Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Duluth 
Easter Sunday—Is Crucifixion Necessary?
The Rev. Karen Gustafson
April 16, 2006
Today is once again according to the calendar, both liturgical and secular, undeniably Easter. This is for me and for many Unitarian Universalists the most difficult and ambivalent of the Christian celebrations.
It is difficult for me because it pairs personal/political violence which I abhor with redemption which I believe in with all my heart. In the Easter story the resurrection is the act which redeems and justifies the crucifixion and this story, be it truth, or history or metaphor, continues to shape the culture in which we live today. The central claim in the Christian story is that Jesus died to save us from sin and that the resurrection was to be the dramatic and undeniable proof that redemption was possible. Does it then follow that crucifixion, or perhaps other acts of political/personal violence is necessary for redemption?
Walter Wink, professor of Biblical interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary in observed the following:
"The myth of redemptive violence inundates us on every side. We are awash in it yet seldom perceive it. Its simplest, most pervasive, and finally most influential form, where it captures the imaginations of each new generation, is children's comics and cartoon shows.
Here is how the myth of redemptive violence structures the standard comic strip or television cartoon sequences: An indestructible good guy is unalterably opposed to an irreformable and equally indestructible bad guy. Nothing can kill the good guy, though for the first three-quarters of the strip or show he (rarely she) suffers grievously, appearing hopelessly trapped, until somehow the hero breaks free, vanquishes the villain, and restores order until the next installment. Nothing finally destroys the bad guy or prevents his reappearance, whether he is soundly trounced or jailed."
Professor Wink does not make a connection between the redemptive violence he describes and the redemptive violence of the crucifixion. But I cannot help but note the thinly veiled similarity. Jesus is the undeniably good guy. He has become a political threat because his followers claim him as King of the Jews. He is at least a man, a man of indestructible faith and uncommon power that comes from his manifestation of love and kindness and caring and peacefulness in the face of adversity and opposition. He suffers grievously through the betrayal of his friends and ultimately through the torture of the cross and then when it would seem that goodness has been defeated by death, he is resurrected. Nothing finally destroys those who persecuted him or prevent the forces of violence and oppression from reappearing.
What pains me about this is that I think that there is a redemptive message embodied in the life and work of Jesus and even, maybe in the resurrection, that got eclipsed by the violence and drama of his death. It is a universal message, deeply human, embodied in everyday human experience, which makes even the story of Jesus' forty days in the wilderness a more powerful metaphor for redemption. It is a message about redemption in which resurrection is simply one of many metaphors for what happens when we attend to our human lives and the lives of our communities and to ourselves as beings not separate from but inextricably connected and part of creation. At worst, Christian tradition treats the Easter event as though it were the first instance of death giving way to new life, death violent, at that, redeemed through divine intervention.
What that does is to draw attention to the dramatic, the violent, the supernatural. It is the ultimate red herring drawing the human psyche away from the daily, hourly recognition of the little death and resurrections that happen within us, around us, through us, because of us. Little deaths and redemptions that shape our relationships with one another and with our communities and with the earth.
Here in these words of Victoria Safford is what I mean:
"Did the Sun Come Up This Morning?
The dead shall rise again.
Have you seen the trees? Have you seen the maple buds? The magnolias, swelling? Poplars, the first lacy, pale spray across the shoulder of the hills? The forsythia (or as one child I know calls it, the three-sythia, the two-sythia), and those three small, flowering, perfect crabapple trees in the park, strong little trees begging children to climb them and get lost for a while in their magical, pink canopies?
Did you smell the rain this week, and the muddy, ready earth receiving it? Did you smell the musty, lusty, moldy pile of leaves all thawed now, and underneath, the moist ant living earthworms, wide awake?
Is it safe, I wonder, to presume that we have all seen the dead resurrected? Can we presume, just quietly among us, this basic fact? Can we admit, however carefully at first, however foolish it may sound, that once or twice in our lives or perhaps over and over and tumbling over, we have seen events miraculous? Choose the words you will, whatever words you need. If "miracle" cloys, try "unexpected." "Surprising." "Unanticipated." "Lucky." "That which has been given us, that second chance, that second wind, by the grace of God knows what."
The dead shall rise again.
We know, because we've seen it.
We don't know, and never will, where the leaf's strength comes from in the spring. We don't know, and never will, entirely, where our own strength comes from. But we have known despair, some of us, and deep discouragement, some of us, and discord of the mind and heart, or disasters in the body or the spirit or in both. We have known dead hope, dead courage, dead caring, dead will, dead faith, dead vision, dead power, deep winter, and we have felt, perhaps when we least expected to feel anything at all, our own slow blood stir in the vein like maple sap, and something very small and tight within begin to swell and open up, urgent, imperceptible at first, then undeniable---love lives again that with the dead has been.
Did the sun come up this morning, no thanks to us and all for us, and did the earth awake again, or did it not?
We will testify to resurrection.
How might the history of our civilization been different if somehow instead of the crucifixion and resurrection, the forty days in the wilderness had become the defining event of the Christian faith. Instead of a victim/savior bleeding on the cross, redeemed by an authoritative act not of his making, what of a mortal retreating to wilderness to search his soul and come to terms with the temptations that plagued him and to restore his relationship with what he believed and what he knew to be the truth of his life. What of his returning, not to die but to deepen the understanding of his followers, to teach and demonstrate his love, to marry, perhaps, and pass on a new vision of human love so powerfully expressed in beloved community that no violence could be committed in his name? What if when he died a quiet death of old age that his funeral celebration drew not twelve or twenty but twelve or twenty thousand, each touched or transformed in some way direct or indirect by his love and from this celebration of his life arose a commitment to change the world with love.
An unlikely scenario. Such experience of introspection and self examination, of gentle humility and compassion does not play well when you need publicity to motivate a religious movement. It lacks the dramatic draw.
Can we claim a new story, one without a crucifixion, one that draws us away from images of violence and find as Sam Keen says that "each of us is redeemed from shallow and hostile life only by the sacrificial love and civility which we have gratuitously received."