Service for Easter Sunday,
“What if Jesus Hadn’t Died Young?”
for the Unitarian Universalist Church of Winchendon, Massachusetts
April 8, 2007, the Rev. Jennie Ann Barrington, Minister
Call to Worship; Micah 6:8:
“What more does the Lord require of you than to do justice, and to love
loving-kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
The Morning Reading, by John Taglibue:
“Moderation is Not a Negation of Intensity, But Helps Avoid Monotony”
Will you stop for a while, stop trying to pull yourself together
for some clear “meaning”-- some momentary summary?
No one can have poetry or dances, prayers or climaxes all day;
the ordinary blankness of little dramatic consciousness is good for the
health sometimes--
Only Dostoevsky can be Dostoevskian at such long long tumultuous stretches;
Look what that intensity did to poor great Van Gogh!; linger, lunge,
scrounge and be stupid; that doesn’t take much centering of one’s forces;
As wise Whitman said “lounge and invite the soul.” Get enough sleep;
and not only because (as Cocteau said) “poetry is the literature of sleep”;
be a dumb bell for a few minutes at least-
We don’t want Sunday church bells ringing constantly.
The Morning Sermon:
All month people have been talking to me about Easter-- neighbors; supermarket check-out clerks; casual acquaintances; my hair dresser, who is also my friend. When they bring up Easter, they’re probably wondering what the heck I, as a Unitarian Universalist minister, am going to say about Jesus, the resurrection, and the Kingdom of God. How can we talk about Easter today in a way that is inspiring, yet also honors how hard it is in a modern age to believe that Jesus rose bodily into the sky after his death? People tip-toe around these questions about Easter-- Have you noticed that, too? How can we talk about Easter in conversations that arise casually, and still include the profound wisdom and inspiration to be found in Jesus’ words and deeds? Imagine with me, if you will…
What has always bothered me most about Christianity’s traditional emphasis on Jesus’ crucifixion, death, and resurrection is that that emphasis makes Jesus into a hero and a martyr. And I have long felt that images and expectations of heroes and martyrs are damaging to a religious or service organization. When you think about it, heroes and martyrs tend to burn out or die young. What they accomplish in their life is glorious. But they end up unable to sustain their service for the long haul. Having grown up Unitarian Universalist, I received an emphasis on Jesus’ life and teachings and ethical code, not an emphasis on his crucifixion, death, and resurrection. And the emphasis I grew up with always felt healthier to me, if less robed in glory. So those are the feelings and background I brought to my conversation with my hair dresser about Easter. You couldn’t have called it a life-changing conversation. We were just chatting a bit. I said to her that attendance at last year’s Easter service was very low. She said to me that she thinks Easter becomes less and less important to Americans every year. “Perhaps you’re right,” I said to her, and that ended it.
But several hours later, while I was trying to read something entirely unrelated to Easter, I suddenly had the thought: What if Jesus hadn’t died young? What if Jesus had lived to old age? I even thought of Jesus saying to his disciples, “Will you still need me? Will you still feed me? When I’m sixty-four--” If Jesus hadn’t died so young (I thought), we would not be left with such strong images and expectation of Christian heroes and martyrs. During the period when Jesus was a young man, there was such a sense of urgency and impending doom among religious people-- They all felt that the end of the world and the coming of the Kingdom of God were so close at hand. But if Jesus hadn’t been crucified at thirty-three years old, he would have led a long, sustained life of service, well into old age. What guidance then (I wondered) would Jesus have conveyed to us as to how we might best do the same? If Jesus hadn’t died young and so dramatically, Christianity today would look much more like Reformed Judaism or like Unitarian Universalism. If Jesus hadn’t died as a young hero and martyr, Christianity today would have less emphasis on a doctrine of the afterlife, and more emphasis on the wise and inspirational words and deeds of Jesus’ life on earth.
What teachings would an older Jesus recommend to us as to how to live a long life of noble service? We can look to the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, with which Jesus was very familiar, and we can look to one of Jesus’ parables. When someone dies young, as a hero or martyr, that tends to shut down honest factual conversation about them and their life. If Jesus hadn’t died young, he would have taught more about the complexities of living a long and mature life. When we age and mature, we realize, as Ecclesiastes wrote, that there is: “A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.” At the end of his book, Ecclesiastes tells us, “If a man lives many years, let him rejoice in them all; but let him remember that the days of darkness will be many.” “And so go and eat your bread with gladness… for God has already approved what you do… And whatever your hands find to do, do it with your might.”
In his parable of the laborers in the Vineyard, Jesus said [Matthew 20]:
“For the kingdom of heaven is like the householder who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the marketplace. And to them he said, ‘You go into the vineyard, too, and whatever is right I will give to you.’ And so they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing; and he said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard, too.’ And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his steward, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.’ And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. And on receiving it they grumbled at the householder, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you, and go; I choose to give to this last as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity? So the last will be first, and the first, last.’”
Jesus envisioned a community of equals, not a hierarchy in which some hold power, status, and money over others-- In his parable, the workers whose labor was more arduous and painful do not receive more reward, monetarily nor spiritually. What Jesus says repeatedly throughout the Christian scriptures is that God requires of us, not sacrifice, but mercy-- We should be merciful to others, and to ourselves. Jesus envisioned a community of equals in which all are empowered in a compassionate and just way, toward others and toward themselves. He said we should love that which is divine with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind, and with all our strength, and that we should love our neighbor as ourselves- that to love one’s neighbor as one-self is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. [Mark 12: 29-34] And he said, “You are the light of the world. Don’t hide your light under a bushel, but let your light so shine before all people.” Had he lived into old age, Jesus, I imagine, would have said that the suffering of living a long life of service is suffering enough. No excruciatingly painful overly-dramatic martyred death is necessary to be blessed in God’s eyes. I don’t believe Jesus or God would want us to live in such a way that we feel degraded. Jesus wanted all the ill and disabled and spiritually troubled people he met --indeed, Jesus wanted all of humankind—to feel lifted-up. Imagine that with me, if you will…
After I had done all this imagining about Jesus as a mature and experienced teacher, and contemplated his parables, his teachings in general, and the Old Testament wisdom he would have known by heart, I went to google. I typed in, “What if Jesus had lived to old age?” Google told me that there is an essay on just that question in a recent book called, What If? 2 – Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been. The essay is by the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Yale University, Dr. Carlos M.N. Eire, and it’s called, “Pontius Pilate Spares Jesus – Christianity without the Crucifixion.” It was wonderful to find that a scholar of religious history had written about the very same idea I had had after chatting with my hair dresser about Easter. It made me feel lifted-up. I asked the staff of the Beals Memorial Library in Winchendon if they could get the collection of essays for me through inter-library loan and, in only a few days, they did! [I just love inter-library loan!] In his imaginings on this questions, Dr. Eire wrote:
“Jesus is ninety-seven years old, and very frail. He can barely see now: he who once healed the blind. Cataracts. He can barely walk: he who once made the lame dance. His hearing is still fine, though. The Word incarnate, as John calls him, can hear just fine. He suffers from arthritis, and his mind is somewhere else most of the time. On some days he doesn’t even recognize his favorite disciple, John, who is nearly as old as he is, but still attends to his needs. Jesus’ disciples think that his mind is in heaven most of the day and night. He suffers terribly from a hernia that can’t be repaired, and from constant indigestion, and a bladder he can no longer control. His hands and feet are so numb sometimes that he can’t feel them at all. He looks as old as he feels, too: thin, white hair, wrinkled, nearly transparent skin, spots all over his body, blue veins snaking all over too. No teeth left with which to chew. He who healed so many has chosen not to heal himself, it is rumored. Jesus wakes up to good news on the last day of his life on earth. He receives word that a woman he healed as a little girl more than sixty-five years ago has come to visit him with some of her great grand-children. Many still believe he didn’t simply heal her, but actually brought her back from the dead. He loves her visits, and the thought of seeing her again makes him rise from bed eagerly, for a change… So many people are now worshiping the one true God and following the spirit of the Law of Moses rather than its letter… So many of them, in so many different places. In Rome alone, the numbers are amazing. In Alexandria, that most learned of cities, there are so many intelligent followers trying to make sense of his message according to the structures of thought invented by Greek philosophers. So many bright scholars trying to fuse Moses, Jesus, Plato, and Aristotle. The future looks dim and promising at the same time. Jesus is convinced that his physical death is not the end at all, but only the beginning. He thinks back on all his years on earth, ponders his long, long life, and all the pain and joy… This is not what he expected. Not at all. He knew he’d have to empty himself, spend himself totally. But, this? Betrayed by Judas once upon a time. Yes, that was awful, but easier to comprehend. Betrayed by his own body now, and by the Father, maybe. That is not so easy to understand. So much accomplished. So little accomplished. He thinks of his visitor [who will come this morning]. He can’t wait to see that little girl, now a great grandmother, and, as ever, he is eager to embrace the children. It is then that he suffers a massive stroke, alone in his room, alone with the Father, and the Spirit he is always talking about too, the Spirit he so desperately wants to see take over the world. ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’ Jesus dies within two minutes, his blood spilled, finally, inside his own head. No one is there to see him die, or hold his hand. It is John and the little girl turned great-grandmother who find the corpse. ‘Oh, look, he’s asleep,’ says the old woman. Jesus receives a humble, discreet burial, as he had requested many times…”
If Jesus had lived to old age, what would the differences be in what we venerate, what we hold in high honor, what we bestow glory onto? Some of the answers to that question are up to you to imagine. If Jesus hadn’t died young, that might have made living a Christian life even harder, in the long run. An elderly Jesus challenges us to tenderly honor the divine spark within each person-- until the very last second that spark simply dies away…