"Reading
the Easter Story"
The week before Easter I got
an e mail from a student member of our church who is
now a freshman at a university in the U.S. He wrote:
"Hi Pastor Gene: I'm learning lots of interesting
things in my Religious Studies class: I have learnt
about the Pauline epistles: how some are truly written
by Paul, some are pseudonymous, and some are
anonymous; the difference in view of some of the
letters (e.g. Paul's letters vs. Pastoral Epitles);
the Greco-Roman household; how customs are different
in the ancient world than today (eg. Baptisms no
longer require you to bathe in a pool of water or in a
river.). A lot has changed since ancient times.
Perhaps we can discuss this further when I come
back."
I hope so because it's good
for me to be in dialogue with a student mind. Those of
us who are "mature" in Christian belief too often give
up thinking and assume that we have figured it all
out. This student is exercising his God-given
intellect at a fine university which was founded by
the Church but which like the majority of once
Christian colleges is now secular.
The development of
departments of Religious Studies separate from schools
of theology is a peculiar American innovation. One
result is that while Christians usually teach in
theology faculties, religious studies are often taught
by non-believers. The kinds of issues that my young
friend is getting into are objective matters and it
does not really matter what the faith orientation is
of the teacher so long as he keeps his faith or
disbelief separated from his academic
responsibilities. Fundamentalist Christians don't see
it that way and prefer to protect their offspring in
what they consider safe Christian colleges where the
bible is taught by Christians and in the most orthodox
fashion. The kinds of simple matters now coming to my
student friend's interest might not be raised in those
orthodox environments.
My young e mail correspondent
also raised a question appropos to Easter: "How do you
explain the ending to the Gospel of Mark (the real
ending, not the added short or long endings)? I mean,
isn't it cheap to say that the women ran away after
seeing Jesus because 'they were afraid?'" Here my
student needs to reread Mark 16:l-8 to realize that in
Mark's original short ending, no one sees Jesus.. It's
an angel, not Jesus, who scares the women at the empty
tomb.
Since the meaning of the
Easter story must be ultimately and personally each
individual's response in faith to the assertion that
Jesus is risen, I don't find Mark's ending all that
unsatisfactory although I'm glad that the other three
gospels as well as later editors of Mark give us
resurrection appearances. But Mark directs us in the
best tradition of scriptural study and faith
exploration: it's up to the individual conscience to
be led by the Holy Spirit to an understanding of the
Gospel including the Easter story.
The Christian Church has most
times affirmed that the Spirit operates through
reason, tradition, and conscience to lead us to a
right understanding of what God is telling us in the
scriptures. Some authoritarian church leaders, and
strangely they often appear on the Protestant side of
the Church, hold to fundamentalist and authoritarian
interpretations of the scriptures and insist that
human reason and conscience must bow before supposedly
self-validating scriptural revelation. This view is
offended by Mark's short ending because Mark leaves it
up to each reader to decide how Jesus is risen. The
fundamentalist view is equally disturbed by
independent religious studies not under the control of
the church.
But, as my young friend is
learning, we of faith need have no fear of exercising
our minds in the discernment of what God wants us to
know and believe. And a faith which calls for
suspension of reason and conscience is not going to
endure very well. Mark's version of the Gospel and the
Easter story has been around for 2,000 years so we can
take our clue from Mark and keep reading for the
meaning of the Easter story.
Pastor Gene Preston