March 31, 2002
The Rev. Gretchen Woods
READING
from “How Did Easter
Originally Happen” by Thomas Sheehan in The Fourth R: An Advocate for
Religious Literacy, volume 14, number
4, July-August 2001, “A Secondary Formulation of the Easter Experience”
The rescue of Jesus from
death and his exaltation and imminent return soon came to be codified in yet
another of the available apocalyptic formulae: “God has raised Jesus from the
dead.” Eventually the term “resurrection” became the dominant and even
normative word for expressing what Simon and the disciples believed had
happened to Jesus.
But even then, for the early
believers to speak of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead did not mean that
they looked back to a historical event that supposedly happened on Sunday,
April 9, 30 C.E. The “event” of the resurrection is like the “event” of the
creation: No human being was present, no one could or did see it, because
neither “event” ever happened. Both creation and the resurrection are not
events but interpretations of what some people take to be divine action toward
the world. Thus, all attempts to “prove the resurrection” by adducing physical
appearances or the emptiness of a tomb entirely misses the point. They confuse
an apocalyptic symbol with the meaning it is trying to express.
For Simon and the others,
“resurrection” was simply one way of articulating their conviction that God had
vindicated Jesus and was coming soon to dwell among his people. And this
interpretation would have held true for the early believers even if an
exhumation of Jesus’ grave had discovered his rotting flesh and bones.
In short, the grounds for
Simon’s Easter faith were neither the discovery of an empty tomb (Simon most
likely did not know where the prophet was buried) nor the physical sighting of
Jesus’ risen body (this is not what an eschatological appearance is about).
Easter happened when Simon had what he thought was an eschatological revelation
which overrode his doubts and led him to identify Jesus with the one who soon
would come to bring in God’s reign.
Thomas Sheehan is
Professor, Department of Religious Studies, Stanford University and the author
of several books including The First
Coming (1986), a widely acclaimed and controversial account of Easter. His
philosophical specialties are in philosophy of religion, twentieth-century
European philosophy, and classical metaphysics.
One winter day when I was
about 12 years old, I left my Bible on the radiator in the hallway of my family
home. Books were held sacred in my home, and the Bible especially so. My Mother
asked me with annoyance in her voice why I had left my Bible on the radiator. I
flippantly replied, “I wanted to warm God up a bit!” My Mother’s annoyance
turned to rage as she chewed me out for sacrilege. The tongue-lashing had
limited effect and may have helped me on my way to Unitarian Universalism.
My minister at the time was
a hard-minded man who nearly failed me in catechism, but did confirm me,
probably largely because my parents were influential in the Dutch Reformed
Church we attended. He, however, was followed by the minister of my teens, the
Right Reverend Arnold John Van Lummel, who read Aramaic and was a doubter,
scholar, and social activist. He, more than anyone else, led me to become
Unitarian Universalist in thought by insisting that no one should be asked to
believe anything that did not make sense to them rationally. The value of
religious scholarship was instilled by my parents, then inspired by “Rev. Van.”
Which brings me to my
understanding of Jesus and how that fits with Easter: I have become a student
of the search for the historical Jesus, recognizing that I am more interested
in his message than Jesus’ credentials as a divine figure. I value what I
understand Jesus’ message to be. This Easter morning, I should like to share
this with you, knowing that you will have your own experiences and belief, and
we are enhanced through creative interchange, to use Henry Nelson Weiman’s
description of the process of religious growth.
“Rev. Van” first introduced
me to the search for the historical Jesus: the attempt to determine what can be
said factually about this event that has had so much impact upon human thought
and action. The quest began for traditional Christians with the work of Hermann
Samuel Reimarus, whose essay, “The Aims of Jesus and His Disciples (published
posthumously in 1778) rejected the miraculous and the idea of revelation and “.
. . was the first to draw an absolute distinction between what the historical
Jesus did and taught and the teachings and aims of Jesus’ disciples.” (Robert
Funk,” Milestones in the Quest for the Historical Jesus,” The Fourth R: An
Advocate for Religious Literacy, volume
14, number 4, July-August 2001, p. 10)) After Reimarus, a revolt against
ecclesiastical control and the rise of respect for science as well as religion
included the work of Copernicus and Galilei.
In 1835, David Friedrich
Strauss produced The Life of Jesus Critically Examined. This theological
bombshell, both in its German original and the translation by George Eliot
(Mary Ann Evans), attempted to emancipate the natural from the supernatural.
The 19th century was rife New Testament exploration, including
Christian Hermann Wilke’s assertion that Mark was the first Gospel, Heinrich
Julius Holtzmann’s recognition that the Sayings Gospel Q and Mark were the two primary sources for
the New Testament, and Johannes Weiss’s belief that God would intervene in
history to establish his kingdom.
At the beginning of the
twentieth century, Wilhelm Wrede asserted that the “Messianic secret” in Mark
was Mark’s work and not that of Jesus. Then, in 1906 Albert Schweitzer
published The Quest for the Historical Jesus and essentially ended the
quest for a period by insisting that little could truly be said about Jesus
historically, and that Jesus was a naïve dreamer and religious fanatic. Rudolf
Bultmann not only insisted on reading the Gospels as mythology but also felt
that the myth needed to be re-interpreted by each new generation. Gunther
Bornkamm began a new quest in 1959 with his book, The New Quest of the
Historical Jesus which tried to establish some continuity between the
historical Jesus and the early Christian proclamation, but this died quickly
because discrepancies between the two became more obvious as scholarship
advanced.
A third quest was
inaugurated in 1973 by Geza Vermes who “. . . concluded that Jesus was a Jewish
hasid and thus belonged to the category of charismatic holy men and
healers.” (Funk, p. 16) The followers of this group see a line from John the
Baptist through Jesus to Paul, with Jesus’ message at the heart of it. Most of
these are more traditional Christian apologists. Finally, we have the Renewed
Quest, which comprises the Jesus Seminar and a few other free thinkers. This
quest focuses on Jesus’ words and deeds rather than on faith in him. “To borrow
Bultmann’s phrase, the renewed quest is focussed on Jesus’ proclamation rather
than on him as proclaimer. It is a radical shift in point of view or
perspective. Jesus points to the kingdom; his disciples point to him. (Funk, p.
17.)
The Jesus Seminar benefits
from scholarly study of new material. 40% more new material relative to Jesus
has been found in my lifetime than was available in the previous seventeen
centuries. This material convinces me that the “Jesus event” is difficult to
verify factually in confirming sources beyond those from Christianity. The
Christian Gospels were written more than 40 years after he died by people who
had never seen or heard him. For me, it is myth written in response to a person
or event that is forever lost to factual history.
The second thing I have
learned is that language exists that is consistent with a particular person,
identified as Jesus, and unlike the preceding Judaism and the following
Christianity. It is limited to radical proverbial sayings (“Let the dead bury
their own dead!” What do we make of that?), a Lord’s prayer unlike any prayers
of its time for its intimacy with God, parables that challenge the mind, and a
notion of a Kingdom of God to come that is unclear at best.
The third thing that I
learned is that the message was quickly lost in controversy over belief in the
divinity of Jesus and an assertion that, in keeping with much religion of the
time, this man must have died as a scapegoat who paid for everyone else’s sins.
I commend to you Rita Nackashima Brock and Rebecca Parker’s new book, Proverbs
of Ashes, as an outstanding response to the way in which this theological
construct has functioned to justify racism and violence against women and
children through the ages.
When the message became the
man, instead of his words and deeds, the religion became Christianity. Paul, as
the best PR man of all time became the true founder of Christianity. Martin
Luther’s insistence upon belief rather than works solidified this position for
most Protestants. Those who insist upon viewing the writings of Christian
scripture as infallible as the Pope miss the richness and inspiration of the
myth.
So why would Unitarian
Universalists pay attention to Jesus’ message. From my perspective, his message
is very resonant with UU values. From what we can see from the words and deeds
that appear to be uniquely of the “Jesus event,” Jesus called upon all the
people who would listen, of whatever background, to question the assumed mores
and norms of his age, including speaking passionately for social justice. He
moved among those considered pariahs in society as easily as he did among those
who wielded power, challenging all to think for themselves, rather than living
by limiting laws.
As close as we can tell, he
was a healer of minds and hearts, for it was not only his political activities,
but his message of healing change (“Repent [which means turn your life around]
and sin no more.”) that caused the rise of anger toward him.
Unlike Abraham Maslow, Jesus
was opposed to anxiety about our lives and our material needs. In the Sermon on
the Mount, he asserts:
Therefore I tell you, do
not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put
on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the
birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and your
heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of
you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life? And which of you
are anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;
they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was
not arrayed like one of these. (Matthew 6:25-29)
Clearly, Jesus would not
value our consumer society while seeing each person as a precious spirit who
could choose and change her or his life into a blessing for all the world. That
is a Unitarian Universalist Easter message for me.
Most of all, Jesus taught
human beings to trust life’s process and to celebrate the beauty that can be
found in creation. At our best, so do Unitarian Universalists, with respect,
responsibility, and relish for the process. Lucille Clifton captures this
Unitarian Universalist spirit of Jesus as I understand it in “spring song.”
The green of Jesus
is breaking the ground
and the sweet
smell of delicious Jesus
is opening the house and
the dance of Jesus music
has hold of the air and
the world is turning
in the body of Jesus and
the future is possible.
Blessed Be!