Resurrection or Hallucination?

This is the crux of the issue isn’t it. The whole conquered death thing.

I suppose you could say that.

Well, wouldn’t you say that?

I have always thought, hoped, that my life would be more important than my death. That what I said and did, or tried to do, would have more of a lasting impact on the world than what was done to me.

And what was done to you? Was it really a sacrifice to appease God?

There was an ancient practice of blood sacrifice among many peoples. The destruction of the Temple put an end to it for the Jews.

So that was a good thing?

The slaughter of innocent Jews by the Romans, or any such slaughter, is never a good thing, but the end of animal sacrifice – it was time for that to end. The Pharisees were right on that point. All you have to do is look at the beginning of the Jewish Scriptures, they got it right in those stories. The Word of God has the power to create life itself from nothing, why would God need animal blood-letting in order to be “satisfied?” It’s a very barbaric, primitive concept, don’t you think?

I do. I totally do. But in the minds of the ancients there was this assumption that what humans did could manipulate the gods and hence reality. Through dance, song, reenactment of hunts or battles, and through sacrifices they thought they could change outcomes, control the future. They thought they could bring rain, guarantee fertility of wives or crops, determine victory in battle. And then when people started to believe in one, supreme God they assumed the same held true.

I think that is all true. But there is more to it than that. As the belief in a stern but compassionate Father/God became the norm for the Jewish faith, they tended to attribute to God the same characteristics of their own tribal leaders and fathers. Sons want to prove themselves to their fathers in deeds of glory and courage, and so they assumed God the Father would want the same homage. Jacob chose well when he chose the thoughtful leader not the bloodthirsty hunter to lead his tribe. But the Hebrew people still wanted kings and heroes like their neighbors. So God became imaged as a king too.

So there is a lot going on here. Ancient cultural norms, family dynamics, traditional pagan religious beliefs, and not a little social and religious patriarchy.

Indeed. So it is easily understood that people who believed in me wanted to believe my death was part of the whole plan. They wanted to understand it as the moment in human history when animal sacrifice became obsolete once and for all, the ultimate and final blood sacrifice had now been made, God’s Son had “satisfied” God’s need for justice, atonement, vengeance. But don’t you see the context? How this message was vital if the Jews were to believe in me?

You lost me here.

The Jews lost the Temple in 60 Ad.  No more sacrifice, no more atonement. But if you could look back thirty years to my death and interpret it as the final sacrifice, then it would seem that this was God’s plan all along and we don’t need the Temple any more. What did Paul write, the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and I was the final High Priest.

Theologically then, to see your death as a blood sacrifice, as THE blood sacrifice, was important in order to connect your death to the destruction of the priesthood and the Temple as being all part of God’s plan. It makes logical sense. But of course most Jews didn’t accept this interpretation and didn’t become Christ followers. And the Greeks who came to dominate the church just accepted the sacrificial interpretation and went with it, even though there was really no need for it.

Maybe no need, in the way that the Jews needed to understand the loss of the Temple, but the ancient Greeks had their own traditions of sacrifice to their gods in their mythology, so the idea of my death putting an end to the need for pagan sacrifice also worked.

We’ve been carrying this blood satisfaction theology for 2,000 years. Don’t you think it is time to take you down from the cross.

Ah, which brings us to the resurrection. Which I think was your initial theme.

Power over death; eternal life. These are the core issues of religions. Who or what has the power to conquer the natural cycle of life and death and offer us an everlasting life. Where is the fountain of youth? Is there another dimension where we live on or another level of existence? I wonder, is it fear that motivates this preoccupation humans have with conquering death?

Maybe, but as a mother who has lost a child I want to add that it is love, too. Anyone who has lost someone dear to them naturally would be excited at the possibility of seeing them again, and would want to believe, would hope, that the dead loved one is experiencing some form of happiness that perhaps eluded them in this life because of illness or circumstance. So maybe it is fear, yes, but also love and hope.

In fact I have been reading about grief and about how people who are grieving commonly have hallucinations of the one who has died. And I was wondering if maybe the resurrection appearances were hallucinations of that kind?

So you don’t believe in the resurrection?

I’m not saying that, exactly. I’m saying that the stories in the scriptures may be stories of grief hallucinations. Mary Magdalene, the key witness, loved Jesus -- loved you --profoundly, and in her grief she sought out the tomb to anoint you. I can’t imagine how it would have felt to her to be about to touch the dead body of your beloved, your leader, your savior. I couldn’t have anointed my son without it breaking my heart all over again. I would have wanted to stay in the grave with him. Mary Magdalene would desperately have wanted to see you alive, to reverse the events of your death. For me, it was the morning after my son’s burial that the reality of the loss really hit for the first time. I know that desperation.

So you think there was no empty tomb?

I don’t know about the tomb, I just know about grief.

Is it possible that the grief was real and the empty tomb was real? Or do you fight that possibility because you never saw your son after he died? Are you still angry that he never appeared to you and said everything is ok, mum. I’m alright?

That’s a low blow.

I’m sorry, I truly am sorry for your loss and your pain. But it might be possible that there was a resurrection, and it might be possible that there is life after death, and it might be possible that your son is, indeed, ok, even if he has not told you so himself. Didn’t you say you had a dream, though.

Yes, there was one dream. I thought it was just a dream and there would be many like it. But, looking back, there was just that one. Which makes it more significant, now, I suppose.

And what did he say in that dream?

He was smiling his big, joyous smile. He told us he was hanging out with friends and we shouldn’t be worried about him. It was a great place and he was fishing. I woke up smiling.

And now?

Now, looking back, maybe it was more than just an ordinary dream. Or maybe I just want it to be.

But it turns out it was special, unique even.

Yes, it was.

So?

So maybe I keep hoping, for life beyond life, love beyond death.

That sounds reasonable.

Christmas -- Myth, history, parable

I’ve been reading commentaries about the Christmas Story and wondered what your thoughts were. I mean it is your story, after all.

No, I’m not sure it was ever my story. Let’s start with your thoughts.

Ok. Well, obviously I believe you were/are real. I mean you existed.

That’s a start. A lot of people won’t even go that far. I suppose they are waiting for a birth certificate to appear. But even if it was even possible, they’d probably say it was a forgery and I wasn’t really a citizen of Palestine.

I believe you lived, taught, pissed people off, got killed for pissing people off and ….

And?

Maybe you healed people, you certainly inspired people, and you made people who were marginalized feel nourished, nurtured, accepted, loved. But the Christmas Story? That’s something else entirely.

I agree. It has little to do with my actual birth.

Really? So is it just a myth?

Ah! A loaded statement. There is no such thing as “just” a myth. Myths are complex, complicated, multi-layered. As to the Christmas myth? Just consider all that it has inspired – amazing music, incredible art and sculpture, endearing and inspiring fiction, profound poetry. Not to mention hundreds of thousands of businesses churning out Christmas paraphernalia every year. But even more importantly, every year there are miracles of sacrificial giving of parents to children, children to parents, community members to those in need.



I completely accept that the Christmas Story has wielded a lot of power in the development of Western civilization, Western culture. But is it history?


Does it have to be history in order to be true?

Huh?

What Matthew and Luke got right (and let me point out that they are the only two of the New Testament authors to tell the “Christmas Story” and they didn’t agree on much of it) what they got right was that they focused on the message, the beliefs that they wanted to convey about the meaning of my life and death. It was never about my birth, per se, the birth narratives were didactic (teaching) devices. They emphasized that I was originally Jewish and that my life was part of our (Jews) larger narrative of salvation. Matthew, himself a Jew, made a concerted effort to parallel my birth with Jewish prophecy. They told a story about the community I came to save – not just Jews and not the powerful.

 Luke, a non-Jew raised in a Greek city, was emphatic about the role of ordinary working people – shepherds – who were invited to witness my birth. He did not have Magi in his story – wealthy, religious seers, from the orient – like Matthew did. And Luke gave more of a voice to women, my mother and her cousin Elizabeth both have “speaking parts” in Luke’s narrative. Matthew, a traditional Jew, did not break with ancient Jewish tradition that rarely included women as God’s chosen witnesses and prophets; Matthew used my father Joseph as the story’s main character – the one chosen to receive God’s messages.

And so the gospel Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke were constructed with a specific theological intention. Each of them had a particular focus and a particular message to convey about the purpose of my life and death in God’s larger narrative of salvation, and they accomplished this in their gospels beginning with their Infancy Narrative.

I suppose it should be noted that Paul, the earliest New Testament writer, and Mark the earliest evangelist, don’t even mention your birth.

That’s what I am trying to point out. My birth wasn’t important until people began asking more questions about my death – why and for whom – and about the significance of my life – my Jewish roots. And by then there was nobody to ask about my birth. Paul and Mark and Luke had never met me.

Do you mind all the shepherds and magi trampling around in the story of your birth?

Not at all. I have always been touched by the beauty of the scenes Matthew and Luke paint. And Luke’s prose is “full of grace” indeed. The Magnificat rivals the most beautiful of the Old Testament Psalms. The nativity story as it has evolved in the church touches people, it softens the hardest of hearts. It brings hope every year to a world in pain and turmoil. It brings beauty in the raising of voices in carols and in the decorating of whole cities. It moves people to kindness, compassion, and generosity, if only temporarily.

Does it bother you that there has been such an infusion of European symbols and myths – the Christmas tree, Santa Claus? And that people don’t know the difference between biblical versions of the Infancy Narrative, and instead just lump it all together into one story – magi and shepherds, angelic visitors or visions to Joseph and Mary?

No. It is one story, the story of a world in need of hope and redemption and of a God who chooses to work in and through humanity to bring evidence of that hope and redemption each year. There is no more important a story to be told than that.