Easter Sunday - A Resurrection and Rebirth of "Faith"

Luke 24

1 Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them.

2 And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre.

3 And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus.

4 And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments:

5 And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead?

6 He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee,

7 Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.

8 And they remembered his words,

9 And returned from the sepulchre, and told all these things unto the eleven, and to all the rest.

10 It was Mary Magdalene and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles.

11 And their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not.

12 Then arose Peter, and ran unto the sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass.

13 And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs.

14 And they talked together of all these things which had happened.

15 And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them.

16 But their eyes were holden that they should not know him.

17 And he said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?

18 And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days?

19 And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people:

20 And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him.

21 But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to day is the third day since these things were done.

22 Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre;

23 And when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive.

24 And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not.

Source 

In what is often called his third great insight, Girard discovered that this repetitive cycle of sacred violence was partially exposed through Greek tragedies and various sacred texts, but it was the Christian Gospels which ultimately offered a completely different perspective—that of the victim.66 In Christ’s siding with victims and ultimately taking their place, the Christian texts turned sacred violence on its head and exposed the ancient religious system of accusation and sacrifice that has been the cornerstone of culture for all of human history. Because of this revelation—that the scapegoated one is actually a victim of the system—the system of sacred violence has slowly begun to break down and lose its long-held grip on human conflict resolution. That this ancient system no longer works like it did has both positive and negative implications. The upside to the crumbling of sacred violence is that we humans are now more likely to recognize when we are scapegoating others or pushing our own pain onto others unjustly. The downside to this exposure is that without the mechanism’s ability to externalize our mimeticism, we are not exactly sure how to deal with it. But deal with it we must. Sacred violence is losing its grip on us because of a prevailing cultural norm that has developed over time—an empathy for the victim. 

Consider the famous 1991 beating in Los Angeles of Rodney King. Gil Bailie bril-liantly analyzed the King beating by four police officers at the center of a crowd, an incident that was captured on video and went as viral as a video could before smartphones.67 Here was a beating that fit with well-known social psychological principles. The “imbalance of power” rule that runs from chimpanzees to humans wherein more savage attacks are found when the ratio of attackers to victims is greater made King’s attack more vicious. Also raising the stakes was the bystander rule at work whereby the greater number of bystanders reduces the likelihood that any of them will object to the violence. Mimesis consumed the scene, with the bystanders copying each other’s behavior (inaction) and the officers follow-ing each other in aggressively beating King. In the chaos of the moment, all the attention was on King as the guilty party. But if scapegoating were to have the same effects it used to have 2000 or even 100 years ago, the officers would not have been so quick to question their actions. As Bailie notes, “as early as the next morning,” the officers were questioning what they had done.68 Girard’s insight is that the Christian Gospels long ago set in slow motion the revelation that sacred violence—scapegoating others—must always be questioned because ultimately the scapegoat is either innocent or at least only as culpable as many others in his midst. Rodney King was not completely innocent that night, but the tendency with scapegoating is to hone in on stark, categorical labels of good and evil. That said, the Christian message has caused us to question our categorical pain-passing. It has forever reshaped our minds such that we cannot dispense with that nagging question that forces us to ask, “How could I have done that?”

Notes:

67 Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads (New York: Crossroad, 1995), 47-55.

68 Meltzoff, “Out of the Mouths of Babes,” 48.