Easter 4

Readings: Acts 13:14, 43-52; Revelation 7:9, 14b-17; John 10:27-30

Today’s reading from John’s Gospel

is an echo of Jesus’ longer discourse in that Gospel

about himself as the good shepherd

who lays down his life for his sheep.

Taking up this image, Jesus says

“My sheep hear my voice;

I know them, and they follow me.”

Some scholars argue that the image Jesus is using here

reflects the custom in the ancient near east

of the members of a village

keeping their sheep in a common pen at night;

when morning comes

and it is time for the shepherd to take his sheep

out of the pen to pasture

he would call them with a distinctive cry

and they would separate themselves

from the other sheep and follow him.

A pretty neat trick, if you ask me.

I can’t even get my dog to come when I call.

In John’s Gospel Jesus uses this image

to indicate how those who are members of his flock

will recognize his call and follow him,

separating themselves from those who do not recognize his call.

It is an image shaped both the concrete situation

in which John’s Gospel was written –

a situation of conflict between the Church,

the synagogue,

and pagan culture –

as well as the perennial call of Christians

to live in a manner that distinguishes them

from the culture and values of the world around them.

Thinking about our own vocation

to hear the voice of Christ and to follow him,

we might interpret this passage as a call

to separate ourselves from a world

that seems in many ways hostile to the Christian faith,

and, in particular, to the Catholic Church.

As we watch the Church and her leaders

pilloried in the press on an almost daily basis

over the scandal of sexual abuse by the clergy

and the cover up of that abuse by Church leaders,

some have suggested that this experience is showing us

that the secular world is out to get the Church

and that now is the time to circle the wagons,

pull up the draw bridge,

batten down the hatches,

leave the common sheepfold

and follow Jesus our shepherd to some place

where we can be free from these attacks.

Let me say that I think it would be a mistake

to take such a lesson from today’s Gospel.

 

My reason for thinking it is a mistake

is not because I think that there are no people in our world

who are anxious to use the current scandals as an occasion

to settle long-standing grudges with the Catholic Church.

I think some – though probably a minority –

of the current critics of the Church fall into this category.

As the ancient proverb says,

“When you want to beat a dog, any stick will do,”

and in this case the stick is the misdeeds of Catholic clergy.

Nor do I think it is a mistake

because I think that Christians should in no sense

seek to distinguish themselves from the world around them

and its culture and values.

Rather, I think it is a mistake

because Christians should be distinguished

not by their withdrawal from the world into a sheltered enclave

but by the way in which they live in the midst of the world.

Our way of living as those who follow Christ the shepherd

should not be one in which we flee our critics

into the safe haven of self-congratulation or self-pity,

but rather should be a life

of fearless self-scrutiny and on-going conversion.

What should distinguish us from the world

is our ability to hear the truth about ourselves,

no matter who speaks it,

and to repent and reform when needed.

The Christian calling involves

hearing the voice of the shepherd

even in the voices of those who would criticize the Church,

and to follow the shepherd into the new life that is promised

to those who let the blood of the lamb wash away their sins.

In the image from the book of Revelation

of the lamb who is our shepherd,

we see that following the call of Christ

is not a fleeing of the world to a place of invulnerability

but precisely our willingness

to let ourselves be wounded as he was

so that he might heal us.

And we are able to face the truth about ourselves,

to let the truth wound us.

because we believe the promise of Christ:

“I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.

No one can take them out of my hand.”

The recognition of painful truth about ourselves

is the path to resurrection.

Some criticism is unfair and uninformed;

some is even malicious.

But the distinguishing mark of Christians –

both as individuals and as a community –

is not to flee from criticism to some imagined place of safety,

but our willingness to listen for the voice of our shepherd

even in the words of our critics.

Because our willingness to hear

uncomfortable truths about ourselves

grows from our faith

that no one can take us out of God’s hands.

If we are following the voice of the shepherd,

we have nothing to fear from the truth,

no matter who may be speaking it.

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.

Easter Vigil

Readings: Genesis 1:1-2:2; Exodus 14:15-15:1; Isaiah 54:5-15; 55:1-11; Baruch 3:9-15, 32-4:4; Ezekiel 36:16-17a, 18-28; Romans 6:3-11; Luke24:1-12

“Evening came, and morning followed. . .”

This phrase, along with the refrain “God saw how good it was,”

punctuates the story of creation

found in the opening chapter of the book of Genesis.

And throughout the history of God’s saving work,

by which God seeks to restore and perfect that creation,

we see evening and morning

punctuating the lives of God’s people.

In the book of Exodus, evening comes

as the Israelites camp at the edge of the Red Sea

with the Egyptian armies bearing down upon them,

intent upon their enslavement and destruction.

But God parts the sea for them and they pass over to safety

and as morning comes God closes the sea back,

destroying the Egyptians.

Evening came, and morning followed.

In the book of the prophet Isaiah,

after the long night of exile in Babylon,

the light of God’s love dawns upon the Israelites

as they return to their homeland,

and they are invited: “come to the water. . .

come, receive grain and eat. . . drink wine and milk.”

The night’s long fast is ended as the people of Israel

return to their promised land and its abundant fare.

Evening came, and morning followed.

The word of God comes to Ezekiel,

so that he might speak to God’s people,

to tell them that though they have defiled themselves

with deeds of darkness,

God will cleanse them,

and place within them a new heart and a new spirit,

hearts of living flesh in place of their stony hearts.

The night of God’s wrath

gives way to the light of forgiveness.

Evening came, and morning followed.

Dawn follows sunset,

morning follows evening,

down through history

until we come to that morning when,

“at daybreak on the first day of the week

the women who had come from Galilee with Jesus

took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.”

Day is breaking after what must have seemed to those women

to be one of the longest and darkest nights of their lives.

This is a morning that brings with it no joy, no hope,

but only the sorrowful but necessary task

of preparing the dead body

of the one in whom they had placed all their hopes.

For them, what lies dead in the tomb

is not simply the teacher from Nazareth

but hope itself.

Though the sun may crest the horizon,

and its light fall upon the world,

for these women it seems

that an evening has come

that no morning will follow;

they are dwelling in a darkness of despair

that the sun cannot dispel.

But evening and morning,

darkness and light,

despair and hope:

these are in the hands of God.

As the prophet Baruch reminds us,

God is the one “who dismisses the light, and it departs;

calls it, and it obeys trembling.”

On Easter morning,

at the mouth of an empty tomb,

the women learn what our Exultet proclaims,

that Jesus Christ is “the Morning Star which never sets. . .

that Morning Star, who came back from the dead,

and shed his peaceful light on all humankind.”

The women learn that Christ is risen from the tomb,

and their hope is risen with him.

Evening came, and morning followed,

and the hope that was resurrected with Christ on Easter morning

is a light that will never set.

As Paul says, “Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more;

death no longer has power over him.”

And we know that this is true

because this history of salvation is our history as well.

The death and resurrection of Christ

is one that we mystically share in baptism.

“If we have died with Christ,

we believe that we shall also live with him.”

This is the mystery into which Laura will be baptized,

the mystery of Christ’s saving death and resurrection.

This is the mystery that Dan will reaffirm

in his reception into the Church.

Of course, as all of us who are baptized know –

and as Laura no doubt suspects –

after our rebirth in Christ

evening still comes

and morning still follows.

Even for those who have died and been raised with Christ in baptism

there is the daily dying and rising,

an evening and morning,

that remains the fabric of the Christian life.

Yet in the resurrection of Christ God has given us,

like those women at the tomb at daybreak,

a rebirth of hope.

And so we live, with the alternation of

evening and morning,

woe and wellbeing,

sorrow and joy,

but always knowing that Christ’s victory over death

has changed the world forever,

so that even in the darkest night

the light is still with us,

even if we can only see it

with the eyes of faith, hope and love.

“At daybreak on the first day of the week. . .” –

on the first day,

the day on which God said “let there be light” –

God speaks again:

let the morning of light and life

follow the evening of darkness and death.

Evening has come and morning has followed,

and it is the first day once again:

the victory of light over darkness;

the victory of life over death.

Christ has risen!

Death is defeated!

Let there be light!