Easter (Fifth Sunday in Corona Time)

Readings: Acts 10:34a, 37-43; 1 Corinthians 5:6b-8; John 20:1-9

Yesterday brought the sobering news
that the United States had surpassed
every other nation in the world
in the number of deaths
from Covid-19.
Even taking into account
the large size of our population,
the number of deaths
in hotspots like New York has been staggering.
And for someone who has lost a loved one
it doesn’t really matter much
what the per capita death rates are;
it is that one death that devastates.
But even as we continue
the seemingly endless journey to peak mortality,
people have begun discussing what it will mean
to “reopen” the country:
to restart our economy,
for people to return to work,
for students to return to school,
for churches and other places of public gathering
to resume ordinary activities.
But one thing is clear:
there will be no sudden return
to so-called normal life.
It may be months still
before public Masses can be celebrated,
before children can go to school,
before we can dine in restaurants.

The idea was floated a few weeks
that Easter would be a nice time
for life to return to normal.
The symbolism, it might seem,
would be lovely.
But, apart from the obvious error involved
in calculating the progress of the pandemic,
and differing opinions on how long
before social distancing measures
can begin to ease up,
I think the idea of Easter as a moment
when everything returns to normal
is a theologically dubious one,
and this for two reasons.

First, it is a mistake to think of Easter
as a moment, as an instant.
Of course, there is a moment
when he who was dead rises from the tomb,
but Easter is not simply
about Jesus’ return to life.
Or, rather, it is about that,
because if it is not about that
it is not about anything.
But it is not only about that.
Easter is the ongoing activity of resurrection
brought about in us by Jesus through the Spirit.
In today’s Gospel,
Mary Magdalen, Peter, and John
all see the empty tomb
but, we are told,
“they did not yet understand the Scripture
that he had to rise from the dead.”
The reality of resurrection
that Jesus lived
was not yet fully real in them.
It seems that resurrection takes time,
and because it takes time
it involves patience,
and patience is our suffering time’s passage.
The raising of Jesus from the dead
is the decisive moment:
a corner is turned,
a new reality does begin,
a new world is opened up,
but all this begins as a tiny seed
planted in the earth of humanity,
and we are still living
through the time of its growth.
Resurrection unfolds slowly
and in often hidden ways;
the new life rises in us
not on our timetable
but on God’s.

Second, it is a mistake to think of Easter
as a return to normal.
As Paul tells us, we do not celebrate this feast
“with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness,
but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
Jesus is not simply resuscitated,
but transformed,
the reign of God is fulfilled in him.
As they come to share in this transformation,
the lives of Jesus’ friends
do not return to normal:
Peter did not return to his nets;
Matthew did not return to his tax collecting.
As the reality of resurrection grows
the world should become for us
stranger and stranger
until the life we live
is taken up completely
into the risen life of Christ.
As resurrection grows within us
moments of unexpected grace
should become the new normal;
acts of extraordinary charity
should become the ordinary stuff of living;
lives lived against death and for God
should become our daily lives.

If Christians truly are an Easter people,
then we who bear the name Christian
can perhaps bear witness to the watching world
about what it truly means to have hope for new life.
In the days and weeks and months ahead
we can let our resurrection faith
inform our daily living.
We can show what it means
not to look for quick fixes
but rather to willingly suffer time’s passage.
We can show what it means
not to hope simply
for a restoration of the status quo,
but to think of how our world
might go forward in ways
that are more just
and more compassionate.
Whatever lies on the other side of Corona Time
is not, to be sure, the reign of God.
But perhaps it can be a world
that is just little kinder, just a little fairer,
just a little more aligned with the truth
that Christ is risen and death is defeated.
May Christ make this new life true in us
and may God have mercy on us all.

Easter Sunday

Readings: Acts 10:34a, 37-43; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-9

Given the timing and the weight of accumulated history,
it was inevitable that people would go looking
for symbolic significance
in the fire that came close to destroying
Paris’s cathedral of Notre Dame this past week.
Some suggested that it was a metaphor
for the crisis of European Christianity,
beset by decades of declining membership and church attendance.
Others, mindful of Holy Week, saw it as a symbol
of the destruction of the temple of Christ’s body—
and drew hope that Our Lady’s cathedral, like Christ himself,
would one day rise again in glory.

But maybe the lesson of the fire at Notre Dame
is not some deeply hidden message or metaphor,
but something pretty obvious:
the things we human beings construct—
no matter how beautiful or culturally significant—
catch on fire and burn.
They also rot and decay;
they get swept away in floods
and brought down by earthquakes.
And, in this way, they are like us, their makers.
The message of last Monday’s fire
is the message of Ash Wednesday
with which we began this Lent:
remember that you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.
Eight-hundred and fifty years is a long time,
but it is not eternity;
and even if, as seems likely, Notre Dame is restored
and continues for a time as a place of Christian worship,
we know that one day this too will come to an end,
shall return to dust like everything we humans create,
as we ourselves shall as well.

Pretty somber news for an Easter morning.
But in the face of this somber new
we Christians proclaim the Good News
of Jesus’ resurrection.
Even as what is beautiful and noble falls to ruin,
Christ’s resurrection brings us glad tidings:
we are indeed dust,
but we are dust bound for glory,
for our life is hidden with Christ in God
and Christ is truly risen.
All that is good,
all that has value,
is treasured eternally
in the heart of the risen Jesus.

But because there has never been a silver lining
that I could not find a dark cloud to wrap around,
I am afraid that I have news this Easter morning
even more somber than the inevitable mortality
that shadows our lives.
There is something more deeply wrong with the world
than the finite timespan of every creature.
This something is what we call “sin,”
and we can see it at work in the death of Jesus.
For Jesus doesn’t just die
because his human lifespan runs out;
rather, he is killed.
As Peter reminds the assembled crowd in Jerusalem,
“They put him to death by hanging him on a tree.”
He is killed
because something far darker than death
has invaded human life.
He is killed because we have a rage within us,
a cruelty that makes us heedless of each other
and willing to cut short
the finite and fragile miracle of human life.

In a sense, the real events of recent days
that capture the full disaster of the human condition
is not the accidental fire that nearly destroyed Notre Dame,
but the deliberate burning
of three historically African American churches in Louisiana--
and now I suppose we must add
the churches bombed and the scores of people killed
this morning in Sri Lanka.
These were, of course, far more humble structures
than the gothic glory that is Notre Dame,
but they were temples no-less-holy,
where worship was offered to the living God.
And while the fire at Notre Dame
speaks to us of the world’s fragility and finitude,
the burning churches of Louisiana,
the bombed churches of Sri Lanka,
speak to us of sin.
They speak to us of those deeds
that grow from fear of what it different,
from a distorted sense of superiority,
from a twisted love of self,
even to the point of contempt of God and neighbor.
They speak to us of something that we can see
in our own selves,
in our own petty deeds
of fear and pride and self-involvement.

But even this somber news of sin
must yield to Easter joy.
As Peter tells the crowd gathered in Jerusalem,
“everyone who believes in him
will receive forgiveness of sins through his name.”
The good news of the resurrection
is not simply that we
have been made sharers in eternal life,
but that the wounds of sin
can be healed through faith.
Our world can be different.
You and I can be different.

John’s Gospel tells us that Mary Magdalene
came to Jesus’ tomb “while it was still dark.”
We too come to this Easter morning while it is still dark.
For the shadow of mortality and the wounds of sin
still darken our world
and make it hard for us to see the tomb standing empty.
But if we lift our eyes to the horizon,
if we heed Paul’s call to “seek what is above,”
even in the darkness of death and sin
we can see the light of the resurrection
breaking in upon us,
illuminating our world
with the Spirit’s gifts of faith, hope, and love.

It is still dark,
but the light of Christ’s risen glory
is already dawning.
It is dawning in the people of Paris,
who, kneeling as they lift their eyes
to their beloved cathedral engulfed in flames,
sing Je vous salue, Marie, Hail Mary…,
a song of hope in the face of tragedy.
It is dawning in the Rev. Harry Richard
of Greater Union Baptist Church
in Opelousas, Louisiana,
who says, “We’ve been through the fire…
We are heading for a resurrection.”
It is dawning in you and me,
fragile and finite and, yes, sinful,
but called by God to be witnesses of Easter joy,
called by God, while it is still dark,
to reflect the light of Christ’s resurrected glory.
Christ is truly risen, alleluia.

Easter Sunday

Readings: Acts 10: 34a, 37-43; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-9

Earlier this year
I spent several weeks at a Trappist monastery,
which is one of those things you can do
when you’re a university professor on sabbatical
and your youngest child has left the nest for college.
Over the course of weeks I discovered
that not a lot happens at a Trappist monastery,
and every day is pretty much like the one before it
and the one after it.
You rise early at 3:00 AM and spend several hours
in communal and private prayer
before going off to work, praying some more,
then more work, and more prayers.
Throw in a few meals, eaten in silence,
and that’s about your day.
The prayer itself is pretty much always the same:
chanting the 150 psalms over the course of two weeks,
along with a few hymns and Mass each day.
The work is also pretty much the same:
at this monastery it is growing mushrooms,
which is about as exciting as watching paint dry,
though more physically demanding.

Shortly before I left for the monastery
my mother was hospitalized.
She had been failing for several months
and it was clear to all of us
that the end was not too far off.
But my family insisted I not cancel my plans.
I arrived at the monastery knowing that I might well
have to cut short my time there,
as indeed proved to be the case
when my mother died three weeks later.

In the midst of those these seemingly uneventful days,
prior to my mother's death,
I found myself thinking about and praying over
the impermanence of life,
the way in which, despite our best efforts,
we cannot hold on to the things we love,
to the people we love:
how we hold our lives like water cupped in our hands
that ever so slowly leaks through our fingers.
Our days slip past us,
each one marked by some degree of loss.
We experience this most sharply
when we lose to death someone we love.
We experience it perhaps less sharply, but no less really,
as we drift away from friends over time,
or lose the enthusiasm we once felt
for our work
or for a cause we cared about,
or even for our faith.

Of course, there are gains in life as well as losses,
but we experience a kind of loss even in life’s gains.
As I prayed about the coming death of my mother
I recalled my last conversation with her,
in which she spoke of when I was a toddler
and she would come into my room every morning
and I would be standing in my crib,
so excited to see her.
While I have no doubt that she loved the man I became,
it was also clear that she missed that little toddler
and his unambiguous love and enthusiasm.
I thought too about my own children
and their transition from childhood to young adulthood,
and how even in the process of becoming
the increasingly accomplished, interesting,
complex people that they are
there is the loss of innocent childlike wonder and simplicity.
Even the great gains of life are not unmarked by loss.
The advent of the child who walks on her own
marks the end of the child whom you carried in your arms.
The emergence of the child who can read for himself
marks the end of the child to whom you read
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
over and over and over and over.
As tired as our arms may grow,
and as tedious as the adventures of that caterpillar may be,
we still miss the feel of that child against our chest,
the time spent together
discovering the wonder of language and image.
We want to hold on to those moments of grace,
but they pass away and even memory fades.

Is this simply the fate of us human beings,
who live within the unceasing stream of time?
Will the water of life inevitably trickle through our fingers?
Does every tick of the clock
mark the winding down of life?
Is it the case, as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins put it,
that “all is in an enormous dark/Drowned,”
that “vastness blurs and time beats level”?
Or can we find, in the midst of the ceaseless flow of time,
a still point, a place of eternity
in which every moment that flies past us
is held safe and kept close,
a point that gathers in all that time takes from us,
a point in which we can find that lost loved one,
that friendship that faded out over the years,
that childlike innocence that was exchanged for adulthood?

On this Easter morning, St. Paul exhorts us,
“Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.”
In the midst of this life that at every moment
is being pulled by time from our grasp,
Paul tells us to open our hands,
to let go of the things we love in this life.
But he tells us this not because this life is unimportant,
not because the things we love are not worthy of our love,
but because the only way we can keep them
is by releasing them
into the eternity of love that is God,
the eternity of love that explodes into our world
in the resurrection of Jesus.
This is what Easter hope is all about.
The empty tomb of Christ is the doorway
into the still point of eternity
in which all time is gathered and redeemed.
It is the doorway that we enter
through faith and baptism,
the faith that is expressed in the baptismal promises
that we will renew in a few moments.
And passing through that doorway, St. Paul tells us,
we have died—
died to the merciless passage of time—
and our life is now hidden with Christ in God,
hidden in the risen one
who holds within himself all that we love.

What I found in the seemingly uneventful life
of prayer and work of the Trappist monks
was not a tedious cycle of pointless repetition
but the presence within time of eternity,
an eternity of returning again and again to the beginning,
to find that everything I thought time had taken
is being kept for me in the risen Jesus.
And it can be like this for all of us,
as we gather week by week
in the repetitive rhythm of the liturgy,
we return to our beginning,
we receive Jesus,
the eternal one,
into ourselves,
and find again in him
all that is true,
all that is good,
all that is beautiful.
We creatures of time,
who seem made for death,
whose best achievements
are shadowed by loss,
are given the gift of sharing in God’s eternity
through Jesus Christ, who came to share our life
in the turbulent torrent of time,
so that we might share his life
in the still point of God’s eternity.
To quote again the poet Hopkins:
“In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
           Is immortal diamond.”

Easter Sunday

Readings: Acts 10:34a, 37-43; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-18

“Seeing is believing.”

It is a phrase by which we express credulity:

“I didn’t think that Tide could get out stubborn stains,

but I saw an advertisement on TV that convinced me.”

It is also a phrase by which we express incredulity:

“Well, Congress may have passed healthcare reform,

but I’ll believe that it works when my insurance premiums go down.”

“Aunt Martha claims that UFOs land in Druid Hill Park every July 4th,

but I’ve never see it for myself.”

“You say that you are going to change,

but talk to me when you’ve been six-months sober.”

“Seeing is believing.”

We also sometimes apply this principle

when it comes to religious faith.

Students in my classes at Loyola

will often venture the opinion

that faith was easier for people in the time of Jesus

because God worked a lot more miracles back then,

and that if they could have seen a miracle –

Jesus healing someone

or walking on the water

or feeding the multitude –

then they could believe because, after all,

seeing is believing.

But the Gospels repeatedly make the point that,

at least when it comes to Jesus,

seeing is not believing,

at least not necessarily.

Again and again in the Gospels, Jesus will work a miracle –

sometimes a quite spectacular miracle –

and some of those who see it believe,

but many of those who see it do not.

Indeed, in our journey through Holy Week

we have heard how the disciples,

those who had been with Jesus since Galilee

and who had seen his mighty works,

all abandon him in the end,

because though they had seen,

they had not believed.

Even in the face of the mightiest work of all,

Jesus’ resurrection,

seeing is not always believing.

John’s account of the resurrection tells us

that at the empty tomb

the beloved disciple “saw and believed,”

but this was not the case for everyone there in that garden.

Mary Magdalen, who finds the stone rolled away from the tomb

and who summons Peter and the beloved disciple,

tells them “They have taken the Lord from the tomb

and we don’t know where they put him.”

She doesn’t specify who “they” are,

but presumably she thinks that someone has stolen Jesus’ body.

For Mary Magdalene, seeing the empty tomb is not believing.

Once the disciples return home, Mary stays at the tomb, weeping.

She peers into the tomb and sees two angels in white

who ask her why she weeps,

and the responds again that “they” have taken her Lord away.

For Mary Magdalene, seeing the angels is not believing.

Then she turns and sees Jesus,

but she thinks that he must be the gardener

and she asks him if perhaps he is the one

who has taken away Jesus’ body.

For Mary Magdalene, seeing the risen Jesus himself is not believing.

 

She must have turned away from him in disappointment,

because John tells us that when he speaks her name

she turns back to him.

She turns back because now, suddenly, she recognizes him,

and she says to him “rabbouni” – “my teacher.”

There is nothing there to see that was not there before,

but now Mary believes.

She believes because the risen Jesus calls her by name.

Gregory the Great wrote that it is as if Jesus were saying to her,

“Recognize him who recognizes you” (Homily 25).

Mary believes not because of what she sees

but because she stands before the one

who knows her to the very depths of her heart

and who reveals himself to her there.

The resurrection is surely something that happens to Jesus:

the one who was killed on Good Friday

is the one who lives on Easter morning;

his tomb is empty and his body is raised.

But it is also something that happens to his followers.

The resurrection involves not simply a change in Jesus,

but a change in those who, like Mary Magdalene,

will become witnesses to his resurrection.

Paul tells us in the letter to the Colossians

that we have died with Christ,

so that our life is hidden with Christ in God,

and that we have been raised with Christ,

so that we ought to seek that which is above.

Seeing is only believing if the one who sees is transformed.

Were we to stand at the empty tomb,

were we to see angels

and the risen Christ himself,

we would not, could not, believe

until the risen one calls us by our name,

summoning our belief

in the good news of the resurrection.

Jesus is truly risen,

but to know this we must be risen with him;

along with him we too must rise from death:

the death of sin and sorrow,

the death of doubt and disappointment.

To truly recognize the resurrected Lord

we must experience

not simply his rising from death,

but also our own.

Otherwise, the story of the resurrection

is just another tale

about something that supposedly happened

a long time ago

in a land far, far away.

During Lent we have focused on a phrase

from the letter to the Ephesians:

“Let the eyes of your heart be enlightened.”

We have prayed in this season of Lent

that God would help us to see

with the eyes of the heart,

that our vision might be transformed.

And now as Lent blossoms forth into Easter

we continue that prayer.

We don’t simply want to see,

but we want to see with the eyes of faith,

the eyes with which Mary Magdalene

was able to see the risen Jesus.

We want the faith that will allow us

to recognize him who recognizes us,

to know him as a living presence

in this community of faith:

in the words of scripture,

in the sacraments,

and in one another.

We want the faith that enlightens the eyes of our hearts.

Because seeing is not believing;

rather, it is believing that allows us to see.