Dr. Marcus Borg speaks at the Episcopal Preaching Foundation’s conference in the Diocese of Olympia on February 26, 2014.
She Left Me For Jesus
Marcus starts out this talk with quoting from a whimsical country song called, “She Left me for Jesus” and continues into his introduction with a brief prayer. The prayer asks God to let us see and know the beauty and the spiritual depth of the world around us.
Jesus’s last week fills about forty percent of several books of the Bible, but many Christians don’t know this story because they only attend the Sundays at the beginning and end of Holy week and miss the segment of story in between. Marcus explains that he does not like the Palm/Passion Sunday convention of reading the Passions and giving the congregation the lines “Crucify him, Crucify him.” This convention reinforces the idea that we are all sinners and all personally responsible for the death of Jesus.
What is Holy Week About?
Marcus reflects on his own childhood understanding of Holy Week and asks the audience what they thought Holy Week was about around age 12. Marcus recalls Good Friday being about Jesus dying for our sins and Easter, the climax, being about God and Jesus cheating death and opening up the afterlife for us. Now Marcus sees Holy Week very differently. The Book of John and the Gospels portray Holy Week very differently. Jesus’s last week was about conflict with the authority and power of the domination system that ruled his world. Then, on Easter God vindicates Jesus and says yes to Jesus and no to the powers that killed him.
The Journey from Galilee to Jerusalem
In all the tellings of this story Jesus warns three times of what will happen when they arrive in Jerusalem. Jesus warns that the authorities there will kill him, not that he was going there to die for our sins.
The Setting Historical Jerusalem
Contemporary to Jesus Jerusalem had a stable population of around 40,000 people but during Passover the population would swell to around 200,000 which meant large numbers of people would be sleeping in the streets. It was a holy place, the emotional capitol and the center of Judaism. It was also the site of religious collaboration with Roman imperial rule. The high priests ruled Jerusalem on behalf of Rome, could be deposed by Rome and collected taxes to be paid to Rome. The problem with Rome ruling wasn’t that it was a foreign domination system but that it was a domination system at all.
The Last Week
Arrival
Marcus’ book, The Last Week, coauthored with Dominic Prossen covers this topic in depth. Palm Sunday commemorates an anti-imperial entrance into the city of Jerusalem. Jesus entered from the east on the same day as the annual Roman imperial army, Passover protest control force entered from the west from their coastal home. Jesus had prearranged to ride into Jerusalem on a donkey because of the symbolism. There is a passage in the Old Testament that speaks of a humble king riding a donkey into Jerusalem and speaking peace to to the world. Upon entering Jesus proclaimed his kingdom was one of nonviolence as opposed to power through violence. For Marcus, Palm Sunday comes alive when you realize it was a planned political demonstration.
Overturning the Tables of the Money Changers
Some speak of the overturning of the tables as a purification of the temple, but it was more accurately another demonstration against the domination system using the church to collect taxes. At this point the authorities want to arrest Jesus but are afraid of the crowd’s reaction.
Tuesday Debates and Wednesday Betrayal
On Tuesday the authorities initiate verbal debates in an effort to separate Jesus from the crowd in order to arrest him. During the debate Jesus skillfully evades some ensnaring questions. On Wednesday Jesus is anointed for burial and betrayed to the authorities by Judas in that he tells the authorities where they can find Jesus away from the protective shield of the crowd.
Thursday Foot Washing and the Last Supper
Thursday Jesus proclaimed that everyone should love one another and demonstrated his humility and love by washing the feet of his followers. Marcus applauds this tender show of loving and wished this part of the story got observed by more people. The Last Supper is also observed on Thursday and continues a general theme of Jesus’s public activities. Bread and wine were staples in that era. Jesus’s practice of inclusive meal eating was at odds with the general practice of the time. People ate in an exclusive manner and eating with someone indicated your acceptance and equality with them. Including tax collectors and sinners at his table made him very unconventional. The biggest and repeated sacrament in Christianity is about food. Marcus sees the separation of body and blood in bread and wine as symbols foreshadowing the violent end Jesus will meet the next day when the authorities execute him.
Easter and the Resurrection
Generally Christians think of the resurrection as physical, that something miraculous happened to the corpse of Jesus and that the tomb was empty. Marcus is skeptical of the empty tomb he is far more interested in what the story means to us and the followers of Jesus.
There are two very clear meanings of Easter and the resurrection, one being that Jesus continued to be experienced after his death. One instance being where Paul experienced Jesus 2-5 years after the crucifixion in a one-hundred and eighty degree transformation from persecuting the Jesus movement to becoming one of it’s strongest apostles. Jesus being a figure of the present and the past makes weather or not the tomb was empty irrelevant as is any controversy over finding the remains of Jesus.
The second primary meaning of Easter being that Jesus’s followers not only experienced him as a ghostly figure from the past but as divine. That God made Jesus lord, god said yes to Jesus and no to the powers that killed him.
The stories about Easter can be interpreted as parables modeled on the parables of Jesus. Most Christians can agree that the parables of Jesus are not factual recordings of events. Those stories still hold meaning even if they are not factual accounts. So what does the story of Easter mean as a parable? First, the angel asks the women who come to the tomb, why do you seek the living among the dead, meaning that Jesus is not dead that nothing could hold him back, he’s still out here. The story of Jesus walking with his followers and not recognizing him until they break bread together before vanishing calls out to be interpreted as parable. Where sometimes we go through life with Jesus by our side and then there are moments of recognition.
Conclusion
Marcus asks us to consider believing in Easter vs. participating in Easter and what kind of Christians each of those results in, virtually two different religions.