Sermon for Easter Monday
“And I, if I be lifted up will draw all unto me”
The Resurrection appearances of Jesus are a profound illustration of how we are drawn to Christ and into the understanding of the meaning of his Resurrection. Perhaps no story illustrates the logic better than the Road to Emmaus account in Luke’s Gospel. The Risen Christ runs out after us who are running away in fear from Jerusalem. He comes alongside us in our fears and uncertainties. Where there are two there is always a third. Not expecting him because they are engrossed in the immediacy of their griefs and perplexities, Jesus draws out of them what they have experienced or rather what they think has happened. It is wonderfully Socratic. They essentially acknowledge their confusion and unknowing.
Only then does Jesus speak directly to them. “O foolish ones and slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken: ought not the Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?” And then “beginning at Moses, and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” He himself provides the interpretation, the way of understanding the Resurrection, through the witness of “all the Scriptures,” meaning here the TANAKH, the acronym for the Torah, the Prophets (Nevi’im) and the Writings (Ketuvim), the categories which comprise the Hebrew Scriptures and which Christians later, starting in the late second century will call the Old Testament. At this point, there is simply the Scriptures. Luke makes that reference explicit later in the same last chapter of his Gospel, naming the Law of Moses (Torah), the prophets (Nevi’im) and the psalms, the latter are a central feature of the Ketuvim, the writings.
But the way of understanding is more than words spoken; it is also words enacted. It is in the breaking of the bread “while he sat at meat with them that their eyes were opened and they knew him.” Word and action, Word and Sacrament, The Word spoken and the Word in motion. They remember the Passover supper on the night of his betrayal. It crystallizes for them the way of understanding; he carried himself in his own hands, lifting up the bread and wine of the Passover as his body and blood even as he was lifted up before them on the Cross. The events of the past are drawn into the eternal presence of God with us.
No story illustrates the real power of education better. The teaching of Word spoken and Word in motion changes them from fear to courageous witness. The change in them is wonderfully expressed by Luke: “ Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the Scriptures?” The change within them leads to motion and action for them. “They rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem” and to the eleven disciples. They return to the place of their fears and confusion as witnesses to the radical truth of the Resurrection. As Luke so simply and yet so eloquently puts it, they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them them in the breaking of the bread.” Is this not exactly what we hope for ourselves in and through the Liturgy? The deepening of our faith into understanding changes us from fear to faith. Thus we are drawn into the mystery of Christ lifted up on the Cross and in the lifting of the veil of the Scriptures by Christ himself.
“And I, If I be lifted up will draw all unto me.”
Fr. David Curry
Easter Monday, 2024
