4/30/17
There’s a blog, done by a priest in this diocese, which I visit every now and then, and on the Wednesday of Holy Week this year he posted the results of a recent poll done by the Times of London, which had found that one in four people who identify themselves as Christians say they do not believe in the Resurrection. The blogger followed the news item with this comment of his own: “I have two bachelor’s, three master’s, and two doctoral degrees, in a mixture of disciplines both sacred and secular, and have no difficulty in understanding the meaning and power of resurrection; or of admitting it. Or of bragging, apparently.”
I certainly can’t claim his level of academic credentials, but I feel the same way; and here’s my working assumption: if you believe, as I do, that God can and does change the rules of God’s own creation – a belief for which the science of particle physics has provided an increasing amount of evidence over the last fifty years – and if you believe, as I do, that God changes those rules out of love for humanity – which is the consistent witness of the Bible from the Garden of Eden on – if you believe those things, then my feeling is, as far as belief in the Resurrection is concerned: where’s the problem?
In this season of resurrection, and since we are called to be resurrected people, it is right, and a good and joyful thing, as we say in our eucharistic prayer, to talk about the Resurrection.
I think many of the people who say they don’t believe in the Resurrection – and also those who tiptoe around the subject – do so because they think it’s really just a big, ancient marketing tool, invented immediately after the death of Jesus to convince people who didn’t know any better to become Christians: to join the club. That notion ignores the unique, infinite power of the man we come to know in the New Testament. The Resurrection is not a magic show. And it’s a mistake – in fact it’s a complete misunderstanding – to see the Resurrection just as a demonstration of God’s power; or to see it just as a demonstration of God’s love for humanity. Of course it is both of those things; but if we leave it at that, we can find ourselves just admiring from a distance. If we’re going to live as truly faithful Christians, then the Resurrection has to live in us: it has to do with how we live, how we behave. I’ll get back to this.
In the four gospels there are a variety of resurrection stories, which teach us many different things; but to my mind, there’s a unique quality to the stories like the one we heard today, in which the followers of Jesus find themselves in the presence of their resurrected Lord but don’t realize it at first, they don’t immediately recognize him.
There are three such stories in the gospels. We heard one on Easter Sunday: from the gospel of John, the story of Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb, weeping, because the body of Jesus has been removed from the tomb; she turns and sees Jesus standing there, but thinks he’s the gardener. Jesus asks her why she’s weeping; she says, if you’ve carried him away, tell me where you’ve put him. Jesus simply speaks her name: “Mary”; and at that, she recognizes him
Another of these stories is also from John: a group of the disciples are fishing at night; they catch nothing; at daybreak Jesus is standing on the beach nearby, and they don’t recognize him; he calls out to them, Children, you haven’t caught anything, have you, and they say no; he tells them to cast the net on the other side of the boat, which they do, and it’s suddenly so full of fish they can’t pull it back in the boat; and the disciple whom Jesus loved says to Peter, It’s the Lord!
And the third is the one we heard today, in which two followers of Jesus are leaving Jerusalem in despair, putting what they see as a complete disaster behind them; and Jesus meets them, walks and talks with them, explains to them how it’s the opposite of a disaster; spends at least a couple of hours in their company, before they finally recognize him, in the moment that he breaks bread with them.
These are very different stories, very different kinds of stories: each of them has a different feel to it, they touch our spirits differently: the Resurrection is not just one thing, it has a universe of meanings around it. But these stories do have in common that the risen Jesus appears in the presence of his followers, and they don’t immediately recognize him, for periods lasting from a few moments to several hours: it looks like somebody else.
In each of these encounters, these different disciples all come to recognize Jesus when he touches the deepest part of their spirits, in the way that, before, in their lives, only he has done; that only he can do. Jesus speaks Mary Magdalene’s name: which effectively says to her, I know who you really are; and you know me: something which she has felt from him, and only from him, before. He says to the disciples fishing from the boat, I will show you where there’s abundance of what you’re really looking for, more abundance that you’ve thought possible, and it’s where you are right now: something they have felt from him, and only from him, before. In today’s story he shows the two disciples the truth of how God works in the world, how God can turn what looks like a disaster into our salvation; which is realized in the breaking of bread: the act by which we share what sustains life, and which tastes good: we share in the joy, and the goodness, of God’s creation: for these two disciples, this is the kind of truth they have learned from him, and only from him, before.
Can we not say the same thing? Each in our own way? Does not God in Christ know each of us better, and more deeply, than anyone else possibly could? Have we not, each of us, at least glimpsed, through God in Christ, a kind of abundance we’d never known before, which is right where we are? Have we not, through God in Christ, heard the truth of God working in the world, and felt the joy of it? Some way or other?
Of course we have. It’s why we’re all here. This is God in Christ, alive among us. This is the truth of the resurrection; and it’s why we can call ourselves resurrected people.
Now (I said I was going to get back to this): there’s a to-do about all this, which I’m going to deal with briefly. We heard it in today’s passage from 1 Peter. This letter opens by addressing those “who have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ” (that’s you and me), and continues: “By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead….”
And after the letter sets the scene this way – after it establishes the conditions in which we now live, that is, in the light of the Resurrection - the first thing Peter tells people to do, in these circumstances, is this (as we heard today): “Now that you have purified your souls by obedience to the truth, so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart.”
That’s not a hazy good wish; it’s not a Hallmark card. It’s an instruction: that we are to live by, every day. It’s a command, the same command Jesus gave his friends: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” It’s a commandment that sometimes hard to obey, and all to easy to forget.
So here’s the to-do: just for a week, keep this command in mind, every day. And when you get angry; or impatient; or frustrated; or anxious; or fearful: bring it to mind; and figure out how to obey it. The more we live by this command, the richer, and more joyful, the life that grows in and around us. This is resurrected life. This is the truth of the resurrection. Thanks be to God.
There’s a blog, done by a priest in this diocese, which I visit every now and then, and on the Wednesday of Holy Week this year he posted the results of a recent poll done by the Times of London, which had found that one in four people who identify themselves as Christians say they do not believe in the Resurrection. The blogger followed the news item with this comment of his own: “I have two bachelor’s, three master’s, and two doctoral degrees, in a mixture of disciplines both sacred and secular, and have no difficulty in understanding the meaning and power of resurrection; or of admitting it. Or of bragging, apparently.”
I certainly can’t claim his level of academic credentials, but I feel the same way; and here’s my working assumption: if you believe, as I do, that God can and does change the rules of God’s own creation – a belief for which the science of particle physics has provided an increasing amount of evidence over the last fifty years – and if you believe, as I do, that God changes those rules out of love for humanity – which is the consistent witness of the Bible from the Garden of Eden on – if you believe those things, then my feeling is, as far as belief in the Resurrection is concerned: where’s the problem?
In this season of resurrection, and since we are called to be resurrected people, it is right, and a good and joyful thing, as we say in our eucharistic prayer, to talk about the Resurrection.
I think many of the people who say they don’t believe in the Resurrection – and also those who tiptoe around the subject – do so because they think it’s really just a big, ancient marketing tool, invented immediately after the death of Jesus to convince people who didn’t know any better to become Christians: to join the club. That notion ignores the unique, infinite power of the man we come to know in the New Testament. The Resurrection is not a magic show. And it’s a mistake – in fact it’s a complete misunderstanding – to see the Resurrection just as a demonstration of God’s power; or to see it just as a demonstration of God’s love for humanity. Of course it is both of those things; but if we leave it at that, we can find ourselves just admiring from a distance. If we’re going to live as truly faithful Christians, then the Resurrection has to live in us: it has to do with how we live, how we behave. I’ll get back to this.
In the four gospels there are a variety of resurrection stories, which teach us many different things; but to my mind, there’s a unique quality to the stories like the one we heard today, in which the followers of Jesus find themselves in the presence of their resurrected Lord but don’t realize it at first, they don’t immediately recognize him.
There are three such stories in the gospels. We heard one on Easter Sunday: from the gospel of John, the story of Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb, weeping, because the body of Jesus has been removed from the tomb; she turns and sees Jesus standing there, but thinks he’s the gardener. Jesus asks her why she’s weeping; she says, if you’ve carried him away, tell me where you’ve put him. Jesus simply speaks her name: “Mary”; and at that, she recognizes him
Another of these stories is also from John: a group of the disciples are fishing at night; they catch nothing; at daybreak Jesus is standing on the beach nearby, and they don’t recognize him; he calls out to them, Children, you haven’t caught anything, have you, and they say no; he tells them to cast the net on the other side of the boat, which they do, and it’s suddenly so full of fish they can’t pull it back in the boat; and the disciple whom Jesus loved says to Peter, It’s the Lord!
And the third is the one we heard today, in which two followers of Jesus are leaving Jerusalem in despair, putting what they see as a complete disaster behind them; and Jesus meets them, walks and talks with them, explains to them how it’s the opposite of a disaster; spends at least a couple of hours in their company, before they finally recognize him, in the moment that he breaks bread with them.
These are very different stories, very different kinds of stories: each of them has a different feel to it, they touch our spirits differently: the Resurrection is not just one thing, it has a universe of meanings around it. But these stories do have in common that the risen Jesus appears in the presence of his followers, and they don’t immediately recognize him, for periods lasting from a few moments to several hours: it looks like somebody else.
In each of these encounters, these different disciples all come to recognize Jesus when he touches the deepest part of their spirits, in the way that, before, in their lives, only he has done; that only he can do. Jesus speaks Mary Magdalene’s name: which effectively says to her, I know who you really are; and you know me: something which she has felt from him, and only from him, before. He says to the disciples fishing from the boat, I will show you where there’s abundance of what you’re really looking for, more abundance that you’ve thought possible, and it’s where you are right now: something they have felt from him, and only from him, before. In today’s story he shows the two disciples the truth of how God works in the world, how God can turn what looks like a disaster into our salvation; which is realized in the breaking of bread: the act by which we share what sustains life, and which tastes good: we share in the joy, and the goodness, of God’s creation: for these two disciples, this is the kind of truth they have learned from him, and only from him, before.
Can we not say the same thing? Each in our own way? Does not God in Christ know each of us better, and more deeply, than anyone else possibly could? Have we not, each of us, at least glimpsed, through God in Christ, a kind of abundance we’d never known before, which is right where we are? Have we not, through God in Christ, heard the truth of God working in the world, and felt the joy of it? Some way or other?
Of course we have. It’s why we’re all here. This is God in Christ, alive among us. This is the truth of the resurrection; and it’s why we can call ourselves resurrected people.
Now (I said I was going to get back to this): there’s a to-do about all this, which I’m going to deal with briefly. We heard it in today’s passage from 1 Peter. This letter opens by addressing those “who have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ” (that’s you and me), and continues: “By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead….”
And after the letter sets the scene this way – after it establishes the conditions in which we now live, that is, in the light of the Resurrection - the first thing Peter tells people to do, in these circumstances, is this (as we heard today): “Now that you have purified your souls by obedience to the truth, so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart.”
That’s not a hazy good wish; it’s not a Hallmark card. It’s an instruction: that we are to live by, every day. It’s a command, the same command Jesus gave his friends: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” It’s a commandment that sometimes hard to obey, and all to easy to forget.
So here’s the to-do: just for a week, keep this command in mind, every day. And when you get angry; or impatient; or frustrated; or anxious; or fearful: bring it to mind; and figure out how to obey it. The more we live by this command, the richer, and more joyful, the life that grows in and around us. This is resurrected life. This is the truth of the resurrection. Thanks be to God.