An Easter Meditation

Originally published in the Sunday Island newspaper, Sri Lanka, in 1995

Our preoccupation over the Good Friday/Easter weekend, with the physical aspects of the crucifixion and resurrection, stressing the betrayal, the anguish, the mock trial, the scourgings, the humiliation, the spittle, the blood and the final abandonment even by God, as if these were the crucifixion story's central elements, has always perplexed me. Of course, they comprise terrible tragedy, but in emphasising these elements I feel we are losing out on the deeper things.

Of Jesus Christ, the Gospels say that He never spoke except in parables. Why? Because spiritual truth cannot be communicated to finite minds except through stories. "We have eyes to see but do not see, and ears to hear but do not hear".

Truth

I believe that in the crucifixion and the resurrection, God was trying to communicate ultimate Truth, as a parable rather than as a set of propositions. This, however, does not mean that the crucifixion and the resurrection were fictions or that they did not actually happen, but that they had a meaning deeper than the one apparent on the surface. What then was this deeper Truth? I would like to present a view, which I personally hold, but which I am aware may seem challenging to traditional Christian belief.

It is generally agreed that in Jesus Christ there were actually two persons cohering as One. There was first the visible, finite man Jesus, referred to as the Son of Man, but there was also the infinite invisible Christ, referred to as the Son of God, whom Jesus referred to as "the Father within", and whose identity only Peter recognised.

Jesus the finite, visible Son of Man, born of a woman on a particular day, within a specific space, shared with us our humanity and our finitude. He felt emotion and wept and lost His temper. He held the Pharisees in judgement and condemned them in very human language. He even used the whip on some miscreants. He experienced fear and recoiled in dread at the prospect of dying. He strenuously resisted His Father's will for him and at the moment when the entire creation was in the throes of deliverance.

Jesus the Son of Man, unable in His finitude to grasp the awesome spiritual enterprise for which He had been specially chosen by His Father, cried out to be let off. That indeed was the "Jesus" mode of Jesus Christ, and it was this Jesus who died on the cross. However, there was also the "Christ" mode of Jesus Christ, in which He was infinite, was never born of woman, was before the foundation of the world, and is from everlasting to everlasting.

All things were made in Him, through Him and for Him. Anything not so made was never made. It was this Christ who gave us the Sermon on the Mount, who could ask us to hold the other cheek, who asked us to forgive seventy times seven, who could tell the woman caught in the act, "I do not condemn thee", and could ask His Father to "forgive them for they know not what they do."

It was this Christ who healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, opened the ears of the deaf, made cripples walk, and raised the dead. It was this Christ who could stand before Pilate, the representative of the greatest temporal power on earth, and announce "You have no power over me". It was this Christ who would dare to say "I and my Father are One. He that has seen me has seen the Father." Finally, it was this Christ who walked out of the tomb on Easter morning, saying. “Fear not, I have overcome the world.”

Dualism

Now, I believe that paralleling this "Son of Man" - "Son of God" dualism in Jesus Christ there is a corresponding dualism in the human being. At the visible level, as individuals, we are living out an illusion. This illusion is our false sense of a personal identity separate and apart from God. This illusory ego is born of ignorance, and is the fallen Adam of the Bible. This ego is the generator, the carrier, the multiplier and victim of karma, or the law of cause and effect, which Paul calls the Law of Moses -“Whatsoever you sow, you shall reap". This illusory ego is the source of all the ills of human experience. It is a hapless creature caught in the wheel of sansaara, squirreling away vigorously inside its cage but getting nowhere, striving desperately to get out but remaining firmly within the trap of its own making. It was this illusory ego that died on the cross with Jesus, the "Son of Man".

On the other hand, in every believer who has consciously and deliberately given over his or her life to the Christ, and has been baptised in His name, and has also invited the Christ to come into their life – regardless of race, religion, creed or colour – there is the invisible Christ, the "Son of God", waiting to come forth. Jesus referred to this hidden Christ as the "Kingdom within".

Addressing the Pharisees, who were not His followers, He said, “Behold the Kingdom of God is within you". This Christ within is, therefore, universally present in all believers, but is only vaguely sensed by them. At the simplest level, the indwelling Christ manifests as an innate sense of right and wrong, which we refer to us "conscience", but we rarely ask how it got there. At a slightly higher level, this indwelling Christ causes us to be dissatisfied with life and sets us off on a search for answers to fundamental questions. This is the "divine discontent", which drives every seeker after Truth. Unhappily, most seekers fall by the wayside, either distracted by spiritual gimmickry which passes for miracles, or by yielding to the temptation to reform the world through human devices.

False ego

However, those who persevere must ultimately, indeed will, confront the need to put the illusory sense of selfhood, or their false ego consciousness, to the sword. The alternative is to return again and again and again to the squirrel cage and continue gyrating inside.

The Upanishads and the Bhagvat Gita (Hinduism), Theravada Buddhism and the New Testament are agreed about the need for the false ego consciousness to die, as a necessary condition of salvation. Where they part company is in regard to how salvation is to be achieved.

All Christian denominations are agreed on the need to identify with Jesus on the Cross, as the way of salvation. However, one has to be careful not to go along with evangelists and crusaders, who in their desire for converts, hold out the prospect of instant salvation if they would confess the name of Jesus and accept baptism.

Most assuredly, salvation in and through the Cross does not work like that. Accepting and believing in the work of Jesus on the Cross marks only the beginning of a slow and painful process of inner transformation, the be­ginning of the process of dying which is not only painful, but protracted as well, depending on how surrendered one is.

Accompanying this process of dying in Jesus is the new birth, in and through the Risen Christ; that is, through the Resurrection. Paul puts this very clearly: "We are given over to death in Him, so that the life of Christ may be manifest in us." "We are baptised into His death and buried with Him, so that we may rise with Him and walk in newness of life." "I live, but not I. It is the Christ that liveth."

The crucifixion was God's way of erasing our false sense of ego, and with it, the enormous load of sin (karma), which this ego has accumulated during its journey in time. The Resurrection was God's way of releasing the hidden Christ who abides in us, whether we be "Jew or Gentile", that is to say, regardless of our religion, race or colour. Paul says, "When Jesus died all died," and the resurrected Christ is the “new man".

Working it out

However, we do not benefit from these spiritual truths just by knowing them with our finite minds, any more than we can fly by committing to memory the laws of aerodynamics. We have to internalize these truths, commit ourselves to them, and work patiently with them. There is no short cut and the "way is straight and narrow!” However to those who persevere, there is guaranteed a life free from bondage, fear, anxiety, lack and limitation, a life of abundant joy and peace, not necessarily after we have been put away six feet under the sod; but here and now, for:

"Lo; the Kingdom is already come. The fields are ripe with the har­vest, but the gatherers are few.”

Paul sums it up neatly: "Behold! If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. Former things have passed away and all things are new.”