True Myth Easter Day
“Happy are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” John 20.29
Two priests decide to go to Hawaii on holiday. They’re determined to make this a real holiday by not wearing anything that would identify them as clergy. As soon as the plane lands, they buy some outrageous shorts, shirts, sandals & sunglasses.
The next morning sitting on the beach, enjoying a drink, a gorgeous blond in an imaginative bikini walks by. She smiles at them and says, "Good morning, Father, Good morning, Father."
They were both stunned. How in the world could she have known?
The next day, they bought even more outrageous outfits - so loud, you could hear them before you saw them. Well after a while, the same gorgeous blonde walks along the beach, turning heads as she passes.
As she approaches the two of them she nods and says "Good morning, Father, Good morning, Father."
Astonished one of the priests shouts out “How do you know we’re priests?”
The blonde turns with a puzzled look and says, "Father, it's me, Sister Monica!"
In the Middle Ages the priest would start the Easter sermon with all manner of ribaldry in order to elicit the Risus Paschalis - the Easter Laughter - from the faithful. Not a practice I would dream of resurrecting!
The media always have a field day at Easter, coming up with the latest harebrained theories about Jesus, or this year, Judas. The Da Vinci Code (which is a good read) shows how gullible many people are. Most surveys show that most people in Britain believe in the historical Jesus.
But then that isn’t the million dollar question, which today confronts us with.
Here’s the Big Question. And it is of course multiple choice. You may tick either A or B.
A: Is the idea of a God who became a human being, who died and rose again, a myth which nurtures the ‘Christ within us’; which releases the power of that myth at the heart of our own consciousness; an ancient by-product of human self-awareness?OR
B: Is there a reality which is beyond the cosmos, the First Cause of the cosmos, a Being who is the Ground of our Being; a transcendent God revealed in the man Christ Jesus who rose from the dead?If you ticked A, then the Easter story ends in the darkness of Good Friday. The existentialists were right when like Sartre they asserted, “There is darkness without and when I die there will be darkness within.” All the other high-flown talk about the power of myth is whistling in the dark. Although of course priests like Don Cupitt and the Sea of Faith group, the so-called non-realists, would deny this. They somehow find hope for living in this myth tradition; this psychological self-trickery.
And if you ticked B when in fact A is correct, then as St Paul puts it, you of all men are most to be pitied. For you have lived your life for a lie. You have supposed there is ultimate meaning when there is none.
Life is a Cabaret if you’re lucky, and a Nightmare on Elm Street if you’re not.
But wait a minute, we’re Anglicans. We don’t do ‘tick one box only’. We tick both and keep our options open!
But by ticking both boxes, we are making a profoundly Christian statement. The Answer to the Big Question is A because of B.
In other words: Yes we see the dying and rising myth enacted everywhere around us, and it has deep resonances within our psyche. Christ is within us, and the image of God is implanted within every human. And the self-awareness of most humans for most of the last 10,000 years has been caught up with god-awareness.
And this is not surprising, for there is a God who is out there, beyond space and time, who has seeded us with longings of immortality. He is there and he is not silent. He woos us to faith by his wounds of love.
Let’s bring it back to the events we celebrate this Easter Eve.
Of course I believe in the Death & Resurrection of Jesus both theologically and historically; and I have experienced that new-life-through-death which the Spirit works in me personally. I would not dare stand here unless, having not seen, yet, I have believed.
And yet… at a very deep level I cannot conceive a dead Man resurrected to a new and supranatural state of being. It is alien to all I experience in my everyday world of life and stay-dead death. It relates more to the powerful imagery of legend, saga and myth, whether The Iliad or Narnia.
But if it is just myth, A and not B, then I take no comfort from it. For that would be to deceive myself and others. I want no fairy story to sweeten the bitter pill of life, and more to the point, of death.
Having not seen, I am drawn by the authenticity of Christ and his people, to believe.
That great student of myth, CS Lewis, puts it well:
“The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact.” (1979:43) Mythology is full of dying and rising gods. But in Christianity, “we pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to an historical Person crucified under Pontius Pilate…” (Eng ed of God in the Dock, Collins, 1979:44)We are indeed people of the Empty Tomb, and yet we must not rob the Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, of the mystery and potency of myth. Or as Lewis says: “We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology.” (1979:44/5 ‘Myth Became Fact’ is in Undeception and also in God in the Dock, Eng & US eds)
“…the mythical radiance resting on our theology…”
Today we celebrate the cornerstone of our faith. Christ is Risen, and because he is risen, because I choose to believe that he is risen, then I encounter True Myth. The Holy Spirit gives me a hope that I cannot explain, but which has been at the heart of Christian experience through the centuries.
I spoke to an elderly lady this week who had just come out of hospital in Shoreham- by-Sea: Southlands Hospital, a dilapidated, run-down old 30’s building, that was due to be rebuilt after the war.
She had been close to death at one point, and a bright young doctor had asked her, if she lapsed into unconsciousness, whether she wanted to be revived?
“I ask you” Elsie said, “I’m at the gates of Paradise and they ask me if I’d like to come back to Southlands!”
This is the Resurrection faith of the people of God.
This is the hope of the Risus Paschalis, the laughter of Easter that carries us through this vale of tears and on to join the laughter of heaven.
My last Vicar, Bill Scott, has a beautiful illuminated manuscript of this piece of prose by Paul Bunday:
In the beginning… God laughed“Happy are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” John 20.29
And the earth was glad.
The sound of laughter
Was like the swaying and swinging of thunder in mirth;
Like the rush of the north on a drowsy and dozing land;
It was cold. It was clear.
The lion leapt down
At the bleating feet of the frightened lamb and smiled;
And the viper was tamed by the thrill of the earth,
At the holy laughter.
We laughed, for the Lord was laughing with us in the evening;
For the laughter of love went pealing into the night;
And it was good.
