2,000 Easters, April 2020
We are approaching two thousand Easter Sundays since the first precipitating event in 33 A.D.; we suppose there are some 13 more years to go till two millennia will have passed since then, when Jesus of Nazareth was tried and hanged on the cross at Calvary. That will be in 2033. Yours truly would be 62 that future spring, if favored to be around. Wow. Age happens! I was just an awkward 8th grader a few weeks ago...
May we all live till then, no? See you in thirteen more springs.
Meanwhile, in the present, 2020, we are doing our Easter-in-place, many or most of us, due to a pandemic that has sheltered us in our homes and not attending church or other congregrated activities, including eating or shopping or carousing in public venues.
What an Easter Sunday, what a time of the world's history!
The original Easter was the Jewish Passover, so it is safe to say that the alleged Resurrection took many people by surprise, since according to the surviving texts, even the original 12 apostles were astounded by the miraculous return of this Jesus of Nazareth three days after his crucifixion. This is the primary Christian narrative of events.
Approximately seven centuries later, or some 600 Easters later, the Prophet Muhammad received his revelations through what we acknowledge this many years afterwards the Quran, literally the recitation. Islam forever altered the former Jewish narrative turned Christian. A fork in the road of history was staked back to the first sons of Abraham, at the time firmly a Jewish, or at least Hebrew, line of people. Abraham had still a couple more generations, through his great-grandson Judah, to really kick off the Jewish people, those claiming their forefather patriarch Judah.
In 2020, today, Sunday 19 April, is the traditional celebrated Easter of 300 million of the Orthodox Christian world. Happy Easter to them and us!
Worldwide there are over two billion Christians in name. How devoted those people are from the East to the West of the planet in all corners, is all up to conjecture. Some nominal Catholics, the biggest of all the faiths under the umbrella of Christendom, has many members that are more aptly described as secular, or sometimes lapsed. This phenomenon is natural and occurs in every faith system.
More Christians do seem to get active in the Easter season than most times of the year, safe to say, perhaps even more than the winter Christmas celebrations. Something about the time of spring and overcoming death, and in most respects memorializing all humanity and our kindred dead is a big deal, and if that does not call membership to its churches' pews, little else will.
I wanted to contemplate and reflect on the close to two thousand years of Easter, and put things into a different light. I recently finished a rather powerful book by James Michener book called "The Source", which covers tens of thousands of years of history. I will do less, and in a different fashion. (His book contains dozens if not hundreds of characters, many of them impressively researched in their historical contexts; the book goes over a thousand pages! I finished reading it this last month, finally...)
The first year memorializing Easter was probably an interesting time for the Christians of that time. Most of them probably had met and talked to the Savior, and many of them were probably struggling to deal with both the dominant Jewish leaders and the Roman rulers. But if the happenings of Jesus and the other resurrected dead were true, many of them were convinced and steadfast, probably more so than during the three-year ministry of Christ.
Year 34. New and amazing times, a small minority of believers but they had witnessed the miracle. Paul was probably learning to hate these upstarts by then.
Year 40. Things were probably picking up steam, apostles traveling farther and farther to spread the word. Matthias, the replacement of Judas Iscariot, most likely carried his weight as a witness of Jesus.
Year 70. The Jews were expelled from Jerusalem in a crushing defeat by the Romans. While Rome was far from favorable towards Christians, the lack of the Jewish leadership probably helped Christians control more of the narrative of the Holy Land. Paul was doing his huge missions across the Mediterranean, which had lasting impacts across the centuries.
Year 100. Easter on a rounded year. Perhaps arbitrary by historical standards in the history of the movement of Christians, but we of a smaller Christian minority believe in the extra powerful
witness and presence of John the Beloved and Revelator, who, while banished to the Greek island of Patmos, would go on to live until His return, doing Christ' bidding in whichever way possible. It was promised to him by Jesus Himself, according to some modern day Christians. By now all the other first-hand witnesses were gone and the second and third generation of Christian pioneers were establishing themselves and growing. The legacy of the original twelve apostles perhaps grew larger in the next waves of those that believed, and the Apostolic Fathers, many modern Catholics and Orthodox considering their continuity of leadership since Peter, were going on and building the communities of Jesus.
Year 200. Christianity had legs, a tradition to uphold. Christians were making their ways into many places around the world. The oldest Christian lands included the Holy Land of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Turkey, and Greece, but also into Africa in nearby Egypt and further off Abyssinia, now known as Ethiopia. Apostolic fathers, as they were known, were the main authorities of doctrine, practice, and authority for this ecclesiastical movement.
Year 310 or so. Emperor Constantin of Rome adopted the Christian religion to his state, which changed the course of history and the culture of the Christian Church. The Roman Catholics wanted to believe and enforce that they were the only "Universal" Church and priesthood of Jesus and His apostles, but worldwide there were Orthodox Christians and other small sects, like the Gnostics, who were going strong and creating their own Christian paths and traditions, albeit in smaller numbers. The Vatican in Rome would become a centralized place of power and reach. All roads lead there, even now we know this expression.
The Pontiff or Pope became one of the most popular and powerful persons in the world.
Year 400 or so. Rome as an empire was in decline but the Holy See (not sure when that name was attributed to the Pope) had by now become ensconced as a position of power and authority. Christian Orthodox sects were still developing in pockets of the Middle East and Africa. Parts of Europe were being evangelized, as Christianity has a way of spreading from one to another.
Year 500. The Roman Empire was over, but the power of the the Western world and the locus of Christian thought went to Constantinople, the bridge of worlds in Asia Minor, close to the original communities of Jesus in that cradle of civilization thanks in large part to the faith and efforts of Paul, in the first century after Christ's three year ministry. Interesting how a few individuals can so change human history! A message and its themes resonate; the rest of us choose to cling to or react in our particular ways to those movements and organizations based on said ideas and personalities. Things develop and evolve, or sometimes go caterwauling into destruction... Certainly violence and tragedy through natural and human means occurs. The human species and the rest of the life forms continue to expand or peter out. Adapting, overcoming, or succumbing as almost all life must do. Stasis is critical. Religions and belief-systems are the same.
Year 1,000. A five hundred year leap (for the purposes of this exercise! The somewhat popular television and movie series Star Trek is supposed to take place in the years 2266 and thereabouts, with the original characters. That fictitious scenario was planted some 300 years of span from the time of its creation. The lesser known story, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, an older perhaps simpler story of the future events of earthlings and others, was imagined a good five hundred years distantly from our time, or the epoch in which it was created. Considering either story line, my point is that it is difficult for many of us to fathom and dissect how long 300 or 500 years are.
Yesterday I went for a walk with my family along Goose Creek and the "mighty" Potomac River in Northern Virginia. We saw a very large tree along the banks-- I asked my college age daughter how old she thought it might be. She first said 500 years old, and when I questioned that, she amended her guess to two hundred. Either way, since the seed of its inception in 1820 or 1520, that is a very long time to consider. Most of the human species is lucky to live a century, and with our combined generations we are fortunate to see into the past another 40 to maybe 70 years, based on the parents, grandparents, and occasional great-grandparents that we know. Of course books, records, ancient texts, and archeological findings supply us with longer term knowledge. We historians and scientists attempt to put together the puzzle pieces of the past to arrive at where we are now, what we were then, and who we might become.
Christianity grew and grew, dominating Europe and expanding into Russia, Scandinavia, making further inroads into to the Middle East and parts of the Far East, thanks mostly due to the Silk Road (see a tremendous book by such name, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, written by Peter Frankopan, published in 2016).
In the Year One thousand, marked by His birth in Western calendars, some 967 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, witnessed the great schism between the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox branches. It took this long for many of the leaders within the Byzantine Empire to finally be cleaved for good. Over a thousand years later they have not reconciled, far into the 21st century.
Many Christians in the Western world forget about the Eastern Orthodox, based in Greece, Russia, the Slavic states, large parts of Africa. And the oldest Christian nation, Armenia, not to mention the Orthodox Christians among the Arab states.
Year 1300. The Dark Ages are in full swing, Christendom had plodded along and continued to grow, politics played out in feudal economics and nation building. Christians were fighting back in Europe against the Muslim advances in Spain and Hungary or central and Eastern Europe. The Crusades brought bloody battles and long held grievances back to the Holy Land. The wars between the East and West continued in the Holy Land, and Islam and its message had spread far across the ancient continents with its principles of life and the after life. Christians and Jews lives decently in most Muslim and Arab settings, experiencing better lives than the darker and dirtier worlds of Christian Europe.
Year 1500. Columbus' discovery changed everything. A whole new world, as Aladdin from Disney proclaims. The Vikings in the previous centuries had traipsed among the New World and possibly encountered a few of the First Nations, as the Canadians call them, and the natives of the New World had populated the length of the Western Hemisphere for millennia, but it was not until this Italian under the Spanish flag brought back word of the riches of the "Indies" that the floodgates opened, and the quest for God, gold, and glory was on. UCLA's Jared Diamond could tell you a lot more, but suffice it to say that the Roman Catholic Church became a powerhouse with tribe after tribe, through Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Belgian explorers, including Italians like Vespucci that the new part of the world wound up being named after. Other religious colonists settling the new world made their imprint: The British colonists were doing their thing in the soon to be American colonies, like the Pilgrims and those that followed in Massachusetts, but this by 1620 and on into the 17th century.
It took a full century after the Columbus voyages to the WHEM, (the Western Hemisphere as we call it at work), but Christians were converting the natives through Catholic missionaries from the Guarani of Paraguay to the Ojibwa of Quebec and the upper reaches of Canada. The First Nations were being exposed to the new Easter beliefs of the Resurrection, while many died of new disease strains and some foreign violence of these new western peoples (dominated by the Roman heritage that they shared), they learned of the God of New Birth and Eternal Life. Catholic priests of varying orders settled far and wide, the Jesuits, the Franciscans, the Dominicans, and they did this into Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, into the Far East.
Year 1700. The Western powers were making their way across the new world, while also establishing major trade routes into the African continent, the Middle East, and the rest of Asia and on to the Pacific lands.
Christian powered nations brought African slaves to the New World, many of these new inhabitants of North America, the Caribbean, and South America becoming Christian believers and practitioners.
Year 1800. Globalization was coming to its fore with the Empires that spread from Europe. Land empires had made their impact, now the naval powers asserted their influence across the seas and up rivers and lakes and flood plains world-wide, the islands receiving their missionaries and priests bringing the Good News of the Resurrected Jesus.
Year 1900. Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants had filled the Western Hemisphere, had colonized most of Africa, Australia and the south Pacific and the Philippines were firmly Christianized, much of Asia had its Christian roots spread through the Muslim and other traditional Asian lands, like Indonesia, India, Vietnam, China, and Japan, Korea.
While the messages of Christ-based hope and Easter life spread globally, unfortunately much of the Christian and Western world brought new colonial and mercantile practices of profit and subjugation. Some deeply religious people moved among others who cared more for wealth expansion and profiteering, or the formerly poor who simply wished to stake out their own new lands and work their physical salvation, worked out by the underpinning principles of largely Christian beliefs, from Catholic countries like Ireland and Italy, or the Orthodox peoples of Eastern Europe. Sprinkled among them were Jews and some Muslims, but the Christian world was growing, ever expanding, even Protestant evangelicals alighting in former Roman Catholic strongholds of South America.
Secularism, popular among some elites since the Renaissance, was also a force among the scientific minded and those Western-based thinkers that believed capitalism, or the new theorized Marxisms or other developed modern philosophies of science or economics carried greater weight than simplistic or outdated religious traditions and systems.
Year 1950. Christianity had gone to blows through the World Wars and survived, albeit bruised or tortured, despite the mixed Christian Germany and Catholic Italy becoming the would-be instigators of world domination and terrible destroyer of the Jewish across the width and breadth of Europe. Japan possessed its own divine tautology, which met its fate in the United States. I recently watched a 2016 film about the ravages of the battles of Okinawa, and read on a Jeff Shaara book on the same subject last year, concluded by the nuclear weapons deployed, and the awful killing of the two theaters of that last world war are still jarring to our 21st century senses. Despite the march of Communism across the populations and the those who fight and oppose it, "religiously" dominated regimes have left their imprint on our collective psyche.
Israel re-established, a new Jewish state revived among the Muslims and and the ancient Christians, while newer non-mainstream Christian faiths were spreading their word and congregations across the globe. Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-day Adventists, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) were becoming known throughout new and disparate populations worldwide, each with their own message of Christ and His promised life after death.
Secularism had its place, and other newer aged beliefs and peoples also came onto the scene, like L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, or into the 1960s Hindu-based Hari Krishna or the Zen Buddhists, with the ever irrepressible growth of Islam, spurring Black Muslims in the United States and other forgotten sects of a the singular faith in every corner of the map.
Year 2000. A time and place where I was fully aware and living in, breathing in the intricacies of world geo-politics, religious movements, the continued rise of the secular movements and systems, the age of of the "nones", those that were "spiritual" but not religious, because to many of them religion was an ugly word and concept, a creator or sower of divisiveness, prejudice, or hate. Religions represented antiquated and oppressive ideas that only kept progressive and liberal, i.e. modern or post-modern good trends from fully establishing their presence where humanity, in the end, would arrive.
Social media through the Internet and other newer technologies were growing and expanding to the degree where institutional faiths could take a background and lives of those "nones", or maybe "nons", non-religious folks who could be filled richly with other thoughts and kind or humanitarian endeavors and groups, thus easing the conscience of those who wished to be a positive contributor and participant of what was right about the world as we knew it without an organized faith to align with, entering the current century, the 21st since Jesus Christ, 21 epochs to count and recount, while acerbic comedians and others of the new world intelligentsia mocked the old-fashioned and non-scientific acts of the past, namely the Resurrection, or any other of the Biblical miracles of traditional Christianity or the other monotheistic traditions.
Buddhism made more sense to the modern thinking science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, since it was more about the inner self and mind consciousness than the outward vestiges of old time religion. Socialists and communists had their proposed answers, too, always. We the people were the Gods of this world, it was upon the secular governments to create life and order it, as we saw fit, an unknown, invisible higher God was not tenable. Even Israel had its secular believers rather than the ultra-orthodox non-gun toters, the ardent believers that would rather die in their convictions than stand up to and push out the Palestinians, or Shia militants, or other extremist jihadi Muslims that would recover the Holy City of al-Qodz (Arabic for holy, the holy place), Jerusalem: the Holy Mosque and the more visibly recognizable Haram as-Sharif in the heart of the Old City for their millions and billions of faithful. The Temple Mount of the Jewish peoples, the site of Mount Moriah and Abraham and his ancient destiny now considered through millions or billions of lenses some 4 millennia later
Here we are.
"Next year Jerusalem." "Or, "Next year in Yerushaleim." A different meaning for the Christians, the Jews, the Muslims, those historical sects that concentrate their thoughts and prayers on the fulcrum of belief and history, the anvil of belief and time, the crucible where the man of the lake, or Jesus of Galilee, was to be laid down and risen on the 3rd day. A weekend of weekends, for sure.
Debates ensue, details become obfuscated, religious and secular empires like the Romans involve their heavy hand, a Caesar must always be involved, whether it is a Napoleon of his age or a Mao Zae Dong of ours...
Year 2020. The present. Many believers, many atheists and agnostics who have little time for such old wives' tales, and the ones in between who cannot be sure. People of my faith go out in the thousands every year to an increasing number of ethnic groups and languages, proclaiming the supreme sovereignty of Jesus the Anointed One, the Promised Messiah, the Christ, as people of my faith are unique in proclaiming.
Not just Christ. The Christ. Capital of Capitals. The end all and be all, the Alpha and Omega.
Endless His priesthoods. The Master, the Saviour, the Redeemer, the Advocate with the Father.
So, where do we all fall on Easter? Will we rise again? Did He?
Have you ever felt that hope? I have.
Despite all the nay-sayers, the non-believers, the adamant atheists and the humble agnostics, the proclaimers of this reality or that, I do believe He was who he said He was. He has risen.
I have stood, like Him not quite two thousand years ago, looking west across the Kidron Valley into the Old City, the City of David, the Qodz of billions, the site of traffic and turmoil for millions of others, the graves aligning the hills on both sides, the Jewish, the Muslim, the Christian tombs in silent repose, notably that of Oscar Schindler, made famous for his bravery and the gratitude and vision of people like Stephen Spielberg hailing this Gentile man who saved hundreds, for saving those lives in the darkest hours of our shared human experience... The grave stones like those of my mother in far off Daviess County, Indiana, like billions of others: some in crematorium halls, others' weathered or wilted corpses left in unmarked rivers and jungles and desert wastes and mountain lairs and caves across the continents and smaller isles, still others in the microbes and corals of the vast and deep seas and oceans, perhaps other bodies frozen in tundras and ice, from the poles to the highest peaks and climes.
We all wait, we will all get there. And maybe Christ, The Christ, will come back to raise us up.
The First and the Last will seek His first and last, millions and billions of us, on that great Easter Day not too far from now, or maybe deeper into the future than I can tell.
I hope to see you then. I hope to see my mom again. I hope to see others that no longer live in 2020. I hope I can be worthy of such a fate.
And, I hope in The One that has caused the hopes of many to be lifted, and at times the same name used to twist and crush each other. Like a grape farmer or olive orchard keeper crushes the precious juices of his life giving fruits, we will be crushed into everlasting beings of goodness, perfection, and sublime beauty. Or not.
I choose the Easter Resurrection, come Heaven or low water.
Happy Easter 2020, in the deadly time of the Wuhan virus. Choose life. Be safe, and be ready for that day when we all sink and go below, to come back again as some new creature, whether as us as presently constituted, or as other atoms and molecules, moving on in the universe of entropy and multi-factored elements.
