Month: April 2011

“Then opened he their understanding
that they might understand the Scriptures”

It is Luke’s recurring theme about the resurrection. It is about the opening of our minds through the understanding of the Scriptures. We saw that on the road to Emmaus. We see it here with Jesus “[standing] in the midst of his disciples.” Somehow we make sense of the resurrection through the interpretation of the Scriptures. Jesus is our exegete, our interpreter. This is itself a key insight into the Christian faith.

It is an astounding scene. We had, on Maundy Thursday, the institution of the Holy Communion at the last supper in the Upper Room. That intimate and intense event set in the context of the ancient Passover story takes on a whole new meaning through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Luke’s accounts of the resurrection convey a sacramental understanding that underscores the reality of human redemption.

“Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself,” Jesus says to the disciples before going on to ask if they have any food and taking a piece of broiled fish and a bit of an honey-comb. What is it all about? It is all testimony to the mystery and the reality of the resurrection. Christ is risen, body and soul. The body is not nothing. Neither is it everything. There is a mystery. The mystery is about human redemption. The mystery is about the larger understanding of our humanity that is opened out to us through Jesus and especially through the interpretation of the Scriptures.

In other words, this meal, too, with Jesus is a learning moment. He teaches them and us about the meaning of his passion and death and about his rising to life again from the dead. The further message that flows out from those events is that “repentance unto forgiveness of sins [is to] be preached in his name unto all nations.” It begins with the disciples in Jerusalem but it continues to the ends of the world and to the end of time. This is the resurrection and its meaning for us. We live in the power of the resurrection. It is about new life and new hope. It is about repentance and forgiveness.

Such things are lived out in the body. They are realised in the every day aspects of our life. We live the resurrection through repentance and forgiveness. For it is Christ who lives in us. If we are the witnesses to these things then we must live what we proclaim. We can only do it in his body, the Church.

For here we wrestle with the understanding of the Scriptures. For here we encounter the Word audible and the Word visible. For here we are fed and nourished in our souls and bodies with the Word proclaimed and the Sacraments celebrated. For here we learn what it means to be with Christ. If we will learn.

“Then opened he their understanding
that they might understand the Scriptures”

Fr. David Curry
Easter Tuesday, 2011

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“He was known of them in the breaking of the bread”

After the intensity of the Passion comes the rich wonder of the Resurrection. What is set before us are the scenes of the Resurrection. None is more dramatic than the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Jesus runs out after us.

It is his running after us, as it were, that teaches us so much about the truth of the Resurrection. In the story of the Road to Emmaus, Jesus runs out after us to be with us in Word and Sacrament. In a way, Luke provides us with a picture of the life and witness of the Church. What is altogether of moment in that picture is the presence of Christ – the living, running, risen Christ.

The Resurrection is not a static event. It sets everything in motion. The Church is the running miracle of God. After all, what else could possibly account for the Church, except the existence of God and the truth of the Resurrection? Certainly not ourselves.

What are we ourselves, you and me, and by extension every congregation of souls really, except by times rather dull and dreary, weary and pathetic, boring and not nearly so fascinating as we would like to think we are? Or to put it scripturally, are we not often enough, “foolish and slow of heart”? I mean to be provocative, not insulting, but I do hasten to add, “in ourselves”. I once overheard a conversation in which the subject was the church – not this church in particular, but church in general. The claim was that church is always boring. In a way, I’m afraid, it often is. Why? Well, to be honest we really only need to look at ourselves. Do you really think that you are all that exciting? It is really we who are rather boring, I am afraid.

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Christ is Risen. Alleluia, Alleluia!

The Church’s ancient proclamation captures something of the joy and the excitement of this day. But make no mistake, the Resurrection is not some sort of clap-happy event, a happy ending to an otherwise sad and bitter tale. No. The joy and the excitement of Easter are born out of the Passion and Death of Christ. The intensity of the Passion gives rise to the joyfulness of the Resurrection.

The Resurrection is a bodily event. But it gives rise to a new understanding of everything. There is, we might say, a resurrection of the understanding. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is radical new life. Radical is the right word, actually. It refers to the root of things, the radix. The Resurrection goes to the root of all life itself. That root is the reciprocal love of the Son for the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit.

The God who creates ex nihilo – out of nothing – recreates out of the greater nothingness of sin and death. The Cross has made visible that greater nothingness. The full force of sin and evil are revealed in the crucified Christ. The greater nothingness is the vanity of our wills as against everything that is good – against one another in the human community, against the good order of creation, and against God himself. But the Cross has also made visible the far greater love of God both for us and in itself.

If the message of Good Friday is that God is dead, then the message of Easter is that death is conquered, death is dead. “Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more;/death hath no more dominion over him.” Christ is risen from the dead never to die again. The meaning of death itself is changed. The tomb is not only empty; it has become the womb of new life. The unending life of the Resurrection is accomplished in and through the darkness of death. Christ is Risen!

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Christ is Risen! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Who is risen? Jesus Christ is risen. Risen from what? Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. Risen to what? Jesus Christ is risen to everlasting life never to die again: “in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.” Risen for what? Jesus Christ is risen for us, for our justification, for the purpose of making us right with God, that we may be “alive unto God through Jesus Christ.” We have no life apart from him.

What, then, is the resurrection? The what, first and foremost, is who. Christ is risen. He can only be in us if we are in him. Christ is “the resurrection and the life.” It is what he told us beforehand though we failed to understand. It is what he told us because he who is “the resurrection and the life” is also “the resurrection and the life” for us.

And that is all the joy of this day and, indeed, our abiding joy. We behold the figure of his resurrection and see in it the shape of our own. No faith where there is no resurrection. No Christians where there is no resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. No church where the resurrection is not proclaimed and celebrated. For if he is not risen, then he is not alive and neither are we. If he is not risen, then we, too, shall simply cease to be as if we had never been at all. But “in Christ shall all be made alive.” There can be no holy abiding in him if he is not risen from the dead. And if we do not abide in him, then where shall we dwell? In the tomb? But the tomb is empty. To dwell there is to dwell where there is no meaning and life is not life but death.

But if we cling to our hurts and sorrows, our hatreds and animosities, our pretension and arrogance, our anger and despair; in short, to what Paul calls “the leaven of malice and wickedness,” then we are but the walking dead. We choose death and reject the hope of new life. Let go of it all. Choose life. Choose Christ.

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