The Politics of Jesus' Death Both Then and Now

Jesus’ radical politics

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by Brandon Ambrosino

April 1, 2015

In his kingdom, enemies are loved, the marginalized prioritized,

and wealth inequality exposed for the sham it is.

TWO THOUSAND years have sanitized Easter for most people. Jesus is alive, we sing each spring, and now let’s get on with lilies and chocolates and bunnies and think about what his resurrection means for us — namely, that we get to go to heaven when we die, and perhaps more important, a lot of other people don’t.

A more careful look at the Gospels, however, might offer a much less sentimental, much more startling picture of the original Easter message, which was decidedly not, “Jesus is alive, and here’s what that means for the next world.” Rather, the true lesson was: “Jesus is alive, and here’s what that means for this one.”

The central claim of Easter — and indeed, of Christianity — has always been that the rejected, tortured, crucified, dead, and then resurrected Jesus is somehow Lord of the entire earth. If that doesn’t sound particularly scandalous today, imagine you’re hearing it for the first time while living in the Roman Empire. As many New Testament scholars argue, hearing “Jesus is Lord” in the first century might sound suspiciously like a bold rejection of the standard Roman creed at the time: “Caesar is Lord.” (There is a lot of discussion about this, but even a quick glance of the Gospels and Acts shows that the texts contain instances of anti-imperial rhetoric.)

'Remember the Stranger in Your Midst"

What’s radical about Easter, then, is not that Christians claim a dead man rose from the dead. What’s radical is what that means — specifically, what it meant for Rome, and, by implication, what it means for all kingdoms everywhere, including the ones we live in. Jesus’ resurrection marked the end of Caesar’s way of doing things. It established a new kingdom in which enemies are loved, the marginalized are given primacy of place, and the poor are blessed. In this kingdom, hierarchies are subverted, concentrated power is decentralized, and prodigal children are welcomed home. Black lives matter here, as do queer lives and the lives of undocumented aliens within our borders — “Remember the stranger in your midst” is a common refrain in this kingdom.

Of course, speaking about Jesus in such a political way is not without its dangers. Many with political agendas are guilty of branding their particular ideologies with the name of Jesus, both on the right and left. But there’s no denying that, at least in recent US history, conservatives have been ready to marry God and government. As a result, Christianity has come to be associated less with policies aimed at helping the poor — and more with those that often serve to keep them down. The tragic irony, of course, is that, as the Gospel of Luke teaches, Jesus’ ministry is inaugurated with the announcement that the Spirit of the Lord compels him to preach good news to the poor.

Though the name of God is sometimes invoked to justify war and greed and the oppression of already marginalized persons, the broken body of Jesus seems rather like a prophetic protest against those values. Philosopher John Caputo discusses this irony in his 2007 book, “What Would Jesus Deconstruct?” — a play on the phrase “What Would Jesus Do?” that many conservatives have plastered onto their cars, T-shirts, bracelets, etc.

The gospels, Caputo writes, invite us to imagine a new way of life where the poetics of Jesus’ kingdom are transformed into political structures:

“What would it be like if there really were a politics of the bodies of flesh that proliferate in the New Testament, a politics of mercy and compassion, of lifting up the weakest and most defenseless people at home, a politics of welcoming the stranger and of loving one’s enemies abroad?

What would it be like if there were a politics of and for the children, who are the future; a politics not of sovereignty, of top-down power, but a politics that builds from the bottom up, where "ta me onta "[lit. “the nothings”] enjoy pride of place and a special privilege?”

Caputo then asks this frightening question: “Would [this politics] not be in almost every respect the opposite of the politics that presently passes itself off under the name of Jesus?”

"Love Your Enemies, Bless Those Who Curse You"

ONE LOOK at current events across the globe today, and Caputo’s imaginings may be easily dismissed. How can Americans simply turn the other cheek to our warring enemies? How can anyone expect the government to make sure each child is looked after? And working to eliminate poverty? Wasn’t Jesus talking about spiritual poverty? That’s a private matter, not a public one. Those kinds of policies just aren’t practical in 2015.

Of course they aren’t. They weren’t practical in Jesus’ day, either. That’s one of the reasons Jesus was killed. He was, to use Caputo’s word, mad. How else do you explain his teachings? Love your enemies. Bless those who curse you. Do good to them who use you. Do not retaliate. Look after your neighbor. The meek will inherit the earth.

But the madness of God is wiser than the wisdom of man, as Paul reminds us, just like God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. And it’s the kingdom of this God — who, contrary to what anyone expected, is weak, mad, and disruptive — that Jesus is both announcing and installing.

“If I, with the finger of God, cast out demons among you, then the Kingdom of God has come near to you,” says Jesus, and his Jewish hearers might have understood the scandalous reference. Scandalous because in this brief line, Jesus seems to be identifying himself with the same God who heard the cry of oppressed Israel and took it upon himself to liberate them from Egypt. As the Book of Exodus recounts, when Pharaoh refuses Moses’ request to let the Hebrews go, a battle of miracles quickly ensues. Though Pharaoh’s magicians try to imitate the wonders that Moses ascribes to God, they don’t succeed. “This is the finger of God,” they explain to Pharaoh, which creates wonders, which liberates God’s people from the empires that enslave them. The finger of God, they reluctantly acknowledge, is mightier than the strongest arm of any world leader.

In reinterpreting this passage around his life and ministry, Jesus is giving us a glimpse into what he thought of himself (who but God alone works wonders by the finger of God?) as well as into what he thought about his kingdom: that, though it’s ultimate fulfillment will be in the future, look around you — it’s already here. As New Testament scholar N.T. Wright explains, for Jesus, God’s kingdom “wasn’t just an aspiration; it was an accomplishment.” Jesus was convinced that his life and preaching and miracles were bringing about the kingdom his followers had longed for.

An Unexpected Kingdom

Only, Jesus’ kingdom of peace and love looked much different than the one that Jews at the time hoped the Messiah would establish. One of Jesus’ more cryptic sayings is found in Matthew’s Gospel. After a strange discussion of kingdom, Jesus compares his audience to children sitting in the marketplace singing to each other, “We played the flute for you, but you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.” Jesus, he hears them say, you are not the Messiah we expected. To which he responds: I will not dance when you tell me to dance. I will not cry when you tell me to cry. I will not be the Messiah you tell me to be. I am here to show you a different sort of dance, a different way; follow me, and build my father’s kingdom, which looks very different than the ones you cling to.

This is the prophetic memory of Jesus that rushes toward us today. What would Jesus do if he showed up today, say, in Washington, D.C.? Would he turn a blind eye to racial injustices in Ferguson and elsewhere? Would he lobby to ensure that entire swaths of our population continue to feel as if they don’t belong in their cities, in their religious congregations, in their local bakeries? Would he, interested as he is in the physical bodies of all he encounters, enact policies that bar people from the health care they desperately need?

At the same time, can we really be sure that Jesus would protest with Wall Street Occupiers, railing against the one percent? This is the same Jesus who, as Luke recounts, tells his followers that if just one of their sheep wanders away from the fold, they are to leave the 99 and go after the one percent. And can we be equally sure that this Jesus, who has no patience for greed, would spend all of his energy condemning the wealthy? This is the same Jesus, after all, who is rumored to be the friend of tax collectors.

A Kingdom of Disruption

This is why it won’t do merely to begin with a political ideology and brand it with Jesus’ memory. The memory of Jesus is disruptive to all kingdoms, to all earthly powers, without respect to any specific political affiliation or agenda.

What we can imagine that Jesus would probably do — indeed what he definitely did do, is to suddenly, without warning, announce that his new kingdom is breaking in upon all of us, has broken in upon us, and that this kingdom is almost the exact reversal of what any of us thought kingdoms were supposed to be. This new king will not tolerate oppression and systemic poverty, nor he will excuse violence directed at those in power. He has no patience for any dirges or dances. He is here about his father’s business.

"Do This Unto the Lest of These as Unto Me"

THE BELLS of Easter Sunday, comforting though they may be, are actually a call to war, albeit a nonviolent kind of war; a call to rise up, to act up, to announce to the powers and principalities that rule our nations that their power has an expiration date, that their rule is a sham, that their kingdom has been undone by the one who undoes death.

The rebuttal here has always been: Open your eyes. This kingdom you’re talking about — where the last are first, where the outsiders are preferred — is not here. There is war. There is evil. There is death and rape and racism and unemployment and sex trafficking. There is a brutally agonizing world here and now, and to pretend otherwise is either naive or morally bankrupt.

But Easter doesn’t deny these things. After all, even the resurrected body of Jesus contains crucifixion scars, which are Jesus’ eternal reminder that he was murdered by the very people he came to save. What Easter teaches is this: Even in the midst of the kingdom you’re living in, it’s possible to actually pledge loyalty to a different one. By feeding the hungry, forgiving your enemies, and providing shelter for the homeless, you can actually choose to live in the kingdom Jesus established.

Hope, then, is not a spiritual thing, or a reflective exercise; it’s decidedly physical. If you believe Jesus was raised from the dead, the obligation that Jesus puts upon you is to meet people’s physical needs. “Do not abandon yourselves to despair,” said Pope John Paul II. “We are the Easter people, and alleluia is our song.”

This alleluia is both a praise and protest. The world is made new, alleluia, and all lives matter. Creation is transformed, alleluia, and therefore let us embrace the strangers in our midst. The tomb is empty, alleluia, now let us work to heal the hurt of all those who have been discriminated against, made to feel like second-class citizens. In God’s kingdom, after all, there is only one class of citizen, because all have inherited the same birthright from their heavenly father.

Two thousand years later, the promise of Easter has not lost its power. The risen Jesus, then as now, invites us to live in this world as if it is somehow a different world.

Because, alleluia, it is.

*Brandon Ambrosino covers culture and religion for Vox.com.

"This Easter I've really been trying to focus on the one I fell in love with a few years ago,

Jesus, as the man who took on our sins and died. I picture the scene in the Son of God, which

still can barely count the ways he suffered. I literally ache for Jesus in the sufferings knowing

that it was our crap that put him there. It has caused a lot of tears this week as I study him

more and more and it has opened my heart to recognize some things that have been

hindering my growth. To the man that saved my life, who now sits on the throne. My heart

is for you. My help came from you. With that I owe my life." - anon

Matthew 28

English Standard Version (ESV)

The Resurrection

28 Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2 And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, andhis clothing white as snow. 4 And for fear of him the guards trembled andbecame like dead men. 5 But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. 6 He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he[a] lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. See, I have told you.” 8 So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.9 And behold, Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came up andtook hold of his feet and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.”

The Report of the Guard

11 While they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. 12 And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers 13 and said, “Tell people, ‘His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ 14 And if this comes to the governor's ears, we willsatisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” 15 So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.

The Great Commission

16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,baptizing them in[b] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold,I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Footnotes:

Matthew 28:6 Some manuscripts the Lord

Matthew 28:19 Or into

The Politics of the Bible Both Then and Now

Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues (with lyrics)




I was raised up believing

I was somehow unique

Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes

Unique in each way you can see

And now after some thinking

I'd say I'd rather be

A functioning cog in some great machinery

Serving something beyond me

But I don't, I don't know what that will be

I'll get back to you someday soon you will see

What's my name, what's my station

Oh just tell me what I should do

I don't need to be kind to the armies of night

That would do such injustice to you

Or bow down and be grateful

And say "Sure take all that you see"

To the men who move only in dimly-lit halls

And determine my future for me

And I don't, I don't know who to believe

I'll get back to you someday soon you will see

If I know only one thing

It's that every thing that I see

Of the world outside is so inconceivable

Often I barely can speak

Yeah I'm tongue tied and dizzy

And I can't keep it to myself

What good is it to sing helplessness blues?

Why should I wait for anyone else?

And I know, I know you will keep me on the shelf

I'll come back to you someday soon myself

If I had an orchard

I'd work till I'm raw

If I had an orchard

I'd work till I'm sore

And you would wait tables

And soon run the store

Gold hair in the sunlight

My light in the dawn

If I had an orchard

I'd work till I'm sore

If I had an orchard

I'd work till I'm sore

Someday I'll be

Like the man on the screen

Taste and Parody collide with Art and Music

The Indie Band Hold Your Horses! web link

70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! (official music video)

Matching the Art with the Scenes

What the Master Pieces Meant

Matching the Art with the Scenes

70 Million Lyrics
Hold Your Horses!

And it hardly looked like a novel at all,
I hardly look like a hero at all
And I'm sorry, you didn't publish this
And you were white as snow; I was white as a sheet

When you came down in this black dress
In your mom's black maternity dress
And so,
Though it hardly looked like a novel at all,
And the city treats me, it treats me to you
And a cup of coffee for you
I should learn it's language and speak it to you

And 70 million should be in the know
And 70 million don't go out at all
And 70 million wouldn't walk this street
And 70 million would run to a hole
And 70 million would be wrong wrong wrong
And 70 million never see it at all
And 70 million haven't tasted snow

And we dance dance dance like the children dance
Imply thought are we taking the chance?
With the light still on, and will we ever reach the tower

And after you came down in this black dress
I don't know what took so very long
And this,
And this isn't a war, we don't have to ration
Now wave white flag, and you kept it at home
And words I wrote from a foreign land
You're holding my no longer foreign hand

And 70 million should be in the know
And 70 million don't go out at all
And 70 million wouldn't walk this street
And 70 million would run to a hole
And 70 million would be wrong wrong wrong
And 70 million never see it at all
And 70 million haven't tasted snow

* * * * * * * * * *

In the music video for the song "70 Million," indie pop band
Hold Your Horses! interprets 25 paintings, including
Magritte's  The Son of Man. | L'Ogre

PLAYING GOD, JESUS, AND LIBERTY

http://www.artnews.com/2010/05/01/playing-god-jesus-and-liberty/

by Jeremy D. Goodwin

May 1, 2010

How a rock band restaged art-history classics for a music video that went viral.

As Salome carries his head on a silver platter, John the Baptist opens his eyes and sings a merry little melody to the camera.

That scene -- enacted by members of the French-American indie pop band Hold Your Horses! -- helped turn the music video for their song “70 Million” into a viral hit on the Internet, viewed nearly 300,000 times within two weeks of its being posted on the Web site Vimeo.

But it wasn’t this live-action re-staging of Caravaggio‘s Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist alone that did it. The three-minute video, created by the small production house L’Ogre, careens through 25 tableaux vivants of iconic works, ranging from Velázquez‘s Las Meninas to Munch‘s The Scream, from Manet‘s Olympia to Klimt‘s The Kiss.

All this art history was filmed over two weekends in a parking garage in Paris, using chalk drawings as backdrops and a smoke machine for fog. To re-create the cloudy sky in Michelangelo‘s Sistine Chapel ceiling, the production team ripped out the stuffing from 200 pillows. “The idea was to make the paintings youthful and funny and rock-and-roll,” the video’s director, David Freymond, says. “We were not trying to be too academic.”

The video begins with Jesus, from Leonardo‘s The Last Supper, drumming on a pot with a pair of wooden spoons. Frida Kahlo (from her self-portraits), van Gogh (from his Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear), and Picasso‘s muse Dora Maar (from his Portrait of Dora Maar) are among the recognizable characters taking subsequent turns with the upbeat tune. One band member sings while smoking a cigarette, interpreting Otto Dix‘s Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden.

The music video “breaks with the image of a rock band,” Freymond says. “This poor band has to get naked—to re-create Renaissance paintings.” Well, not entirely naked: the Venus of Botticelli‘s The Birth of Venus wears a guitar as a cover-up.

The irreverent effort—for an enigmatic song the band claims is about the shifting feelings in a romantic relationship—required feats of costuming. A head covering and the perfect piece of jewelry turned guitarist Charles van den Boogaerde into Vermeer‘s Girl with a Pearl Earring. A bowler hat transformed bassist Robin Montmusson into Magritte‘s Son of Man. The same hat, adorned with a feather, appears in a staging of Holbein the Younger‘s Henry VIII.

To become Van Gogh’s sunflowers, band members covered their arms in green paint. Cellist Simon Tordjman had his face painted white, blue, red, yellow, and black to approximate a Mondrian painting. And six of the band’s seven members got to play the part of Warhol‘s Marilyn Monroe. They all wore the same wig, spray-painted a different color for each shot.

Part of the fun is watching unlikely subjects bang out the tune. The cadaver in Rembrandt‘s The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Nicolaes Tulp reaches over to play a few notes on a melodica, for example. In an evocation of Gabrielle d’Estrées and One of Her Sisters, by an unknown 16th-century painter, a shirtless musician sways his head to the beat as he pinches the nipple of a comrade strumming a guitar. In most cases instruments are not in the original artworks, with Chagall‘s The Bride a notable exception: as in the painting, in the music video a goat (or rather a man with a goat mask attached to his head) plays the cello.

Florence Villeminot, drummer and vocalist, has starring roles in the stagings of The Creation of Adam, from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, Leonardo’s The Last Supper, and Eugène Delacroix‘s Liberty Leading the People. “I was happy because I got to be God, the Virgin Mary, Jesus, and Liberty. That was my goal when I joined the band,” Villeminot quips.

In order of “appearance” in the Hold Your Horses! music video for “70 Million”:

• Leonardo, The Last Supper (1492–98)
• Botticelli, The Birth of Venus (ca. 1485)
• Rembrandt, The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Nicolaes Tulp (1632)
• Holbein the Younger, Henry VIII (ca. 1536)
• Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring (ca. 1665–66)
• Théodore Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa (1818–19)
• Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Marat (1793)
• Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam (ca. 1511)
• Magritte, The Son of Man (1964)
• Mondrian, after various compositions
• Frida Kahlo, after several self-portraits
• Picasso, Portrait of Dora Maar (1937)
• Munch, The Scream (1893)
• Van Gogh, Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear (1889)
• Warhol, after various Marilyns
• Unknown artist, Gabrielle d’Estrées and One of Her Sisters (ca. 1594)
• Cenni di Pepo, Madonna and Child Enthroned with Six Angels (ca. 1280)
• Caravaggio, Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist (1606–7)
• Manet, Olympia (1863)
• Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People (1830)
• Otto Dix, Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden (1926)
• Klimt, The Kiss (1907–8)
• Chagall, The Bride (1950)
• Velázquez, Las Meninas (ca. 1656)
• Van Gogh, Vase with 12 Sunflowers (1888)

Copyright 2015, ARTnews LLC, 40 W 25th Street, 6th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10010. All rights reserved.

* * * * * * * * * *

26APR2011

70 million

by whart

This isn’t about an art event/exhibition (I have something else from that I’m still trying to edit) but I found an interesting video – interesting, humorous and pretty creative. It’s a music video for the band Hold Your Horses.

[First question]... How many paintings did you recognize? :)

Anyway, I guess this is a highly relevant video considering that we were discussing how advertising appropriates art in the last lesson. This is a pretty literal example of it, and it is also an example of parody. I think there are two possible implications.

1) The humour is disrespectful to the artworks as it violates their sanctity and doesn’t bring out their original meaning or context context e.g. if you think about how serious and emotional a Van Gogh painting is and how it has been turned into a funny singing man.

Also, the use of art for advertising [music] is objectionable…turning a priceless creation into low entertainment and a way to earn money.

The second one is the one most people will have and the one that I personally had.

2) It is humorous, but not in a malicious way. Seeing old and familiar artworks portrayed in a new way that is not mocking of them, but took creativity to plan and execute, is pleasant and inspiring. It is a lighthearted take on paintings that might otherwise be regarded as serious or boring by most people, and an expression of the band and director’s own creativity.

That is the view I lean more towards, although I won’t deny that the video doesn’t do justice to many of the original artworks’ emotional content and sense of pathos. In that sense I think I am quite pragmatic about art and reproductions…

I would rather a piece of artwork be reproduced, reused, given new meaning and made

relevant to a new audience rather than remain a sacred object that only a few people

are motivated to try and understand on a deeper level. (As long as the meaning is not

in conflict with the old one, and as long as it is not used for banal/unrelated/really

disrespectful like my toilet paper holder.)

It was the same thing when we were having the show and tell with all the appropriated/reproduced art we found and I said about my Coldplay album that I felt it was an acceptable use of art.

I guess you could say that both the video and the album cover do this. They are appropriating the artwork’s of the Old Masters, and on one hand it is a form of advertising (advertising to get people to buy the music) but on the other hand I feel they are creative endeavours in their own right.

The Coldplay album is part of a whole musical concept and idea the band is trying to evoke, while the direction and production of a video is a difficult and creative process. The paintings are the creative works of the past, but these are the creative works of the present, and we can’t deny that they have a broader appeal in today’s world.

Thus, I think it is a mistake to dismiss all reproduction as harmful and disrespectful to art. It isn’t something that can be stamped out or ignored, and like everything else, it has ambiguous and double-edged impacts, and some of these impacts can be positive, inspiring and creative. I feel that if we take all paintings so seriously and deny any kind of perspective or commentary on them other than the serious, classical, respectful one, we are not doing justice to their complexity and the way people relate to them.

-- Grace

5 Things You Didn't Know About Easter

In parts of Spain, Easter celebrations often involve Christians processing through the
streets carrying crucifixes and other religious icons | Andres Kudacki, Associated Press

5 Things You Didn't Know About Easter

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/01/facts-about-easter-you-didnt-know_n_6982358.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000051

The Huffington Post

by Carol Kuruvilla

April 1, 2015

For Christians, Easter is a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ -- and arguably the most important date on the religious calendar. Easter marks the end of Lent, a 40-day period of fasting and reflection. The day holds the promise of victory over death, a new life and the forgiveness of sins.

The first recorded observance of Easter happened in the second century, though it is likely that Christians were celebrating the resurrection much earlier than that. Today, the holy day has inspired a wide variety of traditions -- from Sweden’s trick-or-treating Easter witches to Venezuela’s tradition of burning effigies of Judas.

Here are five little-known facts about the Easter holiday.

1

There’s more than one theory about where Easter got its name.

PAPER BOAT CREATIVE VIA GETTY IMAGES

The word Easter has been linked to Eostre, an Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring and new life. Other scholars trace the name of the holiday to the Latin phrase “hebdomada alba,” which means “white week.” According to tradition, new Christians were baptized into the faith on Easter while wearing white clothes. The phrase evolved into “eostarum” in Old High German, becoming “Ostern” in modern German and “Easter” in English.

But in many other languages, the word for Easter is still deeply tied to Passover, the festival that celebrates the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. Jesus was crucified soon after he arrived in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover feast.

The Orthodox Church calls Easter “Pascha.” In French, the holiday is known as “Pâques.” In Spanish, it is “Pascua,” and in Dutch, “Pasen.”

2

Easter has always been tied to the moon.

MKOTERA555 VIA GETTY

Since the Jewish calendar is based on lunar cycles, Passover falls on 14 Nisan, the 14th day of the first full moon of spring. Christians in Asia Minor used to remember the crucifixion on the 14 Nisan, and celebrate the resurrection on 16 Nisan. But this meant that Easter could fall on any day of the week. On the other hand, Christians in the West celebrated Easter on the first Sunday after 14 Nisan.

In 325, the Roman Emperor Constantine I gathered bishops from around his empire at the Council of Nicaea to hammer out a solution to this and other debates raging in the early church. The council decided that Easter would be observed on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox.

3

Easter is the reason why we use the Gregorian calendar.

HULTON ARCHIVE VIA GETTY

By the 16th century, scholars had realized that the Roman Empire’s Julian calendar was out of sync with the solar year -- and that Easter was falling further away from the spring equinox. In an effort to close the gap, Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian calendar. But because of old religious rivalries, Protestants in Europe were dead set against the change. It wasn’t until 1752 that England adopted the Gregorian calendar. On that day, the country skipped forward 11 days overnight, going from Wednesday, September 2, to Thursday, September 14. The Gregorian calendar is still the most widely used civil calendar today.

Eastern Orthodox churches still use the Julian calendar to calculate religious holidays. As a result, while most of the Western world will celebrate Easter on April 5 this year, Orthodox churches are celebrating on April 12.

4

The Pilgrims despised Easter celebrations.

BOSTON GLOBE VIA GETTY IMAGES

Christianity in the early New England colonies was very different from Christianity in America today. The Puritans scorned religious holidays like Easter and Christmas, claiming they had pagan roots and lacked a scriptural basis. In fact, the Puritans flat-out outlawed Christmas celebrations in the Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1659 to 1681, slapping rule-breakers with a then-hefty fine of five shillings.

Some Christian denominations are still wary of religious holidays. Jehovah’s Witnesses and many Pentecostal churches, for example, still discourage their members from celebrating Easter.

5

The Easter Bunny barely scratches the surface of this holiday's traditions.

JAIME REINA VIA GETTY IMAGES

When Easter swings around in America, there’s no escaping the Easter Bunny and his colorful basket of eggs. But across the world, Christians have developed many interesting ways of marking the holiday. In Sweden, young girls dress up as Easter Witches and travel from house to house looking for treats. In some parts of Latin America and Greece, Christians burn effigies of Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus. In Venezuela last year, some protesters used the holiday to burn an effigy of their president, Nicolas Maduro. Bermudan Christians fly brightly colored kites on Good Friday to represent Christ’s ascension to heaven.

In Spain, some Christians don cloaks and pointed hoods to participate in eerie night-time processions. The parades are organized by local religious brotherhoods. The participants -- called penitents, or sinners -- carry crucifixes and religious icons through the streets to act out the Easter story. According to centuries-old tradition, the penitents wear capirotes, or tall pointed hats, so that their neighbors don't know the identity of the sinner behind the mask.

Confronting the End of Meaning: Crucifixion and the Critique of Signs and Wonders

Francisco de Zurbaran , Agnus Dei , 1636 - 40 , San Diego Museum of Art , California , USA

3 Reasons the Human Jesus is Important

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2015/03/3-reasons-human-jesus-is-important/

by Peter Enns

March 31, 2015

Comments

Guest Blogger Jared Byas

This week Christians celebrate the crazy idea that God became human.

While affirming this in theory, my evangelical upbringing was very uncomfortable with the idea of  a Human Jesus. We had to admit Jesus was human but that didn’t mean we had to like it.

After all, the God Jesus is where the magic happens. Human Jesus sometimes muddles the important stuff, takes our eyes off the ball about heaven and whatnot. But here, I submit 3 reasons why Human Jesus is important to remember:

1. God gets that we are a mess.

Jesus experienced the love of his mother and the betrayal of his best friends. He felt the beautiful sensuality of getting his feet wiped with the hair of a young woman and the tortuous pain of getting his feet nailed to a cross.

In seminary it was through seeing Jesus as unapologetically human that I was able to see that God doesn’t want me to become superhuman but wants me to be a loved person.

Christianity isn’t an instruction manual for how to be perfect like God but a story about how God became like us. And that’s a crucial difference.

2. God is willing to join the mess.

God doesn’t mind “looking bad” for the sake of those God loves.

If you want to be in relationship with broken humans, you run the risk of looking broken yourself. God doesn’t seem to care. Why do we?

The streak I see in Human Jesus is the holy being so involved in the lives of the unholy that people are uncomfortable with how, from the outside, it’s hard to tell the difference. I see a God who, for the sake of love would risk reputation, trading in “omnipotent” for “glutton” and “drunk.”

3. Because of #1 & #2, I expect a very human-looking Bible.

If the same God that came to earth as an unimpressive carpenter from an underperforming people group also provided us a book, I would expect it to look very human. Would it run the risk of looking ordinary, unrefined, and altogether human?

Yes. Point taken. The Bible looks a lot like Jesus.

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Confronting the End of Meaning:

Crucifixion and the Critique of Signs and Wonders

http://peterrollins.net/2015/03/confronting-the-end-of-meaning-crucifixion-and-the-critique-of-signs-and-wonders/

by Peter Rollins

March 03, 2015

Last night Tony Jones had a launch for his latest book Did God Kill Jesus. The book itself is an excellent and very readable overview of the various ways that the church has understood the meaning and significance of the Crucifixion. Partly motivated by Trip Fuller’s statement, “God has to be at least as nice as Jesus,” he goes further than simply describing the basic approaches and endeavours to find a way of understanding the Crucifixion that prevents it [from] being mired in a theology that justifies violence, anti-Semitism, exclusion, and political oppression.

In the book Jones views the incarnation as signifying a fundamental shift in the way God relates to human beings (shifting God from a place of sympathy regarding humans to empathy). The infinite lives into the finite and tastes the existential predicament of human subjectivity. Including condemnation by the law, oppression and a sense of alienation (Crucifixion).

The main problem I have with this approach is that Tony continues to see the Crucifixion as a meaningful event. It is an event that must be integrated into a certain apologetic system. An approach that generates so many of the problems that Tony brings up in the book… how to make an event that seems to defy everything we think of the Absolute, fit with it.

Below I have taken an excerpt from The Divine Magician that outlines a critique of this idea. It begins by referencing a previous argument concerning “freedom from the sacred-object” and closes before I go on to draw the consequences of the position I outline. Both of which are important to the position. But I hope it at least introduces the idea that Crucifixion might operate as a rupture in meaning.

This freedom from the sacred-object also spells freedom from the need to find an overarching meaning to life. Indeed, the apostle Paul directly attacks the idea of Christianity offering a system of meaning in his attacks on what he called “signs” and “wisdom.” Signs and wisdom represent two ways in which we seek meaning. Through either apologetic argument or the occurrence of unusual or unexplainable events, we want to find ways to justify our beliefs.

To the Jew a "Stumbling Block"

While the affirmation of signs and wisdom to justify a particular religious position is part-and-parcel of religious discourse, Paul sets his sights firmly against them when critiquing the Jewish community of his day for seeking the former and the Greeks for wanting the latter,

Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom,but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

What’s fascinating here is the way Paul sets up the Crucifixion as the very opposite of a sign or wisdom. From the perspective of both, the Crucifixion can strike one as nothing but empty nonsense. Why? Because this method of execution symbolized a divine curse. More than this, the idea of an innocent man, let alone God, being murdered in such horrific terms strikes against the idea of justice, reason, or goodness.

It is a meaningless, absurd, and offensive event, something theologian Paul Hessert picks up in his book Christ and the End of Meaning,

Anyone executed by hanging was seen in Jewish tradition as cursed by God. The sign of such a death was taken as divine corroboration of the administration of human justice. In other words, God was seen as acting in this sign-event to give the victim “what was coming to him.”

As that which runs against the very idea of a sign, Hessert argues that what we’re confronted with is a type of profound offense to reason:

The affront is not merely the case of the ignominious, brutal death of Jesus . . . [it is] to the whole religious outlook that searches for signs. . . . Preaching “Christ crucified” is not merely saying that bad things happen to good people but that God’s approach to us belies our expectations.

In other words, the event of the Crucifixion is actually the very contradiction of our expectations. This contradiction is much more than the liberal concept that the cross represents the idea of a good person being killed because he stood up against injustice. It is rather a direct confrontation of all that we think religion and God is about—it is that which breaks apart “our sense of reality.”

To Greek Stoicism "foolishness"

In the scripture passage quoted previously, Paul connects the desire for wisdom with the Greeks and their development of classical philosophy (the “love of wisdom”). The Greeks were not so much interested in signs, but rather with the eternal realm of ideas. They sought an underlying rational structure that would make sense of the passing, decaying nature of the world and render it all meaningful.

The preeminent teachers of wisdom at the time of Jesus were the Stoics. Stoicism was the ancient Hellenistic philosophy that emphasized an emotionally balanced life based upon a will that was in accord to nature, a strong moral temperament, and a deeply rational outlook.

These teachers would often compete with Christian preachers for an audience and argued that behind the chaos of our lived experience there was a harmonious center, an order that could, in principle, provide a meaning for everything. The Stoics saw the brokenness and decay of the world as a type of illusion or temporary condition. While they had a strong moral theory, there was a broad acceptance of the status quo. In this way, Stoicism was able to become the philosophical outlook of the cultural elite in the Roman Empire without actually threatening some of the more barbaric and inequitable practices of the day.

The Stoics would have had little problem in accepting the liberal reading of Christ’s crucifixion as an example of one who faced injustice and suffering with [a kind of Stoic] peace and resoluteness. Indeed this Jesus would have fitted very neatly into their worldview.

For Paul, however, there was something much more profound and offensive taking place in the idea of “Christ crucified.” Indeed, Paul was reading the Crucifixion against this stoic vision of Jesus. For Paul, the Crucifixion was that which defied reduction to a sign or system of meaning. As Hessert notes,

“Christ crucified” makes no sense. Instead of linking God to the enveloping rationality that absorbs or even overrides the passing contradictions of goodness, it focuses attention on the contradiction itself. That is, “Christ crucified” is no key to the meaning of life and human events. It is a problem to meaning, a problem requiring explanation.

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Shoah

noun

1. (in secular Judaism) a Hebrew word for holocaust (sense 2) See alsoChurban (sense 2)

Word Origin literally: destruction

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Holocaust

[hol-uh-kawst, hoh-luh-]

noun

1. a great or complete devastation or destruction, especially by fire.

2. a sacrifice completely consumed by fire; burnt offering.

3. the systematic mass slaughter of European Jews in Nazi concentration camps during World War II

4. any mass slaughter or reckless destruction of life.

---

Hessert notes that the Shoah operates in a similar way within Jewish thought. For the Shoah is that horrific, unspeakable event that ruptures and renders offensive any attempt to make it into a divine sign or element of wider rationality. This is why the term Shoah is often preferred over Holocaust. For the latter is derived from the Greek holókauston, a term that has connections with the notion of religious sacrifice and thus religious significance. In contrast, the Shoah simply means destruction and thus lacks any justificatory undertones.

The attempt to provide a cosmic meaning for the Shoah is not simply misplaced, it is a profound offense. The event stands as an affront to all such strategies. In terms of the European intellectual tradition, the First World War can be seen to act in a similar way. One of the features of this horrific event is found in the way that the war disrupted all our attempts to tie it into some deeper meaning or significance.

It is precisely this connection with meaning, religious or otherwise, that the Crucifixion of Christ cuts against.

Once we grasp this idea of Christ representing a break with [Jewish] signs and [Greek] wisdom, we can begin to perceive how the actual existing church has fundamentally betrayed the scandal of the Crucifixion, effectively making it into a type of Stoic doctrine that doesn’t challenge our world, but confirms it.

In contrast, for Paul, “Christ crucified” is that event that defies all attempts at being reduced to some system of meaning.

It is a type of antisign that fractures religious signs.

An antiwisdom that confounds human wisdom.

A nuclear event that blows apart all of our apologetic enclosures.

Paul and the Crucifixion: Neither Modern Nor Postmodern in Radical Theology

I have been participating in the "Rupture, Revelation, Revolution" classes each week and must share what Badiou's "Event and Being" means to me on a rudimentary level. I say "rudimentary" because I am not a philosopher but am interested in the creation of a new postmodern philosophical language (or linguistic scaffolding structure) in which to inspect and/or construct/deconstruct a new postmodern language for present day theology. 

Moreover, last summer I met and studied under Alain Badiou at the insistence of a new friend who was conducting podcasts with Pete Rollins and John Caputo out of my office from the week before. And well that I did, because Badiou was the kind of free-ranging thinker whose system concepts bode a greater expansiveness to my own enlightenment/modernistic background from which I had been attempting a resurrection from through the utilization of postmodern thought.

Anyway, today's blog article is a crude summary of what we have been talking about the past 2 weeks which I hope helps when reading Pete Rollins article following immediately below.

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"I have been taking a 6 week primer on philosophic radical theology using Paul's theology as a type of profound revelation that ruptures one's previous world systems by displacing and deeply revolutionizing all succeeding thoughts and acts against past cherished paradigms personally or sociological ingrained in society.

By using Alain Badiou's "Event and Being" as a juxtaposition we moved last week from the poet/prophet act of receiving (or discerning) revelation (the Event) to this week's transformative stages of Being which becomes radically transformative in the Christ event for the Apostle Paul (even as it is for the Christian believer).

As such, all past hermeneutics interpreting Jesus must radically fall away for Paul as he became consumed in Jesus as a rupturing Event to his life's theology, mission, and identity. Similarly, post-modernism's anthropological-existential hermeneutics may now displace all previous enlightenment and modernistic theologies themselves having become radically transformed upon the very foundation these systems had built for their own demise.

In lay terms this means that even as Paul was profoundly changed by Jesus in doctrine, service, and identity so will the new postmodern Christian become profoundly moved fundamentally to his/her state of being with its acquisitions and proclivities. And as individuals are changed so will the church in its doctrine, mission, and identity.

Thus, Paul no longer sought to fit Jesus into his bible but the bible around Jesus. (In existential terms Paul was the one to be fit around Jesus even as the Christian believer becomes radically transformed in the same way). He knew the reality of his experience (the subjective response to the objective) and though he could not explain it he knew he must become neither Jew nor Greek but God's servant.

Even so, this is the philosophical scaffolding of a new theology that brings God's kingdom into the present through gracious acts of servitude towards others when overwhelmed by Spirit-filled revelatory light and illumination. A new consciousness which sees world systems and Jewish or Christian laws as antithetical to Jesus' apocalyptic event and being.

Correspondingly, this becomes the scary stuff that we most fear because it radically changes us should we allow it to do so. But without this personal admittance it cannot displace nor disrupt nor revolutionize the very person seeking to be claimed by the event itself.

Likewise must theology flow in its disruption to all past theologies that it might proclaim the event through a new essence of being. An essence which deconstructs old-line systems and traditions in order to reconstruct the self to the newer radicalized rectitudes and discontinuities obtained by the rupturing revelation to consumptive lives, routines, and activities.

R.E. Slater

March 31, 2015

Comments

Anon: "I concur with all of this. I hope you'll keep us/me updated as you move through the course. Sounds interesting and wise.+

Myself: "Thanks. It's even more radical than this. I am looking for a new philosophical framework on which theology might further expand and transform the bible beyond perspectival hermeneutics to radically lived kingdom lives. Lives as very poets and prophets themselves. I met Badiou and studied with him last summer but even though I didn't understand it I felt there was in his way of thinking a way to reinterpret the bible beyond itself. Moreover, it's also a continuation of reviewing what radical theology can become stripped of western thinking and infused in Christ. Basically it's left of liberalism but center on with Jesus at its core."

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Paul and the Crucifixion: Neither Modern, Nor Postmodern

http://peterrollins.net/2015/03/paul-and-the-crucifixion-neither-modern-nor-postmodern/

by Peter Rollins

March 03, 2015

As some of you know, I’m currently teaching a course with Tripp Fuller that explores the turn to Paul found among atheist philosophers. In contrast to the “New Perspective on Paul” found in contemporary theology, people like Badiou, Zizek and Taubes are celebrating a militant, political Paul who provides a model for combating postmodernism.

One of the questions that has come up during the course concerns why on earth these political atheist thinkers would find an ally in Paul when they share nothing of his dogma or commitment to the largely conservative, pietistic community that claims his legacy. More than this, the Resurrection of Christ is Paul’s overriding belief, it is the sun around which everything else orbits.

How then can thinkers who view this part of the Jesus story as a fable, possibly champion the controversial apostle?

In order to approach an answer we have to briefly reflect on how Paul held the belief in Christ’s resurrection. Bearing in mind the centrality of the belief, it is hard not to be struck by the fact that he doesn’t actually argue for it in the traditional way. Indeed he specifically claimed that the event was foolishness in terms of reason, and a stumbling block for those who sought a sign. In this way Paul neither resembles the modern apologist who employs philosophy to back up his claims, nor the postmodernist who sees her claims as relative.

Paul can’t be placed into either of these camps, and instead opens up a different mode of discourse: Proclamation. For Badiou, this opens up the figure of the apostle over-and-against the figure of the philosopher and the prophet.

To understand the atheist philosophers’ enlisting of Paul we have to understand the nature of this third discourse in relation to the statement “Christ is Risen.” The main thing that strikes us when reading Paul’s claim is the way that it isn’t a theory to defend, it is rather an event that is proclaimed and verified in the formation of what Paul Tillich would call, the New Being.

In Badiou’s excellent book on Paul he uses the example of how the belief in the gas chambers used by the Nazis function for us today.

The claim that millions of Jews where executed in these gas chambers is an historical one that is open to verification and falsification. However the way that this claim functions for us cannot be reduced to this level. When someone attempts to draw us into a debate about whether or not these murders really happened, we not only refuse to enter in, we expose how the very reduction of the event to a type of detached historical debate is already a betrayal of the event it signals.

For most of the world the historical belief in the mass murder of Jews in Nazi death camps articulates an event that demands an unconditional stance. The historical record is encountered as something that makes an absolute claim on us. It reflects a horror that we must attempt to ensure never happens again. The contingent historical reality is thus a site of demand. It houses an event that cannot be reduced to the location it was birthed in. An event that is eclipsed the moment we treat the gas Chambers in a cold, detached way.

For Paul, the resurrection is a historical reality, but he holds it like one might hold the belief in the gas chambers, i.e. the event housed in the historical claim is not something one debates, holds lightly or defends. For Paul it is proclaimed in the life of the one caught up in the event. For Paul, the idea of playing into the Greek discourse of reason is not simply misplaced, but a fundamental betrayal of the event. In a brilliant reflection from St. Paul, Badiou shows that even Pascal failed to grasp this in its entirety.

This is analogous to the event of love. A contingent, imperfect other becomes, for us, the site for the love-event. The love-event is birthed from the other, but the lover doesn’t engage in apologetics to defend their claim that their beloved is the most beautiful person in the world. Yet neither are they an apathetic relativist about their beloved. That contingent person who they met through a random set of events becomes the site for that which cannot be reduced to a mere philosophical argument. [cf., Something I explore here.]

To grasp this means that one can begin to see why some radical political philosophers are drawn to Paul. For Paul is a clear example of a militant who is committed to a truth-event, a truth-event that is based in the world but that is not reducible to it.

This is powerfully portrayed in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. In one particularly incredible scene the firebrand apostle is preaching the resurrected Christ when Jesus confronts him and calls him a liar. When Paul pursues him Jesus says, “I was never crucified, I never rose from the dead. I’m a man like everyone else.” In response to this news Paul retorts, “I don’t care if you’re Jesus or not. The resurrected Jesus is what will save the world and that’s what matters.”

In this scene Paul is faced with the reality that the historical claim that birthed his vision of a universal community (of neither Jew nor Gentile), is false. But rather than despair he thanks Jesus. For he knows that the event is what counts. The historical claim opened up the way for the event, but the event is what counts.

In the same way, a person transformed by love, but who later finds out that their lover was a scoundrel and a fraud, can still be faithful to the transformed life that arose from the love. [sic, not that Jesus was either rogue or scondrel]

For Paul there is probably as little doubt about a historical resurrection than there is doubt for us about the gas chambers in Nazi Germany. But the resuscitation of a body is not what Paul is concerned about: he proclaims Resurrection (with a capital “R”). This means that he proclaims New Being.

Whether one thinks that the historical site of the event is actual or not, one can be caught up in the event and committed to fighting for the universal community that is opened up by the event.

So then, for people like Badiou, Paul provides a great ancient example of what we so need today, a figure committed to fighting for a universal community. A figure who doesn’t get bogged down in modernist apologetics or in postmodern relativism.

jesus meet saint paul ----from temptation

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Philosopher's on Paul

http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2015/03/10/philosophers-on-paul/

by Tripp Fuller

March 10, 2015

Comments

Why in the world are philosophers getting so excited about Paul these days?

Well I would tell you the answer but Tripp and Pete decided to do an entire High Gravity class investigating this turn to Paul among political philosophers. Last week the class kicked off with an initial session on the Bible with Daniel Kirk and now in the second session we turn to the philosophers. This podcast includes the general introduction to Paul and the philosophers that kicked off session two. Check it out and think about joining us for the rest of the class.

In the second half of this session we discussed Jacob Taubes‘ seminal work The Political Theology of Paul. His lectures were what paved the way for two of the most talked about texts in political philosophy. In weeks 3 and 4 we will walk through Alain Badiou‘s Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism. In weeks 5 and 6 we will do a close reading of Slavoj Zizek‘s The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity.

The class includes over 10 hours of live-streamed nerdiness for just 30 bucks. Each session will be a live streamed video-cast w/ some introductory remarks about the thinkers, conversational walk-through the texts, and interaction with the participants. Following the session it will be available for download on the class page along with links to the archived video, supplemental reading material, and the class discussion board. Each session will begin at 6pm pst (9pm est). Go HERE to join.

Make sure you check out our sponsor Deidox Films. They create short films takes which show how different disciples in different walks of life embody their faith. If you like using films in your teaching, preaching or learning then get wise and click on over.

You can also check out the downloadable package of three High Gravity classes Tripp and Peter Rollins taught together. It includes all the audio from Atheism for Lent, Radical Theology, and Christology classes totally over 27 hours of material for 50 bucks.

Head over HERE for info about the March 17th Theology Nerd Bootcamp in Chicago before #PYM15.

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