the gate there appears a young Black boy, beaten unto death in the city. And as Sam Levenson tells it, Heaven has a computerized system to provide St. Peter at the gate with the names and I.D. numbers of all persons who are expected to enter the Gates of Heaven each day. But there are no admission credentials for this Black boy. His name is not on the list. So the gatekeeper phones the next higher level of administration in the bureaucracy of heaven. But no record seems to exist for this boy's admission. So Peter phones various levels of policy. No information. Finally the gatekeeper phones the top – the Lord himself, [and] tells the story of the fatally beaten Black boy who is at the gate. The voice thunders to Peter, "Send him back to Earth – he’ll recover in the hospital. He's not due here for years and years – not until after he has found that cure for cancer."

So amid all the frailties of our existence the inadequacies of our performance of what we ought to be doing and the weaknesses of our will, there are grounds for hope if we accept the obligation to add our weight to the scales of justice and our expectations are undespairing that new creations and renewed life can come to the human family as well as to the ever-renewing Earth.

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.

Resurrection of Revitalization?

April 10, 1965
Plainfield

Resurrection of Revitalization?

More often than not Christian celebrations seem to magnify the doubtful rather than rejoice in the certainties. A human body which dies, and remains dead for three days, does not become alive again in any spiritual sense. Our common, human, every-day experience testifies to this reality.

On this Easter Sunday, I would speak to you about the story of the resurrection of Jesus, point out some of the difficulties in it for the reasonable mind, and then propose what I believe are the enduring feelings which make every Easter celebration of liberation a pageant of joy - revitalization, not resurrection.

All the gospels tell a resurrection story - but it is not the same story. According to Matthew, the empty tomb is discovered by Mary Magdalene "and the other Mary." As they arrived, a great earthquake was the cue for "an Angel of the Lord" to roll away the stone and sit on it. "His appearance was like lightning," frightening the guards into a state of shock.

Mark's account is not only more restrained but has some interesting differences. In his story, Salome is a third person in the group bearing spices to anoint the dead body. There are no guards. The women see, not an angel of the Lord, but a young man sitting inside the tomb. The oldest [manuscripts] of Mark do not include an encounter between the woman an the risen Jesus.

Luke has other variations. The women are Mary Magdalene, Joana, Mary the mother of James and "other women with them." They meet neither an angel nor a young man, but two men in dazzling apparel,. After the women are told that the Son of Man has risen on the third day, the women bring this marvelous story to the disciples. Right at this point, there is a report which is amazing - the disciples do not believe the women! According to the gospels, Jesus had told his disciples that he would be crucified and rise on the third day. When the women brought this news, the disciples should not only have believed, they should have said, "of course, this is just what the master predicted." This is just one more indication of the several layers of tradition, [which] from different times report ... legends which have become a part of the gospel stories.

The gospel of John reports a fourth variant. Joseph of Arimithea secretly entombs the body in the garden sepulchre. In the early dawn, Mary Magdalene comes alone and discovers that the stone has been rolled away. She runs and tells Peter and another disciple who came rushing into the garden to visit the empty tomb.

Then as Mary weeps, she sees two angels sitting inside the tomb who ask the reason for her weeping. Then Jesus appears before her, but she does not recognize him immediately.

If you are intrigued by theological puzzles, the resurrection stories represent a difficult problem to reconcile.

Several well-known circumstances deserve review. First of all, the myth of the savior-god who rose from the dead after being sacrificed to humanity was almost universal in the ancient world. Osiris, Adonis, Attis, and numerous other saviors were the heroes of resurrection myths. In the inter-action of influence, amid the cosmopolitan traffic of the Roman World, how inevitable that the Gentile followers of a Jewish messiah should come to believe that he was a God, too; and also had demonstrated divinity by the miracle of resurrection.

Matthew's gospel has an even more astonishing report (27 51/53). Immediately following Jesus' death-cry, we read, "and behold the curtain was torn in two, from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split; the tombs also were opened and many of the bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and were seen by many." Many people saw the resurrected bodies of saints who had died and been buried! Why did this not cause a mammoth furor? Why are Roman records almost completely lacking in reference to the life and death of Jesus, not to speak of the marvel of the resurrection [Editor’s note: sentence is completed by the fragment, “but also of some of his followers?”]

If you would add another dimension to the mystery, incidents of his post-resurrection meetings with his disciples Jesus talks and acts not so much like the Messiah king, but more as a person who is deeply conscious that his followers should know his continuing love and that they should pursue the difficult mission of bringing better ways of living to the world.

Unless there is some amazing find of manuscripts or scrolls more ancient and authentic than any yet discovered, we will never be able to get at the historical realities. Many years of thinking about the puzzles and reading the scholars leave me with an interesting hypothesis and an abiding certainty.

Towards a hypothesis: The one common tradition among the gospel resurrection stories is the empty tomb. Jesus' body had disappeared.

Then look at the tradition of Joseph of Arimithea. When he asks for the body of Jesus, Pilate is surprised Jesus died so quickly. One who was crucified sometimes lingered two to three days before dying. The death of Jesus is indicated as coming only a few hours after he is hung on the cross. If Jesus was aged, poor in health or weak of stature, one could understand a quick death. But we have no indication that Jesus was sickly – quite the contrary. If any impression comes through the diverse traditions, it is one of a man of vigor, probably hardened by years of outdoor work, able to accomplish long marches and arouse the fear of rulers. The tradition shows strength, not weakness.

Then look at the tradition in John where Joseph of Arimithea and Nicodemus remove the body in great secrecy.

It is necessary to a Christian story of salvation that Jesus died on the cross, then came to life and burst out of the tomb of death, thus making redemption possible for those who believe.

But if one is not under the co-ercion of this theological necessity, then another solution appears probable. That is this: Jesus did not die on the cross, but was removed from it by friends who were able to revive him somewhere in secrecy, perhaps in the tomb of Joseph of Arimithea. Then the appearances of Jesus were those of a living man, who, perhaps, returned to Galilee and lived for an indeterminate time, undoubtedly a brief time.

There is no more evidence for this hypothesis than for the orthodox insistence on the resurrection of a dead body, but it fits the traditions just as well. A bible scholar, Professor Roland Wolfe of Western Reserve University, favors this hypothesis and one day may publish his complete theory.

But lingering no longer on theological confusions or historical puzzles, Easter represents life's revitalization.

The ancient and eternal cycle of returning life is beginning to assert its unfailing renewal as returning life thrusts through the hardened winter crust. When we open our sensitivities, we feel the pulse of the revitalization of life. The swelling bud and the spring rains overwhelm our eager senses with a burgeoning life that dispels the winter's barren hiatus (sic). The sap rises, our spirits lift. The water-courses once more rush eagerly to the ancient seas and our deep-lying, primitive yearnings respond more wildly than we care to acknowledge. There is a revitalization of life and we celebrate life at the Spring festival which is older than the Christian Church, older than the time of Jesus, more ancient than man's historic record.

But beyond nature's ancient, recurring rhythms there are other certainties which can revitalize us. A good influence dues not due (? sic); great sacrifices are never quite overwhelmed either by persecution or inertia; unmistakable examples of justice and caring resist being sealed in the tomb of oblivion.

This I believe – after all the hymns are sung, after the legends are recited, when the creeds have been chanted, when all that is superfluous is sloughed off the Easter victory, we will discover [a story of human character that was sensitive to the highest values, fulfilled the great demands that life makes upon all as it is, faced up to life as it is, and overcame fear of death and disgrace].

Jesus was revitalized, not because a dead body revived, but because before death, the fear of death had lost its power to halt his activities, drain his strength or dilute his faith. When one overcomes such fears for self or fear of failure, then one has revitalized his life. The ancient Greek philosopher, Epicetus said wisely, "for it is not death or hardship that is a fearful thing, but the fear of death and hardship (quoted by Paul Tillich, THE COURAGE TO BE, p. 13).

Like the plant and animal, men and women respond in blood and bones to the Spring. But unlike the plant and animal, men and women know that one day they will die – "no one lives forever and dead men rise up never." Poignantly conscious of life and individual personal self-identity, we fear death and we dread the possibility that our individual, conscious personality may one day be no more.

This is the fear from which we need liberation – not the pain of death but the anxiety that we all know of faces and forms, of people and poetry, of memory and motion which will be gone beyond recall; that personal consciousness is no more than the temporary and unstable gathering of molecules and circumstance. The most agonizing anxiety is the dread of meaninglessness, of nothingness. We have our agonizing apprehensions of a time when we shall cease to be.

The Easter story is more than a doctrinal pivot for the Christian theological formula; more profound than a historical puzzle. For this is the season when ancient people celebrated, as the reviving earth suggested that human hopes for survival might come true and wild was the joy and excessive the rituals. For this is the season when modern man celebrates with song and story new fashions, sometimes only dimly aware of the smoldering inherited emotions that become vital again.

The disciples must have been persons much like us. They responded to a great idea. When the stranger visited them at the lakeside, they left their nets at his invitation "follow me and I will make you fishers of men." But their spiritual odyssey was not crowned with individual success or glory. They sought spiritual adventurer and found insecurity. They followed their leader until, to their dismay, he was despised and rejected by men. Then they ran, they denied him, cursed him, not only in fear that they might share his shameful death, but also terrorized that their lives and purposes were of no real consequence.

After they were scattered, they came together again and formed the group that within a generation or so had led to the earliest Christian movements. They were revitalized after the Winter of their master's execution and their own running-out on the cause they had believed. Somehow they were revitalized and fr

Somehow they were revitalized and freed from that most destructive of anxieties, the fear of death. They were to die and die young. But they no longer were willing to seek to disguise the face of death in a multitude of masks.

When the disciples re-gathered, it was to establish a fellowship of the followers of Jesus the purpose of which was to persist in establishing the goals he had taught them; and to endure whatever came in spite of consequences. In MY BROTHER DEATH, C.L. Sulzberger says, "To a degree, we can control the style of our dying, even if we cannot influence death itself."

As conscious, anxious persons the disciples feared that death would be the end of their being. Jesus seemingly shared this same anxiety in the garden. The Talmud comments, for all creatures, death has been prepared from the beginning.

When we think of our own fears, when we listen to the conversation of little children, when we are sensitive to the raw shock we know when someone near and dear dies, we must realize that to be emancipated from the fear of death is an experience that rewards a person with inner strength and renewed energy.

A half-century ago when Captain Robert F. Scott led that tragic expedition to the South Pole from which no one returned, his diary, which was recovered, reveals the terrible and heroic days through which these men knew the growing certainty of death. One of Scott's notations read, "How hard death must be for those who meet it having done nothing." On the same expedition, Captain Oates, knowing he could not survive long, deliberately left the camp and walked into the white blizzard, to die alone, so that others might have more food. (see MY BROTHER DEATH, p. 186-7).

Such is life's revitalization at Easter. It is more than a story of an empty tomb and dead men walking. It is the affirmative answer to the question in Luke's gospel, "Why seek ye the living among the dead?" For there are gifts of human excellence given by men and women to their fellows, and these are gifts which cannot die.

Maurice Maeterlinck's THE BLUEBIRD is one of the enduring and touching illustrations of this truth – this truth that requires imagination as well as reason. In that story the two children, Tyltyl the boy and Mytyl the girl had been searching for the bluebird because a queer old woman had asked them to find the bird because it would help a sick child become well. The children had been given a magic jewel which enabled them, by turning this jewel into a certain position, to see things as they actually are. The children searched for the bluebird in the Kingdom of the Past, the Kingdom of the Future, the Kingdom of the Dead and the Realm of Night. In the kingdom of the Dead, as they come through an old country churchyard, the little girl Mytyl is fearful because her brother has told her that at the hour of midnight, the dead leave their graves. She wants to run away, but Tyltyl, though he is frightened too, insists on staying. The clock strikes twelve, the children hold their breaths and tremble, there is a moment of silence and the slabs lift. They look for the dead, but no dead appear. Instead of that, suddenly the cemetery is transformed into a beautiful garden – white flowers fill the air with beautiful perfume, dew sparkles on the grass, birds appear – there is sunshine, life and joy. Struck with wonder and amazement, the children hold tightly to each other's hands, looking for the dead, but there are no dead.

[So] with those who are revitalized by new life – liberated from fears born of tribal jealousies, free of the fear that only selfishness can bring happiness and free of the fear that death can erase the hard-won achievements of good persons. For truths live on and flower again, just as the spring demonstrates that the universe is alive. Not a clod of earth, nor a drop of water nor a particle of air can be destroyed. Forms change, life endures. This is the reality of the great festivals of Spring, older and more sweeping than theological ceremonies of any one religion. For we celebrate the great cycle of reviving life. We would feel that life in our bones and blood as the rhythms of nature; we would feel that life in our minds and hearts as the call to what is better in the priorities and needs of the particular human adventure everywhere under the sun.

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.

As It Began To Dawn

April 6, 1958
Akron

The story of the women in the garden is one of the most hauntingly lovely of all to be found in religious imagery and mythology. Somehow the words communicate to us something of the sweetness of early flowers, something of the thrilling smell of new life bursting through wintered crusts.

As it began to dawn the blackness of night was overwhelmed by our brother, the sun. But there had been more than the blackness of night. There had been desperation of the spirit, far more shadowed than kindly, unfolding darkness of the evening.

The disciples had not stood firm in the disaster. Judas had sold out. Peter had shown the white feather. The rest of the disciples had scattered into the safety of the nameless, faceless mob. There, perhaps, the disciples had to endure the abject humiliation of hearing the cry, "crucify him," while their fright kept them quiet, even though there might have been a frantic wish to shout "hosanna" again, but they had failed.

They had held back in terror, while an unknown man, perhaps his name was Simon,had helped carry the cross. Some traditions hold that Simon was a Negro.

The Messiah had not been able to save himself. There had been no miraculous heavenly rescue. The suffering prophet from Nazareth encountered painful death as women wept and soldiers gambled. Jesus, like all others met death, - "the most absolute, the most irrevocable, the most majestic, and the most unknown of all experiences of life."

If you believe the orthodox Christian theology, your faith is that this man was God and that he rose from the dead. Furthermore, you believe that this rising from the dead was the climax and the proof of the fore-ordained Christian scheme of salvation.

Many of the religions of the ancient Asiatic and Mediterranean worlds have claimed that their savior was killed and then resurrected from his burying place. Most of these religions have long since been but historic and religious memories. Christianity with an almost identical faith in a dying-rising savior God still survived.

But for me, Easter has more profound levels of meaning than the "old story of salvation." Jesus has radiated a brighter light down through the centuries than the forgotten saviors of other faiths, not alone because of ecclesiastical, political, and cultural reasons which combined to make the historic Christian church the most remarkable institution of Western culture, but due also to the vitality of the free spirit of Jesus which has survived all attempts to smother the fertile core of his moral leadership in harsh or over-emotionalized supernaturalism. The Jewish disciples buried the real Jesus after the crucifixion, and later, devout Christian followers resurrected a Savior God.

But Easter has other, and for me, more profound levels of meaning than the old story of salvation.
The Jewish Passover added precious dimensions of human freedom, and the dignity of persons to the ancient rites of Spring. In a similar way, the Christian Easter has constructed a more significant value system around the beliefs ancient people cherished about dying savior gods.
It began to dawn on people that no power can restrain a great influence, - not even death. The spirit of Jesus was triumphant over the grave. It began to dawn on people that the cross was not final. "It was not an accident, but the law of human progress." (Reuschenbush).

Alfred North Whitehead once commented, "I hazard the prophecy that that religion will conquer which can render clear to the popular understanding some eternal greatness in the passage of temporal fact."

The disciples gathered new courage when it dawned on them that the cross was not the end, but the beginning. Suppose the voice of Jesus had been silenced, they could testify by word and deed to the redemptive power of a religion that knew no boundaries of nationality, race, or clan. Even though the hand of Jesus would move no more in healing or benediction, the disciples would work, could help, could be a redeeming influence.

As these realities began to dawn, the cowards found courage. Before long some of the enemies became friends and supporters. Paul is the superb illustration of one who found that hate could be removed from his life by the "expulsive power of a new affection," love.

As it began to dawn, just a handful of men and women began a task of telling people everywhere what Jesus meant to them. They withstood torture, scandal, and privation. They lost public approval as they spoke with conviction and emotion about what the teachings of Jesus could mean to a world in danger of going astray.

We have never yet grown big enough in spirit to adopt the teachings of Jesus as a way of living. The way of love, forgiveness, of not judging others has always seemed to us to be too "idealistic", and not "practical".

So instead of following Jesus in living faithfully by certain standards of conduct, during Christian centuries people have more often spent their time arguing whether Jesus was God, a member of the Trinity, a man, a demi-god, or whatever. Harry Adams Hersey used to tell the parable about this sort of debate. A group of people were in a valley surrounded by seemingly impassable mountains and cliffs. If they stayed in the valley it seemed certain they would perish. Then someone noticed a man standing halfway up on a ledge on one of the cliffs. Soon they realized that he was pointing a way out for them which would save them from the destructive influence of the unhealthy valley, would save them from themselves. Instead of following the way out of their difficulty, they began a long and bitter debate about whether the man on the cliff had come down from the top or up from the bottom.

Easter is a triumph of the human spirit over tragic defeat. But it is nothing short of immoral 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. We see a world in fear of atomic destruction; a world that may now be a victim of disease caused by the unhealthy influence of the radio-active products of bomb-testing; a world that because it refuses to accept the simple facts of life about the brotherhood of man, is in danger of tearing itself to pieces.

The notorious Polly Adler once said bitterly, "When society doesn't understand a problem, it conveniently forgets all it preaches about the brotherhood of man." The world is always tempted to sacrifice morality for power; the kingdoms of this world are faced continually with the choice of mastering materials or being enslaved by them; the people of this world are always exposed to the glittering seductive lie that immoral means can produce moral results.

Max Lerner called attention to the American myth of John Henry. John Henry, the giant hero is a man of unsurpassed strength. His achievements parallel the tales of Paul Bunyan. Yet John Henry broke his heart when he tried to compete with the monstrous strength
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The disciples discovered that death could not hold the spirit of Jesus. The doors of the tomb were broken as his teachings became clearer to them. Although they experienced terror, cowardice, guilt, these devastating experiences proved to be a purifying crucible out of which came new courage and new affection.

It began to dawn on them, as it will dawn on our world some day, that one death for a great cause, is of infinitely higher value than the many, dingy, [remaining section cut out]