The Preacher’s Study
First Thoughts on Next Sunday’s Sermon
2nd Sunday of Easter, Year A
John W. B. Hill
Acts 2: 14a, 22-32;
Psalm 16;
1 Peter 1: 3-9;
John 20: 19-31.
The Easter Season is
a gift of grace: seven weeks to explore the implications of what God has done
in raising up the one we crucified; seven weeks for it to sink in that we are
the risen body of Christ, the living sacrament of his saving presence to the
world.
The entire apostolic
witness, the whole New Testament, is founded upon the resurrection of Jesus
from the dead; we would never even have heard of him if that had not
happened. St Paul has provided our
earliest written witness to this stupendous reality, but it was left to the
four evangelists to fill out the meaning of ‘resurrection’. Only they make it clear that resurrection
means an empty tomb! Only they make it
clear that the company of Jesus’ disciples is now the visible manifestation of
his invisible presence!
But what is the
significance of an empty tomb? It tells
us that God’s purposes for the world could not be defeated by destroying the
one God sent to redeem it. God gathered
up the torn and disfigured corpse of his dear Son and transfigured it into the
first fully redeemed human life (body and soul) — a definitive sign of God’s
intention for us all. Bodies matter to
God: flesh and bones, feathers and fur, indeed the entire biosphere that graces
the surface of this rocky planet hurtling through space. All will be redeemed, in God’s good time. Redeemed, not abandoned for something better.
Here may lie the clue
to Thomas’ reluctance to accept what the other disciples were telling him (John 20: 24-25). “We have seen the Lord,” they said. But if they were trying to tell him that
Jesus was still alive in spite of having died — that his crucifixion was just
another random piece of meaningless violence in a world beyond hope — then, as
far as Thomas was concerned, Jesus’ appearance to them was not good news at
all. “Unless I see the mark of the nails
in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his
side, I will not believe.” Thomas could
not just dismiss the memory of Jesus’ shameful and horrific execution, and he
needed to know that God could not dismiss it either.
If God is going to
triumph over the evil that defaces this good creation and truly redeem the
world, then even the world’s catastrophes must be redeemed; they must
ultimately come to be recognized as critical moments in the historic drama of
“the light that shines in the darkness and is not overcome by it” (John 1: 1-5). It was the catastrophe of Jesus’ crucifixion
that revealed the darkness of our world, and it was the crucifixion of Jesus
that revealed the immensity of God’s mercy — mercy which holds the world in
being and is its only hope of healing.
Thus the marks of the nails in Jesus’ hands are the crowning perfection
of his risen body. Likewise, a redeemed
world will bear the marks of our folly and destruction, for these wounds too
are part of the drama of its salvation.
But the wounds will be healed.
The second reading
for this day (1 Peter 1: 3-9) sounds
like an address to people who have just emerged from the waters of
baptism. The Easter Season is a time
when we remember our baptism into Christ’s death. The life we inherited from our death-dealing
culture was buried with Christ in his tomb, to rise with him into a new culture
of eternal life, “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading,
kept in heaven for us, who are being protected by the power of God through
faith in a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” It is not a salvation out of this world; it
is the salvation of the world, in which we participate through hope. Because of this hope we are able to experience
even our suffering and loss as a participation in Christ’s sufferings, and
therefore as part of that great cosmic drama.
“In this we rejoice, even if now for a little while we have to suffer
trials, so that the genuineness of our faith . . . may be found to result in
praise and glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed . . . Even though you
do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable joy,
for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”
Notice that the
world’s eventual salvation is something we “are receiving” — something we are
experiencing now, already! The immediate
“outcome of our faith” is living a life of eternal significance (“the salvation
of our souls”), for as the death and rising of our Lord are replicated in us,
we participate in this historic drama of redemption. This is what it means to belong to the
company of the baptized, disciples of the risen Christ.
John W. B. Hill is an Anglican presbyter in Toronto, Canada, author of one of
the first Anglican sources for catechumenal practice, council member of APLM,
and chair of Liturgy Canada.
"Resurrection," by Donna
Holdsworth, available at
http://donnaholdsworthsartblog.blogspot.ca/2010/11/resurrection-acrylicmixed-media.html
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