Christ Church

“This is the witness, that God hath given to us eternal life; and this life is in his Son”

“The same day,” John tells us. What same day? The same day as Easter. It is as if time has slowed, as if we are simply in the moment and meaning of Easter Day. The same day but “at evening”; “there was evening and there was morning, one day,” Genesis tells us about the wonder of creation. Here is the greater wonder of redemption, the new creation through the Resurrection. Where are we?

We are caught up in the mystery of this same day, the eternal day symbolic of the sabbath of God in the radical meaning of God’s eternal life given and made known to us in Christ, as John says in the Epistle. That is what we are struggling to understand. We are very much, I think, especially in the confusions of our culture of fear and death, with the disciples on the evening of that one and same day. We are behind closed doors. It is a powerful symbol of our human uncertainties and fears. We are behind the closed doors of our minds; buried in ourselves, dead to life. Our minds are like tombs. It is an appropriate image for our culture of fear and death; closed in on ourselves.

Yet, what we are given to see is God opening our minds. How? By appearing in our midst. There is, first, as saw last week the witness of Mary Magdalene finding the empty tomb and running to Peter and John who confirm her finding but revealing their perplexity “for as yet they knew not the Scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.” The second Gospel reading from Mark at Easter (BCP, p. 185) makes this same point: the women coming to the tomb, finding the stone rolled away and “a young man sitting on the right side” of the sepulchre, “clothed in a long white garment.” As Mark puts it, “they were affrighted” or amazed but are told “be not affrighted: ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified; he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him.” It is evidence from absence, the witness of the empty tomb, which is not the same thing as absence of evidence. For there is also the witness of the young man or angel. “He” who was crucified, whose body you seek, “is risen,” they are told. Something has changed. It marks the beginning of the process of learning the radical meaning of the Resurrection. It changes everything but not by negating the realities of the Passion. The Crucifixion and the Resurrection have to be thought together.

(more…)

Print this entry

“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

Print this entry

Fr. David Curry has collected his Holy Week and Easter meditations and homilies, based on the scripture text, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me” into a single pdf document. Click here to download “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me”. These homilies were originally delivered and posted earlier this week on Palm Sunday through Easter Day.

Print this entry