PENTECOST 2006 SPECIAL EDITION

ISSUE 7 - ISSN 1448 - 6326

THE PASCHAL PARADOX: THE DEAD AND RISEN GOD-MAN

DRASKO DIZDAR

Abstract

On Good Friday “God” dies; and on Easter Sunday a human being is raised from death. In the pagan world of antiquity it was the other way round: it was the human beings who died and the gods who rose from the ashes of human sacrifices, from the corpses of sacrificial victims. To this day, both secular and religious non-Christians (and even many Christians) misunderstand the Resurrection of Christ in these simple pagan terms: they think we are celebrating the rising of a god and the death of a man. We are not. We are remembering the death of a man revealing God by entering into the mystery of  God entering into our dying; and celebrating the raising of a human being, and in him, of all humanity, all creation, into union with God.

Breaking Barriers and Boundaries

Holy Week is a liminal time, an in-between moment, where all that Lent prepared us for comes to the fore; an entry into the central mysteries of Christian faith: God dying, and humanity rising into God. Little wonder that the (neo)pagan world misunderstands it—it cannot but fail to understand it and miss-take it for what it does understand. Let me repeat: in the pagan—we may as well say “religious”—view, humans die and gods rise. But the resurrection of Christ is not his “deification”; nor is it his “de-humanisation”, not even as some kind of “trans-humanisation”. He does not cease to be human—ever; and there was never a time when he was not one with God—“divine”. No, the resurrection is not about Jesus’ becoming God or his ceasing to be human. It is about God vindicating Christ’s humanity precisely as, and in, and through his death on a cross, as a victim of human hatred who loves the very ones who hate him to death. That this event finally breaks through to us—or some of us, some of the time—makes it a revelatory moment, rather than a “magical” one: it reveals that the utterly human being, Jesus, is fully human and fully divine in being fully loving. This is what God looks like in our experience, our “flesh”, our history. To borrow an image from Herbert McCabe: the crucifixion is the way God’s love appears when, like a film, it is projected, not onto the pristine silver screen of a pure humanity, but onto the rubbish heap that is the human history of violence, hatred, lies, and self-deception. When love shines its moving lights on hatred, on violence, on deception, it reveals the broken body of an innocent victim loving us because he knows, and always knew, that this was the only way to break through to us: to let us see him loving us even to his death at our hands.

Those hands he invites the “doubting disciple” to put into his opened side, and with our finger to probe his own torn hands, and cease disbelieving something even more unbelievable than that a dead man can live again: namely, that our victim returns to us not as vengeance igniting guilt and shame, but as forgiveness offering peace and joy. The Christian claim, therefore, is that if this isn’t what God is, there is no God. Or, to put it another way: since this is fully loving, it is fully human; and this is God, and there is no other.

God raised Jesus from the dead so that all the dead—all of us subject to death—might rise with him. We stand upright (“justified”), not by our own efforts or beliefs, but by God’s love for us, freely given to us, “dearly paid for” by God in Christ. The Resurrection is the great mystery of an unbelievable, unimaginable love standing among us as the vindicated victim of our violence washing us clean of that violence and the hatred that occasioned it in the waters of “baptism”, immersion into his life and death. “Peace be with you…. Receive the Holy Spirit,” he says as he breathes on them. “If you forgive [literally, let go of] the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain [literally, hold on to] them, they are retained” (John 20:22-23). The sins of others that we let go of, leave us and them “unbound”, forgiven; but others’ sins that we hold on to, we end up holding on to. It is in our best interests, then, to imitate the Risen Christ breaking through our barriers, releasing us from all our sins, by holding on to none of them, but rather, offering “Peace!” instead.

Far from giving us licence to judge others, then, the presence of the Risen Christ teaches us to forgive, lest we end up holding other people’s sins as well as our own, unable to forgive; and so, unwilling to be forgiven—unable to open our hands to let go of the sins we hold, and thus to receive forgiveness in return. The narrative context (John 20:19ff.) clarifies the possible ambiguity (especially in the translation of aphēte as “forgive”) in exactly the opposite direction to that taken by the usual interpretation of this passage, which sees in the latter clause permission to hold others bound by the sins we refuse to forgive them.[1] On the contrary, as Christ’s own action here makes abundantly clear, forgiveness releases us from our sins even while we are crouching in hiding not only in fear of the murderous mob and cynical authorities, but (perhaps) even of the possibility that Jesus would do as he said—rise again… and then what?! Nothing in their experience could prepare them for what did happen. As John frequently tells us, they did not understand very much of what Jesus had told them or what the scriptures meant in relation to him until after he was raised from the dead (c.f. 2:22, 12:16, 13:17).. In short, they would have expected that should he return, it would be as judgement and punishment for their betrayal, abandonment and disbelief. No wonder they hid, with all doors barred! And no wonder they were “glad to see him” only after he said, “Peace be with you,” and showed them his hands and his side (cf. 20:20). Because, against all normal expectation, he returned as forgiveness bestowing peace, unbinding their consciences, setting them free, and sending them out with his Spirit breathing in them to do as he had done (cf. 20:23): to unbind (aphesin)[2] captives.

A Liminal Liturgy called “Holy Week”

Easter Sunday is about humanity’s resurrection beginning in Christ. Good Friday is about divinity ending in Christ. While Easter Sunday—or more specifically, the Resurrection—is misunderstood and all-too readily re-paganised into the “eternal return”, Good Friday is repressed and its scandalous blasphemy sanitized by reducing it to a “human tragedy”. Passion Sunday unambiguously points to the judicial murder by torture of the man Jesus—and declares him the innocent victim of the law. But not Good Friday. Not because Good Friday reverses or nullifies the revelation of Passion Sunday, but because it does not need to duplicate it. Rather it amplifies it: Good Friday is pure theology: it points to God. Passion Sunday is pure anthropology: it points to the hidden roots of human culture and reveals them to be bloody; and comes first therefore. It must. But Good Friday doesn’t merely replay Passion Sunday; it plumbs its depths in God. And between the two days are four others, on each of which Isaiah the prophet provides us with the prophetic grammar, and the Gospels with the evangelic vocabulary, for the astonishing theology that begins on Thursday night (which is, of course, the beginning of Friday according to Jewish reckoning) and continues into Sunday morning as the Triduum (the “three days”). Let’s take a closer look at this theology and its liturgical expression, for it is the paradigm of all liturgy and therefore of Catholic Christianity.

We begin with Passion Sunday—sometimes called “Palm Sunday”. Its proper name is Passion Sunday, referring to Christ’s suffering (passio). It is not about a triumphal entry. It is about a scandalous death. The palm procession and reading of the Gospel account of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem is placed at the very beginning of the liturgy—indeed, before the Mass properly begins—in order to highlight the contrast with his condemnation and mob lynching by the very same mob that hailed him as a king. The “palms” and “hosannas” are ironic; poignant to the point of pain. The fickleness and malleability of the mob is devastatingly exposed by the juxtaposition of their cries of “Hosanna!” with their equally loud “Crucify him!” More than the nails and flaying alive with whips (a la Mel Gibson), it is the mindlessness of the mob hysteria, their adulation turned to hatred, that is the substance of Christ’s Passion, the thing that really hurts. Treachery and betrayal are the most wounding blows—whether that of Judas (who bears our old name) or Peter (our new foundation) or the rest of the Twelve. All four Gospels are agreed on this; and Peter’s denial is somehow even more devastating that Judas’ kiss, since Peter—“the Rock”, on which our future is built—crumbles not “in three days” like the Temple, but thrice in one night before the cock crows (cf. Mt 26:75, Mk 14:30, Lk 22:34, Jn 13:38). Judas, Peter and the Twelve are us: at once grounded—and remaining so—in Israel, and being built on a rock that cracked. Christ’s passion is also our passion: his as evil suffered, ours as evil done, left undone, or just denied. Passion Sunday is about remembering this deeply disturbing—indeed, subversive—memory. It opens the way for the rest of Holy Week like a penitential rite placing us in that space of truth about ourselves that leads to freedom.

Stretching that freedom and deepening it is what the whole of Holy Week is about; and it is as a whole that Holy Week is, in fact, one continuous liturgy. Passion Sunday is its Introductory Rites, so to speak. Monday through Thursday are its Liturgy of the Word. And the Triduum is its Liturgy of the Eucharist. Its “Dismissal”—the climactic moment of the Liturgy from which it gets its name “Mass” (Missa in Latin)—is, as it were, the Easter Octave: the great commissioning and re-creating of the world.

Passion Sunday gives us the context for hearing the Word of God as explored in the four days following. It can only be received in that space of freedom that facing the truth about ourselves opens up for us. The truth that Passion Sunday reveals is the anthropological truth of the cross, the subversive truth of the victim who shows us to ourselves as a people who bestow a phoney peace on themselves at the expense of their victims whom they adore and crucify with equally blind mimetic zeal.

The suffering servant songs of the prophet Isaiah, and his “proto-gospel” announcing “good news to the poor”, are the first readings of the Masses of Holy Week. Together with the Psalms, they are the voice of the hitherto voiceless victim uttering its first articulate sounds. They are the language of revelation that Jesus was nurtured in, his “mother-tongue”, the grammar of his life, the words becoming flesh in his body. This is the language he thought, spoke, prayed. It is how he grew in understanding himself, his world, us, and God. The Psalms and Isaiah (together with Deuteronomy) are the biblical texts he draws on most. They are apt guides, then, to Holy Week and to deepening our appreciation of the role scripture plays in liturgy: it points to Christ revealing God and us to ourselves.

Sacred Speech as Song

What this means in practice is that our reading of the Psalms cannot but hear the voice of the Victim in its “infancy and childhood”, as it were. The Psalms of vengeance and wrath, of curse and spleen, are the cries of the victim as “infant”—literally, one who has not yet learned to speak sense. The more sublime Psalms of wisdom and praise—especially those that join revealing honesty with firm hope—are of a greater maturity, and they come naturally to the lips of the Crucified:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me…

All who see me deride me.

They curl their lips, they toss their heads.

‘He trusted in the Lord, let him save him;

let him release him if this is his friend.’ (Psalm 22:1,7-8)

Both the lot of the victim, and the voice and demeanour of his accusers, are here almost clinically exposed. There is no self-pity here; nor is there any blame or vengeance. If anything, a disturbingly familiar religious argument is soundly put: He trusted in God; let God save him, if this is his friend.

Many dogs have surrounded me,

a band of the wicked beset me.

They tear holes in my hands and feet.

I can count every one of my bones. (16-17a)

The voice of the victim telling it as it is finally sounds in this Psalm, without any ambiguity:

These people stare at me and gloat;
they divide my clothing among them.
They cast lots for my robe. (17b-18)

And in its harmonizing of honesty with hope, the Psalm reaches new depths of revelation:

I will tell of your name to my brethren
and praise you where they are assembled.
You who fear the Lord give him praise;
all sons of Jacob, give him glory.
Revere him, Israel’s sons.
For he has never despised
nor scorned the poverty of the poor.
From him he has not hidden his face,
but he heard the poor man when he cried. (22-24)

These depths are realised in Christ crucified and become “historic”—changing history for ever and before, becoming history’s mid-point. From now on, to those who have the eyes of faith to see the revealing victim at its centre, history is accounted as “Before Christ” and “Anno Domini”, “in the Year of our Lord”, in the time ordered towards, from and by the Revealing Victim as Lord of History. Far from being a piece of Christendom’s triumphalism over “other religions”, such a way of denoting time is Christianity’s temporal (indeed, secular) subversion of every form of religious (namely, sacrificial) triumphalism over the victim’s muted corpse.[3]

Isaiah—the “proto-Gospel of G-d”

Because we are slow to understand the full message of the prophets—even when that fuller message is ostensibly the centre of our faith, even when we call ourselves Christian—it is Isaiah that the Liturgy of Holy Week turns to, since, slow as we are, he wasn’t. The Book of the Prophet Isaiah is a remarkable text. It is a witness to a hope that its writers were not to see realized in their own day. It is a witness to a gradual, but breathtaking, revelation: that God is not like any “god”; that God is less like a “god” than like one; that God is not a god at all; that “God” is but a way of pointing straight with a crooked finger into a mystery that changes everything as it reveals it for what it really is.[4]

At the enigmatic heart of the Book of Isaiah is a strange vision that pervades the whole work—the vision of YHWH Sabaoth , “the LORD of Hosts”, praised by the Seraphim, the highest rank of the angelic host:

One called to another and said:

            Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Hosts:

            the whole earth is full of his glory.

And the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of the one calling, and the house was filled with smoke. Then I cried:

            Woe is me, I am undone… (Isaiah 6:3-5a)

Indeed, are we all “undone”! The very “foundations of the threshold”, the ground beneath the limits of consciousness, the point of entry into being, the dwelling place of God, is shaken at the voice of “the one calling”—for these attendant Seraphim (plural) calling to one another, have become haqorea (singular), “the one calling”, thus filling the house with a murky obscurity, a verbal opacity: with mystery.

…for I am a man of unclean lips

and dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips,

and my eyes have seen the King,          

YHWH Sabaoth. (6:5b)

Why “lips”; and why “a people of unclean lips”? Had the prophet spoken only about himself we might have supposed that he was speaking of his own prophetic role (“lips”). But he adds, “and [I] dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.” It is not only the prophetic utterance as such that is at issue here, but every word that we speak about God: “Then one of the Seraphim,” whose role as “angel”/messenger is to speak of God and proclaim God’s glory, “flew to me, and in his hand he held a live coal which he took with tongs from the altar. With this he touched my mouth…” (6:6-7a). These “live coals from the altar” are the coals which burn the incense, the symbol of prayer, that fills the Temple with its obscuring smoke. Our words, our prayers—our theology—that proceed from our “unclean lips”, are words about God; and the live coal in the Seraph’s hand touches the prophet’s mouth as it did the incense that fills the Temple with smoke.

And he said: This has touched your lips,

and your guilt is taken away,

and your sin is atoned for. (6:7b)

It is God’s own action that accomplishes this “atoning” with the instruments of prayer; thus purging the prophet’s “lips”, and so also his prophetic power, with the “live (incense) coals”, the mysterious and obscure power of prayer. Paradoxically, this much we can see, at the seraphic minister’s command, even in the obscurity of prayer where no pure words, no absolute truths, can pass our lips.

“Then I heard the voice of YHWH,” (and not until then!) “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” (6:8a) God’s voice (at once mysteriously singular and plural, like that of the Seraphim) can only be heard when our own lips are purged, when our prayer is purified, when the live coal of the altar of incense touches our lips and burns in our mouths.

“And I said: Here I am! Send me!” (6:8b) It is even curter in Hebrew: Hinnai! Shelacheni! And God’s response is no less terse: “Go!” Lek!

But then follows one of the most subversive and astonishing sayings in all of scripture:

Tell this people:

Hear! And hear! But never understand!

See! And see! But never perceive!

Callous this people’s heart!

Dull their ears!

Close their eyes!

Else they might see with their eyes,

and hear with their ears,

and their hearts understand,

and they turn and be healed. (6:9-10)

According to the Synoptics, Jesus drew on this text in answer to the question put to him regarding parables (cf. Matthew 13:13-15, Mark 4:10-12, Luke 8:10). Parables are prophetic speech designed to puzzle us into rethinking everything. The prophet is not a pedagogue. The prophet is an enigma, a paradox: “Callous this people’s heart, dull their ears, close their eyes, else they might…turn and be healed.” But isn’t that exactly what the prophet aims to achieve, the repentance of the people? Are we not supposed to listen and see and understand? Of course he does; and of course we are! But the problem is that we think we do hear and see and understand already; and the truth is that we do not. The prophet is sent to make us face the truth about ourselves—in fact, that could stand as a definition of a Hebrew prophet: the one who tells us the truth about us. And Jesus does it with the prophetic language of paradox, the parable, which he learned from Isaiah—Yešayahu, a name with exactly the same parabolic meaning as “Jesus”, Yehošua: “YHWH is salvation”.

Salvation is radically subversive. It takes a revolution to accomplish it. We have to “turn” around, upside down, inside out: ear, eye and heart must change. For that to happen, Pharaoh’s heart must be hardened so that it can be broken—and only God can accomplish that through the prophet’s paradoxical word. “Pharaoh”, the princ(ipl)e of this world, the means by which we have made and maintain it, must be turned into solid and immovable opposition to the prophetic word. It must resist being changed or else it will never be changed—it will merely adapt, and thus go on. To adapt is to “change” without substantial alteration: to compromise, accommodate, and go on pretty much as before; only to revert as soon as feasible to the old ways. The so-called “Renaissance”, which ushered in the “Modern Age”, was a “re-birth” of—a reversion to—the old paganism that remained nestling inside the very heart of a Christianity that by the time of the Renaissance it had well and truly adapted to itself: a Christianity bruised to the bone by a devastating plague, a disintegrating schism, interminable wars, and a re-invigorated dualism splitting faith from reason, sacred from secular, God from humanity, female from male, black from white, rich from poor. Its most blatant and deadly reversion thus far is in the various expressions of fascism. Its more subtle, and potentially deadlier, expression is harder to name; but its traces are discernible in the economics of greed, the culture of selfishness, the politics of power-over-others, the religion of delusion, and the philosophy of post-everything. To be saved from that, takes a revolution: a realization that we are wrong, blind, deaf, stupid. Compared to that, blowing up the Houses of Parliament, the Whitehouse, the United Nations and the Vatican is hardly a reform of the existing system—merely a change of scene and personnel, an adaptation.

Then I said: For how long, O Lord? And he answered: Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses empty of people, and fields ruined and ravaged; until all are expelled by YHWH, and the land is utterly desolate. And if a tenth remains in the land, it will again be laid waste, like the terebinth, like the oak, cut down to a stump: a stump as a seed of holiness for them. (6:11-13)

The terror attendant on all pseudo-revolutions is here but a metaphor used to offset something ten times more powerful: the revealing of a” stump”, a holy seed, in the barest remnant, in the solitary standing victim of the worst that the world has to offer.

The “suffering servant songs”, as they are called, like everything else in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah/ Yešayahu, are comprehensible only in light of Isaiah’s vocational vision. The Book of Isaiah is, as a whole, more than the sum of its proto-, deutero- and tertio- parts. It is a single vision developed over generations in the obscurity of a suffering servant people struggling to maintain hope and determined to remain faithful to a “God” unlike anything a “god” is supposed to be. Reading Isaiah in the light of Christ is to discover it to have been a mirror all along, revealing us to ourselves just as we are: seeing, but not perceiving; hearing, but not understanding; of hardened calloused hearts, dulled ears, shut eyes; staring in the dark at a mirror we don’t know is there. And why? Because we are sure we can and do see and hear and understand when we “nail the truth” by “nailing the culprit”—and thereby restore order to the world.

Conclusion

The truth we “nail” is the Paschal Victim—not an idea, a religion, an institution, or even a faith, but a person. That “person” (per sonare, “sounding for”) is a Word that resounds eternally as our own true nature—in us, as an “echo of eternity” (to borrow a phrase from Abraham Joshua Heschel). His rising from the death of all we ever thought and believed to be “god” is the beginning of the Resurrection. His resurrection-and-ascension is “into heaven”—into the wholly other “Other” who is our own True Nature, whose “image and likeness” we are becoming and Christ always already is. This is what we celebrate at Easter: a person, who rejoices in us because he likes us. A “god” dies in God’s entering into our death-as-murder, so that humanity—indeed, all creation—can rise in the raising of a murdered human being whom death could not contain because he loved fully, freely, and forever.