Sermon for the Third Sunday after Easter
“What is this that he saith, A little while? We cannot tell what he saith”
Perplexity and wonder are among the dominant features of the Easter season. It is all about the perplexity and the wonder of the Resurrection, the new reality which challenges all of our preconceptions and attitudes. The various accounts of the Resurrection are all about the changes and transformations in our understanding of what it means to be human and about how we think the things of the past as well as the things of our present experiences. It happens through the encounters with the Risen Christ, on the one hand, and through what Jesus teaches prior to the events of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, on the other hand.
The Gospels for the last three Sundays of the Easter Season are all taken from the so-called ‘farewell discourse’ of Jesus in John’s Gospel. They are the very profound ideas which Jesus sets before the disciples about which they are puzzled and uncertain. Jesus is preparing them for two mysteries which they do not and cannot understand before they happen. The two mysteries are Christ’s Crucifixion and his Resurrection and Ascension. The latter go together; the Ascension is the culmination of the Resurrection, its fuller meaning, we might say, insofar as it marks his “go[ing] to the Father”. The great Eastertide refrain is precisely “because I go to the Father”. This is the meaning of his Crucifixion and his Resurrection which culminates in the Ascension.
What this means is shown in these remarkable Gospel passages. We read them in the light of the Resurrection and as illuminating the meaning of the Resurrection for us. The aspect of not-knowing is very much part of the human drama of our life with God. Our unknowing is part of the fallen condition of our humanity. The Resurrection is something which we have to be taught, something which we have to grow up into an understanding of its meaning. It means seeing everything in a new light.
