HOLY WEEK 2000 - HIS JOURNEY AND OURS
Preacher: Father Bill Edebohls SSC
EASTER DAY MASS
'Christ is risen, Alleluia! He is risen indeed. Alleluia!'
The celebration of Easter (despite the inconvenience of living in the southern hemisphere) is a celebration of the divine spring which confronts our human winter.
For Good Friday is about cold dark death, and the cold dark side of human nature: cruelty, injustice, treachery and falsehood. But it is also about God's spring, because the death of Jesus was unique and the darkness, the cruelty, was overcome.
Jesus came into the world to die. So what is new? Each one of us could say the same thing about ourselves. But, unlike us, he did not come with the consequence that he would die, but rather he came with the very purpose of dying. With measured tread and painstaking care he addressed execution and death on his own terms, met it with level eyes, chose the time and the place, and bequeathed us a frame of reference and an undying memorial in the offering of the Mass.
But it did not end there. We remember and we celebrate a present reality. An empty tomb and surprised followers convince us that Jesus it risen, that he shares our lives and points us away from ourselves to life beyond death. Truly a spring of souls in a human winter.
Those who maintain that Christ's resurrection was only a spiritual reality must have some difficulty with today.
Some claim that if there was a resurrection at all, then it all happened inside the minds of the disciples. There was no empty tomb just a warm fuzzy psychological buzz that made them all feel better after a rather trying Good Friday.
Yes, it's quite a popular theory, that nothing actually happened to Our Lord's corpse. His followers simply became aware of his continuing presence in their lives, as we do.
Yet both the biblical records and the historical events that followed that first Easter Day make it all but impossible to explain away Our Lord's resurrection in such terms.
He says to them: "Look at my hands and feet.... Touch me and see for yourselves." The disciples are understandably terrified, and presume that they are seeing a ghost, but Jesus says: "a ghost has no flesh and bones as you can see I have".
By now the disciples have been through fear and disbelief, and just stand there dumbfounded. He eats with them, he breaks bread with them, and the scales begin to fall from their eyes.
So this is no ghost and no spiritual vision. His resurrection (and therefore ours as well) means a tangible and active existence which involves purpose, communication, fellowship, and most importantly (for me at least) eating and drinking with friends.
And the proof continues. For Jesus sits down with them, and explains how the Scripture has been fulfilled in his death and resurrection. This was not an isolated, unexpected event. It was part of God's plan of salvation, which had existed from the beginning. All the prophets had testified to it. The Law foreshadowed it. All those incomprehensible Old Testament readings during Lent, and last night at the Vigil, about creation, the Passover, the Lamb of Sacrifice, the Exodus, and the Red Sea, find their fulfilment in today's celebration.
S. Paul says: "If Christ is not risen, our whole faith is in vain". No Resurrection, no Easter, no Easter, no Christianity. Without the resurrection the whole plan of God's salvation is incomprehensible, and the birth, work, life, and death of Jesus remains meaningless.
Easter and Christmass are so intimately linked that one cannot exist without the other. It was in his virgin-born body, the body scourged and spat upon, nailed and pierced and laid in the tomb, that the Son of God rose from the dead. Yes, the risen one is the crucified one. Not some spiritual or psychological phenomenon. On Easter Sunday the Father raised up the Son in the wholeness of his human nature - his body from the grave. The risen Lord is not a ghost but an indestructibly alive, complete human being. No, the empty tomb is not irrelevant to the doctrine of the resurrection. With it Christianity lives or dies. And if the tomb was not empty, if Our Lord is resurrected in his soul alone, or in the mind of the disciples, or in some kind of replacement body then, my dear people, you have all wasted your time getting out of bed.
If God had left his Son's body behind in the tomb, Jesus would have ceased to be perfect man, fully and completely human. What God the Son assumed when he was conceived in the womb of Blessed Mary was not laid aside on Easter Day. The flesh and blood which his Mother gave him with such love was not cast into the corruption of death, but was flooded with glory, with the power of the Spirit. So much does he love us, so precious to him is our humanity, that when he assumes it God the Son does not absorb it, and when he rises, he does not reject it.
The trend of liberal protestantism, to reduce the Resurrection to a purely subjective experience, on the part of the disciples, is not the good news of the Gospel. The evangelists present the disciples in an unflattering light. When the Lord, before the event, predicted his resurrection, they did not understand him and discussed among themselves what "rising from the dead" could mean.
No, as S. Ignatius of Antioch argues, writing on the road to Rome and certain death, only the objective, real, bodily Resurrection of Jesus can explain the transformation of craven and confused men into martyrs. Frightened men, who had witnessed something so dramatic on Easter Morn, that they were prepared to become pet food for lions roaring in the amphitheatre.
A risen Christ had given them the faith and courage to change both their lives and the life of the world.
Of course, the Resurrection is not a bare historical fact, something you can take or leave. It is a fact that calls for conversion. Conversion that will change your life. Conversion that will change your death. For Christ has taken your flesh into his Godhead. He has assumed your flesh, taken it to the cross, taken it into the tomb, and taken it into glory.
Today marks our new creation. The angel of death has passed-over us, Christ the sacrificial lamb has been sacrificed in our place, and we have begun our own exodus from darkness to light, from winter to spring, not through the waters of the Red Sea but through the waters of the baptismal font.
Faced with the clear reality of sin, of cruelty, injustice, treachery and falsehood, and with the inability of humanity to obey his Law or heed his prophets, God chose to give himself as expiation for sin. Jesus became what we are - hopelessly defeated by sin, whose wages are death - so that we might become what he is - the victor over death, living forever in God's presence.
And, Jesus tells them, now that the barrier has been broken down, all that is necessary for the forgiveness of sins is repentance: that turning around, that change of attitude which takes us from enslavement to the values of this world to a life of devotion and discipleship. And this is the way to God for all people.
In a moment you will have the opportunity to renew your baptismal promises. It is a renewal of your exodus, your flight from darkness to light. It is a renewal of your crossing through the waters of the Red Sea and journeying into the Promised Land. It is a renewal of your turning, your conversion, to God. It is the consummation of your pilgrimage - a pilgrimage of the past great three days - the pilgrimage of a lifetime.
As I recalled on Good Friday, Joshua called the people of God to commitment. He did not present them with a range of options, possibilities, and an opt out clause. He gave them two clear choices:
They could commit their lives in service to the One True God or to another lord.
To light or to darkness.
To spring or winter.
To life or death.
Choose life then, and accept the Risen Christ as your Lord and God.
The resurrection brings joy and certainty - and a message that each of us must share with a broken world.
As Easter people you set out on the road together, and together with the numberless people of God, all pilgrims travelling to the Father's house.
Go on your way singing, a song of hope on your lips and your heart burning within you. Now we have the alleluias of the journey, soon there will be the alleluias of consummation, of the great sabbath with God. Now you are being sown in the darkness of the earth; when that day comes, you will bloom in the light and warmth of God's eternity.
Set out on the road, and peace be with you for ever.
'Christ is risen, Alleluia! He is risen indeed. Alleluia!'
