Christ Is Risen!

A few weeks ago, it was Pascha. The Eastern Orthodox version of Easter (usually later than the Western Easter—never earlier—and the most important holiday of the year, more important than Christmas), at which the above greeting and its response (Indeed/Truly/In Truth He Is Risen!) is called out, along with the troparion, about a zillion times, and, at least in the parish I used to go to, in many different languages. 

I remember a priest I knew in Alaska saying that Great Lent (the liturgically rich fast before Pascha) was his favorite time of year. Pascha, not so much. I thought he was crazy, but now (almost 50 years later) I tend agree with him: I don’t much like the Paschal blowout. It seems to me to be a kind of belligerent denial of the death that continues to surround us. A screaming negation of all that came before. A screaming recognition of our belief in Magic.

When I sang in the choir in that same parish, I seemed to always be standing in way that gave me a perfect view of the table of oblation, framed by the Royal Doors.  And on this table, also framed by the Royal Doors, was a huge icon of the crucifixion: Christ suffering on the Cross, with the Theotokos and St. John grieving on either side. Since I am a person who doesn’t believe much in coincidences, I paid attention to  that icon and its presentation with some interest, although I didn’t get it at first.  Please forgive me if I’ve got this wrong. I came to understand kindness and self-emptying as a continuum. In one extreme is the self-emptying of Christ on the cross, and on the other end is just holding the door for someone who’s having a hard time at Dunkin’ Donuts.  Both acts, and everything in between, go radically against the grain of the power struggle on which the world runs. Both are miraculous. It’s all just degrees of miraculous. They go so far against the grain (and it’s important to see how radical Christianity was, in the context of the Roman Empire, when they were already finding ways to blame the unfortunate for their own sorry state—and that’s only natural, as the modern Republican Party has demonstrated so eloquently). Both acts are miracles. They go completely against the way humans like us usually behave. Kindness is indeed a miracle greater than rising from the dead, which is bit of magic we don’t entirely understand, and thus, we yell. Kindness can even be seen as a kind of resurrection itself. Going  against the power struggle in which we all participate is the true miracle. It’s a really big deal. But once you see things as they are, there really is no other choice. Yes, through that icon and its teaching, I came to understand Cross and Resurrection to be the same thing.

I think what’s usually called the Second Great Awakening in America (from which the Evangelical movement arose) would more accurately be called  the Great Falling Asleep.  It’s all about Jesus Is Magic (to quote the great title of the Sarah Silverman movie) and in truly believing in that magic, and in believing whatever your powerful pastor has to say about it. Whatever crosses his (usually it’s a male) mind. It’s all about picking the right kind of magic, which it always becomes when God, while everywhere, is always also firmly kept “other.” It is the fallout of the word pan-en-theism, and this is the word for that supposedly makes Christians better than adherents of other religions, and which keeps them from entering true dialogue with others.  Panentheism cannot be challenged. It is in fact shielded from dialogue. And that makes dialogue impossible.

Pantheism is a more useful word, but it is just a word, and liable to be made into an idol, like any word. At which point it becomes as useless as all words can be.  But say it, and you can mean that what we call God is in no way other: there’s no distinct dividing line between you, God, Pittsburgh, and a bowl of chowder. There’s some truth in that, unless it’s clung to.  Unless you become attached to “all things are one,” and live like that,  in which case pantheism becomes useless.

The thing is that panentheism, by keeping God always  other, also keeps “him” unknowable. It goes against the grain of theologians like Saint Gregory Palamas of Thessaloniki, who said that, while “God” is in some sense “other” “he” is also knowable, intimately so, through prayer. Through hesychasm.

Panentheism goes in the direction of Barlam of Calabria (Palamas’s main opponent) in making “God” in “his” essence unknowable. It’s interesting to me that most Christians (among them, the late Fr. Thomas Keating and the very much alive Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault), find this out through their own experience, rather than through academic theology. Through practices like Centering Prayer, they learn that there is no solid distinction between them and “God.”  You have to be separate from “God” in some way to say thanks, and to ask for something.  But at that point the separation breaks down. Beautifully, as I see it. Read the four Gospels with this understood and they begin to make sense in a way they hadn’t before. Jesus becomes just a regular guy who woke up to the fact that there as no separation between him and what his Jewish forbears called “God.” The Parables were not moral fables, meant to confuse, but were more like koans:  just the best way of teaching, in a case where words failed spectacularly. Or where the truth seemed contradictory, as it usually does. And his teaching on salvation was always and only about the perception of nonduality that surrounds us at every moment.

The Church Fathers spent several hundred years trying to talk about the Christ event, but then they mostly shut down. I think further talk about the human part of that Christ event would have been revelatory, if it had happened, but it didn’t. And the number 7 got made into an idol, because that’s what we humans do. Similar to our other sevens, of course. It’s as though all of truth got expressed in those councils, and any council further will be a robber council. I feel like the Fathers did a good job in talking about the god aspect of the Christ event, but they were not allowed to talk about the human part.  I think learning to talk about that accurately would have been revelatory. I mean that it it was necessary to talk about Christ’s humanity.

What I finally came to understand about the crucifixion icon that kept confronting me, was that resurrection and crucifixion are, essentially, the same thing. And then there are many further implications.  I mean that, once you’ve identified the lack of distinction between yourself and others, even “God,” then self-sacrifice becomes the only logical response. Once you’ve experienced the truth of pantheism, then you realize that resurrection and self-sacrifice have something deeply in common.

So the saying, “Christ Is Risen!” Is still meaningful, maybe more so when you understand that resurrection is inherent in any action that goes against the grain, that puts forth kindness to the point of self-sacrifice as the ultimate miracle. The problem is that we, even now, so seldom go against the grain like that. And when we do, we don’t consider it a miracle, when it very plainly is.