“The fact of the death of Jesus as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable, despite hypotheses of a pseudo-death or a deception which are sometimes put forward.” (Gerd Lüdemann, What Really Happened to Jesus: A Historical Approach to the Resurrection. Louisville KY: Westminster John Knox Press. 1995. 17.)
“.82 red. Jesus’ body decayed” - consensus of the Jesus Seminar, Holy Saturday 1995.
What happened - what happened after that - what came before: we cannot let go of these questions. And as when a friend tells us that the end of something familiar, something we have counted on, is at hand, we ask ourselves, not only what will happen to you, but what will happen to me. What shall I do now?
And these questions will come back to haunt us in three days - but not yet, not yet.
Right now we ask ourselves, what does it mean that Jesus has been killed? For another proposition the Jesus Seminar strongly affirmed was this: “He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, suffered death, and was buried.”
You have heard that one before. It is in the Apostles’ Creed. And however skeptical you are - better however scientific and critical and rational and objective you hope and purport to be - this is historical fact. There was a man named Jesus. The Roman governor of Judea had him executed. He was crucified and he was buried.
We would like to squirm out of this - to say he was a myth, like Alexander or Napoleon or Shakespeare - or George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. He only exists in our minds because we need him to exist. There is no reality. There is no future. There is no hope.
But we would be liars to say so. And that is our hope even in the midst of despair.
He died. So - he lived.
Annoying isn’t it? Would it not be easier if he were myth, even true myth, like something that rings true in a story, but we know for a fact is carrying only a truth through feeling, not reality?
But alas, we cannot honestly say that. And even skeptics can tell us, oh, yes, he lived. He said the prayer over the meal, Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha’olam, hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz. Blessed are you, LORD, our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.. He said: Amen.
And he called God, the eternal and ineffable source of Being, the one beyond names, he called God “Abba” - father, the intimate and loving name a Son calls his Daddy.
And then - as the hermeneutic of suspicion goes to work - we realize he is being treated as a historical personage - like Alexander, Shakespeare, Lincoln - and we can sort out what he really said and what he really did as we might (should we be such wet blankets) sort out the authentic and the apocryphal sayings of Lincoln, Gandhi, Churchill, Einstein, and Groucho Marx.
Jesus said the most outrageous and original things - as well as things any good Jew would - and those are so challenging and so original that we must face them or simply walk away.
These sayings have come down to us in altered form, admittedly. As the first followers faced the full impact of his teachings by body and word, they somewhat absorbed that force into their bodies, their souls, and what they transmitted to us comes through that medium.
Peter, head down, was crucified, the hymn tells us. And, John on Patmos died. They stumbled forth into the early morning, the news of the women sounding strange in their ears, to a new world, one day. One day. Soon. But not yet. Today we must face the fact. Jesus was crucified.
His tomb was right over there. You can touch it. Or touch your forehead (as I have done) to the stone above the stone that protects the place where they think he was buried.
But he is not there. The tomb in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is empty. An empty box.
The church has another name. We can learn it. But not yet, not today. Jesus was crucified.
And why? What hope does that death give us?
“I came into the world for this: to bear witness to the truth” - and that fidelity cost his life.
Somehow his willingness to accept death, even the death of a criminal on the cross, became part of that witness. Nothing could stop him, not even death, from proclaiming the truth.
And part of that truth is this: Love is strong as death. Death does not have the upper hand.
The kingdoms of death will not survive. Nor will their servants. That will all be swept away.
And what will be left standing is this: the hope beyond hope, the love beyond need, the faith beyond faithfulness, the truth that endures. Even in death.
JRL+ Thursday April 7th 2022.
