by CCW | 28 April 2019 15:00
It is like one continuous story from the same book, chapter after chapter. The same book is John’s Gospel. In the spirituality of the older eucharistic lectionary tradition found in the Book of Common Prayer, John’s Gospel contributes greatly to the essential theological understanding of the Christian Faith, especially, it seems, in Eastertide. We see, as it were, through the eyes of John.
“The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early,” we heard last Sunday. “The same day at evening, being the first day of the week,” we hear today. As if time were magically stopped and we are mystically present at that day, that day that never, never ends. The Day of Resurrection is just like that. And so, too, for the meaning of every Sunday.
The Resurrection is not something which we celebrate in a moment, for a day or for a season. It runs through the whole of the year and through the whole of our lives in Faith. The Octave Day places us in that endless day, the day of Easter, to show us the Resurrection in motion. It shows us something of the meaning of the Resurrection for us and in us. The symbolism of being “on the same day,” the day of Easter, becomes the meaning of our Sunday worship. It is always a celebration of the Resurrection. We are always in the presence of the Risen Christ and never more so than in the Easter Season when the Resurrection itself is our principal consideration. The only question is whether we are alive to his presence or dead in ourselves.
“Jesus came and stood in the midst.” They were behind closed doors. They were in fear and great anxiety. The world of their hopes and expectations had been shattered, perhaps like ours in contemporary culture. Then “Jesus came and stood in the midst.” Suddenly all that was shattered begins to come together into something new; a new understanding. His presence changes everything. The nature of that change is the Resurrection in us.
What is the significance of the closed doors? The closed doors are the closed doors of our minds. Our minds are like tombs. We are dead to the idea of the Resurrection, to its power and truth, until it presents itself to our understanding. We couldn’t invent it. It breaks through only so as to break out in us. The Risen Lord comes into our midst to break us out into a new and radical understanding of himself and what he is for us. Out of the chaos of fear and confusion comes peace and forgiveness.
Three times in John’s Gospel Jesus the Risen Lord says behind closed doors to the disciples “peace be with you.” This is “the peace which passeth understanding,” that is to say, it cannot be contained by our minds as if contained in a tomb. It carries us into a new understanding. For this is the peace which has overcome all our enmity – our enmity against ourselves, against one another, and against God. This is the peace which is purchased with the price of blood, the blood of the reconciling sacrifice, the atoning sacrifice, of Christ. The peace of our reconciliation with God is the peace of forgiveness. “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” It is given to be our life. It is, we might say, a living peace. Such is the radical peace of forgiveness.
It is not “peace will be with you some day later on.” No, it is peace here and now. Such is the living reality of the Risen Christ, the living reality of the reconciliation between man and God which Christ’s Resurrection proclaims. The Risen Christ does not hide the past of our sins from us. He reveals them to us in the power and grace of his forgiveness. He comes into our midst and shows us the wounds of his love for us. He breaks down the closed doors of our minds to bring us into a new understanding. The understanding of his Resurrection means peace and forgiveness. This is radical good news for our age of anger and bitter resentment. Nothing that is needed more than this even, and especially, in the face of such atrocities as the terrorist attacks on Easter Day in the churches and hotels in Sri Lanka.
This ultimate peace is for us now because his forgiveness is total. We have only to live it. This is the constant yet joyous struggle of our lives. We live it where Christ is in the midst.
He is in the midst in his body. But his body, too, is the Church. And so the Church, too, must be in the midst of the world proclaiming the dynamic truth of Christ’s Resurrection and being the visible sign of the peace of reconciliation. The Church can only be the place of peace and forgiveness through the Resurrection. It does not mean huddling behind closed doors in fear and anxiety – that is death. No. It means a break-through of the understanding. Such is the Resurrection in us.
This peace is proclaimed in the midst of terror and persecution such as we see in our own world and day. Such is the radical nature of the Resurrection. Forgiveness is given to be lived in the face of enmity. It is given to be lived in the Church, the place of forgiveness. “Whosoever sins ye remit they are remitted unto them,” and, conversely, “whosoever sins ye retain they are retained.” Such is the strong power – the dynamic – of the Resurrection. Jesus comes and stands in our midst to set us into motion. The motion of his life in us means peace and forgiveness. It is Resurrection. As the Swiss theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar beautifully says, the very essence of the Resurrection is that “it bursts the bounds, the grave wrappings, of our concepts; it explodes our ideas of time and space; it sovereignly walks right through the doors of our closed categories.” It does so to set us upon a new understanding.
We are set in motion to “runne, rise, rest with thee” as the poet, George Herbert, wonderfully puts it. He captures exactly the pattern of the resurrection as John’s Gospel presents it. First, there is the running of the disciples to the tomb on that “first day of the week”, then “the same day at evening” behind closed doors the disciples are raised out of the tombs of their minds by the Risen Lord being in their midst. Only so can we have the rest that is the peace of forgiveness, the peace of the Risen Christ who is with us “even unto the end of the world.” Christ is Risen, Alleluia, Alleluia!
Fr. David Curry
Octave Day of Easter 2019
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2019/04/28/sermon-for-the-octave-day-of-easter-10/
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