-- Abraham Lincoln
Meditation: by Anne Alexander Bingham a poem entitled “It Is Enough”
To know that the atoms
of my body
will remain
to think of them rising
through the roots of a great oak
to live in
leaves, branches, twigs
perhaps to feed the
crimson peony
the blue iris
the broccoli
or rest on water
freeze and thaw
with the seasons
some atoms might become a
bit of fluff on the wing
of a chickadee
to feel the breeze
know the support of air
and some might drift
up and up into space
star dust returning from
whence it came
it is enough to know that
as long as there is a universe
I am a part of it.
Reading: by the Iranian born author Reza Aslan from Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (p. xxiiv – xxvii)
It is a miracle that we know anything at all about the man called Jesus of Nazareth. The itinerant preacher wandering from village to village clamoring about the end of the world, a band of ragged followers trailing behind, was a common sight in Jesus’s time – so common, in fact, that it had become a kind of caricature among the Roman elite…
The first century was an era of apocalyptic expectation among the Jews of Palestine… Countless prophets, preachers, and messiahs tramped through the Holy Land delivering messages of God’s imminent judgment. Many of these so-called false messiahs we know by name. A few are mentioned in the New Testament…
The problem with pinning down the historical Jesus is that, outside of the New Testament, there is almost no trace of the man who would so permanently alter the course of human history…
In the end, there are only two hard historical facts about Jesus of Nazareth upon which we can confidently rely: the first is that Jesus was a Jew who led a popular Jewish movement in Palestine at the beginning of the first century C.E.; the second is that Rome crucified him for doing so. … The Jesus that emerges from this historical exercise – a zealous revolutionary swept up, as all Jews of the era were, in the religious and political turmoil of first-century Palestine – bears little resemblance to the image of the gentle shepherd cultivated by the early Christian community….
Reading: by Stephen Prothero from God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World (p. 70)
Jesus means different things to different people in different times and places. Shifting with the cultural, political, and economic winds, images of Jesus are about as stable as the weather in Kansas’s Tornado Alley. In the ancient world, He was the messiah in Jerusalem, a truth teller in Athens, and an emperor in Rome. In the United States, He has been black and white, gay and straight, liberal and conservative, a capitalist and a socialist, a pacifist and a warrior, an athlete and an aesthete, a civil rights agitator and a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Muslims embrace him as a prophet, Hindus as an avatar, Buddhists as a bodhisattva. So when Jesus asks, “Who do people say I am?” [in the Gospel of Mark], there is no easy answer, either in His lifetime or in ours.
Reading: by Tim Rice from the rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar,” this is from the first song following the Overture, “Heaven on their Minds,” sung by Judas.
My mind is clearer now.
At last all too well
I can see where we all soon will be.
If you strip away The myth from the man,
You will see where we all soon will be. Jesus!
You've started to believe
The things they say of you.
You really do believe
This talk of God is true.
And all the good you've done
Will soon get swept away.
You've begun to matter more
Than the things you say.
Listen Jesus I don't like what I see.
All I ask is that you listen to me.
And remember, I've been your right hand man all along.
You have set them all on fire.
They think they've found the new Messiah.
And they'll hurt you when they find they're wrong.
I remember when this whole thing began.
No talk of God then, we called you a man.
And believe me, my admiration for you hasn't died.
But every word you say today
Gets twisted 'round some other way.
And they'll hurt you if they think you've lied.
A Revolutionary Radical
A Sermon Delivered on April 20, 2014
By
The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann
This year, in our family, our Easter and Lenten activities involve a very special religious and cultural observance. Thanks to the initiative of my wife, Elaine, we have procured four tickets for the upcoming revival of the rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar.” I think it will be quite an experience.
According to the official website of “Jesus Christ Superstar: Arena Spectacular,” this summer we will “feel all the power and the glory of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Jesus Christ Superstar in the most awe-inspiring North American arena tour ever staged.” We will experience “the rock music phenomenon that has entertained audiences worldwide for 40 years.”
The tour will visit over 50 cities, starting with New Orleans on June 9th. And, in case you are wondering, the show will be at the United Center in Chicago on June 29. Tickets are still available.
* * *
Jesus Christ Superstar has a prominent place in our family. I myself was first introduced to it in the early 1970s. Soon after the album was released my parents bought a copy, and I remember listening to it closely, carefully reading along the words. This was one of my first, and perhaps the most formative exposure to the story of Jesus. I was in elementary school at the time, growing up in Frankfurt, Germany.
Little did I know at the time, that while I was listening in Frankfurt, a young girl my age was listening to the same music in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and was equally impressed. I didn’t meet her until about twenty years later, when Elaine and I met in seminary.
And so, perhaps it is no surprise that when our children Noah and Sophia were in elementary school, they were introduced to the same music, the same songs, in our home here in Urbana. This was during the years Elaine and I served this church as co-ministers.
On long car trips, when our kids were young, Elaine and I would pass the time by trying to sing the entire “Jesus Christ Superstar” soundtrack from memory, or we would sing along to the CD.
In a newsletter column Elaine wrote in 2001, she recalls the impact Champaign Central High School’s production of the musical had on our kids. It inspired them to “reenact it whenever and wherever possible.” Elaine writes, “they sing the songs everywhere, and loudly. In the grocery store, at their friends' houses, at the bus stop. It is a little startling to have little Sophia all of a sudden belt out, “I don't want your blood money!” And Noah loves to sing the 'theme song'—“Jesus Christ, Superstar, do you think you're what they say you are?”
Jesus Christ Superstar is a modern passion play – a new take on a tradition that goes back to the Middle Ages, to Lenten observances in Europe.
And I continue to be impressed with both the music and the message. They bring the familiar characters of the Gospels to life in a new way. Jesus is not an otherworldly prophet, but rather a complicated and conflicted young person, uncertain about his life and calling, torn by conflicting desires. He is a reluctant revolutionary.
And Judas is not a ruthless traitor, but rather a close friend of Jesus, a firm supporter of his religious and political goals. Judas is a keen observer of the movement that seems to be growing around Jesus, and critical of a rising religious fervor that threatens to undermine the message of Jesus. Judas realizes that as religious and political radicals they are treading on dangerous ground.
The musical touches on religious themes that have been debated since the earliest days of Christianity. How to separate the myth from the man Jesus? As Tim Rice sees it, neither Judas nor Jesus considered him a messiah. This was an idea invented by others.
* * *
It is baffling how stories of Jesus have continued to fuel our religious imagination for centuries. Jesus inspires ethical arguments about right and wrong, political arguments about the power of church and of state, and theological arguments about the nature of humanity and divinity, and what it might look like if we were able to fully embody God’s will.
To this day, as Stephen Prothero points out, there is no easy answer to the question, “Who is Jesus?” And, amazingly, the question continues to be controversial and loaded.
Maybe you heard about the new statue of Jesus that was recently installed in front of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Davidson, North Carolina. It is a life-sized bronze sculpture of a man huddled under a blanket on a park bench, with face and hands obscured. If you drive by, it is easy to mistake the statue for an actual homeless person. And in fact, a neighborhood women driving by called the police when she first saw it.
Only at second glance do most people realize it is a statue. And only when looking more closely do they see that the bare feet sticking out under the blanket have nail wounds in them, and then realize the homeless person under the blanket is supposed to be Jesus. As you might imagine, not all Christians in Davidson, North Carolina appreciate this depiction of Christ. They prefer to imagine Jesus as exalted rather than downtrodden.
Jesus has been imagined black and white, gay and straight, liberal and conservative. There is no end to the debates about who Jesus was, or who Jesus might be if he walked the earth today. For instance, yesterday this interpretation was forwarded to me via Facebook:
“Jesus was a radical nonviolent revolutionary who hung around with lepers, hookers, and crooks; wasn’t American and never spoke English; was anti-wealth, anti-death penalty, anti-public prayer (Mt 6:5); but was never anti-gay, never mentioned abortion or birth control, never called the poor lazy, never justified torture, never fought for tax cuts for the wealthiest Nazarenes, never asked a leper for a copay; and was a long-haired, brown-skinned homeless community-organizing… Middle Eastern Jew.” Of course that’s only if you actually believe what’s in the Bible. (based on remarks by actor/comedian John Fugelsang)
* * *
“Who is Jesus?” continues to be a controversial and loaded question. This is also what Reza Aslan realized when his book on Jesus of Nazareth was published last summer. A groundswell of Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists were “furious that a Muslim published a book about Christianity’s origins.” (Alexander Nazaryan)
But the thesis of the book is not particularly provocative. The portrait of Jesus as a religious radical and political revolutionary draws on the works of well-known religious scholars and historians, some of which were published over a century ago.
Aslan describes Jesus as a man of “profound contradictions, one day preaching a message of radical exclusion, the next, of benevolent universalism.” But more striking than his speculations about Jesus, is Aslan’s description of the political and cultural landscape in which the religious beliefs of Jesus’s followers gradually developed.
Those were wild and desperate times in the ancient Near East. Palestine was occupied by the armies of Rome. Jews lived in poverty and oppression, exploited by the Roman rulers and the complicit Jewish religious elite. And Jesus was by no means the only Jewish leader who challenged Rome.
Three years after his death, in the year 36, there was the so-called Revolt of the Samaritan. In 44 there was the Revolt of Theudas, in 46 there was the Revolt of Jacob and Simon, and in the year 66 there was the so-called “Great Revolt” of the Jews. All of these revolts were crushed by Rome. And in response to the Great Revolt, Roman armies destroyed Jerusalem, and obliterated the Temple, and cast the Jewish people into exile.
It was in this political context that Paul wrote his letters to the early Christian congregations throughout the empire. And it was in the wake of these revolts that the Gospels were written. Understanding this context goes a long way toward explaining why several of the Gospel writers went to great lengths to distance themselves from the Jews, and to emphasize the otherworldly implications of Jesus’s life and teaching – the gentle, peaceful incarnation of a loving God – rather than the radical revolutionary message that clearly challenged the power of Rome.
The revolution Jesus envisioned during his lifetime – God’s reign on earth - did not come pass. And yet the life Jesus had lived continued to inspire his followers, and led them to reinterpret “not only Jesus’s mission and identity, but also the very nature and definition of the Jewish messiah.”
Crucifixions were not uncommon under Roman rule. It was a well-established form of execution for common criminals and enemies of the state. Also the notion of resurrection was not unheard of. The prophet Isaiah imagined a resurrection of the dead, with gravestones cracking open, and the earth coughing up the buried masses. Ancient Egyptians and Persians also believed in a resurrection of the dead. But the resurrection of one lone individual was unusual. Imagining Jesus resurrected, and as a living presence among them, was something that set early Christians apart.
As Reza Aslan puts it,
“The resurrection solves an insurmountable problem, one that would have been impossible for the disciples to ignore: Jesus’s crucifixion invalidates his claim to be the messiah and successor to David. According to the Law of Moses, Jesus’s crucifixion actually marks him as the accursed of God: “Anyone hung on a tree [that is, crucified] is under God’s curse,” [it says in the Book of Deuteronomy]. But if Jesus did not actually die – if his death were merely a prelude to his spiritual evolution – then the cross would no longer be a curse or a symbol of failure. It would be transformed into a symbol of victory.” (p. 176)
* * *
Who was Jesus? What is the meaning of his life and death? How can we make sense of the resurrection story? Men and women have grappled with these questions for centuries. Some believe they have found a final answer to each of them. Me – I’m not so sure. And in fact, I prefer to keep kicking these questions around.
Some believe Jesus is the only begotten Son of God. I prefer to believe that we are all God’s children, each of us an incarnation of the Spirit of Life, within each of us a seed of divinity, each of us endowed with the capacity to practice compassion and kindness, each of us able to live a life devoted to justice and love.
I prefer to believe there is a miraculous spirit of life, a profound and powerful force at the heart of all existence, a spirit that cannot be contained, not even by death. It is a spirit that continues to grow, and change, and flourish. It is the spirit of rebirth and of countless resurrections, as the natural world escapes the icy grip of winter, and awakens to warmth and sunshine, to the green grass and bird song of spring.
The story of Easter tells us is that there is a miraculous spirit at work within us, and all things, a spirit that eternally binds each to all. There is a spirit that, like the atoms in our body, will remain, in countless manifestations, through endless transformations. Like our very atoms that one day may rise through the roots of a great oak to live in leaves, branches, twigs… or rest on water, freeze and thaw with the seasons…. or might drift up and up into space, stardust returning from whence it came.
May the stories of Easter open our eyes and ears
to the miracle of new life all around us.
May we be inspired by a vision of love and justice,
that embraces all people
that reminds us that we are all sisters and brothers,
sons and daughters of humanity.
And that when we join together in love,
each of us can be a superstar.
And together we can save the world.
Amen.
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