Homily: Eastering

Year B / Eastertide / Easter Sunday

Readings: Acts 10.34a, 37-43/ Psalm 118.1-2, 16-17, 22-23 (R/v 24) / Colossians 3.1-4 / John 20.1-9

What if all it took was a minute of hope to free one from death-like fear? A minute of peace to soothe the unbearable pain of suffering? A minute of clarity to pierce the numbing confusion of loss? And a minute of truth to know that the uncertain wait is over, and life can go on better?

These might be some of the experiences Jesus’ disciples felt that first Easter morning. The women who went to the tomb might have experienced these: hearing the Angel proclaim Jesus’ resurrection, they took a few moments to realize this truth. Then fearful yet overjoyed, they ran to announce this good news to the apostles. Mary Magdalene might also have experienced them: she admonished the gardener for Jesus’ missing body but upon hearing him call her name, she paused. Then, sensing in his voice the timbre and cadence of her beloved, she recognized her beloved rabboni, Jesus, risen from the death, and loving her still. 

And, yes, these could have also been the experiences the beloved disciple John had as he ran with Peter to the empty tomb that we hear about this morning's gospel story: John looked in, saw Jesus’ burial shroud folded up, and, taking a deep breath, believed.

The Gospels tell us that all it took for the disciples to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead was just a minute, or two. And then, their lives changed forever.

Now, what if all it takes this Easter is just a minute, or two, for you and me -- amidst our Easter liturgies and celebrations -- to see anew what is the unimaginable? To recognize hope alive when all is despairing? To believe even as we struggle to deepen our faith? Yes, to simply look and see and to know again that Jesus is indeed risen and alive?

How can we do this? By keeping alive the truth that Jesus’ love doesn’t forget but always remembers us. Thus, when we experience the memory of Jesus coming alive in daily life, the power of his Word and the promise of his Resurrection will throb in us as the heartbeat of our lives.

“Do not forget what I have done for you,” Jesus said incessantly in the Gospels. Christian discipleship is about remembering what Jesus did for us: that he died to save us from sin and he rose from the dead so that we will live, not die.

This is why when we are overwhelmed by sorrows and sufferings, we should remember Jesus’ love. When our lives are not progressing as we hope for or we have meandered into dark corners, we must recall his love. When all we say and do to be good Christians only leads us back to the sin, we must never forget the love of Jesus.

Why? Because Jesus’ love is not just that selfless love of dying on the Cross to save us. It is also his hope-filled love in a God who will always forgive us and love us into the fullness of life. This is the kind of love Jesus calls us to also make our own. Why? Because his hope-filled love in God is the way, the truth and the life to our salvation. 

At the heart of this way of loving God is Jesus’ confident anticipation in God’s faithful goodness. Jesus loved like this in the Last Supper and to the end on the Cross. And God loving this confidence Jesus believed in lifted him from the dead into life eternal. Today, we celebrate God’s faithful, life-giving love for Jesus meeting and uplifting Jesus’ hope-filled love for God into God’s embrace. This is why Jesus asks us throughout the Gospels to go and do likewise: to not just love others selflessly in service, but to also love God confidently in hope.

In a few moments, we will gather around this altar, and remember Jesus’ love for us. Take this all of you and eat of it for this is my body. Take this all of you and drink of it for this is my blood, poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of me. Yes, we will do this in grateful memory of him whose self-giving in body and blood saved us. But we also celebrate and believe that through Jesus, with Jesus and in Jesus, risen and alive, God’s life is ours, restored and never ever to be broken.  These are God’s loving gifts of Easter joy and Easter life.

We can remember, celebrate and believe in these Easter gifts because we have already experienced that minute or two when the risen Jesus came to us, called us by name and revealed himself alive for us. 

However this happened in our everyday lives before, or today in our Easter liturgy, or in the quiet of each prayer-time, then, like John, in that minute or two, we will always see, know and believe in the goodness of the risen Jesus alive with us and for us. We can make no better response in these graced encounters, then to do what we do at Communion: “Amen,” we say with a nod, or a smile, or a heart humbled and grateful upon receiving Jesus.

Our Easter joy and Easter life are meant to be shared, not hoarded or possessed.  How can we share the risen Jesus with the world? The answer we give will determine the quality of ho we live Easter life and its joy as Christians.

Let me suggest an answer to this question: by living in the spirit of the risen Jesus generously. We know what this spirit involves: in that minute or two when the risen Jesus encounters us, we always experience nothing less than Jesus’ more excellent way of loving us. In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul describes this way as that that more faithful and selfless way of loving to the end. The risen Jesus returns to us not just to proclaim God’s power over sin and death but to also declare his love for us to the end of time. 

Today, the risen Jesus invites us to love others like he does: faithfully, selflessly, loving to the end. Then, they too will experience the dawning of Easter in their lives, as we are experiencing it now when we look out and see the Easter light breaking up the darkness of the night. For them, it will not be just a minute or two of encountering the risen Jesus. But like us, it must be the beginning of what the Jesuit poet Gerard Manly Hopkins prays is a new lifetime of “letting Jesus easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east.” (The Wreck of the Deutschland)

Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore

Photo: sunrise at ocenaside beach, victoria, australia by phil thompson (internet)