by CCW | 7 April 2015 22:00
This text from Zechariah concluded the reading of the Passion in Holy Week in John’s account of the Passion read on Good Friday. And yet, this text also provides us with a way to think the mystery of the Resurrection. We see that wonderfully today in the second story of the Resurrection that Luke tells.
Yesterday on Easter Monday we had the amazing story of Christ and the disciples on the Road to Emmaus; the point is that the disciples’ hearts “burn[ed] within [them]” as Jesus talked with them on the way and opened the Scriptures for their understanding about the logic of his Passion and Resurrection. In other words, they are pierced, as it were, by what they have learned in the encounter with Christ who provides an interpretation through things said and done. “He was known of them,” specifically “in the breaking of the bread.”
Here Jesus appears in the midst of the disciples. That alone is an intriguing concept. In the Christian story, God is in our midst in Jesus Christ as the Crucified and as the Risen Lord. As an image it captures the central dynamic of the Incarnation. In the Gospel reading for Easter Tuesday Jesus appears in the midst of the disciples who are shocked with joy and disbelief. Their confusion and uncertainty becomes the setting for learning about the Resurrection from the Risen Lord. Beyond the empty tomb of Easter Morn, beyond the report of Mary Magdalene and the other women, beyond the words of an angel, beyond the report of the other disciples, there is the whole matter of Christ making himself known to us in the truth of his Resurrection.
We cannot know this ‘scientifically’ in any kind of empirical sense; paradoxically, though, the Resurrection is one of the strongest concepts that makes science possible. Why? Because it affirms the intelligibility of the material world. We cannot know the Resurrection of Christ experientially only spiritually and imaginatively, intellectually, we might say. “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” as the old spiritual puts it; the point of the rhetorical question is that we are there not literally but symbolically and really in terms of our sins being the cause of his being pierced. But ask the question about the Resurrection. Were you there when he rose from the dead? And the answer is both yes and no. How do we know the Resurrection? Through the power of these accounts that show us how the idea of the Resurrection takes hold of human minds and changes human lives.
As this gospel shows us, it does so through our “looking upon him whom [we] have pierced.” The passage emphasizes the physical. “Behold my hands and feet, that it is I myself: handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as you see me have. And he showed them his hands and his feet.” Attention is being called explicitly to the wounds of the Passion. And he asks them, “Have ye here any food?” which calls attention to the reality of the body as alive. They look upon the one who was pierced. His hands and his feet bear the marks of the Passion. They have become testament to his triumph over sin and death. The wounds are not extinguished but transformed to become the wounds of love.
But how to make sense of such an event? The emphasis in Luke’s account, both in this story and the Road to Emmaus, is on opening their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures. The Resurrection is explained in and through the Passion. The doctrine is understood to be scripturally based and to be the ground for a new quality of life through repentance and forgiveness. This frees us from the fatalisms of the past. Far from denying the body or the physical aspects of reality, the doctrine of the Resurrection is the strongest possible affirmation of the material world and of our human individuality which includes the body. We are more not less than the world around us; we are more not less than our bodies.
This is the astounding and radical meaning of the Resurrection. It signals the hope of transformation not by ignoring the suffering and the hardship of life, suffering and hardship that has been made ever so visible in the one who is pierced, the one whom we have pierced.
In Luke’s account we must look upon him whom we have pierced to learn the Resurrection. It means opening our understanding to understand the Scriptures. Why the Scriptures? Because they are understood to be God’s word to us. We can only think the Resurrection in other words by thinking the things of God revealed in the creedal witness of the Scriptures. Such is the wonder of the Resurrection and the way in which it inhabits our souls and minds. Our looking turns into a deeper kind of reading, to an understanding of God’s will and purpose for our humanity, and to our communion with him.
Fr. David Curry
Easter Tuesday, 2015
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2015/04/07/sermon-for-tuesday-in-easter-week-2/
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