by CCW | 17 April 2016 15:44
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.
That the Gospels themselves are written and could only be written in the light of the Resurrection points to the kind of change and transformation that takes place at once in the disciples and, then, in us. “Your sorrow,” Jesus says, “shall be turned into joy”. He uses a powerful feminine image about that transformation; the image of childbirth, at once painful travail, labour, but, then joy, great joy. So, too, is the Resurrection, Jesus says. “Ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you”. Powerful words that belong to the transition from ignorance to understanding.
But they are also powerful words that speak to the profound idea of redemptive suffering, something which our culture and church has largely forgotten and ignored particularly in the discussions now about physician assisted death. Yet the very image Jesus uses here is about the realities of human suffering, such as childbirth, but which also extends to such difficult things as dying and death. He is not saying that suffering is nothing and meaningless; he is saying that it is not everything and that it is to be faced and gathered into the larger understanding of our humanity which is found in our life with God, shaped by the Passion of Christ which has its fullness of meaning in Christ’s Resurrection and Ascension “because I go to the Father”.
The Resurrection is all about our coming to understand what was previously unknown. Such is learning, of course, but here the learning is through the encounter with Christ, the living Word and Son of God who prepares us to understand what we can only come to understand later.
His first word on the cross speaks to our ignorance and perplexity, our unknowing. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” Jesus prays to the Father. “What is this that he says, A little while? We cannot tell what he says,” the disciples say in this morning’s Gospel.
Jesus addresses our perplexities and uncertainties but we don’t always get it; sometimes things are said that we only come to understand later on. The Resurrection is about seeing things in a new light and in a new way. It is quite literally about the transition from sorrow to joy, the transition from ignorance to understanding. But what exactly does it mean? It means that we are more than our bodies, more than simply the events and experiences of our lives, more than simply our thoughts and actions, more than simply the things that happen to us, more even than simply the things that we do. This does not mean that our experiences, our thoughts, words and deeds, the things that happen to us and the things that we do, are meaningless. Quite the opposite. They have an even greater intensity of meaning because of Christ’s embrace of our humanity in all of its disarray and his gathering of all of it into his love for the Father. In other words, the Resurrection bears eloquent testimony to who we are in the sight of God.
It was Luther’s great insight that when God looks at us he sees his Son, Jesus Christ. It is Paul’s great insight that we are “in Christ” and Christ is in us. This is the radical meaning of the Resurrection that turns our sorrow into joy. And all “because”, Jesus says, “I go to the Father”. It means that the radical truth of our humanity is found in our life with God through Christ’s redemption of our humanity. That redemption is about the transformation of the understanding and the transition from sorrow to joy because we are gathered into the Son’s love for the Father in the bond of the Spirit. We discover who we are in the communion of God who is Trinity, “because I go to the Father”.
This is the mystery that perplexes us and yet awakens us to wonder and delight, a “joy”, Jesus says “no one taketh from you”. It is not about the fleeting joys of our human experiences; it is about the lasting joys that arise from knowing the everlasting love of God for us in Jesus Christ. It changes everything both for us and in us.
Fr. David Curry
Easter 3, 2016
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2016/04/17/sermon-for-the-third-sunday-after-easter-6/
Copyright ©2026 Christ Church unless otherwise noted.