What Does It All
Mean? Easter 2008
Acts 10:34-43; Jeremiah 31:1-6; Psalm
118:1-2, 14-24; Colossians 3:1-4;
John 20:1-18; Matthew 28:1-10
Peter’s Sermon in Caesarea (Acts 10:34-43); Psalm 118; and the story of
Mary Magdalene being first on the scene (John 20:1-18) are always
offered as traditional readings for Easter Sunday morning. These
are the pillars of Christian faith: Peter’s sermon tells the
story of Jesus in about 200 words, much as the story of the Hebrew
people is told and retold at Passover and throughout the Jewish
liturgical year. Psalm 118 becomes a song of vindication for
Jesus as Lord instead of a song of praise at being able to once more
enter the Temple in a condition of reconciliation with God.
“[T]he stone that the builders rejected has become the chief
cornerstone,” appropriated from the original meaning, refers to the
risen Christ as the foundation of the church. Finally, our
favorite Mary, the forgiven sinner, walks in the garden alone and
encounters the personal savior.
Easter Sunday is easy. The scent of forced-bloom lilies in the
sanctuary is overwhelming; the local symphony orchestra’s entire brass
section has a paying gig – even the trombonists have been dispersed
throughout the City. The choir turns its stoles to the gold side
and screams Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus. People show up who
haven’t been seen since Christmas Eve. The plate collection is
the most lucrative of the year. The thunderstorms of Good Friday
and Saturday are over and done, and the sun is shining. The
Easter ham is slow-cooking in the oven, and the kids are stuffed with
multi-colored Easter “peeps” and chocolate bunnies.
Who needs a sermon?
– Everyone who slides over the uncomfortable story about “resurrection”
and talks about spring: New life from death – as though Jesus
were planted like winter wheat and appeared along with the crocus and
the daffodils to prove that nobody really dies, that “love is come again, like wheat that
springeth green.” These are perfectly usable and valid
metaphors for the cycles of birth, life, death, rebirth – the archetype
of the dying rising god, who brings renewal, fertility, hope. But
if that is all Jesus’s resurrection means, he is no different from the
Celtic gods like Herne, or Lugh, or the Greek goddesses Persephone and
Demeter.
Peter’s sermon in Acts is no help. He reiterates the story, but
already Jesus’s Way has been watered down to forgiveness of petty
personal sins. But then, Peter never did quite get what Jesus was
all about, and very nearly joined Judas in opting for collaboration
with the normalcy of Roman rule. The Colossians passage is just
as bad: We are piously advised to “seek the things that are
above, where Christ is.” Authentic Paul’s commitment to
distributive justice-compassion has been eliminated by the usurper
writer, along with Paul’s passion about life transformed by
participation with the risen Christ in God’s kingdom, not the
Emperor’s. The Elves have eliminated this
part (Matthew 28:11-15), but after the
women have left to tell the men that Jesus will meet them in Galilee,
Matthew suggests the distinct possibility of a hoax. The tomb
guards have run in a panic to the chief priests. Once the priests
met with the elders, it was clear that a cover-up was necessary.
The guards were paid “a large sum of money” to forget about angels and
earthquakes, and to claim a “Passover Plot” perpetrated by
Jesus’s followers, “still told among the Jews to this day.” To
claim that Jesus’s disciples stole his body and made up a story about a
resuscitated corpse is no worse than dumbing down the message.
Throughout these meditations on the Revised Common
Lectionary has run a thread called “Piety vs. Covenant,” or the
theology of Empire (piety, war, victory, peace) versus the theology of
Covenant (non-violence, distributive justice-compassion, peace).
The only opportunity offered in the Year A Easter readings to claim
something different from the imperial paradigm that still prevails in
21st Century conventional Christianity is the Old Testament prophet of
the Covenant, Jeremiah. So long as the people honor God’s mandate
for distributive justice-compassion, God will provide protection and
prosperity. In the reading picked for this Easter Sunday,
Jeremiah assures the “remnant” of the people left in Jerusalem that as
a result of keeping the Covenant, they will be reunited with those
returning from exile in Babylon.
What does it mean to keep the Covenant in a post-modern,
post-Enlightenment, pluralistic, global, 21st Century? Clearly
the Way to keeping the Covenant is not to look “up” to God.
In Mark’s original version of Easter morning, the women who found the
tomb empty were so terrified they simply ran away without telling
anyone. But the story could not have ended there, or I would not
be writing this meditation, and nearly 2,000 years of Christian history
would never have transpired. Somebody added a codicil in which
the women did as the young man sitting in the tomb suggested, and they
“briefly” told “those around Peter” what they had seen. In
Matthew and Luke, angels explain what has happened. By the time
John creates his version, there is only one witness – Mary Magdalene –
who carries the story to the rest of the scattered followers.
Regardless of how it is told, the story is the same: Jesus is not
here. He is risen. That is a terrifying realization.
If Jesus is not here, what happens to the message? What happens
to distributive justice-compassion? What happens to those who had
the courage to oppose the Empire? The visitors who find the tomb
empty are confronted with a choice: If God’s realm of
justice-compassion is to be restored – as the Biblical record presents
the argument – it will either be by the direct intervention of God
alone (apocalyptic eschatology), or by the collaborative action of God
in partnership with humanity (participatory eschatology).
For 21st Century Christians, with Jesus seriously dead, and
contemporary cosmology rendering theistic, personalized gods
beyond belief, the only way to renew the Covenant is a participatory
eschatology, through equal partnership with a kenotic
God “whose gracious presence as free gift (Paul’s charis) is the beating heart of the
universe and does not need to threaten, to intervene, to punish, or to
control A God whose presence is justice and life and whose absence is
injustice and death." John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed, In Search of Paul
(Harper SanFrancisco 2004, p. 291.
Despite all the temptations that the Empire offers, the renewing of the
Covenant is up to us. On Planet Earth, we can only look “out”
(not “up”) to find other planets and galaxies, and perhaps to discover
something about the nature of the universe, the character of the
spirit/creator we call “God,” and the conditions in which humanity
finds itself; but then we can only look “in” to ourselves to create the
response that will result in the partnership.
He had stood his ground honorably
to the very end; he had kept his word. The moment he cried out
“Eli Eli” and fainted, Temptation had captured him for a split second
and led him astray. The joys, marriages and children were lies;
the decrepit, degraded old men who shouted coward, deserter, traitor at
him were lies. All – all were illusions sent by the Devil.
His disciples were alive and thriving. They had gone over sea and
land and were proclaiming the Good News. Everything had turned
out as it should, glory be to God!
He uttered a triumphant
cry: “It is accomplished!”
And it was as though he
had said: “Everything has begun.”
Nikos Kazantzaki, The Last Temptation of
Christ ( Simon and Shuster, New York, 1960), p. 496.