Triduum Sacrum – Pascha I

Triduum Sacrum: Pascha I

Acts 10: 34a, 37-43; Psalm 118; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20: 1-9

John’s Gospel fundamentally begins with a question.

Jesus asks us, “What are you looking for?”

So, what are you and I looking for …from life?  …from each other? …in the midst of this pandemic? …from Jesus?

Jesus follows up with an invitation, “Come, and you will see.” The seeing is set into the future. For to discover what we are looking for means accepting this invitation, “Come…”  We will need to follow Jesus even if we do not know where he will lead or what the destination is.

There is a thought provoking detail in today’s Gospel that may offer us understanding. “Then the other disciple [whom Jesus loved] also went [into the tomb]…and he saw and believed.” Curious. How does an empty cave with some burial cloths and the absence of a corpse awaken belief? Mary Magdalene presumes someone has stolen the body but why would the thieves leave the shroud? She has seen what Peter and the Beloved disciple will see and yet neither Mary nor Peter believe. The Beloved disciple alone sees and believes.

I wonder if this was as curious an incident for the Beloved disciple. He has been invited many times and looked deeply into the life of Jesus. Looking into an empty grave was only one more incident in the life of the One who loves him.

The Beloved disciple was chosen by Jesus to be present at his divine revelation in the Transfiguration as well as to intimately pray with him in the garden of Gethsemane. This loved disciple is present with Jesus when the daughter of Jairus is raised from the dead. At the Last Supper, the Beloved disciple is seated near Jesus amidst conversations of betrayal. He leans his head against Jesus’ chest as an intimate. This disciple’s seeing is mingled to his close relationship with Jesus.

It is the Beloved disciple that sprints to the tomb arriving first outpacing Peter. Scriptural scholar, Raymond Brown cuts to the heart of the matter with the insight, “The disciple who was bound closet to Jesus in love was the quickest to look for him and the first to believe in him.”

So it is with you and me.

Our acceptance of Jesus’ invitation requires a trust that only matures in an openness to being in a warm and close relationship.

Like the people who demanded Jesus to come down off the cross if he was the Christ or like Thomas positing a quid pro quo transaction, we cannot demand from God. Our God does not offer proofs nor will God be manipulated. Relationship is not about proofs and demands. It is about trust, openness and intimacy. Being there with Jesus, as the Beloved disciple does, sharing in all the difficult, sorrowful and wondrous moments of Jesus’ life as Jesus shares in ours.

Resurrection faith is rooted in an embrace of Jesus’ love to the extent that even the smallest hint of that love being present will cause us to quickly look for the work of divine love amid even the personal tragedies of life and the injustices of our social experience. It is this relationship that allows us to look into the face of death and see and believe in eternal life.

In seeing an empty tomb and burial clothes as signs of God’s love for us in Jesus Christ we are free. We are free to look into the face of a pandemic, the economic hardships for many people, the internal struggle of our nation as we deal with a racist past and present, the isolation and loneliness of many people, and our responsibility to each other and all life on this blue and white planet.  As a Christian community we are free to believe, along with the Beloved disciple, that the power of God’s love does continue to pervade our world. This is the news of the Resurrection! It is revealed to us at every Christmas, Emmanuel, “God is with us!”