Sometimes, even as we go careening through one series of crises, it can be useful to consider the lessons of another.
A recent mainstay on the New York Times list of nonfiction bestsellers recounts the tale of such a challenge. That tale involves a nation at a crossroads. It is a complex story of war, peace, idealism, pragmatism, assassination, bitterness and ultimately reconciliation.
The nation was none other than the United States. The time was the end of the Civil War. The book is Jay Winiks compelling history, “April 1865: The Month That Saved America.”
Beginning with the closing days of a four-year bloodbath, the book traces the country’s crisscross through a rapid-fire of unlikely events — a long overdue peace at the end of a seemingly endless war, the murder of a president, the attempted decapitation of a government, and the challenges of uniting and redefining a nation.
Talk about the best and worst of times.
Nearly a century and a half later, the challenge lies in appreciating how clearly the calendar itself seemed to inspire America’s sense of grand tragedy and trauma. To a mourning nation, the fact that Abraham Lincoln had been shot on a Good Friday prompted a flood of messianic comparisons. It made for a somber Easter, dawning on the day after the presidents death.
All of it seemed highly symbolic.
But there was more than just symbolism at work. Americans of the time drew from an entire set of themes associated with both Easter and Passover — timeless themes of liberation and renewal — as they considered such questions as the abolition of slavery, African-American citizenship and national reconstruction.
Now, in the 21st century, we have our own gauntlet of tough questions to consider. Like our forebears, we also have to struggle with the challenge of how to accommodate all our widely divergent perspectives. How do we conduct the inevitable debates our challenges present — with civility, with personal attacks, with threats or with outright violence?
Is it possible the observances of Easter and Passover have something to say to all of us about this?.
None of this is meant to trivialize or diminish the sacred import of these festivals. To many Christians and Jews, the significance of Easter and Passover, respectively, extend far beyond the metaphorical.
For the past four days, observant Jews have celebrated the power of a God who delivers his people from bondage. And today Christians praise God for that same power — except the bondage in question is the bondage of sin. For many believers, these are powerful messages about how God intervenes in history to reconcile humans with their Creator.
But is it possible that there might be messages in these stories as well about the potential for humans to reconcile with each other?
Today, we as Americans face our own series of difficult questions — health care, indebtedness, war, economic recovery, our national role as peace broker and police officer, not to mention the lingering effects of the blunt edge of global recession.
But as daunting as those questions may seem, maybe we should remember that our counterparts of April 1865 faced even knottier questions.
Perhaps we should remember how those 19th-century Americans — men, women, immigrants, tribes, diverse children of Europe, Africa, Asia and North America — mined those ancient stories for fresh strategies on how to regard each other and how to reinvent themselves.
Even from their remote place in history, perhaps they still have something to teach us.