The Rev. Virginia W. Nagel
Episcopal Diocese of Central NY (Retired)
Today is the second Sunday of Easter; not the Sunday after Easter, but the
Second Sunday of Easter. Easter, you see, is not just one day, it is an entire
season, some seven weeks long: the Great Fifty Days. And that is just the
beginning. Just as we cannot squeeze all the joy and wonder of Christ's
Resurrection into 24 hours of celebration, we cannot live out the spiritual
dimensions of that event in only 50 days. It is a lifetime project, and that's
why we as the Church are called the Easter People. We begin at our conversion
and make official at our Baptism and Confirmation our intention to live our
entire lives in the spirit of Christ and his Resurrection. Eastertide, every
year, is a reminder and a renewal of that intention and commitment.
We all fail. We are human, and we simply do not have the spiritual strength
and energy to continue living in the supercharged faith of Easter Day, all day
and every day, 24/7. We get discouraged and sometimes depressed. We meet a
series of put-downs and slaps in the face, and we may even give up trying for
awhile. We get sick or preoccupied with family crises or work problems, and
temporarily forget our commitment. God understands this. That, after all,
according to the writer of Hebrews, is one reason God became man in the person
of Jesus of Nazareth: so that we would understand that God
understands our human frailty. After all, God himself lived as one of us
here on earth. He had sore feet, stomach aches, put-downs from the Pharisees,
desertions from his followers, and a general sense of non-understanding from
some of his closest family members. He's been where we are and done what we do,
so that we will know that he understands.
But there is more to it than that. It is simply that we are not God. We are
creatures, and even though we are made in God's image, there is no way that we
can equal God's spirituality. We simply don't have the capacity to equal God,
not in intellect, not in wisdom, not in understanding, not in empathy, not in
emotional or spiritual strength. Even projects and commitments to which we have
given ourselves whole-heartedly sometimes feel like cages that bind us and chafe
and gall at our inner beings. Even things and persons to whom we are devoted
sometimes become pains in the back of the neck, or two feet south!
We also lack the capacity to wholly believe in the way that God does. One
example is that God wholly believed that if he could select a family group, an
extended family group, such as Jacob and his sons, and train them in
understanding God's plans and priorities, and the rules and lifestyle that were
vital for the carrying-out of those plans and priorities, he could convert the
entire human race to his ways and his ideals. We all know what came of that
belief. But God still believes it, and is still working away at it, and we all
know this because we've felt his prodding and poking and reminding and sometimes
the guilt that comes from disobeying him.
Sometimes, too, our mind is convinced of something, but somehow that belief
doesn't seem to work its way down to our heart and our gut, and so we don't
always act in accordance with what we like to think we believe. We have proof of
this every time we look at Congress, or any other assembly or club or agency
that is supposed to serve the people. Every last member of these groups is
convinced that they have to help the people by doing this or that. And every
last member of these groups ends up hurting some of the people by trying to help
them.
Today's Gospel gives us a reminder of this fact. The women had been to the
tomb on Easter morning and had come back to report that angels had told them
that Jesus was risen, as he had promised he would be. Some of them even had seen
Jesus themselves, with their own eyes, and touched him. But, of course, the
apostles felt that they're only women, they're hysterical, they're believing
what they want to believe, just because Jesus had talked of rising from the
dead. So the apostles didn't believe that Jesus was truly risen.
Okay, they said, we'll go see for ourselves. Peter, the leader of
the apostolic band, and another apostle, whom we believe to be John, ran to the
burial cave to settle this once and for all. Peter was perhaps more middle-aged
than the other apostle, who respectfully waited at the tomb door for Peter to
catch up and go in first. They found the tomb empty, as the women had described
it. But still they had feelings that got in the way of believing what they hoped
was true, what Jesus had assured them would happen. Dead men do not get up and
walk around again, especially not three days later. Maybe the Romans or the
Pharisees had stolen the body and hidden it someplace. Who knows? But everyone
knows that dead people don't, just DON'T, come back to life. Never mind that
they had seen Jesus raise at least three corpses to life again. This was Jesus,
himself. Who could raise HIM?
Well, God could, but that idea apparently didn't occur to them.
And so they settled down to a glum supper. Jesus apparently was dead, and his
body was missing, and what were they to do now? Go back to the kind of life they
had had before they'd met Jesus?
And, then, suddenly, Jesus was there in the room with them. They looked
around. The door was still locked. The windows were still shuttered. Must be
a ghost, they thought. Dead men do not come to life again and walk around
the earth. Yes, must be a ghost. If only what he had told them over and over
could be true...if only he had truly risen. But, of course, no sane person
would believe that. Yes, a ghost.
And Jesus knew what they were thinking. So he asked for food. A bit of fish
was left from supper. Nobody was willing to touch him...ghosts are scary. So he
picked it up, and ate it in front of them, and proved that he was a living,
breathing, eating human being. And still, some of them were not quite sure they
believed it. Some believed it, but it apparently did not get any deeper than
their eyes and brain...certainly not down to their heart and guts. Even forty
days later, at the Ascension, we are told that some were still not quite sure
they believed.
But, and this is important, their reactions and behavior gave us Christians
of the following ages a strong, simple rule to follow: No matter if you
are sure whether or not you believe in Jesus' promises, ACT AS IF YOU DO, and
you won't be sorry. In fact, this may be the way God chooses to teach us
to believe! Jesus talked with them that night, and gave them work to do and an
agenda to follow, and endowed them with the powers they would need to carry out
his orders. And, although the Gospels tell us that from time to time they still
wondered if they believed, and that some were pretty sure they didn't, quite,
believe, they all behaved and acted as if they did believe that
Jesus was risen to life again, that he had kept his promise to them, that they
had been entrusted with some of God's own power to forgive sins and to lead the
church, which Jesus said they had to create in God's name. And so they acted as
if they fully believed, and let that belief work its way down to heart and gut
and nerves and muscles, and most of them eventually died because that belief had
become so much a part of them that they simply could not turn away from it, even
to save their lives in the face of Roman law.
And so: it is clear that Jesus, who after all is God the Son, calls us to
truly become the image of God for the world; to share in God's enormous faith in
humankind but most of all in God himself; to carry out God's plans and learn to
think God's way, and to love and to forgive just as God does, no matter how
unlovable and how unforgiveable the persons and things with which we are
confronted. What's more, in forgiving we are bound to do what we can to make it
impossible for people to continue to do unforgiveable things to other people.
That is our part in helping to make God's kingdom come on earth, as it already
exists in heaven. That is our part in the building of the New Jerusalem, which
we will be reading more about, as we read from the book of Revelations the next
few weeks. That is how we are to show the world that we are Easter people,
proclaiming and working in the power of the Resurrection, that raised Jesus from
the dead and gave him...and us...new life.
Amen.
