While listening to Mozart’s Requiem I came thinking of fear and resurrection.
Listen to this incredible music and let me invite you to read my following text.
Mozart: Requiem, London Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Sir Colin Davis:
What is resurrection?
Is it the abstract imagination of going to heaven?
Or is it happening among all of us?
Maybe you wouldn’t notice it at first.
So inconspiciously it happens. Without trumpets and a fanfare.
It is not much mentioned about how exactly the resurrection of Jesus happened. “How was it possible?” people at the time of Jesus and now ask themselves. “How?”
Maybe we can’t understand it, at least not with our common way of reacting to the world, with our mind.
Look at Rembrandt’s painting “The Supper at Emmaus”. Look at the facial expression of the man sitting in front of Jesus.
“How, how is it possible?” I see him asking. A woman in the background is doing her daily work, clearly nobody had expected the visitor.
Yes, how is it possible.
The resurrection of Christ is like a wall for our mind where it can’t get through. It annuls all logic of thinking.
The german theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was executed by the Nazi regime in 1945 once said:
The figure of the Judged and Crucified remains in a world, in which success is the measure and the justification of all things, strange and in the best case pitiful. … The figure of the Crucified crumbles to powder every thinking that is oriented to success.
(own translation)
For me the crucifiction and resurrection of Jesus stands for something we all experience. We don’t have to wait until we die to experience it.
Maybe we die many times in our life?
Maybe we are crucified many times in our life?
Maybe we ”resurgere” many times?
I believe it is a parable we can find in our life.
It might start when a little child expresses its feelings and the parent demands of the child to deny its feelings in order to fit in. “Pull yourself together!” If the child doesn’t obey it will be crucified.
It is not about the being of the child, it has to fit into something. Trying to fit in is a try to be appreciated/to be successful in another way.
Opposite that stands Jesus, the figure which “crumbles to powder every thinking that is oriented to success”.
Why is it so strange to us? Why did it provoke and does provoke so strong counter-reactions?
The people of Jesu’ time could have let Jesus in peace. But no, they had to crucify him.
Why? Was he so dangerous?
The people turned into a wild mob which wanted to see blood. Not recognisable as humans anymore.
“Let him be crucified!” they shouted.
What a threat Jesus must have been to them. If not, why did they react so strongly?
Which part of them was threatened? I believe their Ego was threatened. The part in us which loves to identify with anything. The status, the religion, the job, anything. It is a selfmade illusion and at the same time able to be a lethal weapon. With an Ego we condemn others terribly. “Haha, did you see how stupid he was?”, “Oh I am much better than them!” etc.
Jesus threatened their Ego.
They were deeply afraid – but not aware of it.
Their fear let them – instead of welcoming the unknown – going mad and do things they bitterly regretted later on.
It is okay to be afraid. Fear is an essential human feeling.
Jesus himself was desperately afraid when he was hanging on the cross shortly before he died.
“Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!” he shouted. “My God, my God, why did you leave me?”
It is not about not being afraid. It is okay to be afraid.
But we have to be aware of it. Otherwise it can become a lethal weapon.
I believe the worst crimes were made out of fear.
Crucifiction symbols to me the consequence of the Ego’s condemnation in us.
Resurrection symbols to me that there is something bigger than that.
Unconditional love.
Hanging at the cross, Jesus said:
“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
He never gave up his love. Which was unconditional.
Jesus “resurgit”, appearing in Emmaus after he had been killed.
However much people wanted to pull him apart, his being, his love, couldn’t be destroyed.
What will be left when we die?
Our status? Our money? Our fame? Our body? Our Ego? Our possessions?
None of that.
What will be left?
When I listen to Mozart’s Requiem, I get the feeling that what will be left after we “died”, will be the same as what was left of Jesus.
Our untouchable being.