He is risen indeed!
John 20: 1 - 9
Welcome and a blessed Easter to the Church in exile! I was speaking the other day with a brother
priest and we came up with an interesting comparison between the time of the Hebrews
wandering in the desert with Moses and today’s experience in our own similar imposed
desert experience. In the desert, the chosen people had been deprived of food
and water yet God sent them manna from heaven and water appeared miraculously
when Moses struck the rock. God sustained
them during that wandering and never abandoned them. After 40 years of a journey, they reached the
land promised to them.
If we did a calculation today, it was about 30 days ago that
our imposed isolation, our “social distancing” regulations began. Ten days from now will be nearly the end of
April on day 40. Has this been a desert
experience allowed by God in order to purify and reform us? In order to renew our hearts and call us to reassess
the treasure of our faith and the gift of the Eucharist which is a true bread
or “manna” from heaven? Is it merely a coincidence
that this entire journey has taken place during the season of Lent and close to
the end of the 40 days we find ourselves in the season of Easter, a time of hope
and new life? Will our journey end ten days from now?
Such comparisons might help us to put
this whole time in context. When this will end is unclear but there are signs
of hope and new freedom. One thing is
certain. God has not abandoned his
Church and I personally feel he is not pleased with empty Churches. So, what else might be out there? As we begin
the Easter season on day 30 of our exile we are reminded that death and
darkness and despair are not the end.
In his popular book, Mere Christianity, the Christian apologist
C.S. Lewis famously said about Jesus: "A
man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a
great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on the level with a man who
says he is a poached egg--or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your
choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something
worse. You can shut him up for a fool or you can fall at his feet and call him
Lord and God.”
In short, in the opinion of Lewis, that Jesus was either a
crazy man, the world’s greatest liar who led scores of crowds to believe a
false claim, or he is indeed the Son of God before whom we bow in awe and
worship to follow in his way. Therefore, if the resurrection of Christ is true,
anything is possible and our faith is grounded in a great and awesome truth.
This Easter day we gather and claim to be his followers. We claim that we have made the choice to
believe that Jesus is indeed the Son of God.
The beautiful liturgies of Holy Week and Easter have touched many in
this parish community. I’ve heard a great deal of positive feedback. And even though the “feel” of Holy Week and
our virtual Church is a substitute,
it is not the same as it is expected to be.
Yet the temptation is to concentrate on the external.
Most of us in our parishes have
been live streaming or You Tube the Mass and the visual stimulation that we have all experienced. While the wonders of modern technology have made this all possible in this uncertain time we are not
a community who worship liturgy. The
focus of our faith is this God-man who
is indeed our Lord and God. The resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth for all time
proves that all he said and did was indeed true. He’s not a madman or merely another wise
teacher of ancient times.
For the early Church the resurrection of the Lord was a
shattering event and all the stories of Easter in his appearances convey an
experience both real and beyond human description. In fact, the resurrection is
so pivotal, that if Jesus did not rise we would be as foolish to make the
claims for him as he was to claim it for himself. Here we go beyond science and reason to the realm of the supernatural and miraculous. The Church proclaims that we her speak of the miraculous. God's direct intervention in our space and time as he goes beyond the laws of nature and logic. There would be no other way to describe the resurrection of Jesus as a truth.
In other words, without the truth of the resurrection, there
would be no Christian faith. That is how
central to our claims this event becomes. No other founder of a religion in
history as ever claimed to rise from the dead, nor his followers have claimed
such, except Christians. So it either makes us lunatics, liars, or disciples of
the risen one.
But, we cannot prove the resurrection – it defies reason, logic
and every conceivable law of nature. Dead bodies do not come back to life. But
Jesus now assumes some mysterious, touchable, visible form which combines
spirit and matter, no longer subject to the natural laws of death and decay.
This is resurrection – a form yet to be seen and experienced in eternity.
Scholars agree that Jesus’ resurrection is not at all a miraculous
return from the dead or something like a near death experience. If that is what
the resurrection was, then Jesus would have died again. When Jesus appeared to
his Apostles, he told no story of a tunnel of light, or hovering over his body,
or seeing long lost dead relatives waiting for him.
Yet we will hear this Easter season of the reaction of the
Apostles, of Mary Magdalene, of Thomas who doubted, of talking angels who
questioned visitors at the empty tomb that early morning, “Why do you seek the living one among the dead?” (Lk 24: 1-10). We
will hear of disciples whose lives were instantly transformed from fear to
overwhelming joy, wonder, and bold courage. So convicted were they that Jesus
was alive and eternally present again that no force or threat on earth could
change their minds. When they saw the risen Lord it became a transforming
experience and changed them forever. So, through this event, God invites us to
believe and to be transformed to deeper discipleship and more courageous faith.
The rising of Christ from the dead gives hope to those who have
died. And if the dead have hope then the living also have hope. If we the
living have hope, then the death and resurrection of Christ is true.
The great witness we have today in our Gospel story is that of
the empty tomb. Women, named Mary Magdalene and Joanna and men named Peter and
John who could hardly contain their joy and wonder once they came to conviction
– because of an empty tomb. But, that alone would not be enough. It was not a
onetime event meant to be recalled through history books but the beginning of a
transforming experience for all believers.
It was an invitation to see Christ alive and present right up to our day
and beyond.
We no longer look in empty tombs but in His Church, His Body –
Jesus baptizes, confirms, becomes our food of liberation in the Eucharist as he
will for our newest Elect and candidates this season. Christ unites in
marriage, comforts the dying, forgives sin, chooses and calls in the
priesthood. In those holy sacraments the risen Christ continues his work.
And, in our world today, where there is far too much agony and
not enough ecstasy, many are confused, lost, abandoned, hurt, empty, despairing,
fearful. Everything seems to be about an
uncontrolled virus, numbers, new cases and sadly deaths. Everyone is reacting to numbers and
projections. Many people are dead in spirit and mind or numbed by a world which
presents promises that cannot fulfill; that the answer to every problem can be
found only in science, technology, money, or fame.
The good news of Easter bring a time of hope to us. The invitation
to every one of us is to have hope and to share in the life of His Church. God
has no limits. We bring this good news to a world that is empty; to replace the
agony of meaninglessness, or science and technology alone, of loneliness and
rejection, of poverty and sadness with the ecstasy of faith and hope. Let’s
pray together as we approach these next ten days that God will bring a healing
to humanity and prove himself once again to be our Lord and our God.
Christ is risen indeed, Alleluia, Alleluia!
O God, who on this day,
through your Only Begotten Son, have conquered death
and unlocked for us the path to eternity,
grant that we who keep
the solemnity of the Lord's Resurrection
may, through the renewal brought by your Spirit
rise up in the light of life.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
(Collect of Mass during Easter day)
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