Coronavirus Talk V
Pray the Our Father together
I ended the talk last night by saying that the resurrection of Jesus gives us hope. But the resurrection does something else as well, something that all of us, not matter who we are, have access to.
The resurrection of Jesus invites us into a new and different way of understanding ourselves and the world. The resurrection invites us into a new consciousness, a consciousness that encourages us allow ourselves to experience, in the here and now, the immediacy of life with God, ourselves the welcome the experience of encountering the eternal in time, to realize that we need not wait for heaven to meet God. Jesus named this new consciousness “the kingdom of heaven.” The kingdom of heaven is not a place, it is a state of mind, an attitude, a worldview. The resurrection ushered in the kingdom of heaven, and now there is no moment, no second, in which we are removed from its power’ and there is nothing that can limit what that power can do. Even when it seems as if darkness is fast encroaching, no darkness, personal or universal, can defeat God – ever. Full stop. The resurrection means that God won.
What resurrection reveals is that the transforming power of grace is at work even now in our lives which may be saddened by this disease or otherwise dulled by indifference or cynicism. The resurrection touches those whose faith is weak, those who find themselves powerless in the face of addictions or attachments. The light of the resurrection shines into the darkness of selfishness and greed and violence and racism.
Whenever we find ourselves, in the choices we make, leaning toward more authenticity in our living, being more open to God’s mercy, moving toward greater generosity, more justice, to a reverence for all of life and for all the living, starting to care about those we usually would not even notice or, if we do, feel we are above, when we commit ourselves to the pursuit of the truth more insistently, then we unleash the power of the resurrection, and we will see its effects in this wonderful world. We will find that have entered the kingdom of heaven.
As people who have received God’s extraordinary mercy toward us, let us accept it gratefully and with joy. But let us also embrace the ways we can allow the resurrection to change us, to make us better people, to help us accept the fact that we have no control over the length of our lives, but we do have control over the depth of our lives.
So, although all four gospels report that the tomb was empty on the Sunday after Jesus was buried in it on Friday, and a huge stone put in place at its entrance, none of the gospels report the Resurrection event in itself. None of them describe Jesus emerging from the tomb. What we are told about the resurrection comes from the gospel accounts of some of those who encountered Jesus alive. The gospel accounts do not give a coherent picture of what happened to those people, and they contradict one another in parts.
The writers of the gospels were clearly struggling to express in human language an event that transcends our categories of thought and imagination, of space and time. What God did in raising Jesus from the dead, what God did in making a way out of no way, cannot be fully explained or deduced from any number of appearances, however dramatic: affirming the resurrection can only be done with faith.
There are, however, three characteristics, three common features, that the gospels share as they recount the experiences of those who met Jesus alive, and these can help us see him as alive in our own lives and in our own experience. The appearances of Jesus after he was raised from the dead are invitations to us to pay attention to our lives in a way that will dispose us to encountering him today and every day.
First, all of those to whom Jesus appeared were in a kind of negative mood. This suggests that we can only come recognize the Risen Jesus, Jesus alive, if we have experienced some kind of loss, some kind of reversal, some grief, some disillusionment, some experience of hopelessness, some failure, something that brought us to our knees. In other words, we must have carried the cross. In order to meet Jesus alive, we must have experienced the kind of pain that brought us to our knees, something that has revealed to us our utter poverty and our need for God. When that happens to you, look for Jesus alive to find you and come to you in a form you will not expect to reassure you and to console you.
The second feature that all the resurrection appearances have in common is that everyone who meets Jesus alive is slow to recognize him. In this sense, this dawning of realization process is common to our own faith: how slow we are to believe that Jesus is a living presence in every detail of our lives. As we are first introduced into our faith, the resurrection is presented as something that happened 2000 years ago. But if our faith is developing, we come to know that meeting Jesus alive is something that is happening to us right now. But don’t look for the historical Jesus, the man with the beard and the sandals, look for the person who calls you to your best self, the person who brings you peace and comfort, the person you go to when you need to talk and who listens to you with love, the person who forgives you, the person you admire rather than the person you envy, the person who doesn’t judge you but calls you to a deeper honesty a more consistent responsibility. Look for him in those who are rejected, despised, in great need, those who don’t appear to matter they will heal you of your pride and your cynicism and your bitterness. You will have met Jesus Christ who is alive.
Then, the risen Jesus gives to those to whom he appears their mission: he tells them what they are to do to spread the word, to contribute to the good news that He is alive.
We can apply these characteristics to the first person in John’s gospel to encounter Jesus alive: Mary Magdalene.
On the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them: “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.” So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb. They both ran, but other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first; he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in. When Simon Peter arrived after him, we went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place. Then the other disciple also went in….Mary Magdalene stayed outside the tomb weeping. As she wept, she bent over into the tomb and saw to angels in white sitting there, one at the head and other at the feet where the Body of Jesus had been. And they said to her: “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them: “They have taken my Lord, and I don’t know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus there, but did not know it was Jesus. Jesus said to her: “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” She thought it was the gardener and said to him, “Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you put him, and I will take him.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabouni,” which means Teacher. Jesus said to her, “Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Mary went and announced to the disciples: “I have seen the Lord,” and then reported what he had told her. -John 20:1-18
With respect to the characteristics common the resurrection appearances, Mary Magdalene is in a negative mood when Jesus interrupts her grief with the question: “Why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?”
With respect to being slow to recognize Jesus, remember that she followed Jesus faithfully throughout his ministry, she stood at the foot of the cross alongside Jesus’ mother and watched Him die, she helped bury him in the tomb and she saw the stone rolled in front of it, just three days before, and now she believes she is talking to the gardener. It takes Jesus calling her by name to make her realize that God made a way out of no way and that her whole world has changed.
And Jesus gives her this mission: Go and tell the disciples that I am alive. Peter and the others get the news of what God has done from this woman, now overcome with joy, who becomes the first evangelizer, the first apostle, the first herald of the gospel.
Imagine Jesus asking you: “Why are you sad? Whom are you looking for?” What is God asking you to do to bring his love and mercy into your world? If you allow these questions to go deeply into your heart, if you truly pay attention to them, you will wake up in the kingdom of heaven which is right where you are right and things will never be the same.
On Sunday, we will look even more closely at how the resurrection of Jesus touches all our life.
Let’s conclude with a Hail Mary and a blessing.