Easter Sunday: The Resurrection of Our Lord

Acts 10:34,37-43   Ps 118   Col 3:1-4   Jn 20:1-9

Deacon Jim McFadden

 

            Today we are celebrating the apex of the liturgical calendar; indeed, it is the nucleus of our Faith: The Resurrection of the Lord. In the midst of a global pandemic that is bringing so much misery, suffering, and death we dare to joyfully celebrate that the resurrected Jesus is forever with us. We’re just not commemorating a historical event, but we are wholeheartedly responding to his invitation to be an active part of our lives.   Since Jesus is Life itself, we can participate in his very Being which immerses us in Trinitarian love.

As we celebrate the Resurrection of a Person amidst uncertainty, we simply state that Christianity is not a philosophical system. If St. Paul had barreled into the port city of Corinth, asserting that he wanted to talk about some dead guy from Judea who had some interesting moral bromides to entertain our fancy, they would have been indifferent. Instead, Paul proclaimed, “He is Risen! He is Risen!” Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified and died, is alive and through His Resurrection we can share in His Life that is eternal. That got their attention as it does for us today!

You see, Paul starts from an irrefutable fact that is not the result of knowledge that proceeds from inductive, philosophical reasoning. Christianity is not a system of ideas. Rather, Christianity starts from the Crucifixion, which has been confirmed by several contemporary non-Christian historians such as Josephus (93 a.d.) and Suetonius (122 a.d.) Christianity then leads to the event of the Resurrection which was witnessed by Jesus’ first disciples. Paul summarizes the heart of Christianity: Jesus died for our sins, he was buried, and on the third day he rose from the dead and later appeared to the twelve apostles. That’s it: He died, He was buried, He rose, and He appeared. That is, Jesus is alive! That is the heart of the Christian message, which means we can be in an ‘I-Thou’ relationship that is deeply personal, life-giving, and eternal. That is Good News!

The Resurrection of Jesus is the nucleus of our faith. Without it, Christianity is just another moral way of life. If the story of Jesus had just ended with his Crucifixion, we would have had a poignant story of supreme self-denial, which ended in his sacrificial death. Such a scenario would afford us an example to live by, but that would not be enough to generate Faith. I seriously doubt we would be gathering 2,000 years after the fact to commemorate the death of a Judean carpenter, no matter how noble his death.

No, more to it: Jesus is a hero the likes we have never seen before or since. He absorbed our arch-enemies, sin and death, died to them, and overcame them. Our Faith is not generated by his death—that is the necessary part of the story; our Faith arises from the Resurrection. Accepting that Jesus died during the reign of Pontius Pilate is not an act of faith; that’s simply acknowledging a historical fact. Believing that Jesus is Risen, that He is alive, that He is here among us and within us, that is an act of Faith! Our Faith begins on Easter morning and after that everything changes. Through His Resurrection we have the opportunity to share in the divine Life of the Trinity—now and forever!

Consider what Jesus said to His disciples prior to His Passion: “The Father is in me and I am in the Father (Jn 10:38c). That claim is confirmed by His Resurrection, which means that Jesus is divine—that he is the only begotten Son of God, the 2^nd Person of the Trinity. God is the ultimate reality and through the Incarnation and Death and Resurrection of Christ, it is revealed to us that God is a community of three distinct Persons sharing equally in the divine nature which is Love. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are really distinct, but not separate, and they are utterly implicated by mutual self-giving.

The incredible Good News is that the Resurrected Christ and the One who sent Him, have invited us to enter fully into their divine love, which is called coinherence. The love between the Father and the Son—which is called the ‘Holy Spirit’—we can now participate in because Jesus is Risen! That’s why everything is now different; everything has a liminal aura to it from the perspective of the Risen Christ.

Brothers and sisters, let us not take for granted this opportunity. In the divine economy, God has searched for us amidst our darkness. The Word became Flesh so that he could grasp us, win us over through his public ministry, Death and Resurrection. Moreover, He promised never to leave us orphaned as He gave us His very Holy Spirit Who connects us to God, each other, and Creation.

God is Love and He communicates His very Being to us through grace. And, being made in the image and likeness of God, we have the capacity to receive this grace with a grateful heart. So, on this Easter Sunday, let us have an open heart. Let us know that Christianity is grace, a shared life, which happens in the amazement and encounter of the Risen Christ. Jesus is Risen! Alleluia!