by CCW | 8 April 2018 15:30
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.
The forgiveness of sins is proclaimed through the apostolic ministry by virtue of the words of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Peace and forgiveness are the first fruits of the Resurrection, we might say, the first fruits of our new life with God in Christ. It happens because “Jesus came and stood in the midst.” He makes himself known in concrete and tangible ways, even though in the scene immediately before this passage in John’s Gospel, Jesus tells Mary “do not touch me” and immediately after this passage, he tells Thomas to reach forth and touch him. Here “he show[s] unto them his hands and his side.” What does that mean? He shows them the marks of his crucifixion; the hands that were nailed to the cross, the side that was pierced by the soldier’s spear.
“There are three that bear witness,”John tells us in the Epistle reading which complements today’s Gospel: “the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.” They are the signs that signify the forms of our participation sacramentally in Christ’s death and resurrection. Out of his wounded side flow water and blood signifying baptism and eucharist; the twofold forms of our incorporation into the body of Christ. The first signals the beginning of a new life; the second our being nourished and continuing in that new life.
Today Jen and David who were baptised last Sunday will be confirmed through the apostolic rite of the laying on of hands by Archbishop Ron Cutler and will make their first communion. Bishops, Priests and Deacons are the “Orders of Ministers [that] have been in the Church from the Apostles’ time” (BCP, p. 554) as the Supplementary Instruction to the Catechism simply, modestly and incontestably puts it. The Church itself is Apostolic because “it received its divine mission from Christ through his Apostles, and continues in their doctrine and fellowship” (BCP, p. 553). Here in this Gospel Christ passes on the divine mission to the disciples who become Apostles. Our challenge is to continue in their doctrine and fellowship.
What is made known cannot be contained behind closed doors. Peace and forgiveness have to be made known and lived even in the face of intolerance and abuse, perhaps especially so. Our arrogance so often masks our ignorance. Only God can forgive sins, after all, and yet that power has been revealed in Christ’s humanity on the Cross and that same power is now entrusted to the Apostolic Church.“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” Christ prayed on the cross and now, behind closed doors, the disciples become apostles, charged with Christ’s power for the forgiveness of sins. Apostles are those who are sent, charged with a mission; the mission is the forgiveness of sins. It has to be made known. It cannot remain behind closed doors.
The forgiveness of sins belongs to our participation in eternal life, the life which is in the Son of God, in Christ, and which belongs to our life in Christ in his body, the Church. We live in the power of his risen life. We live in the beauty and the wonder of that “same day at evening.”
Fr. David Curry
Octave Day of Easter 2018
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2018/04/08/sermon-for-the-octave-day-of-easter-9/
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