Thought for the Week: Easter
Michael Wright reflects on the celebration of Easter
Among the astonishing stories of leaders of the world’s great religions, none is more astonishing than that of Jesus. More than two thousand years ago, a peasant from the northern outback of Jewish lands became a noted teacher, preacher and healer. Within a short time he so upset the religious authorities that they planned his arrest and trial and arranged for his execution by the horrific Roman practice of crucifixion. After his death he was laid in a rock chamber sealed by an enormous stone.
Gospel accounts vary about what happened next – but the general conclusion is that on the third day after his death he was raised to life by a divine act, that he appeared, conversed or ate with his friends on several occasions before disappearing from view each time. Was he a ghost, an apparition like a mirage, or was this the only recorded instance of human resurrection?
Who moved the stone? was the title of a book, first published in 1930, which remained popular for many years, by Frank Morison. Originally sceptical of the claims of Christians about Jesus’ resurrection, he sought to prove the flaws in the story and became convinced it was true. All the major Christian churches declare it to be true. The shining happy faces of so many singers on Songs of Praise declare it to be true.
I find myself out of step with them on this. As a young man, I passionately believed it to be true – and now I wonder why I did. Nothing in any other part of life’s experience confirms that such a thing can happen. Those who believe it did have to depend on trust in the authority of the church, or scripture, or their own religious experience to assure them that they encounter the risen Christ in prayer and sacrament.
I do not doubt that something happened and that we cannot now know exactly what it was. His friends were left with the impact of a striking ecstatic experience that changed their lives. When Christians try to explain it, some believe a physical transformation took place and others offer various explanations, such as David Jenkins, former bishop of Durham and now honorary assistant bishop in the diocese of Ripon and Leeds, who once famously said it ‘was not a conjuring trick with bones’.
The explanation that has made most sense to me in recent years is that given in great detail by John Shelby Spong, the retired bishop of Newark, in his book Resurrection: Myth or Reality? The gospel writers, he says, expressed their experience not in the language of history but in the language of the Hebrew Midrash tradition. You’ll have to read his book to get the full picture of this.
However, what remains for me is the conviction that my own and other people’s lives have been changed by encountering either Jesus the Galilean teacher and healer in the accounts of his life and ministry in the gospels, or by encountering the Christ of faith and of the resurrection narratives. Jesus of Nazareth challenges, inspires, encourages and sustains my sense of myself and my sense of the importance of love in human relationships.
I can rejoice with others in celebrating Easter without taking the gospel readings literally. The sense of new growth, new life, new beginnings is powerful and enriching. The Midrash tradition encourages us to find whatever is valuable and new for us for today in the ancient scriptures that are so familiar.
All of us who try who try to walk in the footsteps of either Jesus of Nazareth or the post-Easter Christ are brought up short by the mirror that Gandhi presents to us. When he was asked why he refused to become a follower of Christ, Gandhi replied: ‘I don’t reject Christ. I love Christ. It’s just that so many of you Christians are so unlike Christ. If Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christ, as found in the Bible, all of India would be Christian today’. Would that that were true the world over.
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