Holy Cross Monastery,
Br. Reginald Martin Crenshaw
RCL - Year A – Easter Day – Sunday
Acts 10: 34-43
John 20: 1-18
Yesterday I was crucified with Christ; today I am glorified with him.
Yesterday I was dead with Christ; today I am sharing in his resurrection.
Yesterday I was buried with him; today I am waking with him from the sleep of death. Amen.
These words from Gregory of Nazianzus are an invitation to us to be lovers of God and as lovers to rejoice in this beautiful event. It is also an invitation to witness the magnificence of God’s creation.
And the words, “Yesterday I was dead with Christ; today I am sharing in his resurrection speaks of God’s love for us. It does not matter when you’ve arrived to Christ, be it today, yesterday, last week, last month, two years ago, whenever, you are invited to celebrate this Easter joy with thankfulness as you continue on your journey for nearness to God. The resurrection event is not a lament but an announcement of the universal
The first response to the resurrection is fear, fright, and absolute dumb struck ness. How did this happen we ask to cover a myriad of emotions and responses we may have to this event. And it doesn’t matter how you understand this event, i.e. a belief in the bodily resurrection of Christ from the dead, or you interpret this an allegory to describe the continual presence of Christ within us etc. The end result is still a fear, an anxiety, and the obsessive need to continue questioning of the meaning of the event in abstract terms. All of this contribute to a real confusion concerning the meaning of the resurrection event. But the angel reassures us with words of power and assurance. There is nothing to fear here, the spirit says, I know you are looking for Jesus, the One nailed to the Cross. He is not here. He was raised, just as he said. Come and look at the place where he was placed.”
I remember with awe, wonder, as a young pious Catholic boy the mystery and the power of this resurrection story. Encountering this mysterious event through the liturgy showed me how much power this event had for me and many others. In fact, visually the power of this and other biblical events could be seen in the numerous Cecil Di Mille movies which were attempts to make the bible stories come alive, particularly the life of Jesus and they did in a limited way.
But yet, as I grew older and even now as a mature adult I am haunted by the angel’s, message of power and purity. The angel’s words are spoken in the spirit of hope and assurance with a power not known to most of us until now. “He is not here; you’re looking for Jesus who has risen from the dead as he said.” And then I remember the words from this morning’s Act’s lesson. “He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead.”
That means that this resurrection event must move us to preach and to testify that Jesus is the one ordained by God. The intense emotional experience of Holy Week was to push me (us) to the edge of our ourselves and then out of ourselves. Yes, we know doctrinally that we have been redeemed, saved, restored, to God, not just as individuals but as the human race. But there is more that, and, further redemption my brothers and sisters turns us around and moves us in directions we have previously not traveled.
The resurrection event is an overwhelming experience and as it provoked fear and joy so it does to us as well. The most overwhelming aspect of the resurrection is that once again Jesus has destroyed all the structures of fear that we have been socialized to live with. All the symbols of hierarchy, fear, anxiety, oppressions of various types have been pushed overboard by his death and resurrection. Certainly, they have not all disappeared but their power to hold us hostage has. We have been emptied of all that stuff we have carried with us. And that is frightening because our identity has been shaped by all of that chaos and now we are emptied of all we have known and carried thus far. But the angel’s message of power and purity comes with hope and an assurance that rather than being empty our spirits and souls have been filled with something else—that something else is a share into the divine, a glimpse into the eternal. A new day has been created in which the human story, both on the individual and communal, have become restored, renewed and transformed.
We are the new beginning. And what is this new beginning? Jacqueline Lewis describes this process of beginning this way: “We must now live on earth as we will live in heaven. We must now become the community that is a rehearsal for the reign of God.” We are called to be “as Lewis says, a “
And the Surprise and Opportunities?
Well, It means the creation of new symbols, new and creative and different ways of relating to others, it means the development of a new discourse and by discourse I mean more than words but actions, ways of behaving, new ways of understanding all of God’s creation in which all forms of oppression, injustice, and otherness are turn around in such a way that our lives individually and communally truly becomes nourished by our faith and resting on the knowledge of the power of the resurrection event and experience. We know that death, in all its manifestations, no longer has a hold on us and death has been vanquished.
We can remove fear and death from our world only by God’s Spirit. Again Lewis helps us here. “We do this when we develop empathy, a genuine care and concern for the otherness of the other. We walk a mile in their sandals. We find empathy for the other because we search deep and discover the otherness of ourselves. When did I feel left out? When did I feel down? Where has my journey, my story, had turns in it that left me feeling disenfranchised? Our own otherness, our own sense of being the stranger, is strength as we seek to develop a border consciousness.”[2] The result is that the rehearsal of the human community becomes a living, breathing incarnation of the reign of God.
And so, my brothers and sisters,
Yesterday we were crucified with Christ; today we are glorified with him.
Yesterday we were dead with Christ; Today we are sharing in his resurrection.
Yesterday, we were buried with him; today we are waking with him from the sleep of death.
Amen.
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