Easter Reflections

Spring has sprung . . . backwards

Tomato seedlings

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Good Friday. The name may seem puzzling; it’s a commemoration of an execution, after all. Holy Friday, Great Friday, Black Friday, are other names for the day, but Good is common in our day and likely comes from the archaic sense of the word when it still connoted Holiness. (The etymology of good bye is roughly: God be wi’ ye /  God by ye / Good bye).

                Here at Academy Bed & Breakfast, we’re hosting guests visiting families in Rosthern, we’re blanketed under a cover of fresh snow (with more to come) and the temperatures are 10 – 15 degrees below normal. There may be goodness in this prolonging of winter; I fail to feel it at present.

                Good Friday worship services have taken place in the Christian Church worldwide. I attended the ecumenical one in Rosthern. It was done in the form of a typical funeral: a participant read the eulogy, Mary Magdalene presented a tribute to the deceased as did the Apostle Peter. Primarily, God Friday services remind Christians of the sacrifice that was made when Jesus gave up his life as an offering for our redemption. Not everyone will comprehend that, logically, (including me) but the transaction that is variously called “being born again,” “conversion,” “accepting Jesus Christ as your Personal Saviour and Lord,” relies on the adoption of a belief that Christ grants eternal life to all who put their faith in the validity of this Black Friday sacrifice.

                There are protesters that say, roughly, that a God that is placated by human sacrifice doesn’t correspond to a creator of a universe and living things that he loves; it’s too bloody and violent to be credited. We must be misunderstanding—they may say—what is meant when we describe the transaction of redemption in this way.

Some explain the crucifixion more politically: a leader of a subversive Jewish group was executed by Roman authority. Leaders of rebellions have always been targets of official wrath (See "Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth," by Reza Aslan). Still others think of it as a welcome Friday holiday, a good time to watch NHL playoffs and sitcoms on TV.

There’s plenty of ambivalence to go ‘round . . .

Easter Sunday

. . . as there is surrounding the entire Easter cycle in the church calendar.

“The modern English term Easter, cognate with modern German Ostern, developed from the Old English word Ēastre or Ēostre. This is generally held to have originally referred to the name of an Anglo-Saxon goddess, Ēostre, a form of the widely attested Indo-European dawn goddess.” (Click here for more.)

Orthodoxy has always insisted that contrary to our experience, a body that’s been dead for three days can recover physically, miraculously, and that that must be believed as fact, otherwise the gospel message is null and void. (I’ve been astounded at the lengths to which commentators on—and researchers of—the resurrection have been willing to go to prove or disprove the authenticity of the miraculous resurrection; see a typical website on the subject of the Shroud of Turin, for instance.) Liberal theology is more likely to accept a metaphoric resurrection, i.e. the ignition of a fire that spreads throughout the world and is evident today in the extraordinary impact Christ’s followers, equipped with his spirit and fervour, have had and are continuing to have.

By this reasoning, though, Genghis Khan, Winston Churchill and, yes, Elvis Presley are capable of “resurrection” and of lingering on as presences in the world, a thesis that’s not impossible to defend.

The metaphoric conception of the resurrection, of course, has to assume that early gospel writers stretched the truth, or else wrote in a code that they understood . . . but that we tend to confuse with historical accounting.

This kind of speculation, of course, plays havoc with those whose faith is founded on the hope of their own resurrection and that mystical transaction that makes eternal life possible, and makes belief the key. It also messes with our delight in Easter bunnies, Easter bonnets, Easter eggs and the euphoria surrounding the message and the music associated with both spring and hope arriving simultaneously (the former not to be the case this year, apparently).

No matter how one understands the Easter sequence, it seems to me the message in it must be remarkably similar in import. In a world of pain, suffering and hopelessness, there was one who saw in every human a child of God and found the strength to sacrifice himself to relieve the lostness he saw around him. To the hungry, he gave food; to the sick, healing; to still others, like Nicodemus, a vision for rebirth into a better reality; and to all, he offered hope.

No matter how the story of Easter is interpreted, unless it creates in us fervour for the core message it will remain meaningless and Easter bunnies, Easter eggs, and NHL playoffs will have to do, especially when spring seems a distant dream.

               

Good Friday reflection

. . . do this in remembrance of me

It’s Good Friday, April 10, 2009.

It’s my 67^th Good Friday.

Behind me in the Horse Lake Mennonite Church last night (Maundy Thursday) sat a wonderful lady for whom this will be her 102^nd Good Friday. Amazing. In a pew near the back of the little church, a baby would periodically complain loudly that although this was only his first or second Maundy Thursday, already he didn’t care for it much; he probably didn’t get the fact that only the grown-ups were allowed to eat the little bit of bread and drink the juice from those neat little cups.

He may still knit his brow over the mysteries of these symbolic observances when he’s 67 . . . or 102.

Jesus’ commandment to “do this as a memorial of me,” is probably a later addition to the Gospel account of the "Last Supper", likely influenced by Paul’s instructions to the Corinthian Church regarding the observance of the Christian version of the Passover meal, which he called “The Lord’s Supper.” (I Corinthians 11: 19 – 24, NEB) It’s probably thanks to Paul’s influence that we have come to adopt the rather-rigid forms of the Lord’s Supper meal, and have attached to it some of the mystical quality that would have the Catholic faith arrive at transubstantiation doctrine, for instance. I remember how I worried as a young adult that I was “drinking judgment on myself” at Communion because I was “drinking the wine unworthily.”

The way we often eat the tiny bread, facing the altar of the church but not each other, increases our consciousness that this is in some measure an individual act with mystical powers of personal regeneration . . . or of personal judgment.

Food and drink are number one and two on the list of blessings provided by creation. The lack or abundance of these things distinguishes the rich from the poor, the destitute from the comfortable. Gluttons think of little beyond food and drink, while—ironically—the starving also think of nothing else. It’s when I sit down with friends to the abundance of a table that I am moved in a way that the ritual of communion fails to move me, now in my 67^th year of its various repetitions.

I wonder if Jesus was hoping that we would “remember him” whenever we eat and drink; I wonder if he wouldn’t be more pleased with us if we took time to acknowledge the blessings of creation every time we eat and drink. I wonder if he wouldn’t favour our remembering—whenever we eat and drink—that we are consuming gifts of creation, often at the expense of the hungry.

Jesus was a martyr for the poor, the ill, the downtrodden, the starving and the lost. He asked us to continue his struggle to emancipate them, to liberalize religion so it would embrace them instead of judging and enslaving them again.

And for this, ritualized religion justified killing him.

Whenever we eat or drink alone, we ought to remember that there is a great struggle going on, and acknowledge again that we have committed ourselves personally to Christ's side in that struggle. Whenever we eat together as a community of Christ’s followers, we should acknowledge that there is a near-cosmic battle going on, and remind ourselves that, as a group, we have committed ourselves to the side to which Christ has called us and to which we have said, “Yes!”

It's another way to look at Maundy Thursday's "Lord's Supper," Good Friday and the Easter resurrection symbolism.

Some Good Friday Musing

Good Friday – March 21, 2008

Last night, the “Rosenort” group of Mennonite churches held the second of their joint Passion Week services. It was hosted by Tiefengrund Mennonite Church, whose pastor moderated the service; Eigenheim’s pastor delivered the sermon; Laird’s pastor officiated at the Eucharist celebration and Horse Lake’s pastor assisted in the distribution of the elements.

The theme of Allan’s sermon was the “unless a seed falls into the earth and dies, it cannot bear fruit,” lesson of Christ for his disciples, a very appropriate Good Friday text.

Tonight, I will portray high priest Caiphas in a series of Good Friday monologues called “Were you there?” It seems that my acting career has repeatedly funneled me into the role of the high-priesthood: some twenty-five years ago, I played Annas in Jesus Christ, Superstar in Thompson. I approached that with trepidations as I do this, and here’s why:

Historically, various branches of the Christian community have made much of the gospel reports that “the Jews” were the antagonists in Jesus’ trial and death, and have carried that forward as a banner contributing to the phenomenon of anti-Semitism. Judas’ betrayal of Christ for a few coins is echoed in the stereotype of the avaricious Jew, portrayed even by Shakespeare in his Shylock. In any case, I don’t like to be a portrayer of stereotypes, particularly those that are as hateful and false as those that generally fall into the category of anti-Semitism.

Here’s what I have to say:

Caiphas: Of course, I was there. It was my duty to take action against this man who defied our traditions and the authority of the temple. It was I who said to the people, ‘it is better that one man die for the people.’ Although language is double-edged, and you may understand that differently from what I did at the time.

In my opinion, the end sometimes justifies the means, and sometimes you have to use the mob to get done what has to be done. When we interrogated Jesus, he was uncooperative, and in my opinion, inexcusably blasphemous. Such behaviour simply can’t be tolerated.

I tried to find credible witnesses whose stories would serve to indict him, but that wasn’t easy. So I appealed to the crowds adherence to their traditions. I played them like a violin, and soon they were shouting—as I had hoped they would—‘crucify him!’

I am portraying a man whose principles have been left behind in pursuit of power. That’s evident in his speech. Was Caiphas really a man without principles, or did Jesus’ actions in the Passover atmosphere of Jerusalem represent such a grave risk to the temple-worshipping citizens that the priesthood was at its wit’s end? Was Caiphas an ogre trying to stamp out dissent as ruthlessly as necessary? Or was he a man who felt the burden of office weighing so heavily upon him that he felt it necessary to take stern action, wrong-headed as it may have been? Did the mob that formed around the event reach such a level of hysteria that once begun, the result of the episode became inevitable?

So here’s a Good Friday question for you. If you had to portray Caiphas, what would you have him say? If you were the Roman soldier, how would you have him describe the chain of events that characterized Jesus’ last hours? If you were Jesus’ mother, Mary, how would you have her describe her experience at the foot of the cross?

I wish you all a happy Easter.