Homily:
Easter (Mass during the Day) – Cycle B
Praised
be Jesus Christ! [Now and forever!] My dear friends, all of us, I’m sure, know
that death is a human condition that no human being holds the power to
reverse. Funerals have a way of
demonstrating this for us. After praying
in the church for our deceased loved one, we take his/her body to a grave in
which it is placed and we do not see that person again. The memories of that person live, of course,
and we sometimes get glimpses of that person in children and grandchildren, but
never again do we see the person him/herself in the flesh. In fact, no one in history has ever been
known to be dead, yet who has later been seen to be alive (that is, by a power
that isn’t beyond all human power). This
is a fact of life.
Another
truth of our humanity is that every loss that we experience is a death. Loss of a job, a home, a friendship, a pet, changing
schools, moving from one place to another… these are all experiences of loss
and each of them is like experiencing a death: because each of them, once they
are gone, will never be seen again in the same way. In this last year, we have lost many
things. Some of you lost loved ones to
the virus itself (and, perhaps, even lost the ability to say ‘goodbye’ at a
funeral). You’ve lost important
celebrations: birthdays, graduations, anniversaries, proms… You’ve lost a beloved pastor and have been
asked to embrace a new one. We all, in
varying degrees, acknowledge and accept that losses come and that we have to deal
with them, even though we wish that they didn't happen. In this past year, however, is seems that we
have been in a constant state of mourning for what we have lost (and for what
we are still losing).
Perhaps,
therefore, on this Easter morning, we are better prepared to allow the utter
strangeness and power of the resurrection to touch us. Yes, it's Spring and we're happy that we can
wear brightly colored clothes and celebrate the budding of plants and trees,
and perhaps forget about death and loss for a while. But we shouldn’t allow this to gloss over the
fact that the resurrection of Jesus is something radically strange and powerful.
For
example, what if instead of saying "happy Easter" to you today, I'd
say: "Your husband/wife who has died, is alive and I have seen
him/her" or "Your mother/father, grandmother/grandfather,
sister/brother, best friend who has died, is alive and I have seen
him/her"? Think about this for a
moment. If tears are welling up in your
eyes and an anxiety is starting to churn in your stomach, then you're starting
to feel the utter strangeness and power of the resurrection. These, I imagine, are the same things that
the women felt when they went to Jesus’ tomb that day.
These
three women were going to the grave of Jesus to anoint his body for burial,
which is an act of real love. You’ll
recall that these same three women stood by Jesus at his crucifixion. Now they go to accompany him in his burial. (Meanwhile, Jesus’ apostles—all men—are still
nowhere to be found.)
Their
plan for the anointing is not an organized plan, which we know because along
the way they question how they will open the grave, which was closed by a heavy
stone. Nonetheless, they go. Then, things get interesting. Upon arriving, they discover the stone closing
the tomb already removed. The entered
the tomb and saw, not Jesus’ dead body, but a young man, clothed in a white
robe and very much alive—a young man who clearly wasn't Jesus—and they are
stunned, shocked... amazed. The young man tells them, "do not be
amazed" because Jesus, for whom you look, is risen. Do not be amazed? How could they not be amazed? Then, the young man tells the women to go and tell
Jesus’ disciples (particularly Peter) that Jesus has gone back to Galilee and
that they are to meet him there.
In
this reading, we are not told what happens next, but if we look at the next
verse in gospel it says this, "Then they went out and fled from the tomb,
seized with trembling and bewilderment.
They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." Can we recognize that these great women saints
were at first so afraid at the idea of the resurrection that they refused to
tell anyone? In other words, they were
so utterly overcome by fear of the power that had been declared to them—that
Jesus, whom they had seen die and whose burial they watched, was now alive
again—that at first they couldn’t bring themselves to tell anyone. My friends, if the idea of the resurrection
doesn’t utterly amaze us like this, then I’m not sure if we truly understand
it.
Therefore,
my friends, today is the day that we must let the strange and powerful truth of
the resurrection to touch us again. This
truth should cause us fear and trembling at the power of God, who has the power
beyond our human power to restore life that has been lost. It also should turn us to adore and praise
God and to rejoice that this gift of resurrection is promised to us who have
died and rose with him in baptism. Then,
as we are absorbed by this incomprehensible truth, we begin to recognize once
again that, as witnesses of this truth, we are called to give testimony.
As
we heard in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Peter, a witness to this
truth, testifies to it in the house of the centurion Cornelius. And as we heard in the sequence before the
Gospel, Mary of Magdela also is called to testify to this truth. As witnesses of these things, my brothers and
sisters, we, too, are called to give testimony.
We
testify to this truth both directly and indirectly. Directly, when we profess Jesus Christ as
Lord and that he, being truly human and truly divine, died in his humanity and
rose in his humanity by the power of his divinity, and that he now lives
eternally. We testify indirectly when we
confront the inevitable sufferings in this world with the hope that all has
been made new in Christ and so strive, in spite of all of the obstacles that we
encounter, to form our communities to be places in which this hope permeates
everything that we do. We do this by
expelling the "old yeast" of malice and wickedness from our lives and
replace it with the "unleavened bread" of sincerity and truth. Can we imagine for a moment what our lives
would be like if everyone lived in sincerity and truth? It would be the kingdom of God! My brothers and sisters, as witnesses, it has
been given to us to declare this strange and powerful truth into the world. This year—this Easter—can we commit ourselves
to declare it?
Friends,
we have lost much this year: but all is not lost. Rather, we continue to be an Easter people
and "Alleluia" is still our song!
Therefore, let us allow the power and strangeness of the resurrection to
permeate us and to transform us into witnesses who proclaim this good news in
all that we do, so that the kingdom of God—the kingdom of sincerity and truth…
the kingdom of life after death—might manifest itself among us.
Given at St. Joan of Arc parish: Kokomo, IN – April 4th,
2021
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