The Garden House was splendid this morning with the birds high up on the canopy of trees, singing good morning songs to each other and me. When my breakfast guest arrived, I greeted him with a “Good Easter”. The resulting comment was a political response which rejected this greeting.
I am a student of spirituality because that’s my inner language. I have studied many of the world’s greater and smaller spiritual expressions. When I study, I look for the value they are supposed to have on the individual; and I compare that with the manifestation of their effect on the world. So when my timely greeting was recoiled at, I began to discuss the meaning of Easter, as I understood it.
Without the resurrection, there would be no Christianity. Many prophetic visionaries have been put to death. Jesus could have been yet one more except that he rose from the grave, as reported by Luke in the Bible. This is what distinguishes him from many a political and visionary prophet healer. Easter celebrates this landmark of the spiritual realm.
According to my research, there are many other echoes of death/resurrection. The Isis/Osiris combination of ancient Egypt is one. There are many others and I just might blog about those in future writings. But the difference, again, is that Jesus was set up in the linear religion of the Jews. Their profound dependence on the Law was vital to the events that lead up to the death of Jesus. He kept on confounding the religious leaders of that time and era. The leaders felt no choice but to silence his seemingly narcissistic attitude. Jesus was jamming up the works of his time. He knew he was doing this for a purpose. Throughout the gospel accounts, Jesus kept on telling his followers he was going to be put to death.
And the shock of death, Jesus’ death, seemed to put an end to their faith. And it would have ended there, given a few weeks to months. Except that Jesus rose from the grave as a body intact.
Obviously, this rendition of the story is subject to faith. No one alive now can attest to this as a fact. Reliance on a book of literature is not necessarily fact finding.
So I’ll tell you why I like Jesus. He put the end to animal sacrifice. To me, that’s quite high on the range of spiritualities. And that he didn’t espouse his rising from the grave as a power over people; it was to show them that there are things beyond our normal senses. Some of ‘us’ see and feel the world of the spiritual: I do. And it’s a mighty comfort for me to know that my walk in life no longer needs to sacrifice animals; instead, in another gospel story Jesus says, “Go and preach the good news to all creatures.” As a cousin native american, I find this marvelous.