Just In Time for Easter

Usually this time of year the news market likes to get our attention by recycling some old story about Jesus and the resurrection. One year the Discovery Channel with James Cameron, director of the movie Titanic declared that he had discovered the bones of Jesus, son of Joseph! Trouble was of course that in first century Palestine they recycled names so often it was like declaring that Joe Smith the prophet of the LDS church is buried in a thousand different tombs. Um, there might be more than one.

Another year National Geographic trotted out the Gospel of Judas. “Was Judas the betrayer Jesus’ truest disciple?” That’s not a difficult question to answer if you know much about ancient Gnosticism, but since most Americans don’t, it will sell a few copies one Easter season.

This year no attempts at grabbing the headlines will probably unseat the great flap over Indiana and Religious Liberty. It boils down to two groups not trusting but rather fearing each other and worrying that a law will tilt the future fortunes towards or away from one another. Religious groups and LGBTQ groups then battle it out trying to posture themselves in a favorable light so as to gain influence that can be converted into political power.

Elephants and Riders

People, however, are complicated. If you know any, people I mean, you know how difficult they are to convince in nearly anything. If you live with a person you also know that differences over even small things can cause irritation, anger, and even violence. I’m sure you’ve noticed that among people the tiniest things, a look, a word, the placement of an article of clothing, a symbol can be the occasion of violence and death.

Thoughtful people have long pondered why we are this way. We are mixtures of will, emotion and reason. We often try to convince one another through reason only to discover that a story is more convincing.

Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist gives us a picture to illustrate this mystery about ourselves. He likens us to the team of a rider and an elephant. The rider is the conscious, reasoning side of us who we often imagine is in control. The elephant, however, is the unconcious, emotional side of us that often determines what we actually do. We see this all the time. Do you have a stubborn habit that you can’t see to break? Why is it you find it difficult to stay on a diet or lose weight? Why do you have trouble reigning in your tongue, saying things that you know will get you in trouble or disturb your relationships with others?

Since the rider is often over-matched by the massive elephant below the rider will often make up stories to help the rider feel better about what the elephant decided or make them look good to other teams of riders and elephants.

Both riders and elephants are always looking around, watching the other teams. Elephants are herd animals that feel secure in herds, often following the herd while the riders are making up stories that justify what the elephants feel is best.

The Easter Bunny

I’m sure in the minds of many Easter is associated more with colored eggs and chocolate bunnies than with a dead man walking. Now in my 51st year in listening to a podcast I for the first time asked the seemingly obvious question “why do we call this day ‘Easter’?”

The answer didn’t surprise me. Like many Christian holidays in the West traditional timing and symbolism to the best that we can tell were attempts by Christian monks to convert pagan Western Europeans.

The fact of the matter is no one knows for sure, but our best bet comes from Bede (“The Venerable”), a late-seventh-century historian and scholar from Anglo-Saxon England. He says Easter’s name comes from the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre, associated with spring and fertility, and celebrated around the vernal equinox. So there you go. As Christmas was moved to coincide with (and supplant) the pagan celebration of winter, Easter was likely moved to coincide and replace the pagan celebration of spring.

And while we’re at it, the Easter Bunny comes from these pagan rites of spring as well, but more from pagan Germany than pagan Britain. Eighteenth-century German settlers brought “Oschter Haws” (never knew he had a name, did you?) to America, where Pennsylvania Dutch settlers prepared nests for him in the garden or barn. On Easter Eve, the rabbit laid his colored eggs in the nests in payment. In Germany, old Oschter lays red eggs on Maundy Thursday. If anyone knows why children in an agrarian society would believe a rabbit lays eggs, please tell us or a historian near you. We’re all dying to know.

Now I know these things get some Christians all worked up and want to abolish bunnies and eggs. When I was a boy my Christian parents usually bought us a chocolate bunny and the elephant within really enjoyed it, so maybe that’s why I’m not upset by this form of religious syncretism.

I’m also not too worried about it because of something CS Lewis taught a couple of weeks ago.

 Christ has risen, and so we shall rise. St Peter for a few seconds walked on the water;  and the day will come when there will be a re-made universe, infinitely obedient to the will of glorified and obedient men, when we can do all things, when we shall be those gods that we are described as being in Scripture. To be sure, it feels wintry enough still: but often in the very early spring it feels like that. Two thousand years are only a day or two by this scale. A man really ought to say, ‘The Resurrection happened two thousand years ago’ in the same spirit in which he says, ‘I saw a crocus yesterday.’ Because we know what is coming behind the crocus. The spring cames slowly down this way; but the great thing is that the corner has been turned. There is, of course, this difference, that in the natural spring the crocus cannot choose whether it will respond or not. We can. We have the power either of withstanding the spring, and sinking back into the cosmic winter, or of going on into those ‘high mid-summer pomps’ in which our Leader, the Son of man, already dwells, and to which He is calling us. It remains with us to follow or not, to die in this winter, or to go on into that spring and that summer.

Lewis, C. S. (2014-05-20). God in the Dock (p. 88). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

The old missionary monks might have thought this too. It doesn’t, of course, also work for the southern hemisphere.

 Arguing About the Resurrection

Taking a cue from the news market I usually try to take a little time exploring the arguments about the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection. This piece from the Veritas Forum is one of my favorites.  Gary Habermas goes through his arguments as to why it is not unreasonable to believe what seems absolutely impossible, that Jesus of Nazareth after being dead for three days walked out of his tomb and appeared to many people, up to 500 at a time. This kind of thing really appeals to my rider. It’s rational, reasonable, helps me consciously say “yes, I believe in the resurrection!”

I know, however, that the elephant that his rider is riding, isn’t necessarily moved by this approach.

Habermas, as many scholars do, track the evidence back through the Apostle Paul. They like to use him because historians know a lot about him and his background. We can arrange dates about him. We also know that his account of the resurrection found in 1 Corinthians 15 is the older written account we currently possess by a person we can positively identify with historical certainty.

My elephant beneath, however, has more trouble with the resurrection. Not because it isn’t rationally approachable, but because it isn’t experienced. While my rider reads books, explores the theoretical and can imagine all sorts of things, my elephant is insanely practical and self-protective. Unlike the experience with a car and a driver, the elephant ignores the rider when he things the rider is asleep, or crazy with some idea, or just out to lunch about something. The elephant is practical and very vigilant at keeping the rider safe.

Mary at the Tomb

My elephant knows something about dead people. They stay dead. My elephant knows this because he’s experienced things. While riders learn by theoretical things like science and theory, elephants learn by story.

While Paul’s account of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 is vitally important to historians and theologians, John’s account of the resurrection is vitally important to my elephant. This is a story my elephant can understand.

John 20:1–18 (NET)

¹ Now very early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been moved away from the entrance.² So she went running to Simon Peter and the other disciple whom Jesus loved and told them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” ³ Then Peter and the other disciple set out to go to the tomb.⁴ The two were running together, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and reached the tomb first.⁵ He bent down and saw the strips of linen cloth lying there, but he did not go in. ⁶ Then Simon Peter, who had been following him, arrived and went right into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen cloth lying there, ⁷ and the face cloth, which had been around Jesus’ head, not lying with the strips of linen cloth but rolled up in a place by itself.⁸ Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, came in, and he saw and believed.⁹ (For they did not yet understand the scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead.) ¹⁰ So the disciples went back to their homes. ¹¹ But Mary stood outside the tomb weeping. As she wept, she bent down and looked into the tomb. ¹² And she saw two angels in white sitting where Jesus’ body had been lying, one at the head and one at the feet. ¹³ They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” Mary replied, “They have taken my Lord away, and I do not know where they have put him!” ¹⁴ When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. ¹⁵ Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?” Because she thought he was the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will take him.” ¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni” (which means Teacher).¹⁷ Jesus replied, “Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father. Go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ” ¹⁸ Mary Magdalene came and informed the disciples, “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them what Jesus had said to her.

An Eyewitness Story

What I like about the story is how it is from a person’s perspective. It doesn’t come at the event from on top, but at eye level, from within a person, Mary Magdalene.

We have many more rumors about Mary Magdalene than we have hard evidence about her. The Bible talks about Jesus rescuing her from seven demons. She seems around Jesus a lot meaning that she probably didn’t have any family responsibilities. What was clear was that she loved Jesus and was passionately committed to him. The story is mostly told from her perspective.

I also love how experiential the story is. The story is told as they are experiencing it.

All That Running

I’m also struck at all the running that went on. Adults don’t run often run unless they have to, or in this age if they want to exercise. You get the sense that Jesus means the world to Mary and that when she finds the empty tomb her world is further undone, if that can be said after the crucifixion.

Details

The story has details, like about the linens. These might seem strange but with just a little thought you’d realize that if you were going to move or steal a dead body more than a few hours old, one that had been scourged by whipping and pierced by thorns, nails and spear that you’d want to keep the wrappings around it. We often like to eat a sandwich in a wrapper, never mind touch a dead body. Thieves stealing from a guarded tomb certainly would have been more practical, but there are linens, still in side the tomb.

The Crying Woman

After the male disciples enter and leave Mary stays, bereaved. Even from the scraps we know Jesus had become her whole life. We do lots of speculating about Biblical accounts of demon possession. Was it mental illness? Were they real demons? Does it matter? Her life had been torn apart by these demons. We don’t know if she had lost a family or if she had never been capable of one. The region she was from was known by the Jews to be an area of industry also associated with prostitution meaning that perhaps the only way before she had met Jesus she could earn a living was to sell her body. We don’t know. All we know was that Jesus had rescued her and she would not be parted from him.

She was there at the crucifixion and could do nothing. She had to watch the men take Jesus and brutalize him and strip him and mock him and kill him. Now the only consolation she had was a grave that she could visit to honor him and now even that was taken away. She was undone.

John has two angels come to her and ask her a question. Normally when angels show up people hit the ground in sheer terror but in this case she’s already so overwrought by her grief she hardly notices them. They don’t even pursue the conversation with her.

Then Jesus is there and asks her the same question, and again she is so overwrought she does not recognize him. Isn’t this the way we are. We are so worked up about something we can no longer even see the thing in front of our face.  Then Jesus says her name.

Domesticating the Bunny

This story speaks to my elephant. I am moved by imagining Mary and Jesus. I am set up to believe this story not just because I find it compelling but to a degree because of the chocolate Easter bunnies my parents gave to me. My parents were good, kind Christian people and they believed this stuff so I trusted them and believe it too.

John Chrysostom, a famous ancient preacher whose sermons people still read today makes a similar point.

For “when,” it saith, “iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.” (Matt. 24:12.) And miracles do not so much attract the heathen as the mode of life; and nothing so much causes a right life as love. For those who wrought miracles they often even called deceivers; but they could have no hold upon a pure life. While then the message of the Gospel was not yet spread abroad, miracles were with good reason marveled at, lint now men must get to be admired by their lives. For nothing so raises respect in the heathen as virtue, nothing so offends them as vice. And with good reason. When one of them sees the greedy man, the plunderer, exhorting others to do the contrary, when he sees the man who was commanded to love even his enemies, treating his very kindred like brutes, he will say that the words are folly. When he sees one trembling at death, how will he receive the accounts of immortality? When he sees us fond of rule, and slaves to the other passions, he will more firmly remain in his own doctrines, forming no high opinion of us. We, we are the cause of their remaining in their error. Their own doctrines they have long condemned, and in like manner they admire ours, but they are hindered by our mode of life. To follow wisdom in talk is easy, many among themselves have done this; but they require the proof by works.

John Chrysostom. (1889). Homilies of St. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Gospel of St. John. In P. Schaff (Ed.), G. T. Stupart (Trans.), Saint Chrysostom: Homilies on the Gospel of St. John and Epistle to the Hebrews (Vol. 14, pp. 266–267). New York: Christian Literature Company.

We all know this. Our practical elephants believe in groups and so if the herd is good to us we are disposed to believe what the rest of the riders say.

Your rider might believe that Jesus rose from the dead because your parents where good and trustworthy people who gave your chocolate and colored eggs, but what that miracle means and how it changes your life requires us to go deeper.

Raised to Die No More

Last week in the oral sermon I went on quite a bit about an imaginative story of what would happen if Jesus had raised our friend Reggie from the dead after 4 days in the grave. I just substituted Reggie in for Lazarus in John 11. How would that change things?

The Christian religion says the resurrection of Jesus is even more dramatic than the raising of Lazarus. It isn’t just the killing of Jesus that is undone like the illness of Lazarus, but Jesus is raised with a new body, a different kind of body than the one he had before. Jesus’ body, unlike the raised body of Lazarus will not decay and die like we are all doing now.

This is the answer to Mary’s tears of separation. This is the answer to the tears of separation we weep. The point of the resurrection is that Jesus, in his body, begins a new creation that will not have the disease, violence and death that our present age suffers from.

This is an idea my rider gets excited about, but my elephant has trouble with. This is a believe my elephant needs when it is disturbed and distraught by decay and death, decay and death that is so obvious around us.

How Resurrection Yields Practical Love

Chrysostom hits on something important here. Our elephants are tuned into love at a deep level and our riders make up stories to justify the decision of our love drawn elephants. This is why if the elephant isn’t feeling any love the rider won’t embrace the doctrine.

We acknowledge this at a public, superficial level but remain in denial about the cost of love. You see, in this age of death and competition for all sorts of things, money, approval, lovers, fame, we realize that love is not a feeling, but love is something more like “your well-being at my expense.” My parents didn’t have a lot of money, but they bought those chocolate Easter bunnies for us. That felt like love.

The reason we don’t love is because we have needs, we have fears, we are trying to secure things for ourselves and often other people get in the way. Our elephants know this and so they butt and jostle each other to advantage ourselves while the riders atop say things like “well it’s your own fault that I had to do that to you.”

What Jesus’ resurrection yielded, on a large scale for people who began to believe not only that Jesus arose and is alive, but that he will raise up those who look to him like Mary did, they began to think about life differently. They were in less competition with other elephants and more able to be generous and try to live “your well-being at my expense.”

Christians and Love

Just last week Nicholas Kristof, a liberal columnist for the New York Times wrote an interesting piece. He begins with the results of a survey.

ONE sign of a landmark shift in public attitudes: A poll last year found that Americans approved more of gays and lesbians (53 percent) than of evangelical Christians (42 percent).

Now if we look at Chrysostom and we look at Kristof we might make a guess about what we think people will believe.

Now you might think that he’s about to do a hit job on Christians but that isn’t what happens.

Yet the liberal caricature of evangelicals is incomplete and unfair. I have little in common, politically or theologically, with evangelicals or, while I’m at it, conservative Roman Catholics. But I’ve been truly awed by those I’ve seen in so many remote places, combating illiteracy and warlords, famine and disease, humbly struggling to do the Lord’s work as they see it, and it is offensive to see good people derided.

On a recent tripto Angola, the country with the highest child mortality rate in the world, I came across a rural hospital run by Dr. Stephen Foster, 65, a white-haired missionary surgeon who has lived there for 37 years — much of that in a period when the Angolan regime was Marxist and hostile to Christians.

“We were granted visas,” he said, “by the very people who would tell us publicly, ‘your churches are going to disappear in 20 years,’ but privately, ‘you are the only ones we know willing to serve in the midst of the fire.’ ”

Foster, the son and grandson of missionaries, has survived tangles with a 6-foot cobra and angry soldiers. He has had to make do with rudimentary supplies: Once, he said, he turned the tube for a vehicle’s windshield-washing fluid into a catheter to drain a patient’s engorged bladder.

Armed soldiers once tried to kidnap 25 of his male nurses, and when Foster ordered the gunmen off the property, he said, they fired Ak-47 rounds near his feet. He held firm, and they eventually retreated without the nurses.

Oh, by the way, this is where Dr. Foster raised his family.

One son contracted polio; a daughter survived cerebral malaria; and the family nearly starved when the area was besieged during war and Dr. Foster insisted on sharing the family rations with 100 famished villagers. This created family tensions at times, but today the kids speak glowingly of their dad.

At some point you have to ask, “why do they do this? It makes no sense! Do they view their life as being so cheap? Don’t they imagine that they’ve only got one life to live and so they’d better maximize their pleasure and minimize their pain?”

This is where the resurrection comes in. What if, instead of trying to grab all that you can in this tiny short life you have in the age of decay, your elephant believed that this short thing called “life” right now is just the entry to a far larger, longer, happier story. Wouldn’t we borrow some of that coming joy and bring it into the world right now? Isn’t that what Dr. Foster is in fact doing?

We saw that in the recent Ebola scare. Some very fine American medical personnel rushed over to Africa to help with the immediate crisis to discover that many Christians have been there all the time. The first Americans flow back who had contracted the disease were in fact missionary doctors who had caught it caring for their patience.

This is the old story of how the Roman Empire became Christian and it is the new story of how Africa is becoming Christian. This is how Christianity works, and it is all part of the resurrection.

A Herd for Your Elephant

Now I began by noting all the chatter in the news. I always smile when someone comes out with a story about Jesus’ bones or the book of Judas. When you think you’re going to talk someone in or out of being a Christian by presenting these kinds of things you’re not fully appreciating the dynamics of elephants and riders.

Now you might say “I’d like my elephant to believe in the resurrection more because I want to be one of the beautiful, loving people who sacrifice themselves for the well-being of others, but I find that mostly I’m petty and selfish.”

What I say to you is that what your elephant needs is a herd. I can talk to your rider all day long about how this is important, but that won’t move your elephant. What you need is to be surrounded by other elephants who are increasingly believing that Jesus came out of the tomb and spoke Mary’s name, and that Jesus will do so for us and our loved ones too.

This is why Christians don’t really thrive as individuals, sitting home and trying to read good books or Facebook links from Christians.

CS Lewis, who became a Christian after being an atheist noticed this about himself and explained it to a question posted to a newspaper.

Question 16. Is attendance at a place of worship or membership with a Christian community necessary to a Christian way of life?

Lewis: That’s a question which I cannot answer. My own experience is that when I first became a Christian, about fourteen years ago, I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology, and I wouldn’t go to the churches and Gospel Halls; and then later I found that it was the only way of flying your flag; and, of course, I found that this meant being a target. It is extraordinary how inconvenient to your family it becomes for you to get up early to go to Church. It doesn’t matter so much if you get up early for anything else, but if you get up early to go to Church it’s very selfish of you and you upset the house. If there is anything in the teaching of the New Testament which is in the nature of a command, it is that you are obliged to take the Sacrament, 7 and you can’t do it without going to Church. I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the great merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit. It is not for me to lay down laws, as I am only a layman, and I don’t know much.

Lewis, C. S. (2014-05-20). God in the Dock (p. 62). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Raised for Love

If you read Lewis and you hear about Mary you might begin to realize that there are worse enemies than death. What if Mary were a victim of “solitary conceit”?

You might know that Mary couldn’t have been. Mary’s life before Jesus was brutal and that brutal life taught her something about life, that she couldn’t live it alone. After Jesus rescued her she didn’t want to be without him, and apparently he didn’t want to be without her either. It was her desire to be with him, and this deep love that set in that transformed her and brought her to the tomb. It was his love for her that for a second time saved her from her private hell by calling her name and bringing her into the light of his presence.

This is why Christians believe that in the end the universe is all about Jesus and that is why Christians, when herded up, learn hopefully to be lovers and givers of life.