We are in
the season of Easter; in celebration we enter this mystery: Christ is risen from the Dead, and death has
no more dominion over us. How can this
be? What does this mean? We like Cleopas and his companion may still
have some questions, we’ve heard the witnesses, but the claims being made about
Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus Christ, and the Resurrection don’t add up. We know
death is still a reality; people we love are those among the dead to whom
Christ is supposed to have brought life. Death, suffering, and injustice (the
Cross) loom large, and we perhaps can’t quite escape the despair. Distant and near there are instances of
suffering, oppression, and injustice before which we remain powerless.
The mystery
is unfolded for us in the scriptures and Gospel stories we hear in the season
of Easter. In Lent we heard stories that prepared us to receive again the way
of the Cross. In Easter we do the same
as we view the mystery of our faith from the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth,
Jesus Christ.
Last week we
were encouraged in our faith. We were encouraged that even though we aren’t
among those who saw Jesus Christ risen bodily from the dead, with the wounds
still in his hands, feet, and side, we are still counted with those who first
saw Jesus of Nazareth alive again. We are somehow closer to Jesus Christ, than
those who saw him, more blessed.
In the story
of Cleopas and his companion on the way to Emmaus we get a glimpse of why we
are blessed, and how we are like Thomas. Two disciples not numbered among the Twelve
Apostles but among those who followed Jesus and the Twelve], are discouraged. They
are leaving Jerusalem, they are despondent not sure yet what to make of Jesus
death, and the events that we celebrated from Palm Sunday to Easter
Sunday. They are in grief and
shock. As is common among the stories of
Jesus’ appearances after the resurrection, they don’t initially recognize
him. And when Jesus begins to ask them
questions they think he must be the most clueless and unconnected person in
Jerusalem. How is it possible that this
person could have been in Jerusalem and totally missed the commotion of the
last week, the social media sites were a buzz about all these events in
Jerusalem.
Strangely Jesus
doesn’t speak to the events by sharing shock and outrage over the mob
mentality, nor puzzlement at the strange and empty tomb (that is he isn’t
focused on the power of death, but speaks from Scriptures, the Torah and the
Prophets. This stranger begins to
explain the spiritual and mystical meaning of these events from the religious
texts. The meaning of the events needs
God’s revelation. It is God’s revelation
in the scriptures of the Torah and the Prophets that unfolds the meaning of the
relationship between death, injustice, and the empty tomb. From God’s self-revelation
we learn the meaning of Jesus of Nazareth and his suffering, death, and Resurrection.
Yet it isn’t
simply in the Scriptures that we come to understand the mystery but in the
hospitality of a shared meal. Jesus pretends to be journeying on but the two
disciples insist he join them at supper.
Jesus of Nazareth joins them and as bread is blessed and broken to be
given to them to eat by this stranger, this rabbi, tthey recognize him and in
that moment Jesus departs from their sight.
Blessed are those who do not see but believe. These two disciples return to the upper room
where the Twelve Apostles and others are gathered to report that Jesus of
Nazareth was revealed to them in the breaking of the bread, that is the
Eucharist, holy communion, the Lords supper.
The mystery of faith is Christ in our midst as stranger, teacher, guest,
and host.
We enact
each week this story of the way to Emmaus.
Each liturgy we celebrate is that journey. We walk it again and
again. We come from the world puzzled,
with questions, overwhelmed by the power of death and injustice in our world,
and God in Jesus Christ comes to us and walks with us, and says see here this
is what underlies all this, this is the meaning of the incarnation, the
suffering, the death, and the Resurrection.
Let’s begin
again to contemplate this mystery hearing Peter’s sermon and Peter’s letter to
those who have believed and been baptized, that is to us.
Peter’s
sermon on Pentecost, can be misunderstood in many ways. Two of which I want to
focus. first misunderstanding is seeing
the “repentance” Peter enjoins his hearers on that first Pentecost as being to
repent from the actions that lead to Jesus’s crucifixion. True they are cut to the heart by Peter’s
revelation that the one crucified is Lord and Messiah. However, what Peter’s sermon is seeking to
elicit is a move from one reality to another.
The metanoia, the change of
mind, that comes in repentance, is from identifying as those who subject to
death inflict death, to those who identify with the one who underwent death for
the sake of all. Repentance here is to go from a certain and clear identity, to
a loss of identity, by being joined with Christ in baptism, to receive a gift,
of the Holy Spirit and of life. This
giving up on identity saves from a corrupt or crooked generation. But why?
Here is the second misunderstanding.
We can see this talk about a corrupt or crooked generation as a
moralistic escape from what isn’t pure.
But that makes no sense for in becoming one with Christ we identify with
the one who became accursed, who is by definition impure. Purity, moralistic or ritualistic, has no
place in this salvation. In repentance
and baptism we don’t become pure, we become inspired with life. To escape a
corrupt generation is to escape a dead end, to be freed from a trap. We remove ourselves from those following a
meandering and crooked path, which has no destination. Through repentance and Baptism we no longer
meander to our deaths.
This understanding
of being saved from a crooked generation fits with the words we hear in 1 Peter
when it says that we have been ransomed from the futile ways of our
ancestors. The paths of humanity without
Christ, lead us nowhere. Merely human reasoning and tradition aren’t so much
immoral as without ultimate purpose.
That is they are incapable of lead to us into true life.
But we are
perhaps left with an unsettling question; does Christianity lead us away from
death? Have not Christians been dying from the time of Christ’s ascension and the day Pentecost until now? Think of St Stephen the first martyr.
Here we need
to hear again the words of Jesus of the necessity of the suffering and death of
the Messiah and , of Peter’s insistence on our identification in Baptism with
that death, with this one who died. By
death Christ beat down death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life. If in
this age we still see death, it is because the present generation and age of
the cosmos is a futile, pointless, dead end.
Yet living in the tomb of this age when we pass through death with
Christ, we are in the age that is to come, we are in the eighth day we have
passed through death.
Like Christ
we too still die, yet not in futility.
We no longer meander to death, but know the truth about death, that
deaths dominion has no hold on life, because life entered death and brought
life to us who are in the jaws of death.
Thus for us to die is to live.
This is the mystery of the way of the cross, not that this age and
generation dominated by death will become the age to come, but that in the
midst of a death dealing age and generation in Christ we have life and are saved
from the futility of our death. We are no longer of this meandering generation,
but are Christ, the first born of a new creation, the first fruits of that age
to come.
This is what we taste; this is what we have in
this liturgy and in the breaking of the bread. Here we have life and banquette.
Here we have God in our midst, life itself sustaining us in this age that is
passing away. Amen.
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