Pastor's Page"Reading the Easter Story"
The week before Easter I got an e mail from a student member of our church who is now a freshman at a university in the U.S. He wrote: "Hi Pastor Gene: I'm learning lots of interesting things in my Religious Studies class: I have learnt about the Pauline epistles: how some are truly written by Paul, some are pseudonymous, and some are anonymous; the difference in view of some of the letters (e.g. Paul's letters vs. Pastoral Epitles); the Greco-Roman household; how customs are different in the ancient world than today (eg. Baptisms no longer require you to bathe in a pool of water or in a river.). A lot has changed since ancient times. Perhaps we can discuss this further when I come back."
I hope so because it's good for me to be in dialogue with a student mind. Those of us who are "mature" in Christian belief too often give up thinking and assume that we have figured it all out. This student is exercising his God-given intellect at a fine university which was founded by the Church but which like the majority of once Christian colleges is now secular.
The development of departments of Religious Studies separate from schools of theology is a peculiar American innovation. One result is that while Christians usually teach in theology faculties, religious studies are often taught by non-believers. The kinds of issues that my young friend is getting into are objective matters and it does not really matter what the faith orientation is of the teacher so long as he keeps his faith or disbelief separated from his academic responsibilities. Fundamentalist Christians don't see it that way and prefer to protect their offspring in what they consider safe Christian colleges where the bible is taught by Christians and in the most orthodox fashion. The kinds of simple matters now coming to my student friend's interest might not be raised in those orthodox environments.
My young e mail correspondent also raised a question appropos to Easter: "How do you explain the ending to the Gospel of Mark (the real ending, not the added short or long endings)? I mean, isn't it cheap to say that the women ran away after seeing Jesus because 'they were afraid?'" Here my student needs to reread Mark 16:l-8 to realize that in Mark's original short ending, no one sees Jesus.. It's an angel, not Jesus, who scares the women at the empty tomb.
Since the meaning of the Easter story must be ultimately and personally each individual's response in faith to the assertion that Jesus is risen, I don't find Mark's ending all that unsatisfactory although I'm glad that the other three gospels as well as later editors of Mark give us resurrection appearances. But Mark directs us in the best tradition of scriptural study and faith exploration: it's up to the individual conscience to be led by the Holy Spirit to an understanding of the Gospel including the Easter story.
The Christian Church has most times affirmed that the Spirit operates through reason, tradition, and conscience to lead us to a right understanding of what God is telling us in the scriptures. Some authoritarian church leaders, and strangely they often appear on the Protestant side of the Church, hold to fundamentalist and authoritarian interpretations of the scriptures and insist that human reason and conscience must bow before supposedly self-validating scriptural revelation. This view is offended by Mark's short ending because Mark leaves it up to each reader to decide how Jesus is risen. The fundamentalist view is equally disturbed by independent religious studies not under the control of the church.
But, as my young friend is learning, we of faith need have no fear of exercising our minds in the discernment of what God wants us to know and believe. And a faith which calls for suspension of reason and conscience is not going to endure very well. Mark's version of the Gospel and the Easter story has been around for 2,000 years so we can take our clue from Mark and keep reading for the meaning of the Easter story.
Pastor Gene Preston
The Rev. Gene R.Preston
14th Floor, Blk 36, Lower Baguio Villa Tel : 25516161 Fax: 25512114E-mail : gpreston@netvigator.com
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