Easter Week 2 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: Acts 2:42-47; Psalm 118; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

All religion, we might think, operates with a distinction between what Saint Paul calls the flesh and the spirit. Religion is concerned with spiritual things and is often referred to these days simply as ‘spirituality’. Paul encourages us to be spiritual rather than unspiritual.

Jesus is often proccupied in trying to lead his hearers from what we might call a ‘fleshly’ understanding of human desires to a ‘spiritual’ one. The woman of Samaria is taught that besides physical thirst there is in human beings a spiritual thirst for living water (John 4). The disciples interpret a reference to food as a statement about physical hunger and Jesus corrects them, pointing out that there is another kind of food to be considered also (John 6).

The man born blind is able to see the one who cured him but Jesus leads him to another kind of seeing whereby he perceives Jesus as the Son of Man (John 9). The Pharisees think they see what is spiritually significant but are actually blind as long as they do not recognise Jesus (John 9).

Chapter 11 of Saint John’s gospel tells of the raising of Lazarus from the dead. Once again there is a contrast between life and spiritual life, sickness and spiritual sickness, death and spiritual death. The disciples take Jesus’ reference to Lazarus resting to be an indication that he will soon be better and Jesus is obliged to underline the fact that Lazarus really is dead. Martha and Mary listen to Jesus’ words of comfort and love but still feel that had he come sooner the life of Lazarus might well have been saved.

The desires for food, drink, companionship, sight, life — all these are natural and healthy things in the human animal. But the human being is made for more than these things (which does not mean that the human being should try to live without them). It is relatively easy, I suspect, to think of a kind of ‘second-order’ of desire in us, a higher or deeper level, at which talking about spiritual food, water, communion, vision and intimacy with God seems to make sense. Sometimes people even talk of having ‘spiritual experiences’, of some direct acquaintance with this level of desire and fulfilment.

But just as we must raise serious questions about all our concepts and images of God, subjecting them to reflection and criticism, we must raise serious questions also about any experience which claims to be an ‘experience of God’, subjecting it to reflection and criticism also.

A good friend of mine in the Order died some years ago. He was a slight, shy, quiet and gentle little man, difficult to hear behind a paper bag. Along with a kind of simplicity he had a mighty soul. I asked him once whether we can know that we believe. He answered immediately. ‘No’, he said, ‘we cannot know that we believe. We believe that we believe.’ Because faith is a unique and mysterious contact with God, and is not just an experience of ours, faith itself must fall under faith. It is not an experience in the ordinary sense of the word. This means that Christianity is not just a ‘spirituality’ as that term has become popular, addressing the ‘deeper part’ or ‘higher bit’ of human beings.

In the wonderful texts of John 4, John 9 and John 11, it is not just a simple question of drink and spiritual drink, sight and spiritual sight, life and spiritual life. The spiritual might still refer only to something within us whereas for Saint Paul the spiritual always refers in the first place to the Holy Spirit who unites us with the Father through the gift of faith in Christ. In these gospel passages the focus comes, eventually, onto Jesus himself and onto faith in him as the doorway to the life about which he is teaching us. He says to the woman of Samaria ‘I who am speaking to you, I am Messiah’. And to the blind man ‘You are looking at the Son of Man; he is speaking to you’. And to Martha ‘I am the resurrection. Whoever lives and believes in me will never die’.

Faith then is the central Christian ‘experience’ (for want of a better word). Because faith unites us with God as the truth it is the guarantee that our spiritual aspirations are not just the creation of our own hearts’ longings . By faith we know that what we long for is true and is not just a nice story. But we only know about this believing through believing. We enter Christian life by coming to believe in Jesus as the Christ. Unlike Thomas, we do not come to see and then believe. Nor do we believe and then see. Here, on this life’s journey, believing is seeing.

Easter Saturday

Readings: Acts4:13-21; Psalm 117; Mark 16:9-15

How does the gospel of Mark end? Critical editions of the text have it ending at 16:8: 'they said nothing to anybody because they were afraid'. It seems like a strange ending to the gospel which is one of the reasons why we find shorter and longer endings added in some of the early manuscripts. The passage we read today is the longer ending, a summary of the encounters the disciples had with the Risen Lord in the days after the resurrection and which are recorded more fully in the other gospels. This reading is an appropriate summary to end the first week of Eastertide.

The fact that Mark's gospel has various endings reminds us that the gospel does not end. It is a story which opens on to the lives of those who hear it. The subsequent chapters of the gospel are the life of the Church, the lives of anybody and everybody who hears its message, the lives of everybody for whom the gospel is intended.

The Never-Ending Story was a popular film some years ago. It is the story of a boy who finds a fascinating book in which, as he reads it, he discovers to his amazement that he is a character in its story. The gospel is like this. Everybody is a character in its story. The life of each human being is yet onemore chapter in the fascinating and never-ending tale of creation and salvation, of sin and grace, of promise and fulfillment.

The strange endings of Mark's gospel also bring out this point, that the resurrection is not just a happy ending to what otherwise would have been a tragic tale. It is not that we can all go back to our ordinary lives relieved that the story of Jesus had a happy ending after all. Rather, the resurrection is the opening of a new story, the beginning of a new tale. The Resurrection is a first chapter, not a last chapter or an epilogue. And it is awesome, this story of new creation (which implies a de-creation), of new life (which implies a death), of radical renewal (which implies radical change in our understanding and in our way of living).

The various endings of Mark raise questions, yes, but also confirm that something overwhelming had happened. Of what could they be sure? Of what can we be sure? There is radical change in the disciples and very soon we will hear again about the birth of the Church. There is the possibility of radical change for ourselves as the Risen Lord breathes on his disciples the Spirit who comes to work in their lives.

No wonder the women were afraid, disinclined to speak to anybody about what was for the moment simply baffling and disturbing. A journey is required to enter into what the Resurrection means and today's gospel reading makes that too very clear, a journey from disbelief and fear, through questioning and hope, to faith and joy. Everyone is not yet living happily ever after, so let us read on ...

Easter Friday

Readings: Acts 4:1-12; Psalm 118; John 21:1-14

There are many numbers mentioned in today's readings. The community at Jerusalem is now five thousand strong, a very significant group, which may explain the growing concern of the authorities. When Acts says 'five thousand men' it probably means the same as it did at the feeding of the five thousand, that is five thousand 'not counting women and children' (Matthew 14:21). So the faith is spreading and the preaching of the apostles is bearing fruit. Remember how, a few years ago, a contagious disease spread rapidly across the world? It is important to recall that good things too can be contagious - qualities like faith, kindness, compassion, and love. But the growth of the community of believers provokes the authorities to opposition and very soon to open persecution of them, firstly of the apostles (Acts 5), then of Stephen (Acts 7), and finally of the whole community (Acts 8).

There are four numbers mentioned in the gospel reading. Jesus appears to seven disciples who have gone fishing. They are two hundred cubits, or a hundred feet, from the shore. They catch one hundred and fifty three fish. And this is Jesus' third appearance to the disciples.

In the days of allegorical interpretation preachers felt obliged to find deep meanings in any number mentioned in the scriptures. Some numbers seem well qualified to receive such attention, because of their importance in the history of God's people - the number forty, for example, or the number twelve. Other numbers are not so obviously significant. Here though the very precise and unusual number '153' has attracted lots of attention across the centuries. The usual interpretation is that it represents all nationalities known at the time. Its use here serves to indicate that the fishing of men in which the apostles will engage under the direction of Jesus will reap a universal harvest.

It is reasonable to assume that this number must have some significance: is it credible to imagine that while some of the disciple were having breakfast with Jesus, others were counting the fish they had caught? Perhaps they did, in order to tell others about it later.

The distance from the shore - 200 cubits or 100 feet - seems to have no particular significance. We are told that it means they were not far from the shore. But it may have been far enough to explain in part why the disciples did not immediately recognise Jesus. The beloved disciple did, but tradition tells us that he was the youngest and so perhaps the one whose eyesight was clearest. (We can also of course give that a deeper meaning: as the disciple Jesus loved he was best equipped to recognise him.)

There are two more numbers in the gospel reading. Jesus appears to seven disciples. Peter, James and John are a familiar threesome. They are joined by Thomas and Nathanael, each of whom figures in important ways earlier in the gospel of John. There are also two unnamed disciples, although if the beloved disciple is one of these two rather than John, the son of Zebedee, then we know who six of them were. There remains at least one unnamed disciple. Is it that there was confusion later about which of them was present on this occasion? Or should we take it allegorically and see the seventh disciple as 'every Christian'. So it is you, and me, and everybody else who gets involved in following the Lord? We are participants in the apostolic mission in one way or another, we are invited to breakfast with the Lord and to receive the blessed bread from His hands.

Finally there is the number three: this was the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead. There is a bit of clarification needed about that. Either the appearance to Mary Magdalen is not counted as being 'to the disciples' or else the one week apart appearances involving Thomas and his doubts are being counted as a single two-part appearance. The more likely solution is the first, that the appearance to Mary is not counted as an appearance 'to the disciples' and so this is the third time Jesus appears to a group of them. 

It could be that this third appearance is important as confirming the claim that Jesus has risen from the dead. It is common throughout the scriptures to be told that any claim needs to be supported by the evidence of two or three witnesses. Perhaps, therefore, this significance was seen in this appearance of Jesus: it is the third piece of evidence and so the claim is supported, it is proven.

However, there is yet one more number in the readings today and that is the number one. In the first reading Peter tells the authorities that Jesus Christ is the (one) stone that was rejected but that has become the cornerstone. (The church's one foundation, as we often sing, is Jesus Christ the Lord, a hymn written, appropriately, by one Samuel John Stone!) Peter goes on to tell the authorities that there is just one name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved. It is the name of Jesus Christ.

This is implied also in the gospel reading: Jesus stands alone on the shore, He is the one and the only Lord. The charcoal fire reminds Peter of his threefold denial of Jesus. But the rejection not only of Jesus but of the Lord, the God of Israel, which came from the mouth of the chief priests  - 'we have no king but Caesar', John 19:15 - is a devastating apostasy which is now corrected and transformed. 'It is the Lord', says the beloved disciple, and the rest of them then recognise him at the breaking of the bread (John 21:12).

In the end, one is the only number here that really matters. 'The Lord, our God, is one Lord' (Deuteronomy 6:4). Know assuredly, Peter says in an earlier sermon, that God has made this Jesus who was crucified both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36, read on Easter Tuesday).

Easter Thursday

Readings: Acts 3:11-26; Psalm 8; Luke 24:35-48

Peter and John are witnesses. They witness to the events that have happened, the condemnation and execution of Jesus about which everybody knows already, but then also to his resurrection. This is the specific task of the apostle: to be a witness of the resurrection.

It obliges them to become interpreters also, teachers of a new way of reading the scriptures. The Law, the Prophets, the Psalms, the promise to Abraham, the covenant with Moses, the teaching of the prophets from Samuel onwards ... everything has to be re-considered in the light of what has happened. We are familiar with the idea that Jesus' life and ministry takes on fresh meaning when we read it back in the light of the resurrection. What the apostles teach us is that the whole history of God's dealings with the people takes on fresh meaning when it is re-read in the light of the resurrection.

Just as there is continuity and discontinuity in the disciples' experience of the Risen Lord there is continuity and discontinuity in their understanding of Israel's story. Sometimes they recognised him and he was a familiar figure to them. At other times they failed to recognise him or he even filled them with fear and foreboding. The age old promises to Israel: are they fulfilled or superceded in the resurrection of Jesus? Is what happened continuous with what had gone before or discontinuous with it? To this question we must reply 'both': there is continuity in the fulfillment of the promises, there is discontinuity in the radically unexpected way in which they have been fulfilled.

We can make a further move and say that the life of the Church and any life lived in the light of this faith will also be characterised by continuity and discontinuity. Sometimes things will unfold in the ways we have come to expect from what we have experienced already of God's way with us. But sometimes things will unfold in ways we never expected or suspected. There is no end to the ingenuity of the 'God of surprises' who is ever creative even while being ever faithful.

It means that the Resurrection is not simply a matter of leaving what is 'here' in order to be 'there' but is a transformation of what is 'here', this body, these relationships, this behaviour, here and now. It is not just a question of waiting for some future illumination but of new meaning, new light, new possibilities for where we now are and who we now are. It is a question of re-thinking our past, reading it back in the light of the resurrection, so as to live a new life now and on into the future.

Easter Wednesday

Readings: Acts 3:1-10; Psalm 105; Luke 24:13-35

The beginning of the first reading, from Acts 3, brings to mind the story of the man blind from birth, recorded in John 9. The man healed by Peter and John is crippled also from birth and because of his habit of hanging around in the Temple, begging at the Beautiful Gate, he is also well known to the people.

There are a couple of striking differences though. Here there is no problem with the people recognising him when they see him walking and jumping. In John 9 people are not sure whether it is the blind man or not when they see him after he has been cured. The healed cripple went into the Temple with Peter and John, implying, it seems, that he has immediately become a disciple. There is no drawn out process of recognition on his side as there was in the case of the man born blind. It is as if everything is taking place in a simpler, clearer light: Peter and John look intently at him, people see him when he is healed, and he sees what he must do.

One of the themes of the well-known gospel passage read today, Jesus with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, is seeing and being seen, more specifically recognising and being recognised. We are told that at first something prevented Cleopas and his companion from recognising Jesus, although clearly He recognised them. They also fail to see how what happened to Jesus had long been foretold in the scriptures, even from Moses.

So Jesus' work with them is to open their hearts to understand the scriptures and then to open their eyes to recognise him, which they did when He took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them. In today's Office of Readings Jesus is described as 'the beginning of brightness': the light of the new creation already shining, the light in which understanding and recognition become simpler, more straightforward, more direct.

The experience of grace has its roots in the Hebrew language in the simple experience of being looked at and being seen. When we hear of a person finding favour in the sight of someone else - Noah in the sight of God, for example, or Esther in the sight of the king - it is what grace means: to be seen, to be noticed, to be looked at intently, to be taken account of, to be recognised, as the disciples are by Jesus and He is, eventually, by them.

To be recognised means we exist for another person. 'Is it yourself', people ask in Ireland. It means not just to be seen physically but to be known. It also means to be valued and appreciated: we talk of people receiving the recognition they deserve, for who they are or for what they've done. To be recognised is to be held in the esteem and love of another. The mother or father gives a sense of identity and worth to their child simply by looking intently at him or her. And the child already does the same by looking back, recognising 'mama' or 'dada' and even sometimes - and what a glorious thing it is! - with a smile as well.

So the first disciples - and we with them - are being born again into a new world, a new creation, a new way of living. A different Sun is shining in this world, the One risen out of the darkness of death. He sheds a light in which, in the first place, He knows His own, and then, sooner or later, His own know Him. For the great joy of Easter is not that people came to recognise the Risen Jesus but that Jesus came to recognise them, to hold them in His gaze, to look at them and love them, to establish them in a dignity, identity and worth not imagined before.

Jesus says 'Mary', and she is. And 'Peter', and so he is. And (presumably) 'Cleopas' and he is too, recognised all along by the One he and his companion only came to recognise in the moment of his departure, in the breaking of the bread. And Jesus speaks my name too as He looks at me and summons me into His kingdom. 'Rise and walk', he says.

Easter Tuesday

Readings: Acts 2:36-41; Psalm 33; John 20:11-18

The resurrection of Jesus is the beginning of the new creation. It is on the eighth day that he rises and many of the accounts of his appearances evoke the first moments of creation. None more so than what we hear today, the encounter of a man and a woman in a garden, early in the morning, on the first day of the week.

The Lord is in the garden and Mary is seeking him, still believing that his body has been taken elsewhere. But as the first Adam named all living creatures, including the woman God had created for him, Jesus names her: 'Mary'. She is not now the generic 'woman' but herself, Mary of Magdala, a sinner by reputation and faithful companion of Jesus all through, even to the end. She is now the mother of all the living in another sense, as the first to encounter the Risen Lord and the first to speak the Easter proclamation: 'I have seen the Lord: He is risen!'

In naming her, Jesus brings Mary into the new reality, into the new creation. It is a kind of baptism for her: the Father of Jesus is her Father, His God is her God, and she must go and tell this to the disciples.

In the first creation God spoke and all came to be. In the new creation Jesus said 'Mary' and she is recognised and has her place there with Him. She too is to speak and very soon we see Peter and the others also speaking, telling of the resurrection and of the new reality it inaugurates. They too will be recognised by the Risen Lord, will be given their place in the new creation and  will be commissioned to go and tell others that He is risen.

So in the first reading today we see Peter, the impulsive and practical fisherman of Galilee, now become the Lord's rhetorician, orator of the new creation. He had probably not studied Cicero's works on rhetoric, or learned that the public speaker should inform, delight and persuade his listeners. But by some kind of infused grace - he is speaking under the influence of the Holy Spirit! - he is a master of the craft. He speaks to inform them, he argues and exhorts them, they are cut to the heart - a particular kind of delight. They are convinced by his arguments, moved to act, and they say 'what are we to do?' Repent and be baptised, take your place in the new creation.

The new creation is a kingdom of encounter and conversation, of the Word being with His people and speaking to them, of those people coming to faith and in turn speaking to others, telling of all the happenings in Judea in these last days. We live our faith, and continue the story, by being together as His disciples, by witnessing to the kingdom He has established, by encountering others and speaking with them as Jesus did. As he encountered Mary and spoke with her, and the disciples, the Samaritan woman, the man born blind, lepers and people possessed, his friends at Bethany, the disciples on the road to Emmaus ... 

We speak to inform, to delight and to persuade others. More importantly, He continues to speak to us in many and various ways, to inform us and delight us, to recognise us and call us by name, to convince us into the place He has for us in His kingdom. He meets us in His Word, in the sacraments, in the Church, in the poor, in the neighbour, in creation ... we do not need to ask where He has been laid for He is alive in all these ways. Later Saint Paul, continuing the story, will speak of this new creation as 'the mystery hidden for ages and generations ... that has now been made manifest ... Christ in you, the hope of glory' (Colossians 1:26-27).

Easter Monday

Readings: Acts 2:14, 22-33; Psalm 16; Matthew 28:8-15

The English Dominican Cornelius Ernst once published an article entitled 'How to See an Angel'. It was partly, he said, because it is a funny title but also in order to speak about what he termed the 'subjective conditions' for talking about angels. We can do something similar in Easter Week, think about 'how to see the Risen Lord'. What are the 'subjective conditions' for such an experience? Or even for talking with an open mind about such an experience?

It is a particular angel that brings this to mind, the one we met in the gospel reading at the Easter Vigil, who appeared at dawn on the first day of the week, was accompanied by an earthquake, rolled back the stone from the entrance to the tomb, and sat on it (Matthew 28:2). Two groups of people saw this angel, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary who was with her, and the guards. But the experience of the two groups was quite different.

The women were addressed by the angel who told them that Jesus was risen, that they were to go quickly to tell the disciples this, and that they would all meet in Galilee. The soldiers on the other hand trembled with fear and became like dead men. The women left 'fearful yet overjoyed' - a phrase which captures well what we can imagine must have been the 'subjective conditions' of the disciples in the first days after the Resurrection of Jesus. The soldiers meanwhile went to the chief priests to tell them 'all that had happened'.

This is an interesting phrase. Think about it. 'All that had happened' means not just the women arriving but an angel looking like lightning, an earthquake, the stone rolled back and the angel sitting on it. Think then about the total lack of interest on the part of the chief priests in all that had happened. They were, presumably, Sadducees, believing in neither angels nor resurrection. So a massive doctrinal and ideological stone blocked their access to what this might mean. In their eyes none of it could have happened as the guards recounted it. They do not bat an eyelid, then, in proposing a political solution, to pay off the guards and promote what is after all the most obvious reductionist explanation of the disappearance of Christ's body: his disciples came and took it while the guards slept. (Forget about them being like dead men in the presence of the angel.)

Meanwhile another mind is considering these things. All that has happened is 'by the set plan and foreknowledge of God', who allowed Jesus to be killed but has now freed him from the throes of death (Acts 2:23, first reading today). It is another, and the most penetrating, way of seeing things, in which those who come to believe can share, a transformation of the subjective conditions for seeing the Risen Lord brought about by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We see how that transformation works in the preaching of Peter recounted in today's first reading.

So what has all this to do with me and with you? Various subjective conditions are obviously possible, some of which facilitate an encounter with the Risen Lord, others of which make that difficult or even impossible. That of the high priests and elders shuts things down completely: the news involves too radical a change for them (and a loss of power too, perhaps). The women are between fear and joy, a condition that leaves them open to an encounter with the Risen Lord. Perhaps, though, we are like the guards, not particularly committed one way or the other, somewhere spiritually between being asleep and being half-dead.

Finally there are the subjective conditions of God's heart and mind, if we can speak like that. The Holy Spirit is to be poured out by Jesus, risen and exalted to the right hand of the Father (Acts 2:33). The subjective conditions of the Blessed Trinity are therefore that the Father waits (and wants) to pour out the life and the love that flow now from Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. We will spend the next seven weeks meditating on these conditions, coming to see something of this reality.

May God send an angel to remove whatever blocks our access to that Life and Love: whatever fear, or indifference, or tiredness, or resistance would prevent us from seeing the Risen Lord. To live with his Life and to love with his Love is what it means to encounter the Risen Lord. It means having our fears removed and our doubts resolved. It means living in the fulness of joy.