A Reflection On How Easter Shows Us A Path Back To The Garden, To A Better Way Of Being Human
Religion Unplugged believes in a diversity of well-reasoned and well-researched opinions. This piece reflects the views of the author and does not necessarily represent those of Religion Unplugged, its staff and contributors.
Unsplash image by Thanti Riess.
(OPINION) During the recent Holy Week, which culminated April 9 with Easter for Catholics and Protestants, I got to thinking about the story of Jesus’ trial, crucifixion and resurrection as it’s told in the Gospel of John.
By coincidence rather than planning, this Easter my congregation’s Wednesday night Bible study group happened to be well into a lengthy study of that particular Gospel. For me, John offers the most engaging account of the paschal events.
Whereas the other three Gospels — which are called the synoptic Gospels, in church-speak — tell the Jesus stories fairly straightforwardly, John writes his whole biography of Jesus on a kind of metaphorical level. The narrative includes multiple layers of meaning and weaves in subtle allusions to the Old Testament.
It’s as if, say, John held a doctorate in literature, which assuredly he did not. But he’s lots of fun to read if you’re both a Bible nerd and a literature nerd, as unfortunately I am.
The New Testament scholar N.T. Wright, one of my go-to sources, recently released a 6-minute video explaining a bit of what John the writer is up to in his telling of the first Easter.
Among other things, John’s gospel includes a series of echoes of the Genesis story of creation, Wright says. Chapter 1 even starts with the Genesis line, “In the beginning.”
By the time John has gotten us to what we now call Good Friday, we’re on the sixth day of his reworking of the creation story. In Genesis, the sixth day is when Adam appears. (“Adam” translated simply means “man.”)
Now, Jesus is put on trial. Pilate has him flogged. Roman soldiers mockingly clothe him in a purple robe that signifies royalty and force a crown of thorns on his head.
Then Pilate brings Jesus before a hostile crowd that wants him crucified and declares, “Behold, the man!” This, in a manner of speaking, is Pilate saying, “Look, here’s your Adam!” — even though Pilate is unaware of his words’ ramifications.
This sort of thing happens throughout John’s gospel; people say things of great import without realizing what they’ve said.
Pilate orders that Jesus be crucified and a sign be hung above his head sarcastically declaring him “the king of the Jews.”
As Jesus dies on this sixth day of the week, he utters, “It is finished.” The statement again echoes Genesis, where God finishes his creative work on the sixth day.
On the seventh day, Saturday, Jesus “rests” in a tomb, as in Genesis God similarly takes a day of rest from his labors.
Jesus’ resurrection occurs on an eighth day, the start of a brand new week — or a brand new creation cycle, if you will. For John, the cosmos has shifted over this fateful weekend.
Significantly, in John’s gospel, when Mary Magdalene encounters the risen Jesus early on that Easter morning, she mistakes him for … the gardener.
Thus, in John’s economy, this second Adam has come to the garden, having reversed the spiritual fall from Eden of the first Adam. Everybody’s getting a fresh start. Everything is reborn. The clock is reset.
What’s the significance? Why does it matter?
Glad you asked. The Easter story as John tells it basically sets the world on its head. It defies expectations.
A king arrives in the holy city, possibly as its deliverer from Roman occupation. But he isn’t driving an ornate chariot pulled by magnificent horses. He’s not surrounded by elite troops.
He’s riding a donkey, an almost comical image.
His coronation consists of getting flogged bloody, crowned with thorns, briefly clothed in purple and then stripped naked. He’s tortured on a cross, a brutal form of execution reserved for the vilest criminals.
This is the deliverer? The king above all kings? The lord of all lords?
Yes, yes and yes, John is telling us.
He’s a sovereign who — unlike Caesar or any other ruler — doesn’t lord it over his subjects, but instead suffers every vile indignity they suffer: pain, disappointment, humiliation, death.
And he endures it all without hatred or threats of vengeance or self-pity. He shows immeasurable compassion. He loves even his murderers.
Jesus takes “the sorrow and shame and hatred and violence of all the world upon himself and (deals) with it once and for all,” in Wright’s words.
He’s the kind of human we were created to be but failed miserably at.
Christians traditionally have claimed Jesus was God Almighty inhabiting human flesh.
“God loves things by becoming them,” as the Catholic contemplative Richard Rohr has put it.
John’s Jesus demonstrates his love by living alongside us and dying as one of us, subject to the worst life can deal — while showing us a better way of being.
Then he leads us back to the garden for a fresh start. He welcomes us in, if we’ll only come.
Paul Prather has been a rural Pentecostal pastor in Kentucky for more than 40 years. Also a journalist, he was The Lexington Herald-Leader’s staff religion writer in the 1990s, before leaving to devote his full time to the ministry. He now writes a regular column about faith and religion for the Herald-Leader, where this column first appeared. Prather’s written four books. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.