bukas palad: April 2013

Year C / 3rd Sunday of Easter

Readings: Acts 5,27-32, 40b-41/Ps 30 (R/v 2a) / Revelation 5.11-14/ John 21.1-19

Before and after videos.
We have all seen them, or at least heard of them.

Of the video of the acne-ridden teenager whose face scrubs
give her a flawless Beyonce-like skin.
Or, of television’s Kitchen Crashers,
with its makeovers of bad kitchens
into beautiful and functional spaces.
Or, of videos to trim down, muscle up and sweat it out
to look good for your big moment,
like a wedding, a graduation,
or, for me, an ordination.

Before and after;
the old and the new;
the transformation of what was to what can be.

Let me invite you to contemplate
this theme of before and after,
which our readings offer us as a lens
to understand Peter,
but more so, the grace of Easter faith.

This morning we see two faces of Peter, two phases in his life.
In our first reading, we see the “after”
while in our gospel reading we hear the story of “before”.

First, we see him and the apostles
proclaiming Christ Crucified and Risen,
which the Sanhedrin reprimands them for.
Instead of being downcast, they rejoice,
thankful to suffer for the sake of Christ.
And they courageously continue preaching Christ.

This is the “after” picture of Peter:
he is filled with the Holy Spirit,
brave in proclaiming Christ,
and living out his Christian hope for others.

Like most videos showing the “after”,
this is a happy, inspiring picture
of Peter the betrayer transformed.

But this picture of Peter
is only possible because of the story before.

In our gospel story, we hear of how Peter and the apostles
revert to their old ways after the Resurrection:
they go fishing, fishing in the dark again.
And they fish nothing.

But the Risen Jesus
comes to them and reveals himself in two ways.

First, by providing for them,
repeating what he told them once,
"lower your net to the right side of the boat,"
and, second, by feeding them with bread and fish,
as he once did by multiplying five loaves and two fish.

In this moment
the disciple Jesus loved tells Peter,
"It is the Lord."

And in this moment
when Peter recognizes, meets and interacts with the Lord,
this moment of reckoning,
we see the miracle
in today’s “before" and "after” picture of Peter.

We find it in Peter’s response
to what this reckoning more truly is;
Jesus beckoning Peter, in loving forgiveness,
to look forward to the future
and not to stay in the past,
weighed down by his betrayal.

Peter’s response,
his confession of love three times,
opens up the smallness of his heart
into an even more expansive love for Jesus,
This is the miracle.

Like the morning light
that dispels the darkness,
which is the setting for this scene,
Peter’s confession of love
opens him up to the Risen Jesus
who leads him to no other place but God.

This is what Easter hope is about.

And so it is must be for us
who have encountered the Risen Jesus
on Easter morning.

No matter much how much or how little,
no matter how saintly or how scarred by sin it is,
what else is our gratitude
on Easter morning and in these two weeks of Easter
but really our love for the Risen Jesus
who saves us for God.

Indeed, no matter how limited or how generous
our love may have been before,
as it is now,
this gratitude, this love
did swelled up in each of us then,
as it has swelled up in us this morning
bringing us here.

And this love, dare I say,
still fills us up
as grace that keeps expanding our hearts
and empowering us to love not only God better
but another and another and another,
again and again and again.

This kind of loving saves others
and saves us into fullness of life with God.

There is no finger-pointing in this miracle
except towards the future,
towards the hope-filled call
to love God and to live for others.
This is the call Jesus
made to Peter then,
as he makes to us today,
when he says, “Follow me.”

As we look back
on our own Eastertide thus far,
is not the “before” story of Jesus beckoning Peter
into resurrected faith,
also the “before” story of who we are today,
we who come here to give thanks,
come here to feast on him who is our daily bread,
come here to let God bless us,
break us and give of ourselves to one another?

Like Peter, hasn’t our “before” story in these past weeks
been one of the Risen Jesus coming to us
through family and friends, even strangers
-- to watch out for you in your recent struggles?
-- to provide for others in their poverty?
-- even, surprisingly to still feed us who struggle to live better lives?

If our answers to these questions
are ‘yeses’ or ‘maybes’
or ‘I hope so’, or even, ‘I’m not sure but I’d like to think so’,
then the miracle of the opening of Peter’s heart
to greater love for Jesus
is also our miracle, our Easter gift
in the here and now.

But we must not hoard
or squirrel away or possess
this miracle selfishly.

Peter’s expansive love for the Risen Jesus,
expressed with holy and daring boldness
in lavishing it upon others so that they can live fully,
is really how we too can give
voice to our Easter joy
and a face to our Easter truth,
that Christ is risen and we are indeed saved and made new.

Then, others seeing
our Easter faces and hearing our Easter voices
will perhaps say of us, “see how they are not as before;
see how after the Resurrection, they are truly human, truly alive!”

Preached at Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta Parish, Dorchester, Boston
photo:dawn at jervis bay, australia by peter white

Year C / Easter Sunday / Easter

Readings: Acts 10.34a, 37-43 / Ps 118(R/v 24) / Corinthians 5.6b-8 / John 10.1-9

It is the first day of the week, just before dawn;
the darkness is lifting; light is peeking out on the horizon:
something new is about to happen.

This is how John begins
his gospel passage about Jesus’ resurrection.
He invites us to contemplate on it
as something different, something good,
something about the newness of Easter in our lives.

The newness of Easter
is also the theme in our first and second readings.
In our passage from the Acts of the Apostles,
we learn about the disciples’ new experience
of eating and drinking with the Risen Jesus.
In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians,
we hear him calling them
to celebrate Jesus’ death and resurrection
with new dough, new unleaven bread.

How are we to experience this Easter newness?
To see it and to relish it?

I’d like to suggest that we can find our answers in today’s gospel,
which does not recount or explain Jesus’ resurrection.
but only describes how the disciples responded
to their discovery of the empty tomb.

Mary Magdala discovers the stone removed from the tomb.
In fear and anxiety, she reports this to Peter and the beloved disciple.
They run to the tomb, arriving at different times,
and entering, one after the other, they find it empty.

Their experience is what we are called to
also experience this morning.
With them, we gaze into the empty tomb,
into a place of nothingness but rolled up burial cloths,
indicating something had happened.
Something or someone alive was here but is no longer.
Something or someone that declares death resides here no more.

We make this movement with Mary Magdala,
Peter and the beloved disciple to this space
where death is not and the possibility of new life is.
This movement cannot be anything less
than an experience of entering a new dawn.

Having seen some evidence, just enough, really,
what really dawns on the disciples
is the memory of Jesus speaking about his own resurrection,
and so they believe what they see.
More importantly, they do not try to figure out
what happened with explanations or reasons
but they begin to live what they believe.

Believing what one sees
and beginning to live what one believes.

This is how we are to live as Easter people:
not with heady knowledge about what the resurrection is,
nor with conservative or progressives theologies that explain it,
but from the depths of our experience
of meeting and believing in the Risen Jesus.

I’d like to think that this is
how Pope Francis is living out
his Christian life and ministry for us and the world.

By celebrating the Mass of the Lord’s Passion
in a juvenile detention centre,
and washing the feet of the young inmates there,
including those of women and Muslims,
Francis helps us appreciate
what resurrection faith is,
this faith we are gifted with at Easter.

This kind of faith is rooted in, even as it springs from,
an encounter with the Risen Jesus.
This is a faith that helps us to live in a new way:
in Christ-like ways of going out
to those on those on the margins of our society,
the least, the less and the forgotten among us.

Francis' words and deeds manifest this kind of faith.
As much as they challenge us all
to be a more authentic Easter people,
they forced us to acknowledge that such faith
cannot have any other source, any other inspiration
than the Risen Jesus.
And I believe this is the wellspring
for a profoundly intimate relationship with Jesus.

Resurrection faith
also corrects how we see and do things.
It empowers us with a holy boldness
to see as Jesus sees,
to act as Jesus acts,
to love as Jesus loves,
and not to see, act and love in our self-centeredness.

This holy boldness is the Spirit of the Risen Jesus
at work in our lives.
It imbues us, as it does Francis,
with the courage to truly follow Jesus in all things,
not man-made traditions, rules and laws.

But, most importantly, resurrection faith
brings hope to another.
Listen to what a young prisoner in California
wrote to Francis upon hearing
that he had washed the feet
of the young prison inmates in Rome:
"Dear Pope Francis,
Thank you for washing the feet of youth like us in Italy.
We also are young and made mistakes.
Society has given up on us, thank you
that you have not given up on us."

Like Francis, we too can make the good news of the Risen Jesus
come alive in our lives and also in the lives of others
-- by sharing what we have received
with another in need,
-- by forgiving those who cannot say sorry
because they are unable to,
-- by standing with those
society bullies, discriminates and demonizes,
-- by building up each and everyone in church and in the world
through acts of loving one another without self-serving needs.

When we act in these life-giving ways for another,
we make visible the invisible body of the Risen Jesus
to one another and for each other.
Jesus Christ is not absent:
he is here in our midst, still with us and always for us.
We make up his risen body.

This then is how we can savour
…really, really savour...
this joyful truth
of what we are celebrating so joyfully today
and which our Eastertide will continue to proclaim:
Christ was dead but he is now alive;
and we've been saved to live with God!
Alleluia!

Preached this Easter Sunday at Blessed Mother Teresa Parish, Dorchester, Boston.
photo: wallpaperstock.com

bukas palad

with open hands, we give what we have first received. and with open hands, we receive what we will divest, once again. this is blessing itself: the giving and receiving of life and love, the sharing of faith and God.

Homily: An Expansive Heart

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Homily: the Newness of Easter

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