The Truth About Easter

This week, when I had gathered the children for Godly Play, one little boy burst out excitedly, “Today do we get to do the story of Easter?”  “Not yet,” I had to say. “First we need to hear another story. The story of Easter doesn’t really make sense without telling this other story first.”

And what was that story – the story of the Last Supper. Telling the Passion of Christ to children is a tough assignment. It can be all too much at too young an age. So instead, in Godly Play, it is carefully told. The hard truth of it is there, but carefully told. And the story I told that morning ended with the shocked silence of the disciples as Jesus is taken from them into the night, and they are scattered. When I read the account of the Last Supper in the Gospel of Mark this week, it ended with Jesus quoting the words of the prophet Zechariah, “I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered.” Such a good description of the world in which we live – a world of disunity, a world where the sheep are scattered indeed.

This past week, I had several people approach me with questions about the Bible that were rooted in strange misinformation about that book. How has this happened? How is it that a book that once formed a foundation for knowledge in western culture and civilization is now virtually unread, but argued about constantly? And where are people getting all this weird and distorted information about the Bible? The internet is a huge source of misinformation about all things religious, especially Christianity, but there are other sources as well, popular books and movies. But behind this is a darker force, one that leads to constant distortion of truth. This force operates unchecked in this world. We have to learn discernment, the hard way, we have to start questioning everything we hear, and think, and say. “Is it true?” is a great question to constantly ask. And then, “How can I know that it’s true?” If we start to ask these simple questions sincerely, we’ll discover more distortion and untruth than we ever imagined, and it will no longer have power to confuse and trouble us so much of the time. So this week I heard that the Gospels were all written down hundreds of years after Christ. In fact, what I had learned, and when I researched it again, I found its still the consensus, is that the gospels were written between 40 and 60 years after Christ died, not hundreds of years, but within a generation or two, with some of the apostles still living. Someone also told me this week that the Council of Nicea purged the New Testament of all references to reincarnation, and that this was all the fault of St. Paul. But St. Paul lived 300 years before the Council of Nicea, so where is this story coming from? It simply makes no sense. I also heard that the Vatican has a secret room full of all the really true books because . . . well, that crazy story has been floating for awhile. What on earth? And why?

Meanwhile, no one bothers to read the very book under contention, the one that seems to cause all the arguments, the Bible itself.  That’s what interests me. All this distortion leads people to ignore the place they might look for some real truth. Once you could not have been considered educated without a thorough reading of the Bible. Now, no one knows the basics, and internet misinformation has everyone arguing about a book they have never bothered to study in any depth. Christians used to spend their lifetime reading and re-reading the Bible. There are so many levels of meaning there. Why are people not reading it? Why do they accept all these distortions, all this misinformation, instead of picking up a Bible and simply reading it for themselves? I’d say we’d all be better off just reading the Bible and never arguing about it again. Don’t let yourself be provoked into a single argument about it. Just read it for yourself and listen for the voice of the shepherd, listen for higher truth.

The sheep have indeed been scattered. All over the earth, there are Christians who argue about all sorts of things, and these arguments divide and divide and divide. And how can the shepherd ever bring us back together again, unless we listen for his voice, unless we acknowledge our own ignorance, and seek the higher truths.

It seems very clear to me that Jesus Christ was crucified. The historical evidence there is very strong. Yet, all during my adult life, I’ve had people tell me that he really escaped and lived out his life somewhere else. Why?

It also seems abundantly clear to me that Jesus Christ is Resurrected and appeared to his disciples. In fact, his risen presence is still experienced, even today. It is not the absence of a body that leads me to believe this, but the full presence of God in the lives of Jesus’ beloved community after his death. That is what convinces me that something on the order of a much higher level of existence, something super-natural, and spiritual, occurred. It seems to have cut through all the ordinary responses to events and lead the original disciples to live their lives in a state of freedom that was unprecedented for all of them. Peter is full of fear, and even denies Jesus on the night of his trial. But after the Resurrection, he emerges to speak with boldness of the Gospel. He lives a life surrendered to God’s service after that, where before he had feared and worried over his own life. Mary’s confusion and loss and cut through by an experience of Christ’s presence that leads her to be the apostle to the apostles, leads her to be the first to proclaim that He is Risen. And all through the great fifty days of Easter, we will hear stories of lives utterly changed, freed from the bondage of fear, and growing in obedience, listening for the shepherd’s voice, following his lead, and gathering others into unity in Christ.

This is the movement of the Gospel. Our world is one in which the sheep are forever scattered, fighting, arguing, trying to prove our points of doctrine or politics or identity. But the Gospel gathers us as One, around a table where we are invited to experience the Union, the Communion, that Jesus shared with his disciples on that last night before his crucifixion. The Resurrection shows us that death did not succeed in taking him from us. The shepherd was struck, but he is here with us now, whenever we remember who we truly are, and whose we truly are, whenever we gather together in the humble spirit of obedience, listening for the Truth, listening for the shepherd’s voice. He is here with us. And he binds us together with him and with one another in spirit and in truth, as one.

The story of Easter begins to really make sense to us when we realize the limits of the world of ego in which we live: a world of proud division, a world where unity seems impossible. Then the Resurrection shines as real hope. Most of us have to learn this other story, the story of living in this world according to its rules before the very different rules of the Resurrected Life begin to call to our imprisoned souls.

What ever divides us can (and should) be left behind, for as we are raised with Christ, we now seek the things that are above, where Christ is. Make it a practice this Easter to recognize what divides you from seeking the higher truth, what divides you and makes you unable to love your neighbor, and seek to leave it behind as you raise your mind and heart towards Christ. No longer do we live for ourselves, no longer do we set our minds on earthly things like we once did when we worried, “am I good enough, am I nice enough, do people like me?” or when we worried, “who will be the greatest in the kingdom?” or when we worried, “what if I embarrass myself?” or when we worried, “what did they really mean?” or any of the rest of that crazy divisive thought that fills the mind. No longer do we our minds on such things. Leave it behind and set your minds on the things that are above – seek the higher truth – for you have died, the old man has died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. What a beautiful thing, your true life, your true self, your immortal soul, is hidden with Christ in God. Seek that, seek it early, seek it first, seek it always. And come to this table to remember that this is the true life, the true home, and it gathers us from the scattering hand of the world, and binds us together as One in Christ.

The Rev. Edie Bird
Palm Sunday, March 16, 2008


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