A Reality to Many, a Symbol to Others

In a symbolic movement from death to life, Christians will celebrate the resurrection of Jesus beginning late tonight as the first Easter candles are lighted after the Good Friday observance of his crucifixion.

Still more are expected to turn out for Easter sunrise services at dawn Sunday. Later that morning, churches throughout Southern California will draw one of their two biggest crowds of the year. The other is at Christmas.

As the large turnout of worshipers on Easter makes clear, the United States remains a nation of believers, brushing aside skeptics, including controversial biblical scholars who question the assertion that Jesus actually rose bodily from the dead.

Four public opinion polls taken by various organizations during the past six years reported that 74% to 88% of Americans questioned said they believed in the resurrection of Christ.

“I see people who are very celebratory and happy to know that because of Christ’s resurrection there’s a hope for every human being who will embrace faith in Christ,” said Pastor Jack Hamilton, executive director of pastoral care at the Church on the Way in Van Nuys.

As for the skeptics among biblical scholars, Hamilton, former president of Life Bible College in San Dimas, said their impact has been minimal. The Church on the Way is part of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel and teaches the physical resurrection of Jesus, Hamilton said.

Others, like the Rev. J. Edwin Bacon, warn against a literal reading of the resurrection accounts. He said there is no doubt that Jesus’ disciples experienced something “very real” after the crucifixion. “But to get mired in a literal reading of the Easter story is in itself deadly,” said Bacon, rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena.

“The risen Christ still operates in people’s lives, not only to reverse their failures and deaths and injustices but to call them to carry the message of new life and justice into their own histories,” Bacon said.

That Christians can interpret the resurrection story in different ways is no surprise. But educational levels and economic class may be important factors influencing how one views the biblical accounts, according to Donald Miller, professor of religion at USC and director of the Center for Religion and Civil Culture.

Miller has just returned from Asia, Africa and Latin America as part of a three-year research program on rapidly growing congregations in what many church officials refer to as the “Two-Thirds World”--the majority of nations that are still poor. One preliminary impression, he said, is that those who are poor and uneducated tend to place their belief in concrete things and accept the supernatural intervention of God in human history.

By contrast, those who are better educated and more affluent think in more abstract terms and are therefore engaged by the mystical and symbolic.

Miller warns against a tendency toward religious snobbery on the part of the affluent and well-educated, who tend to see their more abstract view of the Bible’s meaning as more advanced.

Clearly, however, there are differences, he says.

“People who are sophisticated in terms of their education and are affluent--since they often go together--they’re more likely to be more abstract, more philosophical about all aspects of their religion, including the resurrection, which they then see as symbolic.

“On the other end of the scale--and I don’t mean this in any demeaning way--the less educated they are and make their livelihood from the soil, the more they take a more physical approach, and almost by analogy it makes sense there’s a physical resurrection. There’s a strong sense they need a physical resurrection in sort of a concrete way,” Miller said.

Exceptions exist, of course, with millions of highly educated Pentecostal and evangelical Christians who believe in a bodily resurrection.

The Rev. Ron Jackson, rector of St. Luke’s of the Mountains Episcopal Church in La Crescenta, for example, notes that “my experience as a pastor has been that people of all educational levels and backgrounds believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ because they have experienced his risen presence in their lives.”

“The resurrection in many ways defies human logic, but with God all things are possible,” he said. “Many people have found that hope to be true in their lives regardless of the education or social background.”

Whatever their views, members of the clergy see the overflowing pews on Easter morning as a “teachable moment” when they are able to reach not only regular congregants, but newcomers or “twice-a-year Christians” as well.

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles, spoke of the human emotions of fear, uncertainty and dismay in his annual Easter message. He recounted the narrative in Matthew 28:8 in which two of Jesus’ female followers are confronted by an angel at the empty tomb who tells them Jesus has risen from the dead and to spread the word.

Mahony noted the women were “fearful yet overjoyed.”

“While the women still cannot comprehend fully the incredible news they have been told by the angel, already the grace of Jesus’ resurrection is beginning to transform them,” Mahony said.

Like any good pastor, he sought to connect the story with the lives of his listeners. Listing a host of contemporary problems, from family divisions to racial discrimination to the current fighting in the Balkans, Mahony urged parishioners to allow the same “transforming spirit” to remove their own doubts and fears: “May that same spirit and power of Christ Jesus flow into and over our lives that we may reflect outwards to all peoples that wonderful new life that our risen Lord shares with us once again!”