Year A / Eastertide / Divine Mercy Sunday
Readings: Acts 2.42-47 / Psalm 117.2-4, 13-15, 22-24 25-27a (R/v 1) /1 Peter 1.3-9 John 20.19-31
Have you ever hidden in fear because you worried about the consequences of a wrongdoing you did?
When I was a little boy, I uncapped my mom’s perfume bottle and poured out its rich golden liquid onto the cushioned stool she sat to make herself up. I turned the stool around and around, laughing gleefully. The perfumed scent wafted through the room. “Look, Mommy, look”. “Oh no!” she cried seeing my dad’s anniversary gift of expensive French perfume to her empty. She looked at me annoyed; I knew I had done wrong. So, wailing, I ran into the cleaning closet to hide. Oh, the fear.
Fear was the disciples’ experience that first Easter evening. Not the joy or elation we had last week at Easter celebrating Jesus’ resurrection. Locked in a room, they hid in confusion, despair and fear. The women had seen the empty tomb. Peter and John had entered its emptiness. Jesus was nowhere to be seen. And though they must have heard about Jesus appearing to the women, they had not seen him yet.
Mark’s narration of Mary Magdalene and Salome going to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body articulates this fear best. They see the stone rolled away. A “young man” announces that Jesus has risen. He instructs them to tell the disciples that they will find Jesus in Galilee. Hearing that Jesus has risen, these women “fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.” Why fear and not unmitigated joy?
Fear because what happened that first Easter was truly outside anything that they could have expected. Fear because now there was no security, no rules, nothing normal they could trust in for all the familiar and well known had collapsed. Fear, perhaps, most of all, because Jesus who died is alive, and they could only speculate what would happen next.
According to the moral calculus of the world, of how humankind often interacts in a tit-for-tat manner, they had reason to fear. Indeed, they ought to fear because Jewish Scripture tells of how God acted after Cain slew Abel: “Where is your brother Abel?” God asked and Cain replied, “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” only to hear God lament, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground”.
If Jesus is indeed alive, if the victim has come back, they who are guilty had better hide. This fear could have forced the disciples to hide themselves behind locked doors. If Easter is seen from this perspective, from our human way of tit-for-tat—even from the Bible up to this point—then Easter cannot be good news for the perpetrators, for the disciples who betrayed, fled, and stood at a distance, for those who washed their hands and called out for his death. And it cannot be good news for us too who must be counted among the guilty—we who have sinned, nailed Jesus to the Cross, and killed him. If Jesus is indeed alive, not dead, how are all of us, the guilty, the sinful, the fearful, the ashamed going to face this victim?
Everything about Jesus’ coming into the midst of the disciples however overturns the world’s moral calculus, our human tit-for-tat interactions, our Old Testament knowledge of God as vengeful, and yes even our fear.
The risen Jesus came into their midst, as he comes in ours daily, not crying out for vengeance, for revenge, for punishment because of a wrong, of an immoral act, of a sinful choice. He came then, as he comes now, simply saying “Peace be with you”. The Letter to the Hebrews says that the blood of Jesus “speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.” What is this better word? Where Abel’s blood cries “Guilty,” the blood of Jesus cries, “Forgiveness”. Where Abel’s blood cries out “Vengeance;” the blood of Jesus cries “Peace!”
Forgiveness and peace must have been the unpredictably unexplainable and profoundly unbelievable experience the disciples had when the risen Jesus came into their midst. In a more personal and intimate way, Thomas experienced it when Jesus came, took his finger, put it into his wounded side and said, “Believe”.
Believe that Jesus has risen as he said he would. And yes, believe that his peace reconciles all with God for through him, with him, and in him, the disciples are still his own, still his beloved, still one with him in spite of what had happened. Jesus also calls us to believe in him as the Christ and in his peace that reconciles. Isn’t this the reason we keep coming to the Eucharist, even when we have sinned? Aren’t we also hoping to hear Jesus say, “Peace” and experience him taking our finger, placing it in his wound, and saying, “Believe”?
We can courageously answer “yes” because the return of the risen Jesus into our lives places us in the power of God’s love that triumphs over death, that brings new life and undying hope. Jesus’ coming gives us a whole new moral calculus to understand how God interacts with us: with mercy that is limitless and immeasurable; with mercy that bestows peace, not retribution.
Easter is not Judgment day for the guilty and sinful. Easter is the resurrection day that surprises all with fullness of life. Easter was that moment when my Mom found me in my fear, hugged me, and loved me still.
The risen Jesus entering into the disciples’ midst reveals the very nature of God’s mercy: it always desires to enter into the chaos of our human lives, and meeting us there to raise us up. In Jesus, God’s mercy comes to all he loves wherever they are but, more so, into however their lives may be, whether saintly or sinful. “Peace be with you” Jesus says to everyone. God’s mercy is indeed the Easter scandal we celebrate with today’s feast—divine mercy for all.
Jesus as Divine Mercy returns from the dead speaking that better word, “Peace”. Wounds inflicted by human hate, condemnation and evil no longer scar his risen body. They are transfigured into channels of mercy. God’s love, forgiveness and grace pour forth from them changing everything. Such mercy will never let us be the same again. It will open us to an unexpected future, sowing life and light in place of death and sorrow. And no matter how sinful we may think we are, the good news today is that Jesus will look for us, come into our midst, greet us with peace and invite us to believe again.
This is why we have every right to rejoice and be glad today. Our joy will be profoundly richer however when we can acknowledge that fear is indeed part of the Easter story. For then we will know that Easter joy is the joy of relief, the joy of finding ourselves surprisingly forgiven, inexplicably loved still, and wonderfully made new again by God’s mercy. Try as we might, we will never be able to explain God’s mercy for us. It will always bother and bewilder us, but it will always humble us into gratitude, into giving” thanks to the LORD, for he is good, his love is everlasting”, as we sang earlier.
Today we learn that we need not hide in fear anymore. Yes, Jesus our victim has come back from the dead looking for us—looking not to condemn or punish us, but to bless us with peace and to draw us deeper into our belief in God.
Now is therefore the time to come out of the tomb of our sinfulness. Now is the time to step into Easter light and see the face of the risen Jesus who comes to take away our fear, our sins, our death by giving us God’s incomprehensible relief of being incalculably loved and forgiven. Yes, now is the time for us to shout out our victory story of Jesus who will fill us with love that we may always rejoice.
Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
photo: www.kidanemihiret.org
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