SOME THOUGHTS ON EASTER

by Bishop Allen Shawcross, OSJ of Australia

1. The crucifixion of Jesus is not simply something that took place in an overseas country some 2000 years ago.  Jesus stands for a living principle and the principle he stands for is not restricted to any particular place or to any particular time.  You, the 21st century citizen, have no advantage over the crucifying Jews of 30 CE and may even stand in exactly the same condemnation.  The same questions of principle confront us today.  Jesus is crucified daily.  Here!  Today!  In Australia just as everywhere else!

2. The story of the Garden of Eden simply relates how Mankind, by the convenient means of self-delusion, attempted to escape from personal responsibility and from facing the facts.  Truth was, to Adam, only what Adam chose to ‘believe’. He exchanged the truth for a lie and worshiped and served the creature (including himself) rather than the Creator.

3. The crucifixion of Truth by self-righteous ignorance in 30 CE was a repeat performance of what took place in the Garden of Eden.  Basically, what happened to Jesus was this.  He took away the ‘cover’ and the ‘excuse’ which mankind had erected in justification of comfortable irresponsibility.  Self-righteous men – smug, sanctimonious and complacent – were forced to take a good look at themselves.  Prevarication was their ruling principle; they had never been honest with themselves in their lives.  But when they were forced to look at themselves as they really were, they had no stomach for what they saw.  So, deluding themselves that the cause of their discomfiture was external, they vindictively vented their spleen on the innocent party, Jesus.  And yet the real cause, as it always must, lay inside them (yourselves, ourselves); certainly not in Jesus of Nazareth.

4. Throughout the centuries, pictured in the Old Testament, the Jews developed a consciousness of a coming ‘Anointed one’ (i.e., Greek, christ: Hebrew, messiah).  A concrete image slowly emerged.  By the time Jesus was preaching, the Jews to this stage had developed this image of the ‘anointed’ where it was simply a projection of their own mind.  They wanted an anointed, fashioned not after the image of God, but after the image of their own minds; an anointed one who indeed must satisfy the criteria of the Jewish mental image, which image was self-delusion in the form of self-projection, or the Jews would not accept him as the anointed one of prophecy.

5. Naturally there was a conflict between the real Jesus, who was like himself, and the image of the “Christ” conjured up by the Jews, which was like them.  Here again occurred a repeat performance of what went on in the Garden of Eden.  To prove that what they ‘believed’ was the truth, they crucified Jesus.  But all that they proved was that Jesus was not fashioned after their image, and that fact was obvious anyway.  Then Almighty God took a hand in the matter and showed that, irrespective of what the Jews ‘believed’, Jesus was, in fact, the man he had appointed.

6. The Jewish establishment conspired with the Roman authorities to have Jesus crucified because he did not conform to their delusions of grandeur.  Yet they accused him, not once but several times, of being ‘mental’.

7. Human nature is nothing if not consistent.  The 21st century image of Jesus as projected by Christian Theology is based on exactly the same principles as the Jewish image of 30 CE.

8. All denominations and sects keep Jesus at a comfortable distance.  They are united on the principle that Jesus was not just a normal man, born in a normal fashion.  They have fashioned him according to the grandeur of their own delusions.  But perhaps Jesus is really like himself and not like the image of the theologians at all.  And perhaps, perhaps, I say, God has really appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he hath ordained!