Jesus came and stood in the midst
It was, we are told, “the same day at evening,” meaning Easter. It is as if time stopped and yet even that doesn’t quite capture the wonder and the mystery of the Passion and the Resurrection. It is more like being in the eternal now of God, in the moment which gives time its meaning and without which time and our lives have no meaning. That is the power of the readings for the Octave Day of Easter. They speak profoundly to our current crisis. The world, it seems, has stopped. There is not the same hustle and bustle of frantic and busy lives. Every day has a certain quiet but anxious sameness to it. And like the disciples in John’s Gospel we, too, are behind closed doors. Like the disciples, we, too, are perhaps in fear and worry about our suffering world and about ourselves.
Yet the Epistle reading from 1 John (5. 4-12) makes the extraordinary statement that “whatsoever is born of God, overcometh the world.” What is born of God is faith, he says. “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.” As he explains, it has altogether to do with Christ’s sacrifice by which “God has given us eternal life; and this life is in his Son.”
The Resurrection changes everything because it changes how we think and feel about ourselves and our world. When we are in fear and anger about the world and about being cut off and isolated from one another, then those things define us. We grant them a total power over us. That is to be defined by the world of suffering and death. What is our faith? It is simply that Christ is in the midst with us. “Jesus came and stood in the midst.” That changes everything, if we will let it. At least that is what the Gospel shows.
It is a powerful image that signals the radical truth and nature of God. God’s love is present in the midst of the sufferings of the world. That has been the stark meaning of the Passion of Christ that now carries over into the Resurrection. We have seen over and over again how Christ is in the midst of everything: in the midst of the crowd shouting “hosannas” in joy and then crying, “let him be crucified,” in hostility. Such are the contradictions of our hearts and our world. He is crucified between two thieves. Such are the cruelties and enmities in our hearts and our world. The whole of the Passion has been about his being in the midst of the chaos and confusion of our wounded and fallen world. He suffers for us and with us. Why? One word. Love. The one thing that doesn’t die. Love is forever. That is faith, a deep insight and trust in God as love. Such is the Resurrection, too.
The truth and power of the Resurrection is signalled wonderfully in this scene where Jesus appears in the midst of the disciples. “Peace be unto you,” he says. That word is enough. It changes sorrow into joy. “Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord.” His presence with us in the midst of our uncertainties changes our outlook. It sets us in motion inwardly and spiritually. It changes our humanity from the passivity of suffering to the activity of love. Such is the apostolic mission and church. “As my Father has sent me, even so send I you.” Sent. Set in motion. We are recalled to our vocation. We are to be the witnesses of the love of Christ. That love is what defines us. It overcomes the world because it allows us to see the world in a new way; as redeemed and as God’s world. We are not only on a mission. We are the mission. We are sent to be the witnesses of God’s love.
The image of being closed in is something which we can relate to only too well in the current crisis. It challenges us about our assumptions and expectations with respect to our lives and our care for one another, particularly, the elderly who are in Nursing Homes. Perhaps, just perhaps, it will lead to a deeper appreciation and understanding of what it means to be human, about the quality of life in the communities where we actually live with one another, and about a more respectful relation to the land. Probably it will be about learning how to live with less which may not be such a bad thing. And there will be, it seems, a whole lot more vegetable gardens! Not such a bad thing either. And perhaps, as Aquinas wonderfully puts it, it will be about learning how God “governs us as masters of ourselves.”
It is in the nature of challenging times and crises that they bring out the best and the worst in all of us. There are the realities of sin, after all. But the good news of the Gospel here is about peace and forgiveness. The forgiveness of sins is proclaimed here and now through the apostolic church. Jesus, we are told, “breathed on them, and said unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whosoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosoever sins ye retain, they are retained.” We may be somewhat apprehensive about him “breath[ing] on them” in our current fears but here it signals the Holy Spirit as the breath of life and recalls us to creation. “The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man” – meaning our humanity – “became a living being” (Gen. 2.7).
The Resurrection is our re-creation, our redemption. It is rebirth and renewal. There is forgiveness. That is about looking beyond the divisions and hatreds of our hearts and of our suffering and divided world. It is about overcoming the world by way of being recalled to God in our midst. God’s life and spirit lives and breathes in us.
Such is the power of the keys as it is called. It is something sacramental. Something invisible is made known through what is visible and tangible. It is what is shown on the Road to Emmaus when Jesus “was known of them in the breaking of the bread.” That is to affirm the created world which becomes the means through which the things of God are made known and communicated. Such is the power of Word and Gesture, a word in action. Here in the mystery of the Resurrection we have the sacrament of absolution. Such is the overcoming of the world of sin. Such is love. It closes the gap between ourselves and one another, between us and God.
The first King’s-Edgehill School podcast last week observed that under Covid-19 more people were waving at one another. Waving closes the gap between the perceiver and the perceived, between self and other. It is an affirmation of our common humanity, a connection in the face of separation and distance. Waving plays an important role in Timothy Findley’s novel “The Wars” precisely in the context of the destructive violence and the awareness of the colossal loss of life in the First World War. At one point, the protagonist returning by train from artillery training in Alberta, sees a group of Indians and wants his fellow soldiers to wave at them. It means acknowledging the other as one with us. And Findley also notes the change in how people appeared in photographs in 1915 just after the news of the immense loss of life at the Battles of Ypres. Suddenly people wanted to be seen; waving at the camera, as if to say, we exist. It is about connection where there is separation and affirmation in the presence of desolation.
Christ is in the midst either with the disciples behind closed doors proclaiming peace and forgiveness or in taking bread, blessing it, breaking it, and giving it to us. His word and his gestures reach out to us and gather us into the company of the Trinity.
No doubt there have been times in the current stresses and strains of the Covid-19 crisis that we have all thought, said, and done things which we regret, things which are negative and hurtful to others and to ourselves. Such things belong to our fallen selves and contribute to the sufferings of the world. Forgiveness flows out of the Resurrection of Christ. It makes things new not by denying our faults and failings, not by ignoring suffering and sorrow, sin and death, but by recalling us to confession and forgiveness. Such things belong to the Resurrection. Peace and forgiveness flow out of the Resurrection. Because Christ is in the midst, we are in the midst of God; his life in us and we in him. Love is all and everything. It overcomes the world and the world in us.
Jesus came and stood in the midst
Fr. David Curry
Octave Day of Easter 2020