John 20: 19-31
Acts 5: 12-20
Christ is Risen!
We have only
begun our celebration of Pascha, of our Lord’s victory over death in His
glorious resurrection on the third day.
Perhaps one of the reasons that Pascha is a season of forty days is that
it takes us a good while to let the good news sink in. For not only is Christ raised from the dead,
we are too. Now not even the tomb is not
a shadowy place of separation from God, but an entry way to the Kingdom of
Heaven where the departed are in the presence of the One Who has conquered
death. And the Risen Lord calls every
human being to life eternal, including you and me.
For Jesus Christ
is raised with His Body as a whole, complete human being who is also God. We share in His resurrection already through
our participation in His Body, the Church.
We are nourished with His glorified, risen Body and Blood each Divine
Liturgy in the Holy Eucharist. Our
mortal bodies receive the medicine of immortality when we are nourished by the
One Who has conquered the grave. We put
on His Body through baptism, are filled with the Holy Spirit in Chrismation,
and in all the other sacraments and ministries of the Church we share ever more
fully in the new life that Pascha has brought to the world. “Pascha” means Passover; Jesus Christ is our
Passover from death to life; and our entire life in His Risen Body, the Church,
is an ongoing participation in the new day of the Kingdom that He has begun, which
should transform every dimension of our lives, seven days a week.
We can certainly
see something new in Christ’s followers in our reading from the Acts of the
Apostles. In the gospels, the disciples
misunderstood the Lord and often lacked the power to minister effectively in
His name. They even doubted the
testimony of the women who heard of the resurrection from the angel at the
tomb. But in Acts, they perform so many
signs and wonders that the sick trust that they will be healed by the mere
shadow of St. Peter falling on them.
Multitudes of sick and demon-possessed people sought out the apostles,
and they were all healed.
A confused,
weak, and often divided group that included fishermen, a tax-collector, and a
zealot; which collectively ran away in fear at the crucifixion; and the leader
of which denied the Lord three times, is now a powerhouse of miraculous
healings and bold preaching. What has
happened to them?
The answer is
clear: Christ has conquered sin and
death in their lives. He has filled them
with the Holy Spirit. He has empowered
them to manifest His new life and ministry.
“Peace be to you. As the Father
has sent Me, I also send you.” The
salvation which Lord came to bring now lives in them. He lives in them. Christ is the vine, and they are the
branches. They are members of the Body
of which He is the Head. His victory
over sin, the grave, and all human corruption is now theirs. And you can see the change in their lives.
And even as we live and breathe and go
through our routines at work, school, home, and in this parish, the same is
true of us. Christ’s victory over sin and corruption are
ours, too. We probably find that hard to
believe. We have not seen the Risen
Jesus as the apostles did, but remember what Jesus said to St. Thomas, “Because
you have seen Me, you have believed.
Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Just as
doubting and fearful disciples became faithful, bold preachers and
wonderworkers, we are also called to know the power the Lord’s resurrection in
our lives. We may want to excuse
ourselves from this high calling, however.
In contrast with the brilliant light of Pascha, we may see the darkness and
brokenness in our lives all too well.
Christ has conquered sin and death, but we all still bear their wounds;
and sometimes we wonder if this glorious news of life eternal really applies to
us with all our struggles, pains, and weaknesses.
But didn’t you notice that when the
risen Lord appears to His disciples, His glorified body still bears His
wounds? Christ was not raised as a ghost or a spirit, but as
a whole human being with a body. His
horrible wounds were part of Who He freely chose to become as a human being for
our sakes, and He arises victorious with them.
He has taken these wounds upon Himself purely out of love for us and has
used them to defeat evil and death.
Of course, we
must not deny the truth about lives; we should not pretend that all is well
when it is not. Our growth in holiness
is an eternal journey, and we certainly have not yet arrived. But we must recognize that Christ rose again
to bring the dead to life, to heal our wounds and transform all who are created
in His image and likeness; and, yes, that includes all of us. The good news of Pascha is that we are no
longer held captive by sin and death.
Sin only has the power in our lives that we allow it to have; the same
is true of the fear of death, violence, suffering, and all the other works of
darkness that can so easily dominate us.
When the Risen
Lord breathes on His apostles and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” we are
reminded of the creation of Adam in Genesis.
The divine breath gave us life to begin with, but with our sin and
corruption we have rejected that life and preferred death instead. Now the same Lord Who created us has
conquered death on our behalf. The
Second Adam breathes on humanity again, bringing life once more to the first
Adam and restoring us to our original dignity. And this time He gives us an ongoing remedy
for our sins: the ministry of forgiveness
through His Body, the Church. “If you
forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they
are retained.”
This apostolic
ministry continues in the Church through the Sacrament of Confession. Even though we fall away time and time again
from the new life in Christ, He extends the joy of His resurrection to us by
forgiving us, restoring us to the life of the Kingdom, healing our spiritual diseases,
and helping us grow ever more like Him.
No, Confession is not negative, for it is the good news of the Savior’s
victory over death applied to us personally, to the wounds and scars of our
lives that we rarely expose to anyone else. Through our humble confession, Christ conquers
the evil in us and empowers us to life with the joy and confident hope of those
who have passed over the slavery of sin to the glorious freedom of the children
of God. No, Confession is not only for Lent, and we
should all make regular and conscientious use of this Sacrament—not out of legalism
or excessive guilt, but as a therapy to help us enter more fully into the joy
of the Lord.
No matter how
difficult our struggles are or how weak we feel before them, let us rejoice today
in the resurrection of Christ. No matter
how far short we have fallen from faithfulness in any way, let us embrace the
new life brought to the world by the empty tomb. For Christ’s resurrection is good news for people
just like us. Though His Body, the
Church, and His Body and Blood in Holy Communion, and the ministry of
forgiveness, we are all to passover from death to life. The light really has overcome the
darkness. Now the challenge is for each
of us to live in the joy of Christ’s resurrection, to make His victory ours, and
to recognize that nothing separates us from Him other than our own stubborn refusal
to share in His great triumph. So I challenge you—and myself-- to celebrate
Pascha by not only saying “Christ is Risen,” but by living the new life that
His empty tomb has brought to the world and to each of us.
Christ is Risen!