Redeeming & Re-imagining Easter Resurrection for the Modern World: Finding a Jesus worthy of an Atheistic Age

Redeeming & Re-imagining Easter Resurrection for the Modern World:

Finding a Jesus worthy of an Atheistic Age

First published, 4/4/2021; Undated 9/18/2024

Happy Easter everyone.  Today we reach the most problematic moment in the annual cycle of Christian holidays.  On Christmas, we celebrate "Peace on Earth, Goodwill to all Humanity," as metaphorically imagined in the incarnation of the sacred in the birth of a poor Jewish peasant child, resting in a feed trough for domestic animals, accompanied by poor herdsmen from the hills, the utter antithesis of the prosperity gospel spouted in some evangelical megachurches today.  This is, of course, still an anthropocentric creed which had not arrived at the needed expansion of the moral circle to embrace non-human life, as taught to us by St. Henry (Thoreau), St. John (Muir) of the Mountains, and St. Aldo (Leopold), and that most mischievous eco-saint of them all, Cactus Ed (Abbey), but still a step in the right direction.

In contrast, at its worst, Easter is that most narcissistic of holidays, whereby most Christians imagine that they can avoid the plow of mortality through trivial assertions of "belief" (ala John 3:16) in a resurrected God.  Christmas has the advantage of at least some historical basis.  There really was a Jesus and he, therefore, really was born.  Easter lacks this grounding in reality and displays instead an early appropriation by a subgroup of the various early Jesus movements of the dying/rising god motif of the surrounding Mediterranean mystery cults.  To a certain extent, I am grateful for this development.  If belief in the imaginary Christ had not developed, the ethical creed attributed to this wandering Sage of Nazareth probably would not have survived to the present day.  Such knowledge has come at a high cost, but this part of the story is for another time.

With the foregoing in mind, I share again my effort at salvaging some worthwhile meaning from a mostly dubious Chrisitan holiday:

"One persistent criticism of Christian Pantheism is 'What about the resurrection?' As a child of the modern age, I cannot believe Jesus literally rose from the dead. So, is there any worthwhile way of re-imagining Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection that doesn’t offend the modern mind? This is how I metaphorically re-imagine these events. Jesus so inspired his followers that he became metaphorically identified with 'the good' on a cosmic scale. Indeed, within Western Civilization, he became the embodiment of cosmic goodness. His crucifixion is not merely an event two millennia ago, but an ongoing event. Every time I fail to follow Jesus’ message of love, compassion, and selflessness, I crucify him anew. And every time I do follow, however imperfectly and briefly, his message, I enable Jesus' ongoing resurrection and [partial victories] over the daily deaths that flow from greed and selfishness. Jesus’ resurrection exists in those who follow his path to union with the sacred through justice-making and compassion."

From my 2006 paper, "Christian Pantheism as the Lost Gospel of Creation - Revisted"

My inspiration for the foregoing came from these two paragraphs from Benedictine monk, Brother David Steindl-Rast:

Part 2 - Science and Theology - Chapter 4 - The Christian Paradigm

DAVID [Steindl-Rast]:  

That's why the life of Jesus is so important.  In the way Jesus lives he takes an antiauthoritarian stance in the world, and that stance grows out of his mystic intimacy with God.  Looking at Jesus, we see how one lives when one has this mystic intimacy with God, when one says yes to limitless belonging.  That's what he lives.  If one lives this way in the kind of world we have created, one will be squelched or in one way or the other crucified.  Now the question arises, Is that the end?  The teaching of the resurrection is the affirmation that it's not the end.  This kind of aliveness cannot be extinguished.  He died, he really died, and behold, he lives!

Where does he live?  Let's not make the mistake of saying he is here or there.  No.  A rarely cited early Christian answer is this:  "His life is hidden in God" Paul doesn't say it in these words; he says, "Our life is hidden with Christ in God."  But that implies that Christ's life is hidden in God.  God's presence in this world is hidden, and yet it is the most tangible thing for anybody who lives with full awareness.  God's presence is everywhere; still, it is a hidden presence.  Jesus died, and yet he is alive, and his life is hidden in God.  He is also alive in us.  There is no way of pointing a finger and saying, "Look!" or "Zap!  He came out from the tomb."  Resurrection is not revivification; it is not survival; it is not a matter of saying, "There he is!" It's a hidden reality, but it is a reality, and we can live in the strength of its power.  And that is all we need to know about the resurrection.

Capra, Fritjof, David Steindl-Rast, Thomas Matus_"Belonging the the Universe: Explorations on the Frontier of Science and Spirituality" (HarperSanFrancisco 1991), Part 2 - Science and Theology, Chapter 4 - The Christian Paradigm, p. 65.