The Passion of Jesus
Sunday, April 11, 2004
READING:
Reconstructing the Original Easter by Thomas Sheehan (a
professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University and
author of several books, including The First Coming (1986), a widely
acclaimed and controversial account of Easter.)
According to the best scholarly estimates, the last
historical event in the life of Jesus of Nazareth was his death on April 7, 30
C.E., following the torture of crucifixion. No coroner was present to record
the medical facts, but the Scriptures and the Christian creed put the matter
simply and directly: He died and was buried. Jesus had not fainted. He was
dead. And in the spirit of the New Testament was may add: He never came back to
life.
The Passover festival of 30 C.E. came and went, and life
returned to normal. Jesus’ closest disciples probably knew of his death only by
hearsay. Most likely they had not been present at the crucifixion and did not
know where he was buried. Having abandoned Jesus when he was arrested, they had
fled in fear and disgrace to their homes in Galilee. There, grieving at their
loss, they had faced the crushing scandal of those last days in Jerusalem.
The scandal was not that Jesus had been condemned to die on
the cross. Traumatic as it was for the disciples, the murder of Jesus was not
entirely a surprise: indeed, it seemed almost inevitable. Death was the price
that heroes like him had paid (John the Baptist was only the most recent case)
for threatening the cherished world of the religious establishment and the
vaunted omnipotence of empire. Jesus had known what was in store for him, and
accepted it with courage, trusting himself without reserve to the cause of God
with humankind. By living the kingdom and becoming what he lived, Jesus
demonstrated his conviction that not even his death could cancel God’s
presence. This is what Jesus finally meant by "Abba": everything,
even death, was in the hands of his loving Father.
The scandal of those last days in Jerusalem was not that
Jesus was crucified, but that the disciples lost faith in what he had
proclaimed. Jesus’ every word had been a promise of life, but the disciples
fled when threatened with death. He had trusted utterly in God; but they feared
other men. On the night before Passover, they abandoned Jesus to his enemies,
just after sharing with him the cup of a fellowship that was supposed to be
stronger than death. (The Fourth R, July-August, 2001, pp. 5-6.)
SERMON:
"The Passion of Jesus"
Disclaimer:
First, let me say that this sermon will have nothing to say
about "The Passion of the Christ," the incredibly successful film
about Jesus’ death as presented by Mel Gibson. I have not seen it. I will not
see it. Critics have convinced me that the level of violence is more than I
could stand. I did not view "Apocalypse Now" for the same reason. I
do not wish to inflict that level of violence on myself, thank you. And I will
not put my money into such an expression of violence either.
The message that I was given for the larger community while
engaged in a VisionQuest (and one is expected to come back with a message for
one’s community while undertaking VisionQuest) was that religion needs to
provide creative, nurturing, and loving symbols and visions, rather than the
violent images currently seen in much of traditional western religion. Balance
must be found. Taking into account that violence exists, it should not be
deified, glorified, nor made better than it is in any way. This I know in the
core of my being.
In addition, I now recognize that I mis-named this sermon. I
will not be speaking about the "passion" of Jesus. Close examination
of the word "passion" in Webster’s New World Dictionary of the
American Language, college edition, informs me that it derives from Latin passus,
which means to endure or suffer, thus leading to a definition: "1.
originally, suffering or agony, as of a martyr." Only by the fourth
definition, does it consider "any one of the great emotions, as hate,
grief, love, joy, etc." I don’t want to distance from my own vision, so I
wish to rename this: "the loving message of Jesus."
Introduction:
Given that disclaimer, I should like to offer a life-giving
and joyous picture of Jesus, including his understanding of the "Kingdom
of God," his sense of the spiritual, and his invitation to all to
"life abundant,"
Discussion:
If you are looking for a quick scholarly history of the
understanding of Jesus’ death, I recommend the most recent issue of the
magazine Time. David Van Biema examines this understanding, beginning
with the Jews of Jesus’ time who were struggling to try to become closer to
God, thus the concept of atonement or at-one-ment. This resonates with Marcus
Borg’s understanding that we can move from a God who is transcendent (wholly
other) to a god that is immanent (within).
I am convinced that human beings want a scapegoat to give
their sins, then walk off without another thought. In like manner, Paul, in Hebrews,
" . . . directly appropriates the Jewish sacrificial metaphor of Jesus’
time, except this time, Jesus is both priest and sacrifice, spilling ‘not the
blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing eternal redemption.’
("Why Did Jesus Die?" by David Van Biema, in Time, April 12,
2004, p. 57.)
I would like to turn this understanding upside down,
positing that Jesus may not have believed he would die; that he may, in fact, not
have died on that cross, and, really, that none of this really matters. What
really matters is that Jesus was trying to show people how to live fully and
freely in consonance with his Source, his God. By focusing upon Jesus, the
human sacrifice, we avoid the "radical responsibility" of his
message. As Norman Perrin asserts in his The New Testament: An Introduction
:
Historical
data with regard to Jesus himself is extraordinarily difficult to reach. . . ;
the evidence seems to indicate, however, that Jesus did not make any claims for
himself, but focused attention entirely upon God and the proclamation of the
Kingdom of God. (Norman Perrin, The New Testament: An Introduction,
second edition. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovenovich, Publishers, 1982. p. 57.)
This Kingdom of God, of course, reflects a mythical
understanding of Jesus’ time that God would have to be a king: a creator and
all-powerful ruler of creation. We, Unitarian Universalists who believe in the
value of democracy, are likely to have other views. Other thoughts offered:
Phillip Pullman posits a "Republic of Heaven" as an alternative in
the "His Dark Materials" trilogy. Cheryl Gibbs Binkley offers the
notion of a "Kingdom of Equals" in her RE curriculum for children
that explores Jesus’ message. I believe that Jesus was using the language and
metaphors of his times to convey deeper experience, experience of ecstatic
connection to the source of life, resulting in creative action. I believe that
Jesus saw his experience of connection with God as spiritual, giving him
healing power and grounding all his actions in life. And his actions were for
justice for all.
The Sermon on the Mount, which appears to come uniquely from
Jesus, emphasizes that it is not those with the most material wealth or power
who ultimately have the most value. Further, Jesus asserts in Mark: "It is
easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to
enter the kingdom of God." (Mark 10:25.) I suspect that this perspective
comes from Jesus’ sense, not that wealth is inherently evil, but that it is
difficult to set it aside and respond to whisperings of spirit.
For Jesus, the value of a person comes from a sense of
connection to simple caring principles, and this connection can be made
immediately, not after future signs and portents are fulfilled. Luke asserts,
"The Kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they
say, ‘Lo here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the
midst of you." ((Luke 17:20-21.) That’s here and now. In like manner,
Jesus says, "You are all heirs and joint heirs with me." In the
Gospel of John.
One of the manifestations of Jesus’ kingdom of God, this
state of grace, is that each human being is viewed as a precious spirit. This
directly relates to our first UU Principle: We "affirm and promote the
inherent worth and dignity of every person." Jesus was constantly getting
into trouble for consorting with tax collectors (That could pinch some of us
this week!), "sinners," and women of ill repute. He did not engage,
nor measure people by the usual standards and cultural mores, but by a sense
that each one had a spark of the divine within that could be fanned into a
flame for living rich and creative life.
Jesus’ presence seemed to evoke this awareness in others.
When he told them to go and sin no more, they had a sense of relief from the
troubles in their lives and of hope for their future. Perrin sums this up:
The
Jesus we can reconstruct from the New Testament is, therefore, the proclaimer
of the Kingdom of God. More than that, he is one who had the power to mediate
to his hearers the existential quality of that which he proclaimed, and who
instructed them in ways of responding to that reality so that they might enter
ever more deeply into their experience of it. On this basis he taught those who
responded to the proclamation to look to the future with confidence. (Perrin,
P. 426.)
Jesus does what none of the rest of us, with the exception
of some Buddhist teachers, seem to be able to do: actually transfer his
mystical experience of that which is most important and powerful in life to
another person and thus share his experience of grace. His incredible spiritual
power manifested in experience for others.
Yet, Jesus does not give himself the name
"Messiah;" nor does he, contrary to the interpretations of Mark,
Matthew, Luke, John, or even Mel, explain the meaning of his death. Perrin
writes:
There
are two things conspicuously absent from this picture compared to that given in
the gospels. The first is a specific claim by Jesus himself to be the Messiah.
. . The explicit claims in the gospels reflect the piety and understanding of
the early church, not historical data about Jesus of Nazareth.
The
second element conspicuously absent from this picture is an interpretation by
Jesus of his own death. The fact is that we simply do not know how Jesus
thought about his own death. (Perrin, pp. 426-427.)
Whether we view Jesus’ death as the ultimate sacrifice for
sinful mankind or a senseless killing that sparked a religious movement, we can
benefit from Jesus’ message: that we should trust the process of life and that
we can celebrate all that is good and beautiful about it. This is not a passive
message of suffering violence, but an active message that calls us to greater
awareness of the spirit of beauty, truth, and goodness in life and to act
toward a more just world. This message invites us to speak to one another as if
each of us were a messiah, to respect all beings, to enact our values in the
world.
This is a message of radical responsibility: we can only be
responsible for ourselves, but we only do so effectively in the context of
awareness of the impact of our acts upon all life around us. We are invited to
live alive to our choices and their consequences. It is not enough to say,
"This is right for me!" We must also recognize that our acts have
impact throughout the "Kingdom of God." That is the grace of radical
responsibility, and I genuinely believe it is what Jesus was trying to get at
in his time.
Conclusion
The result of living in comfort with the process of creation
and one’s sense of responsibility is a joyous engagement with life. Easter
reminds us that life is not only stirring again after the long winter, but it
is riotously active and lushly creative. What are we going to do and be as a
result of this new rush of life? Will we choose wisely, with respect, radical
responsibility, and relish for the process of life? Will we be able to
celebrate and trust the process? If we could, we would generate an Easter joy
that continues throughout the year.
The Rev. Jill Job Saxby puts it this way:
On
Easter, we can look with new eyes and see, and listen with new ears and hear
it. God’s Word is always the same: Love. And what springs from God’s Word is
always the same: Life. God’s Word on Easter is an echo of the first Word God
ever spoke. The breath of God that brought the world into being, the spirit
moving across the waters, whispering, "I love you." . . .
The
same Easter voice speaks our names. You can hear it in the birds, the ocean,
the new life springing from the ground after the long winter, the wind, the
sun, the warm heart of the person standing next to you, the friend, the enemy,
the ones who have left us and the ones who remain. It is all calling your name.
It is all here because of Love, and for us to love, as deeply as we ourselves
are loved. . . .
We
don’t have to search. We don’t have to weep. What we’re looking for is right
here. We are recognized. In God, new life, in which we move and breathe and
have our being, is risen. (Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship GoodNews,
March/April 2004, pp. 6-7.)
Amen. So Be It! Blessed Be!