by CCW | 3 April 2018 21:00
Once again, we are presented with a lesson from The Book of the Acts of the Apostles, often attributed to St. Luke. Once again a Gospel reading from The Gospel according to St. Luke. Once again, the word of Resurrection is being shown to us and we are being opened out to its meaning. And once again suffering and death are inescapably made an essential part of the teaching of the Resurrection along with repentance and forgiveness.
“To you is the word of this salvation sent,” Paul says to a group of Hebrews in the synagogue in Antioch of Pisidia. The message of Resurrection arises in the context of the Hebrew Scriptures, among “the sons of the family of Abraham.” As Luke puts it, too, the idea of the Resurrection comes to us through “the open[ing of] their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures.” Yet all of this builds upon the story of Christ on the road to Emmaus, upon the tangible realities of Christ being with us.
“Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and blood, as ye see me have.” And in addition he asks “have ye here any food? And they gave him a piece of broiled fish, and of an honey-comb.” It is all part of the testimony to the reality of the Resurrection that “he took it, and did eat before them.” It is the Risen Christ who teaches us about the resurrection and its radical meaning.
It does not mean the annihilation of nature but its transformation and perfection. The body and the physical world are not everything; they are not self-sufficient and self-explanatory, but neither are they nothing. Here Jesus uses both the Scriptures and the things of the natural world to teach us the meaning of our humanity in God. He speaks to our fears and worries, to our anxieties and our uncertainties. He confirms his presence with us in simple ways, even through such simple things as “a piece of broiled fish and of an honey-comb.” This is part of the power of these Gospel stories.
They impress us not by their extravagance and pretension but, if anything, by their humility and simplicity. “God raised him from the dead,” Acts claims, pointing to “his witnesses” and pointing to the Scriptures in relation to his identity, “thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee,” quoting the Psalms. For the Resurrection is new birth, new birth and new life accomplished through suffering and death.
It is made known but only so as to be lived. The Resurrection sets us in motion and catapults us into life with Christ through repentance and proclamation. That is part and parcel of our witness. We are “witnesses of these things.” How? Through our hearing and seeing the word of Resurrection in the liturgy of the Church, through Word and Sacrament. Through our pondering and thinking upon its radical meaning.
You exist and you matter and your bodies are part of you. The Resurrection is not reincarnation, a kind of rebirth into a different physical reality such as in Hinduism with the idea that ‘you’ are somehow separable from your body. Buddhism in turn will reject the idea of ‘you’ altogether; you are an illusion. It will reject reincarnation for there is no ‘you’ that shifts and changes from one bodily form to another. Here with the Resurrection we are reminded of our embodied being. Our bodies belong to the equation of who we are; they participate in the fulness of human redemption. The Resurrection is without doubt a bodily event and one which carries a spiritual significance. The Risen Christ makes himself present to us and known to us in very concrete and particular ways. It is all part of the teaching and thus the learning; all part of the understanding; all part of our living in the mystery of the Resurrection.
It is all about being defined by the word of Resurrection, the word which is about our life in Christ.
Fr. David Curry
Tuesday in Easter Week, 2018
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2018/04/03/sermon-for-tuesday-in-easter-week-3/
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