A Homily - The Third Sunday of Easter (Year B)

First Reading – Acts 3:13-15, 17-19 ©

Responsorial Psalm – Psalm 4:2, 4, 7, 9 ©

Second Reading – 1 John 2:1-5 ©

Gospel Acclamation – Luke 24:32

The Gospel According to Luke 24:35 – 48 ©

 

(NJB)

 

Listen!

When you encounter royalist language in scripture depicting God, the creator of the universe, as a king, you are reading cult propaganda.

God is not a king, and prophecy is not concerned with prescience , divinations, auguries, the prediction of future events or any other form of con. None of the things Jesus said or did were said or done in fulfillment of prophecy. The prophet’s role is to serve as the voice of justice, true justice in an unjust world. Jesus fulfilled the mandate of this office and because of his commitment to justice that he was made to suffer.

Be mindful.

The author of Acts speaks of repentance and the forgiveness of sins, about wiping sin out as if it a mechanical or operation, or like balancing a ledger, as if the forgiveness of sins was equivalent to discharging a debt.

This is not the way of it…salvation is not redemption; God’s children are not traded like commodities between some fictional heaven and a make-believe underworld. The divine spirit that dwells within each of us is not a thing that can be bought and sold, and as such, no human being should be treated as such.

The grant of grace is not transactional; divine grace is free, it is fulsome and always present in our lives. When we are asked to repent, which simply means to turn around, we are being asked to examine the work of grace already active in our lives.

Consider the wisdom of the psalmist and place your trust in God; this is the essence of faith.

Believe that your life, that all-lives have meaning and purpose; if you claim to be a Christian you are called to trust God and reach out to the marginalized, to aid the disenfranchised, to the stranger among you, to be a living witness to the providence of God.

Let humility and mercy be the sacrifice you bring to the altar, these will make you holy; let you sacrifice be compassion, fairness and mercy.

Know this.

The apostles and their disciples were often confused about Jesus’ ministry, which was much different from what is depicted in the reading for today in John’s letter.

It is proper to view Jesus as an advocate, as the son of God who interceded on our behalf,  but is improper to view his death on the cross as the offering of a holy victim to a blood thirty deity; insofar as Jesus’ death was an act of compassion, insofar as he gave himself up, went to trial and accepted the outcome in order to protect his followers it was a sacrifice, in every other respect it was an political murder.

Be mindful.

It is true that you may come to the knowledge of God by following the commandments, if you follow this path, the way Jesus taught, then you must interpret the law and the prophets through the wisdom of the Shema, as Jesus did:

Hear this, God is one.

Love God with all your strength and all your heart and all your mind…and love your neighbor as yourself.

Serve God through the service you give to others. Do unto them as you would have them do unto you.

Do not do unto others what you would not have done to you.

Be mindful.

A person may also come to the knowledge of God through sin and suffering and the experience of grace; any and every point in time and space may serve as a nexus of grace and for the encounter with the eternal and infinite God.

Remember the prodigal son; do as God does and seek out the suffering in others; care for them. Remind them that they are loved.

God dwells in all people, regardless of what anyone might say about their probity and propriety, God is with them. God is with even those people whom we fear and hate…if we fear and hate anyone. God is with you and your family and everyone you love, God is also with those who wish to harm you. God is with your enemies and those whom you most despise.

Some people are able to manifest the presence of God in their life through an emulation of the love that Jesus himself demonstrated through the way. They show us this though self-emptying, kenosis and the outpouring of good that follows.

Other people find God through their encounters with those by whom they have been hurt, in situations where they are called on to be merciful, to forgive them and thereby acknowledge the need for mercy in themselves.

Remember.

God is present in every person, some are able to demonstrate the divine will and show us the way. Others call us to a Christ-like response, to demonstrate for them a heart of love and the blessings of mercy. Our faith instructs us that all things redound to the good in the end…and yet it remains the task of the living to assist with that transformative process.

Do not emulate the author of John’s letter, who is quicker to judge than to express humility, who seems to have misplaced the core conviction that everyone has fallen short of the glory of God.

Be mindful.

It is God’s will that God’s love comes to perfection in every person; we are co-creators with the divine in the determination of that narrative. God is the author of the script, God directs the stage and us toward our end, we are merely players, created in freedom, with the ability to improvise and ad lib.

Consider the Gospel reading for today.

The unfortunate truth is this, the myths the Gospel writers wove in order to narrate the story of Jesus’ resurrection, the structure of those myths and the values they uphold, serve to undermine the teaching and ministry of Jesus and his articulation of the way.

We are not called on to be good in exchange for eternal life; we are called on to love the good for the sake of the good itself, to love justice for the sake of justice. As followers of Jesus we are called on to serve the truth, to be truthful and to depend it, which cannot be done so well when the foundation myths of the Church are predicated on a lie.

There was nothing about the death of Jesus that was preordained, if Jesus ever even lived. There was nothing written about Jesus in the “Books of Moses,” books which Moses, if he ever even lived, did not write. There was nothing foretold about Jesus in the Books of the Law or in the writings of the Prophets, because prophecy is not a prediction of future events, which prognostications are called divinations and auguries and all fantastically absurd.

The prophets were not prognosticators, they did not augur, they were not diviners; they were critics of the social order, as Jesus was, they spoke about the times he lived in and the powers he and his followers faced in the world.

Every effort that has ever been made by Christians to read into the Hebrew scriptures references to the life, mission, and person of Jesus, has been an exercise in vanity and the mission of fools; it is the work of the faithless.

The truth is much better.

Jesus was killed by the unjust for exemplifying true-justice through the quality of his life; he was an example to us all. He showed us the way to free ourselves from sin, he showed us how to live an authentic life…and his death did not end him.

First Reading – Acts 3:13-15, 17-19 ©

You Killed the Prince of Life: God, However, Raised Him from the Dead

Peter said to the people: ‘You are Israelites, and it is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our ancestors, who has glorified his servant Jesus, the same Jesus you handed over and then disowned in the presence of Pilate after Pilate had decided to release him. It was you who accused the Holy One, the Just One, you who demanded the reprieve of a murderer while you killed the prince of life. God, however, raised him from the dead, and to that fact we are the witnesses.

‘Now I know, brothers, that neither you nor your leaders had any idea what you were really doing; this was the way God carried out what he had foretold, when he said through all his prophets that his Christ would suffer. Now you must repent and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out.’

 

Responsorial Psalm – Psalm 4:2, 4, 7, 9 ©

Lift up the light of your face on us, O Lord.

Alleluia!

When I call, answer me, O God of justice;

  from anguish you released me, have mercy and hear me!

Lift up the light of your face on us, O Lord.

It is the Lord who grants favours to those whom he loves;

  the Lord hears me whenever I call him.

Lift up the light of your face on us, O Lord.

‘What can bring us happiness?’ many say.

  Lift up the light of your face on us, O Lord.

Lift up the light of your face on us, O Lord.

I will lie down in peace and sleep comes at once

  for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.

Lift up the light of your face on us, O Lord.

Alleluia!

 

Second Reading – 1 John 2:1-5 ©

Jesus Christ is the Sacrifice that Takes Our Sins Away, and the World's

I am writing this, my children, to stop you sinning; but if anyone should sin, we have our advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, who is just; he is the sacrifice that takes our sins away, and not only ours, but the whole world’s.

We can be sure that we know God only by keeping his commandments.

Anyone who says, ‘I know him’, and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, refusing to admit the truth.

But when anyone does obey what he has said, God’s love comes to perfection in him.

 

Gospel Acclamation – Luke 24:32

Alleluia, alleluia!

Lord Jesus, explain the Scriptures to us.

Make our hearts burn within us as you talk to us.

Alleluia!

 

The Gospel According to Luke 24:35 – 48 ©

It is Written that the Christ would Suffer and on the Third Day Rise from the Dead

The disciples told their story of what had happened on the road and how they had recognised Jesus at the breaking of bread.

  They were still talking about all this when Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you!’ In a state of alarm and fright, they thought they were seeing a ghost. But he said, ‘Why are you so agitated, and why are these doubts rising in your hearts? Look at my hands and feet; yes, it is I indeed. Touch me and see for yourselves; a ghost has no flesh and bones as you can see I have.’ And as he said this he showed them his hands and feet. Their joy was so great that they still could not believe it, and they stood there dumbfounded; so he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ And they offered him a piece of grilled fish, which he took and ate before their eyes.

  Then he told them, ‘This is what I meant when I said, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses, in the Prophets and in the Psalms has to be fulfilled.’ He then opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘So you see how it is written that the Christ would suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that, in his name, repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses to this.’

 

The Third Sunday of Easter (Year B)

Observation - April 9th, 2024, Tuesday

robin silhouetted against the silver sky

watching from the leafless maple

squirrels scrambling in the morning

 

the air is crisp

            flowing through my open window

A Homily - The Second Sunday of Easter (Year B) Divine Mercy Sunday, A Holy Day of Obligation

First reading: Acts 4:32-35

Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 117(118):2-4,15-18,22-24

Second reading: 1 John 5:1-6

Sequence – Victimae Paschali Laudes

Gospel Acclamation: John 20:29

The Gospel According to John: 20:19-31

 

(NJB)

 

Listen!

The readings for today move us away from the ministry of Jesus, into the life of the early church.

John’s Gospel was written roughly one hundred-twenty years after Jesus died, it contains some fascinating glimpses into the life of John’s community, but it is far removed from the way Jesus instructed us to follow.

John’s Gospel makes enemies of the Jewish people, it tells his audience that in the week after Jesus’ crucifixion the apostles hid for “fear of the Jews,” indicating deep division in the nascent church between the Pharisaic Jews who founded it, and the far greater number of gentiles in Palestine and the broader Mediterranean world who quickly became the majority of its members.

Remember!

Jesus and the apostles were Jewish, they were Jews of the diaspora; Jesus taught in synagogues, the people called him Rabbi.

Ninety years before John’s gospel was written, Paul was active with his “ministry to the gentiles,” arguing with Peter over the question of whether gentiles must first convert and become observant Jews before they could join the church. In this period the Jesus movement was a Jewish movement.

Paul argued against the notion that gentiles should first covert to Judaism before becoming Christians, Paul’s point of view ultimately prevailed. The Church, still in its infancy, opened itself to the world and over the ninety intervening years between the ministry of Peter and Paul and the writing of John’s Gospel a profound transformation took place, coming to see the Jewish tradition and its people, the tradition and people from which it was born, as anathema to itself.

During the period that John’s Gospel was written, the Church had great concern for its authority, this time was marked by persecutions from without and division from within. In this time the image of Jesus is changes from prophet to priest; he is less and less the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, and more the administrator of priestly functions. When he commissions the disciples he instantiates their office as a priestly office, empowering them to pass judgement on the people, to forgive or not forgive sins as they and the heirs to their authority saw fit, etc…so they told us.

This portrayal of Jesus as the Christ is a betrayal of the actual ministry of Jesus and his teaching on the way, it flies in the face of the historical account that lingers in the synoptic gospels (Mark, Luke and Matthew), a history almost wholly absent in John.

The historical record tells us that Jesus was not a priest; he was a prophet. Jesus forgave sin and encouraged the disciples to forgive sins, not because they had the sacred power to do so, but because God, the creator of the universe had already done so, and their role was merely to proclaim it, to teach this truth and help people to understand what that means: which is that sin is forgiven by the divine, and we are meant to honor God by accepting this forgiveness, and to emulate God by forgiving those who have done us harm…real or imagined.

When Jesus and the disciples forgave sins, they were not so much performing an act as they were proclaiming God’s intention for the whole of creation, teaching God’s abiding love for the creature, no matter how far they might have strayed.

When a prophet proclaims absolution, they are not exercising a priestly power, they are articulating the will of God.

John’s Gospel did a disservice to the early Church by encouraging the faithful to become believers, to respond to reports mystical deeds and magical happenings, to ghostly apparitions and visions as if they were true, in the hope that these supernatural events, if accepted would lend a greater authority to their position in the Church, and their own ministry within it.

Many people are taken in by this sort of thing.

Every appeal the Church makes on the conscience of the believer that relies on the super-fantastic for its authority, must always be understood as a fabrication and a failure of the Church’s ability to reason.  

It is our duty to uphold the notion that when Jesus called us he called us to serve in the Church, he called us to abide by the Spirit of Truth in that service, and that when we lie, we undermine its foundation, which is destructive of the faith.

In the final passage of the Gospel for today, the writer puts forth the notion that the miracles were real: he insists on it, he says that they were performed so that people would believe that Jesus was (in a special way) the son of God, and that through this belief (as if their belief-itself were the key to a secret door) they would enter the Church, becoming candidates for admission into eternal life…this is a false representation of the way.

The construction of the ideology is:

Come to the church where the Gospel is given, learn the name of Jesus Christ and believe in it; believe that Jesus is the Son of God. If you believe this, you will be rewarded with eternal life.

The scheme of this idiom is essentially Gnostic, it represents a system of belief that the Church attempted to reject in the same era that John’s Gospel was written. However, the Gnostic strain of thought had significant appeal among early Christians, and the teaching of the Church, even the liturgy and especially John’s Gospel, reflect the compromises that the Church made with those Gnostic movements in order to allow their adherents to join the mainstream.

It is my position that we should continue to reject those Gnostic strains of thought, the reliance on magic, the super-natural and the fantastic. More importantly, we should reject the notion that there is some kind of exchange that must take place before any one of God’s children can become the beneficiary of God’s saving will.

Understand this!

Grace is free and salvation is not transactional; what brings us to salvation is the natural movement of God’s will, flowing from the Divine out toward the creature, infusing each and every being from the moment of their generation with a divine force that culminates in the return of the creature to God.

Know this.

The meaning of faith is trust, and the faithful trust God. The meaning of faith is not belief, belief is an ideation that we hold in our minds, like a proposition or an article of dogma. A person may have faith in a belief, they may also believe in the things they have faith in. But faith and belief are not the same thing, and the distinction between them is important.

The proper content of Christian faith is not: believe in Christ so that you can be saved.

Christian faith is this: trust God, you are saved already.

Be mindful.

Everyone who is, or was begotten by God, is loved by God; we are called upon to love God in return, to love the ineffable, the transcendent and the infinite, to do so to the best that we are able.

The ministry of Jesus, the ministry that we are meant to follow as Christians, this ministry calls on us to act from our love for God, by loving all of God’s children, by loving them equally and without preference, whether or not they believe what we believe or have faith in the same things we trust in.

Note well: the profession of an ideology or the articulation of belief in a particular doctrine is not in itself an act of love.

Keep God’s commandment, as Jesus said: love your neighbor as you love yourself, care for them as you care for your own, do not equivocate.

Do not assume that just because a person professes to love God that this person actually has love in their heart. Such a profession is a good first step, but it is not proof of anything. The profession of love is not the act of loving…its proof is in the doing.

Know this.

Being a follower of Jesus does not confer any special benefit on a person, neither in this life, nor in the next.

Rather, being a Christian, having accepted the responsibilities of following Jesus, confers a special responsibility on the follower, the responsibility to treat all people as God would, as beloved members of the divine family.

Remember,

God is kind, God is loving and God is merciful.

Wherever God is present (and God is not, not present in any place), God’s kindness, God’s love and God’s mercy are also present. As Christians we are called to trust in this, to demonstrate that trust through our actions, and to encourage that trust in others.

Know this.

The Church, like God, has no enemies.

Know that God does not dwell behind the wall of a city, or within the precinct of a temple, neither in a cathedral, nor a basilica. There are no gates barring access to God, priestly intermediaries are wholly unnecessary, God is in all places, at all times and in the hearts of all people.

God is with us!

God does not favor one child over another. God is a bringer of life, not death. God loves peace, not war.

God is the parent of everyone, the creator of the universe and everything in it, and the resurrection of Jesus (if you believe in it) is a gift of hope for you. It is a reason to trust in what had theretofore been unseen, and encouragement to believe that you are included in what God has promised to do for everyone.

Whether we believe in the resurrection or not, does not matter, the return to God is the destiny set in place for you and everyone, not one of us will be left in the dark.

All will be saved, all will be well. God will be all in all…this is the hope of the church, and the true content of our faith.

Faith makes it easier to live the good life. When your belief in God’s love for you is firm, it is easier to pray for those who persecute you, to love your enemy, to orient your life toward justice, to fill it with mercy and express it with humility.

Faith is not an article of belief that we are meant to cling to, it is not the golden ticket that will grant a person access to paradise.

Faith will not protect you from evil, either from within or from without, but faith will empower you to persevere in the face of it, to endure it and remain whole.

Consider this.

The myths we tell about Cain and Able, Ishmael and Isaac, Essau and Jacob, Saul and David, these stories reflect the tribal and dynastic machinations of small minded and sinful creatures. They are not a reflection of the divine will.

Do not confuse victory in battle with God’s will, do not confuse human suffering with God’s will; God does not desire anyone to suffer.

Now consider the reading from the Book of Acts. The author of Acts is informing us of the way things ought to have been, rather than speaking of the way things actually were.

We know that the Church did not conduct its daily business according to its most lofty ideals. The letters of Paul confirm it. More importantly, we have the judgement of common sense and our own experience to tell us that this is always how things go. This reading from Acts informs us of what our aspirations for our communities should be, and it is good that the author directs people toward a unity of heart and soul. However, it is a disservice to hold these aspirations over the people of the Church today, as a factual representation of a “golden-age” that has been lost to sin.

Be mindful!

The apostolic era was a period in the Church that was rife with conflict, oftentimes bloody, and it was not always the party in the right that emerged from those internal conflicts victorious.

There was conflict and misunderstanding among the disciples, even those closest to Jesus, even while he lived with them and taught them; Jesus’ own disciples betrayed and denied him.

The conflicts of the apostolic era ended with the age of heresies, the age of heresies ended with advent of the Imperial church, after which, new heresies were persecuted through the power of the state, leading to centuries of war and bloody conflict, all the way to the inquisition and the protestant reformation, which has never ended.

The last two hundred years have brought us an ebb in the tide of those conflicts, but the structure of those conflicts remain…the unscrupulous could reignite them at any moment, and with the rise of Christian nationalism in America, we could easily experience those conflicts again.

Know this.

There is not a single teaching of the Church whose meaning has been agreed upon by all Christians, not a single teaching that has been held by all people, in all times and all places; even the teaching on the resurrection has been a point of division among Christians, going all the way back to the discovery of the empty tomb.

It is not the teaching we believe, it is not doctrine nor dogma that lifts us up and saves us. It is only the ever-present love of God that returns us to ourselves and to the divine. Our salvation is to trust in that…not that we will be saved one day, but that we are saved already

First reading: Acts 4:32-35

The whole group of believers was united, heart and soul

The whole group of believers was united, heart and soul; no one claimed for his own use anything that he had, as everything they owned was held in common.

  The apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus with great power, and they were all given great respect.

  None of their members was ever in want, as all those who owned land or houses would sell them, and bring the money from them, to present it to the apostles; it was then distributed to any members who might be in need.

 

Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 117(118):2-4,15-18,22-24

Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his love has no end.

Let the sons of Israel say:

  ‘His love has no end.’

Let the sons of Aaron say:

  ‘His love has no end.’

Let those who fear the Lord say:

  ‘His love has no end.’

Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his love has no end.

The Lord’s right hand has triumphed;

  his right hand raised me up.

I shall not die, I shall live

  and recount his deeds.

I was punished, I was punished by the Lord,

  but not doomed to die.

Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his love has no end.

The stone which the builders rejected

  has become the corner stone.

This is the work of the Lord,

  a marvel in our eyes.

This day was made by the Lord;

  we rejoice and are glad.

Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his love has no end.

 

Second reading: 1 John 5:1-6

Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ has already overcome the world

Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ has been begotten by God; and whoever loves the Father that begot him loves the child whom he begets.

We can be sure that we love God’s children if we love God himself and do what he has commanded us; this is what loving God is – keeping his commandments; and his commandments are not difficult, because anyone who has been begotten by God has already overcome the world; this is the victory over the world – our faith.

Who can overcome the world?

Only the man who believes that Jesus is the Son of God:

Jesus Christ who came by water and blood, not with water only, but with water and blood; with the Spirit as another witness – since the Spirit is the truth.

 

Sequence - Victimae Paschali Laudes

Christians, to the Paschal Victim

  offer sacrifice and praise.

The sheep are ransomed by the Lamb;

and Christ, the undefiled,

hath sinners to his Father reconciled.

Death with life contended:

  combat strangely ended!

Life’s own Champion, slain,

  yet lives to reign.

Tell us, Mary:

  say what thou didst see

  upon the way.

The tomb the Living did enclose;

I saw Christ’s glory as he rose!

The angels there attesting;

shroud with grave-clothes resting.

Christ, my hope, has risen:

he goes before you into Galilee.

That Christ is truly risen

  from the dead we know.

Victorious king, thy mercy show!

 

Gospel Acclamation: John 20:29

Alleluia, alleluia!

Jesus said: ‘You believe because you can see me.

Happy are those who have not seen and yet believe.’

Alleluia!

 

The Gospel According to John 20:19-31

Eight days later, Jesus came again and stood among them

In the evening of that same day, the first day of the week, the doors were closed in the room where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews. Jesus came and stood among them. He said to them, ‘Peace be with you’, and showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were filled with joy when they saw the Lord, and he said to them again, ‘Peace be with you.

‘As the Father sent me, so am I sending you.’

After saying this he breathed on them and said:

‘Receive the Holy Spirit. For those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained.’

Thomas, called the Twin, who was one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. When the disciples said, ‘We have seen the Lord’, he answered, ‘Unless I see the holes that the nails made in his hands and can put my finger into the holes they made, and unless I can put my hand into his side, I refuse to believe.’ Eight days later the disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them. The doors were closed, but Jesus came in and stood among them. ‘Peace be with you’ he said. Then he spoke to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here; look, here are my hands. Give me your hand; put it into my side. Doubt no longer but believe.’ Thomas replied, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him:

‘You believe because you can see me.

Happy are those who have not seen and yet believe.’

There were many other signs that Jesus worked and the disciples saw, but they are not recorded in this book. These are recorded so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing this you may have life through his name.

 

The Second Sunday of Easter (Year B) Divine Mercy Sunday, A Holy Day of Obligation

Easter, A Holiday Reflection

When I was a child Easter always came in conjunction with a week off from school; Spring Break we called it, and we still do.

Spring Break always came with Eastertide, but in the public schools we were not allowed to call it Easter Break, on account of the separation between church and state, a separation that we are wise to maintain.

I am not sure when it happened, but at some point those old-conventions began to change, school boards stopped planning the spring break to coincide with the Christian holiday.

Maybe this was due to a sensitivity concerning cultural hegemony of Christianity that had begun to develop in secular society, or perhaps the change reflected a desire to cohere more closely to such constitutionally required demarcations as the freedom of religion, and the freedom from religion, or maybe it was just because the Easter festivities have an erratic cycle and at variance with the solar year, and therefore it presents a complex set of challenges for curriculum schedulers.

Easter, like Passover and Ramadan follows Selene, the wandering Titaness, our silvery-moon.

Sometimes Easter comes as late as my birthday, April 22^nd, which is Earth Day, other times it is as early as my sister Raney’s birthday, March 28^th.

In the years when Easter fell on our birthday’s we were able to experience that same sense of being overlooked that some kids felt whose birthdays fell on holidays like Christmas or New Year’s Eve, Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July or Halloween…just a taste of it, every now and then, because, as I mentioned, the cycle is erratic.

There are many ways to celebrate Easter and many layers to the Holiday.

In America, Easter is most clearly represented by its palette of pastels:

The donning of spring garments, flowered hats and dresses for the ladies, pressed suits for the men, greening lawns and budding trees, crocus and lilies.

Easter is about hard-boiled eggs died with bright colors and hidden around the house, in the yard and garden.

In America Easter is means jellybeans, chocolates and other candies, for my family it meant a feast of baked ham, green beans and potatoes au gratin.

For many people Easter has little to do with Jesus, and the commemoration of the resurrection, which is at the root of the holiday, the good news that Christ has risen.

In the Christian context Easter is a celebration of Jesus, the new lawgiver, guiding the people to a new promised land in a new Passover; it is the foundation of the church leading the poor and downtrodden to a world beyond the veil of time and space, beating down the doors of death and arriving in a place that is free from pain and anguish.

When we were young my brothers and sisters and I would always watch Cecil B. De Mill’s epic, The Ten Commandments, starring Charlton Heston as Moses; we watched his transformation from prince to exile, as he discovered his identity and freed his people from a life of bondage.

Watching this movie was a tradition followed by millions of Americans, and it more clearly connected the Christian holiday to its Jewish roots than any sermon I ever heard in church…though we were ostensibly Christian, Lutherans and Catholics, my family rarely went to church on Easter, we hardly ever went to church at all.

For many folks, Easter marks the equinox, a celebration of the change in the arc of the sun, in the angle of its light, a change from the dark days of winter to the bright days of spring.

It is a celebration of life over death and the expectation of summer, the season of planting and hope for the future.

This year Easter comes at the end of an mild winter on the northern plains. It comes in the midst of the ongoing war in Ukraine, and war between Israel and Palestine, it comes as women in the United States are step by step losing the franchise of citizenship, it comes with church bells ringing and with Christians on either side of the political divide both cheering and lamenting the autocratic forces that threaten our own democracy, promoting political violence and even civil war.

This Easter, as with every Easter since the murder of Jesus, there is good reason to mourn the terrible state of humanity, and some reason to hope for our future.

It is a day on which we should ask ourselves what the best way is to be restored to ourselves, reconciled with our families and our communities,  and how we can share those hopes and expectations with the world.

A Homily - Holy Week, Easter Sunday (Year B) A Holy Day of Obligation

First Reading - Acts 10:34, 37-43 ©

Responsorial Psalm - Psalm 117(118):1-2, 16-17, 22-23 ©

Second Reading - Colossians 3:1-4 ©

Sequence - Victimae Paschali Laudes

Gospel Acclamation – 1 Corinthians 5:7-8

The Gospel According to John 20:1-9 ©

 

(NJB)

 

Listen…

 Hear the Easter message:

 Follow Jesus; walk humbly.

 Do good; serve justice.

 Be merciful, like Jesus, be a source of healing in the world; this is the way, place your hope in it and believe.

 The way is God’s law, and the law is life; it is written in our hearts. God speaks to us there, to everyone; do not doubt it.

 The divine law is like a living flame; look into the flames and see the truth shimmering there, tongues of fire leaping from the burning coals, its smoke rising like incense. All other versions of the law are merely reflections of the divine law, dim and imperfect.

 It is good to uphold the law, demonstrate mercy and compassion through right living, as a blessing to everyone.

 We are alive in the world and our faith calls on us to live as if we believed that the promise of our salvation were true, as if it were true already accomplished, and accomplished in full.

 This is the meaning of the Gospel:

 It is the good news that Christ has risen.

The essence of Christian faith is to trust in this proposition, it is trust in the belief that you and everyone will rise as Christ did, not in a transactional way, not as an exchange for the coin of our “belief,” but returned to life by God merely because God loves us.

 Imagine the holy family, by which I mean the entirety of creation, all of the living and all of the dead and everyone who will yet be; imagine all of us living in the garden now, at peace, without want or enmity, living in that place where we are able to see God clearly, a place in which our relationships with each other are more important to us than gold, political power or any other earthly treasure. When we achieve that heavenly state, we will have brought Heaven to Earth.

 Celebrate the feast of Easter, take part in it and accept the way as Jesus taught us, the way he showed us through his life, through his death and resurrection as depicted in our mythology.

 Celebrate the feast, knowing that it does not matter whether they are literally true…or not.

 Believe in the hope that Easter represents, even in the dark times, even in times as dark as the first Sunday morning after the crucifixion, when Mary Magdala and Mary, Martha’s sister, came to the tomb.

 It was Mary Magdala who had anointed Jesus for burial. She and her companions were at the foot of the cross when Jesus died. Mary Magdala was the first to receive the revelation that he had risen.

 It was dark when Mary arrived at the tomb, but not completely dark, and in the dim light of morning she saw a hint of the truth that was about to unfold, with the sun rising to fill the day with light.

 Mary saw the stone rolled away from the tomb, she looked in and found it empty.

 At first she assumed that someone had come and removed the body of Jesus, taken him and hidden him somewhere…then she understood. She hurried to find the other disciples, to tell them what she had found and evangelize them. When she reached them she encountered their doubt…but when they arrived on the scene and explored the empty tomb for themselves, the understanding of what had transpired began to take hold among them. They saw the empty tomb and the burial garments cast aside. In that moment they realized that Jesus had been raised from the dead.

 On that belief and on the strength of their witness the Church was born

 Know this.

The Church was not built on the foundation of Peter’s faith, which faltered and failed on the night Jesus was arrested. It was built on the faith of women, like Mary and Mary and Mary and Martha, the women who never abandoned Jesus, who did everything in their power to make the path that was in front of him smooth.

 Throughout his ministry it was the women among his disciples who understood his mission, it was the women who were able to fully comprehend the power of his message, including the necessity of responding to it in faith, which they did.

 Those great women, the mothers of the church, responded with trust, not with propositions and creeds but with action and with their living witness; the women in Jesus’ company were never confused about his mission, they always understood how it would end.

 While his male disciples tripped over themselves, doubted him, doubted each other, vied for supremacy, betrayed him, denied him, sold him into captivity, while all of that was going on, these women were by his side, comforting him, tending to him, doing everything in their power to ease the burden of what lay ahead of him.

 

First Reading - Acts 10:34, 37-43 ©

'We Have Eaten and Drunk with Him After His Resurrection'

Peter addressed Cornelius and his household: ‘You must have heard about the recent happenings in Judaea; about Jesus of Nazareth and how he began in Galilee, after John had been preaching baptism. God had anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and because God was with him, Jesus went about doing good and curing all who had fallen into the power of the devil. Now I, and those with me, can witness to everything he did throughout the countryside of Judaea and in Jerusalem itself: and also to the fact that they killed him by hanging him on a tree, yet three days afterwards God raised him to life and allowed him to be seen, not by the whole people but only by certain witnesses God had chosen beforehand. Now we are those witnesses – we have eaten and drunk with him after his resurrection from the dead – and he has ordered us to proclaim this to his people and to tell them that God has appointed him to judge everyone, alive or dead. It is to him that all the prophets bear this witness: that all who believe in Jesus will have their sins forgiven through his name.’

 

Responsorial Psalm - Psalm 117(118):1-2, 16-17, 22-23 ©

This day was made by the Lord: we rejoice and are glad.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!

Give thanks to the Lord for he is good,

  for his love has no end.

Let the sons of Israel say:

  ‘His love has no end.’

This day was made by the Lord: we rejoice and are glad.

The Lord’s right hand has triumphed;

  his right hand raised me up.

I shall not die, I shall live

  and recount his deeds.

This day was made by the Lord: we rejoice and are glad.

The stone which the builders rejected

  has become the corner stone.

This is the work of the Lord,

  a marvel in our eyes.

This day was made by the Lord: we rejoice and are glad.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!

 

Second Reading - Colossians 3:1-4 ©

Look for the Things that Are in Heaven, where Christ Is

Since you have been brought back to true life with Christ, you must look for the things that are in heaven, where Christ is, sitting at God’s right hand. Let your thoughts be on heavenly things, not on the things that are on the earth, because you have died, and now the life you have is hidden with Christ in God. But when Christ is revealed – and he is your life – you too will be revealed in all your glory with him.

 

Sequence - Victimae Paschali Laudes

Christians, to the Paschal Victim

  offer sacrifice and praise.

The sheep are ransomed by the Lamb;

and Christ, the undefiled,

hath sinners to his Father reconciled.

Death with life contended:

  combat strangely ended!

Life’s own Champion, slain,

  yet lives to reign.

Tell us, Mary:

  say what thou didst see

  upon the way.

The tomb the Living did enclose;

I saw Christ’s glory as he rose!

The angels there attesting;

shroud with grave-clothes resting.

Christ, my hope, has risen:

he goes before you into Galilee.

That Christ is truly risen

  from the dead we know.

Victorious king, thy mercy show!

 

Gospel Acclamation – 1 Corinthians 5:7-8

Alleluia, alleluia!

Christ, our passover, has been sacrificed:

let us celebrate the feast then, in the Lord.

Alleluia!

 

The Gospel According to John 20:1-9 ©

He Must Rise from the Dead

It was very early on the first day of the week and still dark, when Mary of Magdala came to the tomb. She saw that the stone had been moved away from the tomb and came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved. ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb’ she said ‘and we don’t know where they have put him.’

So Peter set out with the other disciple to go to the tomb. They ran together, but the other disciple, running faster than Peter, reached the tomb first; he bent down and saw the linen cloths lying on the ground, but did not go in. Simon Peter who was following now came up, went right into the tomb, saw the linen cloths on the ground, and also the cloth that had been over his head; this was not with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in; he saw and he believed. Till this moment they had failed to understand the teaching of scripture, that he must rise from the dead.

 

Holy Week, Easter Sunday (Year B) A Holy Day of Obligation