Easter III: Not knowing, knowing and believing

The picture is the famous “Duck-Rabbit” bistable image. A bistable image is simply one which can lead to one of two precepts. Although most people can switch between the competing percepts of either a duck or rabbit, it can’t really be seen as some kind of intermediate or mixed figure. There are a number of such figures, widely used in psychology experiments and at dinner parties (and occasionally in blogs). It demonstrates that what you see is not determined entirely by what you see (i.e. the image that is at the back of your eye), but is affected by what you know. When Peter and Susanne Brugger asked a large group of experimental participants in October what they perceived, they were likely to say “bird”; at Easter participants were more likely to say “bunny”. This was found for both young and old participants even although, presumably, the older participants had no strong beliefs about Easter bunnies. Nevertheless, just the notion of the Easter bunny lurking somewhere in the cognitive background was sufficient to bias what their participants saw.

It seems fairly likely that if you start with something that we all regard as absolutely and immutably true, something that is believed essentially by all of us, something that has been believed almost as long as there have been people to believe anything, such a belief (which is probably thought of as knowledge) is likely to have a rather oversized effect on how we interpret what our eyes tell us. Believing is likely to be seeing rather than the other way around. But given what a fractious, disagreeable bunch human beings tend to be, what could we possibly all agree on? Well, how about that dead people stay dead? Suppose you had seen your best friend die, what would your expectations be? Surely you would not, indeed could not, expect to see them alive again (in the sense we normally mean when we say “alive”)? This is not to deny that very often people report hallucinations of recently departed loved ones. Indeed such hallucinations have long been the subject of study. But while such experiences are often regarded as important, rather than dismissed by those who experience them, and are often an important aspect of grieving, they rarely if ever lead to claims that the loved one in question is no longer dead.

Now consider the situation where the death in question is relatively sudden, brutal and unjust, and where the deceased is a significant public figure (and their death is likewise significantly public). And that after death, normal burial rites are carried out (if only in a rushed and partial way), and no-one is in any doubt about the “deadness” of the deceased. How are they likely to be regarded, at least with reference to their physical remains and existence? Note that I am making a distinction between their physical existence (ie in the normal sense of being alive) and their possible continuing influence in terms of their previous statements, philosophy or teaching. While there might be some ongoing existence of, and interest in, the latter, the former has clearly ended. At least that would be the normal, almost universal expectation, and therefore that is what everyone would see. Indeed to claim something different would entail encountering overwhelming scepticism. If one were to come to believe the assertion that the deceased was now alive, to persuade anyone else of this would require extraordinary and copious evidence. And precisely because of the normal expectation, even the evidence would be seen in a particular way, leading to the “normal” conclusion. It would be a really hard sell. Would such an effort even be worth making?

And yet last weekend, and particularly last Sunday, many of us were celebrating precisely such an extraordinary and unlikely event. Not one that happened recently either, but one which occurred (if it occurred) a long time ago, but has been remembered and celebrated ever since. How come​? Well, there is evidence of course, in the form (for us) of written documentation. That’s not just in terms of the Gospel accounts, which detail the rising of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead. Paul probably wrote his first Corinthian letter in the mid-50’s AD, about ten years before Mark wrote his Gospel account (probably the first of the four to be written) and about fifteen to twenty years after the event in question. It is clear from what he writes in 1 Cor 15, that it was broadly believed not only that Jesus had quite literally returned from the dead, but that he had then been seen by a group of his first followers, and then by a large number of others who were still alive at the time of writing. He then goes on to demonstrate why Jesus resurrection is so central to the Gospel that he (Paul) preached, the same Gospel that is preached today. He is insistent that he is not talking about some kind of mere “spiritual” event, or some shared experience, or the enduring legacy of an important teacher. He was rather claiming that the unlikely, the normally impossible, had happed and that it was pivotal. It was a claim that cost him respect and honour among various groups (not least his own people, the Jews), and eventually cost him his life.

What Paul was doing in part was reporting what had been the consistent earlier report of Jesus’ intimates. Having found Jesus’ burial place to be bodiless on the third day after His very public death, it seems very unlikely that Peter and others would have made the outrageous claim that He had actually returned from the dead were it not actually true. Peter had not reached his conclusion on the basis of some mystical experience, nor had he reached it quickly and easily. He had initially had seen an empty tomb, but saw an empty tomb, not the site of a resurrection. He and his friends “knew” that dead people stay dead. And they did not jump to the conclusion that Jesus was alive. One of Jesus female followers, on actually seeing Jesus (such is the claim), assumed not that it was Jesus, but that she was seeing someone else. Two other early disciples, who had also heard of the empty tomb, did not imagine that this meant Jesus was alive. So strong was the effect of their knowledge that He was dead, that even as He walked alongside them they didn’t see Him, but some other stranger (arguably another clear instance of the duck/rabbit effect). But they, and Peter and Mary, along with Paul and many others were convinced by prolonged exposure to the risen Jesus, a risen Jesus who ate with them, walked and talked with them. Jesus too was well aware of how difficult His new post-resurrection life was to believe.

But His return to life was not just believed as an isolated fact. How could it be? Such a thing, if true, would entail a fundamental alteration of not just how we think, but how we live and everything else in between. For if Jesus was alive, if He is alive (something that He Himself had claimed would happen), if he was correct in making such an outrageous prediction, then everything else He claimed and said would need to be re-evaluated in the light of the singular fact of His resurrection. This is precisely what seems to have so impacted those early followers. A dead Jesus is just another minor rabbi, and one who was guilty of lies and distortions (like His claim that He was going to rise from the dead). A risen Jesus is who He says He is, and demands our worship (the conclusion that “doubting” Thomas reached upon seeing Him) and commitment. Lies rarely evoke in the liars the kind of commitment that marked those early witnesses of the living, risen, Jesus.

This particular piece of knowledge, that Jesus is alive, once accepted and responded to appropriately (once “believed” in Bible terms) then affects everything else that we see. Nothing can ever be quite the same again.

Easter II: It was traumatic….

I’ve been thinking about death recently. No, I’m not depressed (at least not yet), but there’s a lot of it about. I mentioned that my dad died just a few weeks ago. And we’ve had rather a lot of funerals at Church just recently (with another one coming shortly). All that is close to home. But one doesn’t have to look very far to find death further afield. How quickly the thousands killed in Gaza disappear from the media spotlight as the World’s attention (along with its cameras) turns to a new war in the Middle East. Mercifully(!) the death toll there is probably only in the hundreds (at least currently), but the number is tragically growing daily. And that’s not to mention the “old” war in Ukraine, with a death toll in the tens of thousands (at the very least). Easy enough to write, not difficult to total, but so many of these deaths are an utter disaster to those intimately involved with them. The kind of traumatising disaster from which folk never fully recover.

Although for the most part in modern life we do what we can to distance ourselves from it, death is part and parcel of life. Although (outside of war and major incidents) we sanitise it, even ignore it, it is in reality inescapable and unavoidable – at least eventually. In that sense it is not a choice. But imagine if it were. Imagine if it was not inevitable. The obvious question is what would you give to avoid it? Presumably anything short of life itself (that would be self-defeating). But such a question is so hypothetical they it is not worth spending time on. Except that death, even in this fallen world, is not inevitable for everyone. God doesn’t die. You might argue that He is so far removed from death anyway that this hardly counts. He is not “one of us”, so how would this change anything? Except that the Christian claim is that He became one of us. Further, that He became one of us precisely to die. I’ve already discussed that in the person of Jesus He lived as one of us aware that he was heading inexorably toward His death. And there is very good reason to think that he knew about His impending death in detail that went beyond even what He told His first followers ahead of it happening. What kind of death was it to be? The worst imaginable.

The human imagination is a powerful thing. But it is part of our fallen lot that it has so often spawned really horrible ways of bringing about death. There’s no need to list them. But in terms of intensity of pain, degradation and humiliation, crucifixion must be near the top of the list. It was designed to be. We have even managed to sanitise the cross by turning it (even with a body attached) into an item of jewellery. But in Jesus’ world, everyone understood whatwas involved in crucifixion. And on the first Good Friday, they (or those who wanted to) actually observed what was involved. That this was the type of death that Jesus had chosen seems so implausible that multiple theories have been advanced as to why His death was variously an accident or miscalculation. All of these are speculative, and none of them is consistent with what we actually know of Jesus’ intentions. But the stuff that we can imagine, and in that sense can enter into and understand, is as nothing compared to what was unique about the particular death that Jesus elected to endure.

From His perspective what was really difficult, and the thing that in His humanity He appears to have struggled with, was that he was going “to be made sin”. That’s not speculation, that’s how the Apostle Paul described what is going on as Jesus hangs on the centre cross on the first Good Friday. Not that He becomes a sinner, but that He becomes sin and a sacrifice for it. The sin in question is mine and yours and therefore in a sense has to be at one remove from Him. Nevertheless the idea is that He becomes what we naturally are, and as such God Himself vents His justified and just anger on Him, so that it might be both exhausted and turned away from us. Again, this is so appalling, and from a certain perspective so unjust, that many theories have been advanced to explain what is happening on the cross in a different way. But the wonder of it is in part that He knowingly and willingly goes to the cross in the full knowledge of what is going to transpire. In the full knowledge of a kind and extent of anguish that you and I can’t imagine. But also in the full knowledge of what this is going to achieve.

As an aside, there is another aspect that we often forget. In a way that is probably impossible for us to fathom, Jesus’ humanity is never divorced from His divinity (He is God incarnate). What that must mean is that He always knows that He has the power to call a halt to proceedings, or in some sense divinely rescue His humanity and lessen the impact of what frail, pathetic creatures are seeking to inflict on their Creator. Yet he does not. He surrenders His human will to the divine will, and suffers as one of us, but also representative of all of us. That second aspect is precisely why it has to be Him, and not merely a man who happens to be a very good and exemplary prophet or moral superstar.

Meanwhile, what of the effect of the death of this particular person in this particular manner, on those closest to Him at the time? No every death is tragic (although most are in their way). Not every death is traumatic. It is genuinely difficult to think of the death of a Hitler, Mao or Stalin as anything other than justified. In my own case, my observation of my own father’s death was that while it brought us the pain of bereavement (which is always a complicated experience) it was neither unexpected nor traumatic. I realise that this is not always the case, but that’s how it was for me. Dad’s time had come; there was little element of choice. It was in many ways a relief. And it was transformed by what Jesus accomplished. But at the time of Jesus death, to those first followers, to those who were bereaved on that Friday, it was so unexpected (even if it shouldn’t have been), counter to their expectation and just plain horrible, that the trauma for them is difficult to imagine. And for them to see much beyond the events of that day, is surely too much to expect. We know the whole story, they did not. It is to their credit that they inform us about how devastated they actually were. My suspicion is that I would have been just as devastated and traumatised.

In the normal course of events this story should probably have ended with their trauma, or perhaps some moral they derived from it. If that were really the case we probably would never have heard of any of them, or any of their story. That you are reading this is a small piece of evidence that this is not where the story in fact ends. Fortunately it’s really difficult to miss what happens next.

Easter I: It didn’t/doesn’t appear from nowhere….

I know it sometimes feels like it, but Easter doesn’t just appear as if by magic and then just as quickly disappear. Nor is it primarily driven by a commercial imperative with its own timetable - Christmas decorations down, then valentine’s cards and treats, and then all of a sudden chocolate eggs appear, to be followed by rabbits of assorted sizes and constitutions. These are all distractions apt to convince the unaware and unthinking that there is nothing of importance going on, beyond obtaining an early spring sugar-rush. But there is more to Easter than eggs. And there is a then as well as a now.

The “then” I have in mind is of course some time around 30AD. As with all ancient history, some of the detail has probably been lost in the mists of time. But not being able to know everything with certainty is not the same as not being able to know some things with a fair degree of confidence. Real, 100%, cast-iron, completely proven certainty only ever exists within the confines of logic and mathematics, and is never likely to be available in the much messier world populated and shaped by fallen, fallible men and women like us. But, in tracing the events that led to what we now call Easter, we are well served by what is found in the Bible. This is not the place to rehearse why after thousands of years of critical scrutiny (and deliberately destructive scrutiny in the case of the Western academic tradition of the last couple of hundred years) the Biblical narrative still carries authority. It’s not difficult to track down accounts of why and how this should be, from the technical, through the polemical to the popular. But as a starting assumption, let us take the Biblical accounts of what we now refer to as Easter to be coherent and accurate, albeit they are neither journalistic or written in the linear way that modern academic history is written. Actually, if we consider only the Gospels, the writers are clear with us as readers that they are selecting their material and assembling it to present Jesus and His claims as they perceived Him to be making them. In other words they are more transparent about their methods and motives than your average podcaster or Tick-tock influencer.

What is clear from the Gospel accounts is that there is much about that first Easter that should have come as no surprise at all. But things being said and things being heard are two very different things. What comes across is that the person at the centre of it all, and the person driving events (rather than being driven by them) is Jesus Himself. Now, again, this is no surprise if Jesus is who He claims to be. A straightforward reading of the Gospels shows that Jesus did things that only God could do, expecting observers to draw the obvious conclusion. Just have a read of the account of His healing of the paralysed man let down through the roof into the middle of a room where He was speaking. He did things that were amazing but that also reminded his original Jewish audience of things God had done in the past, like when He fed thousands of people with bread in a wilderness area. Remind you of anything? Think Exodus, think 5000. He accepted things that only God should rightly accept, as when Thomas declares Him to be Lord and God and in so doing offers worship (although admittedly this comes at the end of the story). And He claimed, in terms, to be identical to God. It seems odd that this is disputed. Actually, this is sometimes a bit obscured in the English translation. In the Greek in which the Gospels are written, it leaps out from the text more than once. Of course there were those in His original audience who heard exactly what He was saying and were outraged by all. All of which gradually builds an expectation of some sort of climax. Either He must be exposed as an enormous fraud or…..

But to their credit, the Gospel writers (or at least Matthew and John who were with Jesus from near the beginning of His public ministry) make clear that there is another reason why the events of Easter should have been no surprise. Jesus laid out precisely what was going to happen in considerable detail, and did so repeatedly. He talked about location, rejection, crucifixion and resurrection all before they happened. Hours before the critical events He even explained why he was being so forthcoming. He was letting them know so that they would know that He knew! Consider why this matters. Jesus was neither simply following events as they unfolded, nor a hapless victim of miscalculation. If he didn’t intend what happened to happen he had ample opportunity to plot a different course. But from very early on, well before anything was apparently inevitable, He is very clear about both the purpose and shape of those first Easter events. Arguably, of course, well before Jesus arrived on the scene at all, it had all been first hinted at (as early as Genesis Ch3!), and then described in some detail (Isaiah Ch53). Those who heard Him speak might have had cause to feel somewhat embarrassed that they didn’t get it. But we know much more now than they did at the time, and do we get it? There is a greater purpose unfolding in the events of Easter, greater in a sense that the events themselves, although dependant upon them actually happening. What happened matters. But that should not distract from what it means.

So it turns out that the first Easter (not that it was called that) did not just appear. It had been long promised, and long prepared. And this Easter does not just appear either. The life, death, resurrection, ascension and return of Jesus is not just for one part of the year. All of these are rooted in history and yet in the person they concern have a daily relevance. He, through who He is and what He has done, restores, shapes, motivates and provides daily (even momentary) hope for life and living. Christmas, Easter, birth, death resurrection, return; these are not just disconnected ideas to be dissected and argued over. It all fits together in one big picture.

Not to be missed.