As I've said before on occasion, when a
person comes up to me and confesses--assuming that she is going to shock
me--that she doesn't believe in God, I always invite her or him to tell
me a little about the God they don't believe in, because I probably don't
believe in him either. If you think about it, if many of the gods people
do believe in are too small, it's almost certain that the gods any of us
disbelieve in are too small. The same thing goes for the resurrection. People
who believe that Jesus was resurrected on the third day are not guilty of
believing too much. It may be, in fact, the opposite: that they're believing
too little, or too narrowly. But not too much. It's impossible to believe
too much.
Please. Just take a moment and think about it. We're here, in this room,
on this earth, surrounding the sun, one of a hundred billion stars in our
galaxy, which is one of, say, a hundred billion galaxies. You can't believe
too much. We shouldn't be wondering this morning about whether or not Jesus
was resurrected. We should be wondering first and foremost--this is the
miracle, by the way; miracles aren't the stopping of the sun, or the parting
of the waters-- the miracle is life, this, right-now, blow-it-away miracle.
It's absolutely unfathomable, that He could be here, that we are here now.
And then, you see, he lived and died and lives. So that's the Easter question,
the big question. Can we live, and die, and live? And die, and live? It
doesn't have much to do with the resurrection at all. I think it has to
do with the passion, the Passion of Jesus. How easily it could have turned
out differently, if only he had simply lived and died.
Pilate, it seems, was a man of some conscience. He was uncomfortable, it
appears, with handing Jesus over to be crucified. For one thing, it was
far from clear that Jesus had done anything wrong. He certainly had broken
no laws of the state. As long as Jesus continued to exhort his followers
to give unto Caesar that which was Caesar's, there could be no harm, really,
in countenancing his continued presence. In Pilate's opinion, Jesus was
nothing more than a minor Jewish prophet and wonderworker. There were many
such figures in Judea at the time; we've forgotten all but one of them.
They were, admittedly, not Pilate's kind of people. As a matter of fact
they were probably not our kind of people. Pilate was a rational man; he
was a good liberal. He had no use for religious fanatics, though Jesus,
he had to admit, was interesting. Imagine: the man wouldn't say a word in
his own defense, on his own behalf. Seemingly, he was unconcerned about
his fate. This appealed to Pilate's Stoic sensibilities. Not only that,
but there was this question of Pilate's wife. Had she not written him a
note, passed him a note while the proceedings were taking place, while he
was sitting in judgment, imploring him in these words: "Let there be
nothing between you and this just man; for I have suffered much today because
of a dream I had about him."
Pilate was a rational man. He didn't put too much stock in dreams. On the
other hand, he knew enough not to completely discount them. Nor was he one,
being a prudent man, to cross his wife lightly. And so he sat. And he asked
questions. And he listened as the case against Jesus was presented, taking
into account the Sanhedrin, especially the Sadducees, who seemed most concerned
by the competition Jesus offered. Pilate had to admit that something would
be gained by giving in to them. But he just couldn't bring himself to do
it.
"Enough," he finally said. "Even my wife has suffered from
your foolishness. And this man, Jesus, goodness knows, he's suffered enough.
He does not threaten Rome. It is not he who spreads civil unrest in Judea.
The law of Rome protects those who have done no wrong. We need peace, not
another martyr. I will be truly innocent of the blood of this man. I keep
Barabbas. I give you Jesus. He can go. He can preach. He can practice his
healing throughout Judea. The power of Rome will go with him and protect
him. Jesus will suffer no more."
So it was that Jesus continued to teach in parables and to minister to the
sick. His ethical message remained much as it was before, the message of
the progressive rabbis of his time, except for one distinctive, radical
insight: "Love your enemies. Forgive them. Do good to those who persecute
you."
But no one dared to be Jesus' enemy, at least not openly. And no one persecuted
him, for on Pilate's instruction the legions of Rome watched over him and
made sure that he came to no harm. He was admired, even revered by some.
But most who knew him--and not that many did--regarded him as an amiable
eccentric who preached in pious hyperbole about loving hypothetical enemies
and praying for mythical persecutors. He was admired... and forgotten.
Jesus died of old age in Nazareth in his carpentry shop, slumped across
a wooden workbench. The night before he died, when at supper with his aging
followers, he turned to the one whom he had forgiven the most and loved
the most and said to him, "Judas, let me tell you. Pilate's vow holds
me prisoner, even as his justice gives me joy. I came to usher in the Kingdom
of God, to create it here on earth. But creation is composed both of joy
and of suffering. The pains of the new and wondrous birth have been denied
me. The world is little changed for all my years of teaching. I must go
to my Father having drunk the bitterest cup of all."
And that was the end of Easter.
None of this happened, of course. But perhaps we can learn from what didn't
happen something about what did.
Jesus entered Jerusalem festively, leading a band of rag-tail followers,
people who believed that he was the promised messiah. Within a week he had
been betrayed by one of his disciples, brought before Pilate, sentenced,
and crucified. His followers disbanded. Many, in fear for their own lives,
went into hiding. His chief disciple, the "rock" Peter, forswore
him three times rather than admit to any knowledge of him.
This is certainly not the way the story was supposed to turn out. By ancient
tradition the promised messiah, scion of David, King of the Jews, would
march triumphantly into Jerusalem to be crowned. This was the expectation,
as far as we know, of many of Jesus' followers. The problem is, this expectation
had nothing to do with Jesus' gospel.
Empty yourself and be filled. That was the essence of his message.
Lose your life and find new life. Dare to suffer and be part of a
new creation. Paradox upon paradox. The kingdom of God is in a mustard
seed, the smallest and least portentous of all seeds; riches can
be--often are--impediments to salvation, to neighborliness, to love; all
the knowledge of the scribes and all the logic of the Pharisees, and all
the pretense of the Sadducees is a sham--it accounts for nothing.
Think about what this man taught us. Begin with sacrifice. For instance,
to love an enemy, we must sacrifice our pride. We must sacrifice our sense
of entitlement, and all the pleasure that go into salving a wounded ego
with vengefulness, and bitterness, and hate. How sweet, how sweet are the
pleasures of victimhood.
Forgiveness too requires sacrifice. Fully to forgive, we must sacrifice
our precious self-righteousness. We must sacrifice our preoccupation with
having been wronged. And we must sacrifice the advantage of holding another
in our debt.
Jesus' teachings, especially his parables, are filled with this message.
We remember it, by the way, because he died for it. His disciples didn't
understand any better than we do. You go back to the gospels and flip through--
every page, he's trying to explain to these dunderheads what he's talking
about. And they fall asleep, and they wander off, and they get big heads,
and he's saying No, no. No, no. You're not getting it. It's very, very simple.
Many before him, by the way, had preached that one should love one's neighbor
as oneself, but he just completely redefined the term "neighbor."
He made it as difficult as possible for us to do what he felt we had to
do to cleanse ourselves. You know the parable of the good Samaritan? Samaritans
weren't good, that's the whole point of the parable. Everybody knew there
was no such thing as a "good" Samaritan. Think about your most
easy stereotypical prejudice. Make it, let's say, the parable of the redneck
with three guns in the back of his truck, or something like that. Then you
begin to see what he's talking about. When he says "Love your neighbor,"
he's saying to the Catholic in Ireland, "Love the Protestant,"
and to the Protestant, "Love the Catholic," and to the Jew in
Jerusalem, "Love the Palestinian," and to the Palestinian, "Love
the Jew." He's saying to us, "Your neighbor is the one who betrayed
your trust. You neighbor is the friend who turned on you without just cause.
Love them. Put them in your mind. Put them in your prayers. Pray for them,
because it's absolutely impossible to hate someone and pray for them at
the same time. It is no wonder, however, that this hard message eluded not
only Jesus' disciples then, not only those who walked with him, but those
who have followed, ever since, in his name.
Which brings us back to the Passion. The reason we remember the essence
of Jesus' gospel, which even this day is there for our awakening, can be
summed up in his own agony on the cross. Suffering, self-sacrifice, forgiving
his enemies, he does it all, right there, and submitting to the mysterious,
inscrutable, and often paradoxical will of God. Just think about his dying
words, "I thirst." How human is that? "I thirst." This
is not God thirsting, it's us, you and me, or our neighbor, on the cross.
"It is finished." And then, "Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do." Forgive your enemies. Forgive those who persecute
you. And your heart will be filled with the presence of God. "Into
thy hands I commit my spirit." Take away the Passion and there is no
triumph, there is no new creation.
Now the issue here is not the physical resurrection of Jesus. That can just
get in our way. The affirmation and triumph of Jesus' gospel come during
the Passion itself. The resurrection is simply the fruit of that Passion,
the symbol of its integrity. This is true whether one takes the Gospel accounts
literally or figuratively. What does it really matter how little we know,
how little our neighbors know--the ones whom we must love? In either case,
the message remains the same. It is a message founded on suffering: the
suffering of Jesus, real suffering-- thirsting, pain, bewilderment. And
it's grounded in failure. Not the failure of Jesus, but the failure of Pilate
and the failure of Judas and the failure of Peter.
Pilate tries to wash his hands clean of the failure. That points to the
lesson. Judas tries to cash in on the failure. That also points to the lesson.
Peter begs forgiveness for his failure. He gets it, he finally gets it.
The suffering Christ that was in Jesus on the Cross is born again in Peter,
and then born again in the Church that Peter established, Peter who has
learned the lesson of Easter through his ignominy and his tears. The Kingdom
of God that was in Jesus is now resurrected in Peter's heart, beginning
there, and not, my friends, just ending here.
Of course, we have cut our teeth on a radically different gospel. In a nutshell,
nothing succeeds like success, with its evident corollary, failure is by
all means and at all times to be avoided or disguised. Not that we do avoid
it. But, like Judas N even more like Pilate, we tend to finesse it. We tend
to blame our suffering on others and make excuses for our little failures.
Most pathetic of all, we tend to avoid situations in which we might place
ourselves at risk: not daring to speak out when justice is left undone;
not daring to formulate convictions so sound that we would be inconvenienced
should we attempt to live by them; not daring to assume personal responsibility;
and, most important of all, not daring to probe our life's meaning too deeply:
this for fear, I expect, that we might just discover what it would take
to make our lives worth living and worth dying for.
The problem is simple. One way or another, we are always in danger of finding
out the truth about ourselves. And when we do, or even begin to get a glimmering
of it, we are met with the demand that we must change. Just think about
what this might mean. It likely will mean emptying ourselves before we can
be filled, perhaps in a sense even losing our lives to that they can be
found; and, short of this, it surely means giving up a modicum of comfort,
and prejudice, and convenience, and security.
Imagine. Imagine that you and I were brought before the tribunal of meaning
and purpose, of truth and conscience, of love. Let's ask ourselves, as if
it really made a difference: Are we in any danger of being convicted of
self-sacrifice, or heartfelt forgiveness, or a sufficient generosity of
spirit that we may be said truly to love our neighbor, our enemy, the other,
as ourself? And if convicted of a desire for these things, are we even halfway
prepared to pay the penalty? Or when brought before the tribunal do we simply
say, "Leave me alone. I am not really guilty. What could I do? I am
no worse than anyone else, and better than many: my enemies, for instance.
What I do, why, everyone does it. And the things I do not do, well, who's
to tell me that anything I could do might really make a difference anyway?
Besides, I've got my own worries to think about. Forget about me. Keep Barabbas."
And ninety-nine out of a hundred times the judge is going to say, "Fine."
The judge will keep Barabbas or opt for any one of a thousand other outs
or excuses. The judge will do this for us, because we are the judge.
Every time we plead innocent on self-servicing advice such as this, we are
convicted by the gospel. Love your enemy. Forgive those who persecute
you. Empty yourself. Chance your life. Put your trust in the hands of God.
Dare to suffer. Dare to fail. Suffer well and fail boldly in causes that
are just. And when you've failed in causes that are not, then accept forgiveness,
grant forgiveness, and set forth anew. Such failure, despite all the
pain that facing up to it entails, is far more redemptive than much, even
most of what the world celebrates as success.
One final thing.
Jesus preached his gospel with the full expectation that the world was about
to end, that this would happen within his own disciples' lifetime. He was
wrong. He called upon his followers, however--in this mistaken belief--to
repent and love even their enemies, not to save the world but to ensure
that they themselves would have a place in the kingdom. Two millennia later,
the world, as far as I know, is not quite yet about to end.
So today, the same radical ethic demands and promises something more even
than it did in Jesus' own time. It demands that we repent, forgive, and
love one another, enemies included--not only to save ourselves, but also
to save them.
And that, my friends, is not the end of Easter; it is really only the beginning. Copyright
AllSouls 1998.