“The same day at evening … came Jesus and stood in the midst”
There is something quite intriguing and compelling, I think, about the accounts of the Resurrection presented to us in the Gospels. They show us how the idea of the Resurrection takes hold of the minds of the disciples and, by extension, our minds. Such is the living power of the Resurrection for each and every generation.
Today is the Octave Day of Easter. It is as if time has stopped and we are still in the moment of the great mystery of God’s great redemptive act, the act of the Resurrection. It is the same day as last Sunday. It is as if the liturgy has not stopped but has continued. That is the meaning of an octave, just like in music, where the first note and the eighth note are the same note except for the upward progression through the scale.
And so here we are in the mystery of the day of Resurrection, but it is the evening. Jesus comes and stands in the midst of the disciples. They are in fear and they are behind closed doors. There is the surprise and wonder of Christ’s sudden appearance. There is the greater surprise and wonder, I think, about what Christ says and does here. At the heart of it all is Christ in their midst.
In a way, it is an image for the whole meaning of Christ’s mission and life. He is in our midst. God wills to enter into the fabric of our world and day. God wills to engage our humanity in the intimacy of the humanity of Christ. He is in the midst of his creation in every way. Throughout his brief public life, he has been in the midst, travelling throughout that ancient land, teaching and healing, bringing a startling new and yet old message of hope and salvation, proclaiming a peace that the world cannot give, a peace that is about the forgiveness of sins. He comes into the midst of Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. He is in the midst of his disciples in this same Upper Room on the night of the Passover when he takes himself in his own hands, as it were, and gives himself to us, body and blood, through bread and wine. He is in the midst subject to the betrayal of his disciples, subject to the mockery of his own people and subject to the scorn of the Roman soldiers. He is, finally, crucified between two thieves. Again, he is in the midst.
In every way, the story of Christ is about his engagement with our broken and wounded humanity in all of its disarray and violence. All of it, we must say, is visited upon him, so much so that he is, literally, “made sin for us.” In other words, the whole messy and nasty package of human sin, past, present, and future, is made visible in the crucified Christ. He bears it all. More importantly, he bears it all in his love for the Father and in his love for us. “Father, forgive them for they -[we] – know not what they -[we]- do.” That alone should pierce our hearts and make us penitent people.
Yet, it is not the end of the story. The Resurrection is something more and more wonderful. It is a new beginning, a new creation. Our redemption is accomplished out of the empty yet violent nothingness of our sins and folly. It happens in the silence of Easter morning. Like creation itself, there are no witnesses to the event, only to its consequence. We learn the resurrection just as we learn creation, namely, after the fact.
The great wonder of Easter week is that we best learn the Resurrection from Jesus being in our midst. He runs out after us on the road to Emmaus and inserts himself into our conversation, opening our minds through the understanding of the Scriptures, and making himself known “in the breaking of the bread.” Luke emphasises this basic theme of the Resurrection, the opening of our minds through the understanding of the Scriptures. John emphasises the being of Jesus in our midst. Here he is on “the same day at evening” in the same upper room.
All of the disciples are there except Thomas on that first Easter evening. He will be with them a week later (today as it were), where, once again, Jesus will appear in their midst to make visible to Thomas the truth and reality of his Resurrection. But in this morning’s Gospel, Jesus appears in their midst and says “peace be unto you.” He proclaims peace in the face of our fears. This is part of the great wonder of the Resurrection. It is about a radical peace in the face of every fear and worry. Christ is our peace. It is not the peace of the world for that is no lasting peace. True peace is to be found in our being with Christ. He is in our midst.
This is what is proclaimed and made present in the liturgy in the Word proclaimed and the Sacraments celebrated. We live it by being in the body of Christ, his Church. That is how we learn to live it in our daily lives. The Church is the body of Christ. It, too, is in the midst of our world and day. Sometimes it is despised and rejected, as in this post-Christian world, because it does not conform to the world’s demands and conditions or because of our own sins and follies. But it is there holding out to the world the wounds of Christ as the signs of redemptive love. Jesus, in our midst, “show[s] unto [us] his hands and his side.” The wounds of the Crucified have become the signs and tokens of his triumph and glory.
The Resurrection gives us a new understanding of our humanity. It joins us to God without whom we are really nothing and, at best, simply incomplete. In the Christian understanding, God in Christ is in our midst. “In his will is our peace,” as Dante puts it. It is his will for us that he is in our midst so that he can be in us and we in him. His peace is the peace that “passeth human knowing.” It is a gift that illumines our understanding. We learn the Resurrection from Jesus coming and being in our midst. It is, I think, quite compelling.
“The same day at evening … came Jesus and stood in the midst”
Fr. David Curry
Octave Day of Easter
May 1st, 2011