Pascha III

Pascha III

Acts of the Apostles 3:3-15, 17-19; Psalm 4; I John 2:1-5a; John 24:35-48

Jesus, whom you handed over and denied in Pilate’s presence…You asked for a murderer…The author of life you put to death…Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer…

On this Sunday of the Lord’s Resurrection we are presented, if you will, with a “miniature” Passion, suddenly thrusting us back to Good Friday. For how many of us is the passion and death of Jesus an event of the past, over and done with? Yet the cycles of biblical readings, the texts of the liturgy and the seasons of the Church year meander in and out of these mysteries often piling image on image and story upon story, in and out of sequence.

For John, Pentecost occurs from the cross as Jesus breathes out the Spirit. The slaughter of the innocents of Bethlehem reaches back to the murder of Hebrew boys in Egypt and forward to the execution of another firstborn on the cross. The only sure way of recognizing the risen Christ is by the wounds of the crucified Jesus.

The call to repent of our sins permeates all of the scriptures from the Hebrew prophets and John the Baptist through Jesus and the earliest preaching of the Apostles. Repentance is not limited to Advent and Lent, it is the lifetime journey of the soul. Dying to self, rising with Christ, repentance, joyful saturation with the gifts of the Spirit continually happen in our lives.

Whoever said, “History is just one damn thing after another” was wrong. The spiritual life is not sequential. Unlike the boxcars of a train neatly following one another, or the view of history as one century succeeding by another century, the spiritual life is not neat and tidy. Historians have begun to view history as century stacked upon century like the sedimentary layers of the earth all occurring at the same time. Or as William Faulkner famously said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

And so it is with our individual spiritual lives and that of the Church as a whole. The pandemic, the economic and racial tensions in society, the pressing issues of the climate and environment and the continued polarization between people have only heightened this awareness.

It may be the Season of the Lord’s Resurrection but are we not experiencing the isolation Jesus felt  in the garden of Gethsemane and during his passion? Does not the media daily bear witness to humanities’ sins of violence, lies and mistrust of each other? Consider the immediate consequence of the “original sin” in the Eden garden. It resulted in humanity’s isolation from God, mistrust between Eve and Adam who cast blame rather than take responsibility and the separation of humans from creation leading to dominance over rather than care of our planet.  Is this not the world we have created for ourselves? And there is no serpent to blame.

Isolation is a terrible feeling. Whether caused by a break in a relationship, the death of a loved one, mistrust, physical distance, a pandemic, a chronic illness, imprisonment, the cold shoulder, mental illness, our sinfulness; isolation imprisons us. It is a prison from which we cannot free ourselves but need to be released by another person; someone who will reach out to us and take us by the hand. This is the image among Eastern Christians, Orthodox and Catholic, of the Resurrection. The risen Christ reaching out his hands and grasping Adam and Eve. It is the image of the Good Shepherd picking up the lost sheep and carrying it close to his chest. It is the image of life-giving creation as envisioned by Michelangelo on the Sistine Chapel ceiling; the Eternal Creator reaching out for Adam as humanity reaches toward God. A simple gesture that sums up the entire story of salvation.

Can we thus understand why Jesus asks, “Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts?” The questions of the heart are not the same as the questions of the mind, are they? The questions of the heart strike at the core of our fears, our self-identity, our failures and inadequacies, our sins.

And thus on this Sunday of Easter we again hear about the mystery of sin, its consequences and the call to repent. We are retold the story of the Passion; of suffering and dying. And we are told, but…

…but God raised Jesus from the dead…God has thus brought to fulfillment what he had announced through the prophets…But if anyone does sin, we have an Advocate [the Holy Spirit as a defense lawyer] with the Father…Jesus is the [death of] our sins, and not for our sins only but for those of the whole world…

You are witnesses of these things.

We are witnesses to our sinfulness and God’s gracious and renewing love. We offer for others the sight of our wounds and our actions springing from the Spirit’s gifts. We do this through the movements and seasons of our lives, which may or may not coincide with the feasts and season of the Church.

But the mysteries of Christ: suffering, dying, reaching out to others in their own deaths with our wounded hands, being the voice of the Shepherd for others to come to repentance, rising to newness of life and the exhilaration and exaltation of a life filled with the Holy Spirit occur within our own lives. These mysteries weave in and out of each other throughout are lives. Through Baptism we are the dying and rising of Christ.  

And so the questions remain.

What part of the Paschal Mystery of Christ are you experiencing at this time in your life?

“Why are you troubled?”

What are the questions of your heart?