Sermon for Tuesday in Easter Week
admin | 10 April 2012“Be it unto me according to thy word”
Mary’s word to God at her Annunciation is found in Luke’s Gospel. Readings from Luke’s Gospel also provide the Gospel readings at Holy Communion on Easter Monday and Easter Tuesday, the story of two resurrection appearances by Jesus: the one, on the road to Emmaus; the other, the story we have heard this morning about Jesus appearing “in the midst of his disciples” in Jerusalem. It serves as a complement to John’s account of Jesus appearing behind closed doors in the second lesson read at Evening Prayer on Easter Day and in the Gospel for the Octave Day of Easter, “the same day at evening” as we shall hear next Sunday.
In both accounts, there is this twofold emphasis on the Word explained and interpreted and the presence of the Risen Christ who teaches us about the reality of the Resurrection. “Behold, my hands and my feet, that is I myself: handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and blood, as ye see me have.” That direct encounter is not the end of the story here, however, for two more things follow. First, Jesus asks if they have any food. “And they gave him a piece of broiled fish, and of an honey-comb.” Somehow, the holy tradition of the Church avoided turning this moment into something ritual and sacramental! Just as well.
But secondly, and importantly with respect to our Marian theme of letting the words of Christ define us, Jesus says, “these are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms concerning me.” Then, as on the road to Emmaus, “opened he their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures.” The Greek words emphasize the opening of their hearts and minds and the idea of comprehending something thoroughly. There is something intense and intentional about the teaching. Beyond rumour and report, beyond fantasy and fabrication, beyond even the evidence of the senses, there is this primary emphasis on understanding the Resurrection through the pageant of the Scriptures, explained and interpreted.
What is meant by the Scriptures here is unmistakably the Jewish Scriptures, what we have come to know as the Old Testament. But for the Jews, the Scriptures are known as the TANAKH, an acrostic derived from the Torah, the Nevi’im, and the Ketuvim; in short, the Law, the Prophets and the Writings which are here nicely summarized by Luke. In the presence of the Risen Christ there is a transformation of the images and the understanding of the Scriptures. It is not simply about a new word but rather “according to thy word,” interpreted and explained. Thus we are opened out to a new and radical understanding of our humanity. As the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it, “I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am.”
The Resurrection is, on the one hand, beyond human understanding on its own terms; it is, on the other hand, something understood through the Divine Word who is the Risen Christ who teaches, explains and interprets the meaning of the Resurrection for us. What is that meaning? That we are defined ultimately by more than what belongs to suffering and death, by more than the vagaries and vicissitudes of human experience, by more than the ebb and flow of temporal events. And yet, those things are not dismissed as mere empty nothingness, as simply illusion. No. The Resurrection is about the redemption of the world, about the redemption of our humanity. Christ interprets the Scriptures concerning himself and in so doing gathers us to himself in the divine will and purpose for our humanity. We live for God and we do so in the context of our lives with one another. We live for and with God and we do so in the body of our redeemed humanity; in short, in the body of Christ, the Church.
Our task continues to be what is being opened out to the disciples here: to understand more and more fully the radical nature of Christ’s Resurrection, and to feel it and to live it in the communities where we are placed. Luke’s account of the Resurrection is emphatic about the change in our understanding. It is, we might say, an education that never ends. We are always being drawn more and more into the mystery of the Risen Christ. That should be our joy and delight, a joy and delight found precisely in what Christ opens out to our hearts and minds.
It means though that we have to be open to the teaching, open to the challenge of the understanding that is the only counter to our fears and doubts. The disciples were at first “terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a ghost.” Jesus immediately counters such superstitions and opens us out to a new and deeper understanding of our humanity. We are more, though not less, than our bodies is what we can say at the very least. As to what we shall be in the end that shall not end, it is enough and, perhaps, more than enough, to say that we shall be as he is. In the Risen Christ we see the form of our resurrection. A mystery beyond the immediacy of anything sensual, it is nonetheless about the reality of the idea that our bodies are not left out of the equation. Matter, too, is redeemed; the body, too, is part of the story, part of the mystery of redemption. But only through the interpreted word and only, too, we might say, “according to thy word.” The Resurrection is something understood.
“Be it unto me according to thy word”
Fr. David Curry
Easter Tuesday, 2012