Easter,
2004
Every year
at this time, our civilization celebrates the two great redemption
stories of it's collective history, those of Easter and Passover.
The two religious traditions are of course a single tradition
with two branches, and at no time is their intertwining more
apparent. In both Greek and Latin, the term for Easter
is Pascha, from the Hebrew Pesach, or Passover. And the English
world "Easter" comes from Eostre, Anglo-Saxon
goddess of the dawn, whose rites were celebrated at the spring
Equinox. And though bunnies, eggs, flowers, and other
signs of the earth's fertility have indeed become a
part of the holiday, Easter's not about bunnies. It's
about the passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus
of Nazareth. And His message of the redemption of humanity
through love has, more than any other message, shaped the
worldview if not the actions of our civilization for the past
100 generations.
Jesus'
message wasn't a central part of the tradition into
which he was born, and though it wasn't universally
embraced there, it was widely heard. Among other things, Jesus
lived and died both as a subject of a country under Roman
military occupation and law, and as a Jewish teacher.
His Last earthly Supper was a Passover seder, a ritual meal
differing little from those held throughout these mountains
and throughout the world this week∑a meal at which the
story is re-told of a people's freedom from enslavement,
and celebrates their redemption with the profound message
that none of us are free until all of us are free. Of
course that Exodus is also one of the world's great
stories starting with Moses, Prince of Egypt, and ending with
the parting of the Red Sea and the disappearance of Pharoah's
legions into a swirling abyss.
But it's
in the telling that stories like this take life, and help
us make the experience they narrate part of our own experience.
And so whether the telling is at a ritual meal or - even more
poignantly - through the acting out of the Passion story on
Palm Sunday, the form in which the story's told is important.
That's why throughout European history,
the "Passion Plays" have always been such a powerful
force, measured both by the faith and by the violence they've
often brought out.
This year's
big passion play is Mel Gibson's film The Passion of
the Christ, certainly the most compelling example of the genre
in modern times, and one of the most brutally manipulative.
For Gibson, the story of Easter isn't about the transcendence
of death through the resurrection, or the redemption of time
through God's love. Instead, it's a story
about Jesus of Nazareth as a victim of torture. And while
Gibson's said he used the approach to affirm Christ's
humanity, that's achieved at the price of a sickening
graphic intensity that can only be described as the pornography
of violence. The religious purpose this serves isn't
terribly clear, equally troubling is that because the film's
presented as historical docu-drama, many will think Gibson's
"Passion" is substantially factual. It may or
may not be, just as Pontius Pilate, a man who ordered the
executions of over 4,000 people, may or may not really have
been the most reasonable guy in all Jerusalem, as Gibson portrays
him. For anyone seeking to better personally understand the
Easter story this spring, we encourage you to stick to the
book, which is quite good. There are four excellent
accounts of the story in the New Testament, and though none
was actually written down until more than 60 years after the
events took place, they are, at least, faithful accounts.
The great
stories of freedom and redemption are part of who each of
us are - not because we all come from the same
religious tradition because we don't - but because
they're aspirations that all of us share. Our
country was founded by people who cherished freedom in all
of its forms above everything else. And while redemption
may mean something different to each of us, for all of us
it means our personal sense of being a part of something greater
than ourselves. Whether at any given time we're
in touch with that or not, we are that anyway. We are
all a part of a family, a community, a nation, and a world
where everything we do has meaning and significance.
Recognizing this is what makes holidays holy days, and helps
each of us find the way toward our own wholeness and our own
fulfillment.
If you're
inclined to attend church services this Easter, we hope you
will. If you're inclined to seek your experience of
the sacred in the forest or by a favorite stream, we hope
you'll do that. Whatever you do, we hope you'll
share it as best you can. Holidays are for retying the bonds
of family, whether those bonds are ties of blood or
of spirit. They're also a time for a broader coming
together, and this year we hope most will remember our country's
brave men and women in harm's way, and join in prayer
for their safe and speedy return home.
In this season
of renewal and rebirth, most of us will soon have seeds in
the ground and the sweet smell of earth on our hands. We wish
everyone a spring of hope and renewal in their own life and
for our communities, and a season of peace for the world.
