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“Be it unto me according to thy word”

Once again, we are presented with a lesson from The Book of the Acts of the Apostles, often attributed to St. Luke. Once again a Gospel reading from The Gospel according to St. Luke. Once again, the word of Resurrection is being shown to us and we are being opened out to its meaning. And once again suffering and death are inescapably made an essential part of the teaching of the Resurrection along with repentance and forgiveness.

“To you is the word of this salvation sent,” Paul says to a group of Hebrews in the synagogue in Antioch of Pisidia. The message of Resurrection arises in the context of the Hebrew Scriptures, among “the sons of the family of Abraham.” As Luke puts it, too, the idea of the Resurrection comes to us through “the open[ing of] their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures.” Yet all of this builds upon the story of Christ on the road to Emmaus, upon the tangible realities of Christ being with us.

“Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and blood, as ye see me have.” And in addition he asks “have ye here any food? And they gave him a piece of broiled fish, and of an honey-comb.” It is all part of the testimony to the reality of the Resurrection that “he took it, and did eat before them.” It is the Risen Christ who teaches us about the resurrection and its radical meaning.

It does not mean the annihilation of nature but its transformation and perfection. The body and the physical world are not everything; they are not self-sufficient and self-explanatory, but neither are they nothing. Here Jesus uses both the Scriptures and the things of the natural world to teach us the meaning of our humanity in God. He speaks to our fears and worries, to our anxieties and our uncertainties. He confirms his presence with us in simple ways, even through such simple things as “a piece of broiled fish and of an honey-comb.” This is part of the power of these Gospel stories.

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“Be it unto me according to thy word”

The word for Easter is Resurrection. But how do we know about the Resurrection? How do we begin to understand what is meant by the Resurrection? Few Gospel stories illumine our understanding better than Luke’s famous story of Christ on the Road to Emmaus. “He was known of them in the breaking of the bread.”

“Him God raised up the third day, and showed him openly, Luke tells in the Lesson from Acts, rehearsing features of the life of Christ and especially the events of the Passion and then the Resurrection, or rather the making known of his Resurrection. The Risen Christ is made known “unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us,”Luke suggests, “who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead,”the very things which his Gospel account, too, will emphasize. The Resurrection, it seems, can only be known by way of testimony, by way of witnesses, by way of a reflection on extraordinary things. Thus Luke’s Gospel shows the Risen Christ running out after us, as it were, and inserting himself into our conversation about our perplexities and confusions, drawing out of us, in good Socratic fashion the nature of our own uncertainties and, then, providing a way to make sense of it all. So in the story of the Road to Emmaus, we have two disciples fleeing Jerusalem in fear because of the events of the crucifixion, “talk[ing] together of all these things that had happened.”Jesus joins them but is not recognized by them; after all, they aren’t expecting him given the events of the crucifixion and its aftermath.

He gets them to explain their perplexities about the crucifixion itself and then the report of the women and the other disciples, and even the vision of angels about the empty tomb. “Foolish one, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken,” Jesus says to them, “ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?”Note, once again, that conjunction of suffering and glory. With that compelling introduction, “he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”It becomes a repeated trope by Luke, namely, the idea of Christ “opening to us the Scriptures”and “opening their understanding”to provide us a way of thinking the radical nature of the Resurrection.

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Fr. David Curry has collected his nine Holy Week and Easter meditations and homilies, based on the Scripture text “Be it unto me according to thy word”, into a single pdf document. Click here to download “Be it unto me according to thy word”. These homilies were originally delivered and posted earlier this week on Palm Sunday through Easter Day.

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“Be it unto me according to thy word”

What is that word? It is all Resurrection. “Christ is risen, Alleluia, Alleluia. The Lord is risen, indeed, Alleluia, Alleluia.”This is the Easter word and the ancient greeting of Christians. It is the great proclamation of the Church about the wonder and the mystery of God in the work of human redemption. Death is not everything; it is nothing. Death is changed. God makes something out of human sin and wickedness, even out of death. Such is new life, the radical new life of the Resurrection.

The tomb has become the womb of new life. We are provided with an entirely new way to think about human life; it is life with God, now and evermore. The word of Resurrection resounds in the liturgy of Easter beginning with the Easter Anthems. And resurrection and rebirth, new life and new beginnings are seen visually and actually in the baptism of Jen and David Appleby on this day. They are the visible reminders to us of our life in Christ. Their baptisms immediately recall us to our own.

Word and Sacrament. Easter is a word derived fromEastra, an ancient pagan Germanic Goddess of Spring. Other cultures speak of the Pascha, referring to the Passover and, indeed, the new Passover of Christ. The Easter Day anthems help us to understand something of the radical meaning of the Resurrection. “Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.”The consequence of that for us is made clear in the Epistle, itself a proclamation. “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God.”That means we have to die to ourselves and our old ways, “cast[ing] off the old self with its evil deeds, and put[ting] on the new.”There is, in short, an new orientation and direction for our lives, a new birth for all, a new way of looking at things.

The challenge of Easter Day is quite simple. We are dead in ourselves. We live only in Christ. It is all about getting out of the tombs of our minds and our lives to be alive in Christ. How? Through the Gospel encounter with a new and transforming reality. It begins with the empty tomb with the puzzlement and perplexity of expectations shattered. It begins with confusion and uncertainty out of which will come a new understanding. Mary Magdalene comes early to the tomb, alone, only to find the first wonder, “the stone taken away from the sepulchre.”This sets her motion to tell the other disciples, Simon Peter and “the other disciple whom Jesus loved,”, John. “So they ran both together.”John outruns Peter but only stoops down and looks in; he does not enter. Peter enters first and then John follows. Then suddenly, beyond the moving of the stone, they find that there is no body but only the linen clothes lying. It is for them and for us a complete mystery.

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“Be it unto me according to thy word”

Our Easter Vigil is a greatly simplified version of the ancient liturgies and rites of “this most holy night.” Vigils are about watching and waiting. As such they are about anticipation and expectation for something more. Holy Week has immersed us in the Passion of Christ, using Mary’s fiat as our mantra to enter into the narratives of the Passion; “be it unto me according to thy word,” the word which has gathered into itself all of the madness and disorders of our words. But in so doing we have been aware that we are participating in something great and wonderful, something which belongs to the mystery of human redemption.

That mystery recalls us to the deeper meaning of God’s creation. We can only participate in the Passion through the Resurrection. For here is the great wonder. It is the Resurrection alone that makes our participation in the Passion both possible and necessary. Tonight we wait expectantly and profoundly upon the mystery of God in the fullness of redemption. We await the new creation, the Resurrection.

How do we watch and wait? First, in the quiet darkness in which the Paschal Candle is blessed and lit and the great prayer, the Paschal Praeconium or Exultet, is sung, itself a wonderful and moving set of Scriptural and theological images about the Passion and the Resurrection, sometimes attributed to St. Augustine or more likely St. Ambrose. It is really a kind of Eucharistic Prayer or Canon. It proclaims the triumph of light over darkness, of life over death, of good over evil. Then, we listen to a few of the great prophecies and readings that illumine the mystery of human redemption. That prepares us for an important feature of the Vigil.

Traditionally, the service provided the occasion for baptisms, indeed, in its fullest expression, there was baptism, confirmation and then communion. In the baptisms at the Vigil, there is the renewing of our baptismal vows. In other words, there is a constant circling back and into the mystery of our incorporation into the Body of Christ.

Our country vigil ends with the lauds or praises of Easter morn. Our vigil brings us to the Resurrection, to the Alleluia’s that resound in praise and thanksgiving to God. The Resurrection is the triumph of good over evil, the triumph of God himself in his very truth and being giving himself for us in the sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion. Such is the word heard and seen that defines us, Word and Sacrament through which we participate in Christ.

“Be it unto me according to thy word”

Fr. David Curry
Easter Vigil, 2018

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