Homily: The Joy of Being Wrong

Year B / Eastertide / Third Sunday 

Readings: Acts 3.13-15, 17-19 / Psalm 4.2, 4, 7-8, 9 (R/v 7a) / 1 John 2.1-5a / Luke 24.35-48

He waited expectantly for the promised Thomas the Train set. When Mommy and Daddy handed down his elder brother's train, he cried out “No, don’t want; old!”

She placed the earrings, a family heirloom, into her daughter-in-law’s hands. “They’re not even 24 carat gold,” the wife complained to her husband. 

They moved into their renovated offices: the paint was fresh, the fittings new but some furniture was as before. “Still broken,” they grumbled.

No to the old. Out with the dull. Reject the broken.

Isn’t this how you and I sometimes look at things in our lives? Don’t we prefer the new, the bright and the expensive? Who amongst us happily accepts and gives thanks for what we don’t like?

And doesn’t this disdain, this ingratitude for what we don’t like and don’t want extend to how we sometimes treat the poor, the criminal, the other, be she a prostitute, or he a homosexual, or they those maids, those hawker centre cleaners, those foreign workers, in our midst? 

If you are like me, we have to admit that we would much prefer the good, better, best in our lives; after all, there is really nothing in anything else. So, let’s push them out of sight, out of mind. 

But isn’t it ironic that the one we, as a people of faith, most long for, the risen Jesus, comes to us wounded, broken, scarred? 

This is how Jesus comes to his friends in today’s gospel story; he stands in their midst, his wounds visible, and greets them. “Peace.” I’m sure the disciples did not expect "peace" to be the risen Jesus’ first word to them. They had failed him, and they probably expected to hear words of regret, recrimination, and reproach. But “Peace” is all Jesus said. In this moment of astounding simplicity, Jesus simply offers the gift of silent acceptance and unconditional love.* Peace, no matter how much his disciples had failed him. And peace, no matter how grave and how often we sin.

“Peace” helps us understand why Jesus asked them, “Why are you troubled?” Troubled because they wanted to make sense of Jesus risen and alive. But troubled much more, I think, because Jesus continues to love. “How can Jesus still love, after we have failed him?” they could have asked themselves. We too should be troubled by Jesus’ continuing presence in our lives, moment by moment, in every choice we make for good or for bad, loving always us into salvation.  

How does Jesus prove his enduring, saving love for us all? “Touch me and see,” he says. 

The wounds in his hands and on his feet – holes his disciples would have seen and felt – speak of God’s forgiving love. With his wounded, broken and scarred body, Jesus revealed the love of God to his disciples once, and again to us tonight. This love led him to the Cross but it also disfigured him with wounds, signs of God’s saving love. In the resurrection, Jesus’ risen body continues to be scarred by his wounds; and now, they must remind us that God’s love saves by giving us new life.

I’d like to suggest that we can only know this reality of God’s saving love in Jesus by seeing and touching his body, and so, enter into the mystery of resurrection life. Jesus patiently led the disciples in today’s gospel story to experience and believe in his resurrection. He came to them where they were. He invited them to touch his body; it may have been wounded, broken and scarred by human evil but it was raised into life by the love of God. And by eating a “piece of baked fish,” he testified that he had indeed risen. 

Doesn’t Jesus also patiently bring us into his resurrection life? Doesn’t he come to us where we are, touch us with his forgiveness, and invite us to come to his table, feeding us with his risen Body, wounded, broken and scarred as it is?

In a few minutes, we will hold his body in our hands, before nourishing our lives with his body in Communion. Isn’t this the most concrete way Jesus continues to prove his saving love for you and me no matter how pure or sinful we are as we come to him? “Touch; see; eat.” And we do so because we believe in Jesus risen and alive. “Amen” is the right and holy response we can make as God’s creation to the resurrection life we partake of in Jesus, most palpably at every Mass. Yes, “Amen,” “so be it that you, my Lord and my God, have risen, and we, your friends, are alive.” 

Our gospel story extends this Easter invitation to us: to let the risen Jesus come alive in us and for us amidst what we don’t like and what we don’t want. 

Can we let the risen Jesus reveal himself in the old we don’t want, the dull we would rather shun, and the broken we dislike and prefer throwing out? Do we dare step back and allow Jesus to come alive in our encounters with those we have judged wounded because they have sinned, those we have branded broken by their lifestyle choices, and those we have scarred in our hatred and rejection? 

Perhaps, if we dare to let Jesus reveal himself in our lives and in our encounters with others, we might discover the gracious mercy of God labouring in them all. That divine mercy that never condemns what human evil disfigures but bends low, embraces it up, like a mother for her child, and transfigures it in divine love. This is the glory of God’s saving love that Jesus reveals in his wounded, broken, scarred but risen body. 

I’d like to believe that when we can let Jesus come alive in us, we will experience the immense goodness of God’s merciful love in us and for us – we who are also wounded, broken and scarred yet profoundly loved, mercifully forgiven again and again, and truly saved already. 

Then, we will really know the depth of Easter as God wishes us to have, to know and to believe in. And it is this: the joy of being wrong.** 

Wrong to see that God’s saving love is restricted to the good, the wholesome, the clean of heart: because God is also there in the bad, the broken, those whose hearts are stained by sin  to redeem them like God has redeemed us.

Wrong to insist that God’s saving love depends on how many boxes I tick “yes” as an obedient Christian: because God is also there for those who don’t always follow the Church’s rules and regulations but whose faith still trusts in God, like we do too.

Wrong to think that God’s saving love is mine alone in Jesus: because God is always there in Jesus for all people of goodwill, even if they are of another faith.

Yes, Easter life is to have the grace to look back on our sinfulness of not liking and not wanting what we have or what we are given, and to appreciate how God is already there waiting to redeem us for life. This then is the Easter joy of being wrong about ourselves, about who God is and who we are to God in Jesus. 

The disciples discovered this truth in the risen Jesus’ first word that consoled, uplifted, loved: “Peace.”  They then went forth and proclaimed this good news.

Will you and I let Jesus speak his peace to us, and show us the Easter joy of being wrong this evening, so that he can then send us forth to say to another, and another and to all,  "peace be with you"?

* The Monks, Spencer Abbey
** James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin Through Easter Eyes.

Preach at St Ignatius Church, Singapore

Photo: www.timesofmalta.com