Rosalynde Welch (00:00.622): Hello friends. This year, the Maxwell Institute podcast is re-releasing some of the best episodes from our 2022 podcast series, Abide, which covered the Come Follow Me curriculum through the Old Testament. The series was hosted by my colleague, Christian Heal, and it's well worth revisiting. Today we share the Easter episode. The hosts explore the connections between Jewish Passover and Easter, and they discuss an early Christian sermon that puts words in the mouth of the risen Christ. And they make a strong case for what Latter-day Saints can gain from taking the historical resurrection seriously. Enjoy the conversation.
Joseph Stuart (00:43.852): Now, Kristian, we usually have you give an overview of what's happening in the chapters, but we figure that if folks are listening to this podcast, they know what Easter is. And I wanted you to think about what are some of the encounters that you've had with Easter that have helped you to better appreciate not only its miraculous nature, but to connect it to yourself as a Christian.
Kristian Heal (01:04.8): I love Easter as a reason to draw deeply from the well of Christian tradition. This is the time when Handel's Messiah blasts through our house. This is the time when we're looking at Christian art, where we're thinking about the rich celebration of Easter within the Christian tradition. And my favourite encounters with Easter, and the ones which stick in my mind and fuel and fund my own faith, are ones which come from the Christian tradition.
One, for example, is with art. I have an Easter encounter just about every day as I look up on my office wall and see Caravaggio's deposition. So I have a couple of Caravaggio prints in my office. One is Caravaggio's Saint Jerome, which is an image which I particularly love. Saint Jerome was the fourth late early fifth century translator of the Bible from Hebrew into Latin, what became the Vulgate.
and the image of him that Caravaggio captures is really a of a model of scholarly diligence. But the other is this print of the deposition. And I've always been moved by this ever since first seeing it about 20 years ago. This image of the deposition is so rich. It depicts the moment where Jesus is removed from the cross and laid on the anointing stone and outside of the tomb. It's a scene of devotion and of despair, at least that's how I read it. The devotion you can see in the movement and the loving gestures of the other figures in the scene, the way that Jesus is being carefully and lovingly laid on the stone, for example, but there is despair there too.
Joseph Stuart (02:50.178): That seems important to me because Easter we always focus on the hope of the resurrection, but I think that we can sometimes skip over the three days in between where no one knew what was going on or what was going to happen to this burgeoning religious movement.
Kristian Heal (03:04.172): Yeah, exactly. I think that there is a sense in which despair is the corollary to the hope and joy of the resurrection. And we have to imagine, and I think Caravaggio did, this unexpected death of Jesus. The Messiah was not supposed to die in any narrative that Jesus' disciples would have been familiar with. And so what we see in the deposition is this sense of the thing that we hoped for hasn't come about that life hasn't turned out the way that we thought it was going to be. And as I think of the despair captured in this painting, I think of two scriptures from the Book of Mormon. The first is Alma 34:9. This is the moment in Amulek's sermon where he is trying to explain the necessity of the atonement. "All are hardened," he says, "yea, all are fallen and are lost and must perish except it be through the atonement which is expedient should be made."
I think that sense of lostness is captured in Caravaggio's deposition. Jesus is dead and this was simply unimaginable to the disciples. The Messiah was supposed to come and triumph gloriously, not die ignominiously.
The other passage is Alma's moment in which he tells his conversion story to his son Helaman. This is familiar to people listening to this podcast, no doubt. He describes this moment, but listen to his despair. "I was wracked with torment, for my soul was harrowed up in the greatest degree, and wracked with all my sins. Yea, I did remember all my sins and iniquities, for which I was tormented with the pains of hell. Yea, I saw that I had rebelled against God, and that I had not kept His holy commandments. Yea, and I had murdered many of His children, or rather led them away into destruction. Yea, in fine, so great had been my iniquities, that the very thought of coming into the presence of my God did wrack my soul with inexpressible horror." It was from this state of greatest despair that a light pierced the darkness and that light was Jesus. And that light inspired Alma's Jesus Prayer. "Jesus, thou son of God, have mercy on me who am in the gall of bitterness and am encircled about by the everlasting chains of death, O Jesus."
Kristian Heal (05:29.282): I think the reason why I'm so moved by Caravaggio's deposition is that it captures the despair of the believer immediately before the cry for mercy, immediately before the cry, Jesus, thou son of God, have mercy on me. It is the darkness before the breaking of the dawn, the moment of exhaustion before heaven's aid helps us continue to press forward that is captured here. It's the feeling of the necessity of feeling lost and hopeless that so many of us feel and have felt before we call out to Jesus to rescue us.
Joseph Stuart (06:06.082): Thanks for sharing that, Kristian. It brings to mind an episode in Dostoevsky's The Idiot where the titular character and the villain are in an art gallery looking at a copy of Holbein's Dead Christ. And they have this discussion about how this is the most depressing thing, the most antithetical thing to faith that could be produced because it is a picture of Jesus in rigor mortis who is upon the anointing stone, but he is left there in dark. And it's something that I reflect on when you say that is that if we only knew the Jesus story up until the second day or the first day, then we would miss out on the hope and only capture the despair. It seems that those two aspects are always present in our lives as Christians, not trying to cling to one and forsaking the other, but trying to hold both things in our hearts in the same way I think that our heavenly parents do as they watch us act in the world.
Kristian Heal (07:04.13): Yeah, that's beautiful. we have to, Father Lehi reminded us about the importance of opposition. And I think this contrast of light and darkness, feeling these moments in which we're surrounded by darkness and then the light pierces it, these moments become transformative for us as believers and as people who love the Lord. I saw this enacted liturgically in an Easter service in the Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity and the Annunciation in Oxford. I'd been invited by a friend to attend and I'd never attended an Orthodox service before this moment. So I was not prepared really for the way that the service enacted this darkness into light narrative from the death to the resurrection of Jesus. My experience had been in singing Christmas carols in Anglican churches where there was lots of light and lovely music and sounds ascending up to the apse. But within an Orthodox church, you're entering, it felt, into an older world, a world of incense, a world of deep liturgical action.
One of my professors presided as the Bishop of Oxford over this, and it was wonderful to see this example of an academic performing liturgical acts in this moment of the highest sacredness in the Christian calendar. What struck me the most about this encounter, I think, was this remembrance on Saturday evening of the moment in Jesus' death, the darkness in the building, the solemnity of the hymns. As midnight came, the light was taken from the vigil light that the priests had and started to light candles one after another in the church building with everyone lighting their candles out successively until the whole building was filled with light. At that point, recognized that something significant had happened in the world, the church representing the world and Jesus emerging and this light pouring out from this moment in the liturgy.
Kristian Heal (09:26.03): There was a procession around the church, shouts of Christ is risen and the hymn of the resurrection and the whole ceremony then transitioned the joyful celebration of Easter morning. Christos Anesti, Alephos Anesti is how they greet each other in Greece and in Greek speaking countries. —"Christ is risen." —"Indeed he is risen." This is the Easter greeting between Christians. And at this moment, this whole service became a living metaphor for Easter, an enactment in worship and song of the movement from the darkness of death to the bright, hopeful, life-giving resurrection of Christ.
Joseph Stuart (10:03.682): I'm not sure how to change topics after such a lovely remembrance, Kristian, but because we're studying the Old Testament this year, it seems important that we think about Easter in the context of what the ancient Israelites would have expected as well, and connecting the story of Passover to the story of Easter. What did the early Christians have to say about this connection?
Kristian Heal (10:25.554): The early Christian story of Easter was framed within an Old Testament context, I think by Jesus himself. After the resurrection, as Jesus is walking with his disciples on the road to Emmaus, unknowingly, they didn't recognize him. They were wondering what had happened and relating to him this event. Jesus said to them, fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken notice he's going back to what we would call the Old Testament. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory? So he's teaching them that this suffering is actually a part of the Messianic promise. And beginning at Moses, i.e. books of Moses, traditionally called the Torah, the first five books that we've been studying to this point in our curriculum, and all the prophets, the things that we will be studying, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures, the things concerning himself. Jesus told us that we should expect to find in the Old Testament and we don't have to look very far or very hard to do that. In fact, we've spoken about a number of cases already in which Jesus seems clearly depicted, seems clearly modeled in this. One of my favorite early Christian sermons celebrates this connection between the Jewish past of Christians and this sort of Christian future, this way in which the Old Testament was taken and reinterpreted through the lens of Christ. Christ becomes the eye through which the Old Testament was seen.
Joseph Stuart (12:08.184): Yeah, that seems important to me because there can be so much in celebrating Easter, at least in my experience growing up, that there can be some sort of scorn for Jewish people or for discounting the Old Testament. again, just to point out that not only was Jesus Jewish, but he is consciously placing himself into the Jewish story for others to understand him as Messiah.
Kristian Heal (12:33.1): Yeah, I think this is vital actually, especially for Christians and especially in this day and age for us to show the greatest respect. In fact, the Book of Mormon tells us very clearly, have you remembered my ancient covenant people? God has not forgotten the Jews and still remembers them and they are still his covenant people. And as they at the time of Easter celebrate and remember Passover, the great moment of their deliverance as a people. Christians are taking those same events and reinterpreting them through this different lens. But I think God is at work in both moments and in both activities. And that's important for us to remember that this is an interpretive act in many ways that allows Christians to read the story of the Exodus as the great model and the great type of the rescue of all humanity.
A relatively unknown Christian writer from the second century, this is very early in the Christian tradition, someone who was said to have always lived his life in the Holy Spirit, a man called Milito from Sardis, wrote a highly artistic sermon in Greek with the title, Peri Pascha, on the Pasch. And Pascha has no English equivalent really, it's a Greek form of the Aramaic Pascha.
It can denote the Passover festival, the Passover meal, the Passover lamb, or the Christian feast, Holy Week and Easter, which continues and replaces in the Christian tradition Passover. So it means all of these things simultaneously. The sermon followed a reading of Exodus 12, this last great act within the deliverance of Egypt, not the Passover part of this story where the angel of death passed over the Israelites because of blood that was upon their lintels and so forth. It also includes a dramatic retelling of this story. Milito's objective was to explain how the great story of Israel's Exodus was this sketch, this model, a type of the great Christian story of the rescue of all humanity. So speaking of Exodus, this is what Milito says, understand therefore, beloved, how it is new and old, eternal and temporary.
Kristian Heal (14:55.896): Perishable and imperishable, mortal and immortal. This mystery of the pascha. Old as regards the law, but new as regards the word. Temporary as regards the model or type. Eternal because of the grace. Perishable because of the slaughter of the sheep. Imperishable because of the life of the Lord. Mortal because of the burial and death. Immortal because of the rising of the dead.
You can see here that this has a sort of flavour of Old Testament poetry, these parallel passages, this vocative language, the sort of parallelism of it is sort of highly, I think, highly evocative and captures this sense of the contrast between these two events. So Passover in Melito's mind is a story of Israel's temporal salvation. But Easter is the story of this great permanent rescue of all humanity. So the sermon lays out here, this salvation history. It's a different story. We're not stuck in Egypt and trying to be rescued from it. This is the story of the fall and of humanity's sin and death.
Joseph Stuart (16:11.416): I like that you know the Old Testament flavor of poetry or style and thinking about how these early Christians were often Jews or were aware of the ancient Israelites' narratives of salvation. And so in connecting those two things, it seems to me that he's taking Jewish ideas and making them universal about how any person can become a chosen person through taking on the name of Jesus Christ through baptism.
In short, he shows that everyone needs to be saved and that a savior has been provided. Something that Milito points out as well is that everyone is fallen. This isn't a unique thing that only the Israelites have to remember through remembering the Passover and remembering the Exodus, but really that all of humanity needs to remember our fallen state.
Kristian Heal (17:01.282): Yeah, that's exactly right. We have Amulek's words, ringy in our mind, all are hardened, all are fallen and lost. So Milito's response to that would be, this then is the reason why the mystery of the pascha has been fulfilled in the body of the Lord. So Jesus is the response to this universal sense of fallenness and lostness. At the end of this sermon, Milito does something really interesting.
He gives us an example of a Greek rhetorical technique called prosopopeia. He gives us an example of a Greek rhetorical technique called prosopopeia or speech in character. And this character who he gives voice to is Jesus. So quoting from Melita again, the Lord, when he had clothed himself with man and suffered because of him that was suffering and been bound because of him that was held fast and been judged because of him that was condemned and been buried because of him that was buried, rose from the dead and uttered this cry. So now we enter into the words of Jesus. Who takes issue with me? Let him stand up against me. Here Jesus is quoting from Isaiah 50 verse eight. I released the condemned. I brought the dead to life. I raise up the buried. Who is there that contradicts me? I am the one, says the Christ.
I am the one that destroyed death and triumphed over the enemy and trod down Hades and bound the strong one and carried off man to the heights of heaven. I am the one. Come then, all you families of men who are compounded with sins and receive forgiveness of sins. For I am your forgiveness. I am the Passover of salvation. I am the land slain for you. I am your ransom. I am your life. I am your light. I am your salvation. I am your resurrection.
I am your King. I will raise you up by my right hand. I am leading you up to the heights of heaven. There I will show you to the Father from ages past." In giving voice to Jesus in this moment, the message of the whole homily becomes immediate and personal. Jesus speaks directly to the congregation. He uses this rhetorical effect of anaphora, this repetition and this builds to a crescendo of Jesus' promise to all of those who feel lost and despair.
I will raise you up by my right hand. I am leading you up to the heights of heaven. There I will show you to the Father from ages past. This, to me, is the great message of Easter, put so beautifully and profoundly.
Joseph Stuart (19:42.83): And I love the sacred imagination that Milito is showing us that we can imagine conversations, we can imagine things happening, and we can become closer to the Lord by trying to put ourselves in his shoes or understand what it might have felt like to return as the resurrected, triumphant Savior. I think it's also crucial, though, to remember that Christians are not the only ones who think about Easter, and that Latter-day Saints are not the only Christians who have thought about how to celebrate Easter.
Julia, before we even begin, you told me earlier that Easter is long been one of your favorite holidays. Why is that?
Julia (20:18.51): I've loved Easter for so long and it's because I think when I was a teenager, I thought really, hard about the question, what's your favorite holiday? You probably over thought it a little bit. Just so could be prepared if anyone asked me about that. So I thought about it and I determined that Easter was my favorite because not only is it the most important holiday for it to me, you but it's also the richest in just symbolism and beauty.
I really liked seeing parallels with the world around me, I grew up in Utah and so the weather was super unpredictable. It was winter and cold one day and the next day it was like almost summer. And so that reminded me of Christ's life, the bitter sweetness there of his atonement, his resurrection, those two contrasting themes there. I also thought of music, dissonance in music where a chord would kind of have this ugly sound for one second and then just kidding, would resolve into a beautiful harmony. I also really like just the symbolism and all of that. So that's why I've liked Easter for long time.
Joseph Stuart (21:09.278): that's crucial to remember too that as Latter-day Saints we have something to offer the world but also that we have a lot to learn from the world around us. How have your perspectives changed on Easter as a scholar and as you served as a missionary?
Julia (21:22.114): I don't even think I even thought about other religions before I went on my mission. So I was lucky to serve somewhere that was really diverse religiously. I served in Norway and met a lot of people of different faiths. One of those faiths was the Islamic faith. And so when we would talk and engage with...
Muslims, they would often tell us what they believed in. And I loved, frankly, listening to what they had to say. My intent was always to just understand rather than to argue with them or impose my beliefs onto them. I always really had these unanswered questions about Judaism. Just growing up reading the Book of Mormon, I'd be like, okay, what is that? With I just had all of these questions and those weren't really answered until after my mission when I took a couple of classes at BYU. Dr. Chadwick has an excellent survey of Judaism and Islam class that I really enjoyed here.
Joseph Stuart (22:04.492): So in your classes, though, I imagine that you thought of things that may not necessarily come up in Sunday school. Something that seems crucial in understanding Easter as a Latter-day Saint, though, is thinking about the historical reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And this isn't something that's necessarily accepted or embraced by other Christians or by scholars. How would you approach this as a Latter-day Saint to explain to someone about the literal resurrection of Jesus?
Julia (22:31.634): That's a really good question. And often with historicity, we don't have answers, all of them. can't necessarily prove something right or wrong or one way or the other. And so a lot of people question, is it even worth it to question? know, should I even try to figure out if he's a real person or not? As I was looking into this with the historical Jesus, you mentioned that idea a little bit earlier, I found an interesting quote by Terrell Givens. He's one of our research scholars here at the Maxwell Institute.
But he said that he's heard it said that history as theology is perilous because you don't want, other words, to found all of your beliefs and hopes and religious values on a historical document that may prove to be spurious. And then to our replies, he says, my reply is yes, history as theology is perilous. If it turns out that the whole story of Christ's resurrection is a fabrication, then Christianity collapses. I just really love that idea of
Yes, historicity and history is perilous, right? I think that Christianity really does hinge on whether the resurrection really happened. So of course it's valid to look into that historically.
Joseph Stuart (23:29.964): I'm reminded of something that the great historian and early church leader B.H. Roberts said that no amount of physical evidence is enough to persuade anyone of the truth. And then followed up by what Elder McConkie said that even with physical proof, it does not matter if it doesn't help you to build a testimony of Savior. So how did you go about reconciling historical questions about belief and in thinking not only about the historical Jesus in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teachings, but in thinking about other religions as well.
Julia (24:01.058): So for me, it's kind of taken a long time to develop a really strong testimony. And I think that's okay. I think it's okay to build slow, learn line upon line, right? There's an analogy that I really liked when I heard last year, I was reading talk called The Three Most Important Things by one of the law professors at BYU, Brett Sharps. He outlines what's called the three stages of religious faith. And those are from Paul Ricoeur, the French theologian and philosopher.
And so, recurred outlines that often, not always, but often in faith people experience first a sort of childlike belief and just wonder and amazement. And then sometimes it'll morph into a sort of desert of doubt or questions. when you hear other viewpoints, right, and you're trying to reconcile those and then the third stage is what he calls like a second naivety. And that's when you have sort of a more mature understanding and you have some of those questions answered, some of them not, but then also you retain that sort of childlike wonder. And so for me, as teenager and as a child, was Jesus lived again. And then I've looked into historicity and asked those questions honestly, like, did Jesus live again, right? But then I think after that, I mean, I personally have come to believe that Jesus Christ really is my savior, the resurrection really happened and Christianity, the claims that it makes are true and valid. So right now I'm in the, did Jesus really live again? Yes. And just enjoying that amazement.
Joseph Stuart (25:20.824): I think that much of the conversation in the church about faith crises really can be better framed as thinking about faith-deepening processes where we can ask questions and receive answers that help us to better appreciate our faith. And in my process of learning more about my own testimony of the restored gospel, I have found a lot of inspiration in learning from other religious traditions. What do you think the role of learning from the religious traditions of the world offer to Latter-day Saints?
Julia (25:52.424): I think it does so much for us. There's a quote from the professor I took classes from here at BYU, Jeffrey R. Chadwick. He's scholar in Islam and also Judaism. And he says, anytime Latter-day Saints reach out and learn something about another people, another religious community, another culture, it enriches us by helping us to appreciate what it means to be children of God in all places and in all situations. So I just, really love that quote and it resonates with me as I've experienced it and being able to meet people in conversation and just wherever.
Life takes me and learn from them and have this perspective of, yes, my faith is very important to me, but so is learning from other people who have a lot to control.
Joseph Stuart (26:29.048): Thank I think that's the perfect place for us to end this week. Kristian, Julia, thanks so much and have a blessed week. Thank you for listening to Abide, a Maxwell Institute podcast. Could you please rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening to this podcast? And follow us on social media at at BYU Maxwell on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and sign up for our newsletter at mi.byu.edu. Thank you and have a great week.