Death and Resurrection - Jared Himstedt

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Jesus as Lived Metaphor Jesus as Lived Metaphor Jesus as Lived Metaphor Jesus as Lived Metaphor

By Jared Himstedt

"First of all, Mary, the Mother, plays a very prominent role in a corner of the world where women had been systematically downgraded for tens of generations. She is not explicitly called Mother Earth, but her crucified son goes under the ground and then rises up, like vegetation, like Demeter's daughter Persephone, like Isis' twin brother Osiris. This news is not at the margins of the myth but at its core. And the news goes much deeper. The crucified Jesse is like Serapis the bull, Osiris's double. By his death he redeems the living. New shoots are fertilized by fallen plants. Death is overcome, its finality is taken away. Out of the dead fragments sprout the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, and every living thing that moveth upon the earth. The bull or the lamb gives himself for the sake of the living, for Mother Earth's renewal."

I am tempted to print the above quote and leave it be to speak for itself, but I think the possibility it proposes for new understanding and interpretation of the life of the Christ is profound. I am still trying to digest the implications of the hypothesis I'm dealing with here: that the life of Christ is a lived metaphor dealing with natural cycles and rhythms of death and rebirth. The death and rebirth of all living things...their inherent connectedness are central themes common to much indigenous spirituality. In genera; we see a lack of messianic/ deliverance motifs in indigenous mythology and prophecy. If Meyers and others are right, and the Fall is a fall into civilization, then it makes sense for nature based peoples to not have their spirituality hinged upon future deliverance. Maybe that's not what Jesus was bringing either, or maybe the salvation that was being offered and the Kingdom being promised were of a different order. He brings his gospel of good news to a domesticated and civilized tribal people. Their entire history with their God is riddled with reminders of how they have strayed, beginning with the garden. They have sought the amenities of society as their own God declares that it is a rejection of God. They do so out of an explicit desire to be like those around them. They know better. Christ does go into the ground and sprout up again, although changed. Christ’s death and resurrection reminds them of truths they already know. Death is not final. It has no power because we return, changed in form, in bodies unrecognizable to our former selves. All things go under the ground and spring back in renewed life. This truth is obvious to earthbased peoples, but needs to be retold and danced out before the eyes of those who have strayed and forsaken the Way. And how appropriate for us, now civilized, once wild. We are those post-tribal aliens who need someone to show us a sign of reminder, to ignite deep in our instinct and soul a truth so deep and ancient that we cannot imagine how we ever forgot it. A reminder or renewal...all things made new. A reminder to not fear death, that it is not final nor has any power to halt life. Death is not conquered by an act but is conquered already. The only true finality would be if the death/rebirth cycle of natural rhythms and the ancient knowledge and wisdom that reminds us to heed it were disrupted. I find myself at a complete reversal. Rather than a hope in divine intervention that will end the life/death cycle, our hope lies in the continuation of that cycle. Our hope given to