“They shall look on him whom they pierced”
What? We look upon Christ who is pierced? That sounds like Good Friday. Is this not Easter? It is. Christ is Risen, Alleluia, Alleluia! Perhaps our text should be what we see above our heads on the Chancel Arch. “I am He that liveth and was dead and behold I am alive for evermore,” words from The Book of the Revelation of St. John Divine (1.18) that speak directly to the themes of death and resurrection. Yet we can only read such words because of our “look[ing] upon him whom [we] have pierced.” Only through the Passion of Christ can we make sense of the Resurrection. For this is no spring time carnival, some playtime in the park to amuse ourselves. No. Easter celebrates the radical new life of the Resurrection. It is about new life and new birth, even as this morning we have seen the new life and new birth in the baptism of Liam Patrick Gregory Paradis.
Baptism is itself a new creation. Every baptism is about the Resurrection in us as a community of faith and in those who are baptized. The only question is whether we will live out what is proclaimed and given here this morning. It is the question for our age. We have so domesticated divinity that we find ourselves bereft and empty of any real understanding of God. As a consequence we are lost to ourselves. It is the current dilemma of our culture both within and without the Christian Church. We betray the very truth that gives us life.
The good news is that this is part of the old news which the Gospel of Christ has overcome and so is there for us to reclaim. The great good news is that we are not simply left to the barren realities of our human claims to excellence or goodness, to the specious claims about moral and cultural relativism, to the impoverished ideologies of our humanism which reveal only our inhumanity. If we want to know what it means to be human, the reality is that it cannot be found in the laboratories of science or social constructs and conventions; it cannot be found in the economic, social and political programmes to which we so desperately cling. There is a profound unease in our culture and world but there is as well as profound reluctance to face our problems. Why? Because it means two things which we would rather not face: God and ourselves.
The two go together. They come together in The Feast of the Resurrection in wonderful ways because what we celebrate today is what we celebrate every day in the Christian understanding. We celebrate what God accomplishes in and through our humanity and which belong to our real truth and dignity. It cannot be measured by statistics and graphs, by economic projections and political stratagems exactly, by religious and social slogans, though such things often shed light upon our primary commitments and concerns. No. It is found in the simple yet profound things that are part and parcel of this celebration. The liturgy is not play-acting. Through the sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion we participate in what they signify, for the sacraments are what they are, the forms of new and ever renewing life in us by virtue of the divine life given to us.
Christ is risen. This is the claim of this day and we are only risen in him to the extent that we “look upon him whom [we] have pierced” and contemplate in him the overcoming of all our sins and follies. Easter is a new beginning, a beginning again in what Christ in his Passion accomplishes for us. For out of his pierced side flow blood and water, the symbols of the sacraments of Baptism and Communion, the effective signs of his Resurrection in us through his Passion.
The grave cannot contain him. The tomb has become the womb of new life. By what folly do we possibly think that our minds, then, can contain the whole truth of God? By what folly do we possibly think that our minds, too, can deny the truth of God and find joy and life and meaning for ourselves and others? We live, I am afraid in such illusions.
The strong message of Easter is that God is greater than our illusions and that he seeks our good in his reality, the reality which this day sets before us in such wondrous array. We return to our Church, scaffolding within and snowbanks outside, reminders to us that God is more than nature and more than the vanities of our humanity. We are opened out to the most radical of all things, the radical new life of the Resurrection, the radical new life of the only one who makes something out of nothing, even out of the nothingness of our lives.
This is great good news of Easter. It has nothing to do with the sentimentalities of our hearts. It has everything to do with our hearts being moved to love out of our “looking upon him whom we have pierced.” Look and love, we heard on Good Friday. To be sure, but so too, look and love him who makes all things lovely in his love for us. Be risen with Christ. Only so can you look and love. It is the radical freedom of this day which allows us to face all that confronts us in a troubled world and day. The Gospel of Easter is always more than the passing moments of this age and every age. It is about the great constant: the deep love of God for our humanity.
In Christ’s Resurrection we learn, if ever we will, what the lessons of love really mean. They mean radical new life, a life lived for God and for one another, a life that we cannot possibly live on our own power, a life that we can only know through what is proclaimed on this day. For if Christ is Risen and we are risen with him, then we are no longer tied to the grave, no longer tied to the boring reality of our everyday lives, no longer captive to the false sense of how exciting we think we are, no longer seduced by the illusions of our narcissism nor by the distractions of the facebook culture. Why? Because we are no longer looking at ourselves but at him whom we have pierced. He is not in the grave of our self-conceits. He is not ‘here’ – in the grave – as Mary Magdalene tells us. He is Risen! That is our joy, the joy of new life, the new life of Christ alive in us. Live it and rejoice For “I am He that liveth and was dead & behold I am alive for evermore!”
“They shall look on him whom they pierced”
Fr. David Curry
Easter, 2015