Easter 4

Readings: Acts 4:8-12; 1 John 3:1-2; John 10:11-18

Today’s readings unequivocally proclaim
that our salvation comes through Jesus Christ
and through him alone.
Jesus says in today’s Gospel, 
“I am the good shepherd,
and I know mine and mine know me,
just as the Father knows me and I know the Father;
and I will lay down my life for the sheep.”
To drive home the message as starkly as possible,
Peter declares in the book of Acts:
“There is no salvation through anyone else,
nor is there any other name under heaven
given to the human race by which we are to be saved.”

These words, 
so absolute and imperious in their claim,
might sit uneasily with us.
Perhaps they sit uneasily with us
because of what they seem to say about other people,
because they seem to restrict salvation to those
who are visible members of Christ’s flock, the Church.
But the Church herself 
does not understand these words in that way.
The Second Vatican Council teaches that 
God can lead people outside the Church to saving faith 
“through ways that are known to himself” (Ad gentes 7)—
ways that are not known to us.
As Jesus says in our Gospel, 
“I have other sheep 
that do not belong to this fold.
These also I must lead, 
and they will hear my voice.”
 
I think it is actually more likely
that these words sit uneasily with us
not because of what they say about other people
but because of what they say about us.
They sit uneasily with us because they say
that no achievement of ours,
no affiliation of ours,
no ideology of ours,
no relationship of ours,
but only our relationship with Jesus Christ
that can rescue our lives 
from ultimate meaninglessness.
Salvation means knowing Jesus 
and being known by him.
Salvation means the love of his Father 
making us children of God.
Salvation means being built into 
a living temple of the Spirit,
of which Jesus Christ is the cornerstone.
Salvation is not a prize 
for having a correct opinion about God;
it is a transformation wrought by the Holy Spirit 
in the depths of our being.
Salvation is not a reward 
given to us for being good, moral people;
it is a free gift from God 
given to us through the goodness of Jesus,
which makes trivial all our claims to goodness.
Salvation is not our souls someday going 
to live in heaven after we die;
it is Christ living in our souls right now, 
at this very moment,
transforming us into God’s children.
 
The reason why 
“there is no salvation through anyone else”
is not because God has arbitrarily decided 
to restrict salvation to those 
who have a relationship with Jesus Christ,
but because salvation simply is 
being in relationship with Jesus Christ.
The name of Jesus is inextricably woven 
into the meaning of salvation
as Christians understand that term.

But all of this 
makes us profoundly uncomfortable.
Yes, sure, Jesus is important,
but other things are important too.
I may be a Christian, but I am other things as well.
I have my achievements and my affiliations,
my loves and my loyalties.
Certainly the prudent thing, 
when it comes to the ultimate meaning of our existence,
is not to put all our eggs in one basket 
but to seek balance in our lives.
But what could possibly balance out the love of God 
that has been poured into our hearts through Christ?
Who or what could compete in importance
with the one who has the power 
both to lay down his life, 
and to take it up again—
and in taking it up again
to take my life with it
into the mystery of God’s life,
making me a child of God.
What could possibly be placed on the scale
that would balance the eternal weight of glory?
Before this, all prudent calculations must fall away.
 
And along with them must fall away as well 
my achievements and my affiliations,
my loves and my loyalties
that I seek to balance against my relationship with Jesus.
And this is so that Christ’s desire might be fulfilled:
that “there will be one flock, one shepherd.”
For our achievements and affiliations
and loves and loyalties,
when we invest them with a weight that could rival
the eternal weight of glory,
turn into the identities and ideologies
that divide the human race 
that Christ has come to gather together.
Whether it is conflict
over politics or nationality
or race or gender
or economic justice 
or the sanctity of life,
we only can begin to understand 
these differences and divisions
when we see in the faces 
on the opposite side of the divide
those who, like us, are called 
into relationship with Jesus,
when we see them as those 
for whom Christ the good shepherd 
has laid down his life,
no less than he has for us.

For in the end, 
we are not saved by identities or ideologies
but by a person who has loved us: Jesus Christ.
“There is no salvation through anyone else,
nor is there any other name under heaven
given to the human race by which we are to be saved.”
May Christ our shepherd gather us all into his one flock,
and may God have mercy on us all. 

Easter 2

Readings: Acts 4:32-35; 1 John 5:1-6; John 20:19-31

The risen Jesus seems to show a marked preference
for sinners and skeptics.
At least, as we see in today’s Gospel reading, 
it is to such as these that he in his mercy
entrusts the tasks of forgiveness and faith.

First, the sinners.
It is perhaps understandable that the fickle crowd
who had hailed Jesus upon his arrival in Jerusalem
would quickly turn against him and called for his crucifixion.
The disciples of Jesus, however, had been with him for a long time:
they had heard his teachings and seen his miracles;
they had made the journey with him from Galilee to Jerusalem;
he had called each by name 
and given them the joyful task of witnessing to God’s rein.
But by abandoning him in his moment of greatest need,
they committed the sin for which the poet Dante 
reserved the deepest circle of Hell: 
they had betrayed their benefactor.
And in the aftermath of their betrayal 
they now cower in hiding, behind locked doors,
And yet it is to these cowardly sinners that Jesus 
comes and speaks the words “Peace be with you”
and to whom he entrusts
the power of the judgment and forgiveness of sins:
“Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained.”

Then, the skeptic.
Thomas the doubter
was perhaps by nature one of those people
who suspects that if something seems
too good to be true
then it probably is false.
 He was one who would not believe the testimony 
of even his closest companions,
who would not believe unless he was given 
concrete—literally tangible—proof.
And yet it is to this skeptical doubter
that Christ appears and bids him to believe
and gives to him the grace to utter 
the New Testament’s boldest confession 
of faith in Jesus Christ,
the words that state most plainly 
the mystery present in the person of Jesus:
“My Lord and my God!”

Sinners and skeptics.
They may seem like odd choices
to become vessels of forgiveness and faith.
But in the upside-down world 
inaugurated by Christ’s resurrection
this is precisely what they become.
And it is in fact only fitting once we grasp 
the revolutionary mercy of God
revealed in Jesus’ resurrection.

Who better than this frightened band of betrayers
to be entrusted with the ministry of reconciliation?
Who but a sinner knows how deeply we suffer from sin,
and how desperately we need forgiveness?
Who but one who knows from within
the evasions and self-deceptions we employ
to excuse our sins
would know how to apply, 
with both mercy and rigor,
the just judgment of God upon the sinner?
Who but one who has committed the worst betrayal,
and yet still hears from Jesus the words “Peace be with you,”
would know how deep into the hell of sin God’s mercy can reach?

And who better than Thomas the skeptic
to be entrusted with the confession 
“my Lord and my God”?
Who but one whose restless mind 
will not rest content with simple answers
could receive the grace to press beyond 
the joyful moment of encounter with the risen Jesus 
to see what is unseeable,
and to speak something as mysterious and hidden
as the presence of the invisible God 
in the human flesh of Jesus?
Who but one who has doubted 
knows the time it can take to come to faith,
so as to bear with patience the doubts of others?
Who but one who in their doubt keeps seeking Jesus
can know that even amidst our doubts
the seeds of faith planted by grace can still live?

We hear in the First Letter of John,
“the victory that conquers the world is our faith.”
This statement might sound to our ears
like a triumphalist affirmation
that faith allows us to trample underfoot
the enemies of God, 
that faith is a weapon in the arsenal
of those who are strong and destined for success.
It is a phrase that might bring to our mind’s eye 
images Christians striding confidently 
through the halls of power
and passing judgement upon all 
who succumb to sin and skepticism.
 
But what if faith’s conquest of the world
looks not like the successful
going from strength to strength,
but like the sinful and the skeptical
grasped by the crucified and risen God?
What if it looks not like those 
who wield God’s word as a weapon,
but like people being reborn 
through the blood and water pouring forth 
from the pierced side of the crucified Christ?
What if it is mercy’s conquest won through suffering?
What if it is Easter?

According to the logic of Easter 

it makes sense
that the victory of forgiveness and faith
would be made manifest 
in the sinful and the skeptical.
And this is the great hope Easter offers us.
For all of us are, let’s be honest,
sinful and skeptical—at least some of the time.
All of us know ourselves to have abandoned Christ—
at least some of the time.
All of us know ourselves to have doubted Christ—
at least some of the time.
So Easter is for us.
Easter is the great feast of God’s mercy,
the great feast of forgiveness and faith,
spread before us sinners and skeptics.
Easter is the invitation, 
“come and eat, for all is prepared.”
And blessed are we who are called 
to the supper of the Lamb. 

Easter Octave: Wednesday

Readings: Acts 3:1-10; Luke 24:13-35

When Peter heals the man crippled from birth,
St. Luke tells us, “He leaped up, stood, 
and walked around,
and went into the temple with them,
walking and jumping and praising God.”
I think he is doing more than simply
giving his newly-healed legs a test-drive, 
taking them for a spin,
to see what they could do.
I think that his heart is so full of joy at being healed
that he simply cannot contain himself,
so he stands and walks and leaps and jumps.
He leaps in praise of God;
he jumps in joy for having received
a gift more precious that silver or gold,
for in a very real sense he has been given a new life.
And those who see him 
are “filled with amazement and astonishment
at what had happened to him.”

What about those two disciples fleeing Jerusalem,
who encountered a stranger on the road,
only to discover, as he broke bread for them,
that it was in fact the risen Jesus?
We are told that they “set out at once
and returned to Jerusalem.”
Do you think they walked at a leisurely pace?
Isn’t it more likely that they ran?
Isn’t it even possible 
that they leaped and jumped as they ran,
so filled were they with joy
that the one who was dead now lived,
that the one whom they had abandoned 
had not abandoned them,
that the hungers of their burning hearts
could continue to be fed by fellowship with Jesus?
And those who saw them returning to Jerusalem,
where their master had just been killed,
from which they had just fled,
were they too 
“filled with amazement and astonishment”
at what had happened to them?

And what of us?

We may think of ourselves as dignified people
who are not prone to leaping and jumping
and other forms of enthusiastic religion.
We’re Catholics, after all,
with our orderly liturgy 
and our relatively restrained demeanor.
But perhaps as we encounter Christ 
in broken bread this day,
just as the disciples did in the village of Emmaus,
we should at least let our hearts leap and jump
at the good news that Jesus lives,
that he is with us to heal us and feed us
and to give us new lives.
Let us pray that, having received today the risen Christ,
we should go out into our daily lives transformed,
to live in such a way that those whom we meet
will, like those who saw the man healed by Peter,
be filled with amazement and astonishment
at what has happened to us.
And may God have mercy on us all.