Jesus’ disciples are huddled together. They do so not for community. Nor is it for warmth. It is for fear, stone cold fear. Soldiers, on command from the ruling elite, have arrested, tortured, and murdered Jesus. The disciples fear the same will be done to them. And so, they hide. They remove themselves from people and places. They cut themselves off from their mission and connections. What can break through? An uprising. New Life.
We know from historians disciples leave their hiding and progress onward and outward from the Resurrection. They still know the same horrors done to Jesus may be done to them, and yet they are no longer afraid. They share community. They reattach themselves to people and places. They return to their mission and connections and so much more. They are explicably risen, newly alive again. They give witness as an uprising and they cause an uprising too, throughout the empire. Their witness endures in all human beings who from the tomb connect again with community, reattach themselves to people and place. In doing so, together, they empower new life. It is unfortunately the case that the Western mind is heavily influenced by an isolating individualism. It infects theology which it then unfortunately applies to Jesus. For example, it falsely claims Jesus is not a radical agent of social transformation but he is instead my personal Lord and Savior. Isolating individualism infects virtually all of Western culture. Psychiatry shows its infection by claiming mental health is best gained from months and years of one lone individual laying on a couch analyzed by another lone individual. Founder of Psychodrama, Jacob Moreno, thought otherwise (1889-1974). He caused an uprising in psychiatry when he dissented from the Freudian paradigm. Moreno is a psychosociologist and educator who proposes human beings are of course integral persons but not as passive lone agents acted upon but rather as active social catalysts constantly interacting. We are spontaneous inventors of social connections that are dynamic, educational, and transforming. Moreno called his perspective sociometry. In part, sociometry involves socially measuring and increasing our connections, for social health and for returning to social health. The perspective assists us in exploring and invigorating or warming up our relationships. In a sense, we exist as social atoms, bouncing around with and alternatingly bonding with a variety of other atoms, other energies. Sociometry studies how our atom is patterned in connections. How is our social connectedness doing? How many different and unique persons are we in touch with, bonding with, connected to? How many persons are we thus in communion with, invigorated by, warmed up with? The more warming up with others we do, the more uprisings or new life we experience and cause.
Eastern Christianity is celebrating Easter, the Resurrection this week (due to use of the Julian calendar rather than the West’s Gregorian). Western Christianity’s Resurrection art usually depicts a lone triumphant Risen Christ – victorious over death. The Eastern church usually depicts a communal energizing Risen Christ among people; disciples, friends, crowds – sowing new life again. Jesus’ uprising, so too ours, is with all and for all. John Dominic Crossan and Sarah Sexton Crossan researched artistic depictions of Jesus’ uprising in their 2018 book, Resurrecting Easter. They prefer to use the word ‘Anastasis’ when referring to the event. Anastasis literally means “up-rising.” Uprising more accurately reflects the truly revolutionary event that is every person’s coming into new life in an isolating and deadly world. We are true atomic power – core energies always connecting. We are spontaneous dynamic interactions always rising to new life.
Prayer: Spirit of New Life, may we always be an uprising energy
Question: How am I moving forward as an uprising agent in this world?
April 28, 2019 Gospel John 20:19-31 Second Sunday of Easter