Sermon for the Octave Day of Easter
“The same day at evening”
Time, it seems, has stopped. We rest in the morning and the evening of the new Sabbath of the Day of Resurrection, it seems, with Mary coming early in the morning on the first day of the week to the tomb and finding it empty. She runs and tells Simon Peter and John and they both run and find that what she said is indeed true. Now, it is “the same day at evening.” Yet, we are behind closed doors.
It is a powerful image. Like the disciples, we too are behind closed doors out of fear. Our culture is very much the culture of closed doors, the culture of the various ghettoes of our minds, like so many gated communities, as it were. We hear only what we want to hear and see only what we want to see. But the more serious point is our fearfulness, our uncertainties and our anxieties.
We are behind the closed doors of our minds because we are uncertain about ourselves, about our world, and about the very idea of truth. This shows itself in a myriad of ways: from the increasing intolerance about diverse opinions about identity politics to the increasing fragility of ourselves as a self. It means a loss of confidence in being able to think and proclaim what belongs to the Christian faith and to the ways in which it engages the world. Yet the Resurrection breaks open the closed doors of our minds and our souls.
The Gospel for the Octave Day of Easter places us imaginatively on “the same day at evening” to counter all of our fears and uncertainties. Something happens behind closed doors that belongs to the Easter message of Resurrection. It changes everything. It changes us. Such is the Resurrection. It gives us a new perspective and a new understanding about ourselves. We are freed to God and are set in motion.
What is that motion? In today’s Gospel, it is about “the forgiveness of sins”proclaimed by the Apostolic Church. On “the same day at evening,” Christ breathes on the disciples and signals to them and us what his word and action means. “Receive ye the Holy Ghost,” he says.“Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained.” It is called the power of the keys.
