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This will be seventh Easter since retirement and the annual struggle over what to say to a congregation composed of people I had known and loved for years. There was no way ever I could have told them that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead, and if they could just muster sufficient faith to believe that he did, they, too, would enjoy eternal life in heaven with God.
If "pride goeth before a fall" -- as my mother was fond of saying, misquoting Proverbs 16:18 -- then I must admit that the contents of my first book was for me that pride. In it of Easter and resurrection theology I wrote: "Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley ... to the contrary notwithstanding, no observable data have ever credibly been put forth to suggest that the reversal of death beyond a certain point, say three days, is possible or even desirable."
All these years along, the book is still in print and still sells. It did not, however, go over very well in the parish. Even though I had said as much over 12 years' worth of Easters to that point, reading it on pages of uniform type between the covers of a book apart from the joyous music and liturgical pageant of the day gave some people a rude shock.
I mentioned this to a priest friend the other day, eliciting this question -- more of a challenge, I think, than a question: "Now that you're that much older and you have cancer that could take you down, what would you say about Easter this year?"
I told him I would say more or less what I had said all along, albeit perhaps more gently. I would put it in a less academic manner. I wish I could deal with it all in a more orthodox fashion and with the kind of certitude a good many people think they deserve to hear on Easter. But just because I am required by circumstances to face my own personal mortality does not give me license to contrive facts.
So what would I say to the people of a congregation rash enough to invite me to address them on Easter?
I would lead them through the biblical texts that mention resurrection. On the basis of the more than 50 years of my research and analysis of those texts, I would say that they partake largely in mythology -- not meaning that they convey no truth, rather convey it in metaphor and by other literary devices.
I would say that more and more I understand St. Paul's idea of resurrection was not the reanimation of flesh but of the reality of a potent presence of deathless love and courage.
Paul mentions precious little about the Jesus who he said over and over again was raised from the dead, but maybe that part of story was waiting to be woven into a greater legend. It could be that Paul was quite well aware of the ethical wisdom for which Jesus was apparently known. Maybe Paul perceived that without the language of myth in which to wrap it, that ethic would never be able to compete with the powerful Graeco-Roman mystery religions then so prominent in the first century. A number of such religions featured dying and rising sons of gods.
The Gospel of Thomas, the provenance of which is arguably as early as 50 CE, makes no mention of Jesus' death or resurrection. The Gospel according to Mark, the earliest -- circa 70 CE -- of the four in the New Testament never makes clear what its writer thought happened to Jesus. The last words of that gospel concern women who are said to have come to the cemetery to anoint his body for final burial. Having found no body there, Mark wrote, "They told no one anything because they were afraid."
It remained for the gospel writers known by the noms de plume Matthew, Luke and John to create the stories that, if taken at face value and admitting of no nuance, posit an actual resurrection. I have always been quick to acknowledge that the story, however mythological in nature, helped keep the message of Jesus alive. Why, though, are not others of the dying and rising sons of gods of the period objects of reverence today?
Pondering that question has always brought me back to the message that -- if one trusts the text -- seems to constitute the sense of who the Jesuses of the gospels really were: sometimes the bringer of the simple justice of inclusion, or one who habitually thought of others rather than himself, or a teacher of behavioral wisdom that if lived by consistently could issue in a peaceful society.
That's more or less what I would say in an Easter homily. It would not, as it did not in my years as a parish priest, satisfy those who want and need to hear a recital of the old, old story because it is old and is a story. It was more than once said to me by such persons that I should turn in my ordination certificate and seek honest work. Others, though, found hope in what I said because it enabled them to remain part of the community with their intellectual integrity intact.
One woman said this: "Your approach keeps the door open for me to come in. If you said the same old thing, you would be holding the door open for me to walk out." Of course, some did walk out. Others came to take their place.
That said, it is impossible for me to express in words the great relief of being retired from the door-tending task, never knowing who would walk in and who would walk out and why they'd do either.
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