Easter: The Sunday of the Resurrection - April 12, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC
The Sunday of the Resurrection - April 12, 2020

Romans 6:3-11
Matthew 28:1-10

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Augustine called the Great Vigil the Mother of All Vigils. It lets ritual and Scripture do its work on us by recounting our salvation history, unfolding our theology in an experiential way through sacred gestures and acts of ritualized memory, that cannot be exhausted or explained by words alone. The work of sacred rituals like initiation is to situate life in a larger frame, so nature, beauty, suffering, work, sexuality, and ordinary moments are seen to have transcendent significance. They give life meaning— the one thing the soul cannot live without. The integration of heaven and earth is the necessary human and spiritual task, or this world never becomes home.

This morning, as we made our way from death into hope for new life, we let the fire, light, scriptures, water, and gathered community testify to the deep truth of what is sometimes lost in translation. Paul too lets the water do the talking as he uses baptismal practice to convey his theology. There is more than what we see and do, far more than we can say or explain. That’s the truth of the sacraments and the sacramental encounter. Sacraments are gestures of both memory and hope, empowered by anamnesis---remembering. Baptismal language gives definition to the bookends of the Christian life. It marks both the beginning and the end of one’s faith journey. The paschal candle itself, the symbol of the Risen Christ, that once burned bright for a person’s baptism burns again for that person’s funeral liturgy.

The words of Paul’s Letter to the Romans comprise the most potent statement on baptism written in the New Testament. Paul interprets Baptism as an event that joins Christians to Jesus’ death and resurrection. He writes:

“All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. Therefore, we have been buried with him by baptism, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3-4).

This understanding of baptism as the paschal mystery has dominated in the West since the 4th century. It went hand in hand with the emphasis on Easter as the most appropriate day to celebrate baptism. Across cultures initiation is always, in some form, an experience of the tension and harmony of opposites: of loss and renewal, darkness and light, death and resurrection.

Paul insists that it is dying and rising, always held together, inseparable sides of the same life, that constitute a faithful way to make sense of one’s bond with Christ. Sometimes prepositions are the most important words in a Pauline sentence. Here, the prepositions “with” and “in” are critical to following his logic. We die “with” Christ in baptism, and we will be raised “with” Christ at his coming in glory. Between now and then, however, we walk “in” newness of life. We do not die alone, and we do not rise alone. Even the five wax covered nails in the Paschal candle, recalling the five wounds of Christ, remind us that his wounds are ours and ours are his. Six separate times in this letter Paul speaks of our lives being tied up with Christ.

Paul is not naïve about the lingering reality of sin in human experience. For Paul, sin is always in the singular, and its opponent is not forgiveness but the grace of God in Jesus Christ. We are not punished for our sins we are punished by our sins. Suffering was not something Jesus did for us but part of the paschal pattern that he revealed and invited us to share. Many with privilege in the United States are missing out on the redemptive meaning of their own suffering. By trying to handle it through willpower, denial, or medication, they’ve forgotten that we do not handle suffering, suffering handles us in deep and mysterious ways that become the very matrix of new life. God used Jesus’ death to defeat the powers of sin and death.

We proclaim that Christ is risen this morning, although we know full well that we are not. We are keenly aware today of what is not yet true of the world in which we live. We struggle with the forces of evil that continue to torment God’s world. We face the certainty of our own deaths. What has changed in baptism is not the existence of sin and death, but their deadly hold over us. Not only does something die in baptism, but new life emerges. Paul talks of this new life in both present and future tenses. Resurrection is God’s final word and the Gospel’s first word. Easter announces the reality of death but announces the greater reality of life.

Matthew’s version of the resurrection story fits perfectly as the final reading of this liturgy. His Gospel is most linked to our salvation history and the developing story of God’s grace. It also parallels in narrative the darkness to light theme of the Vigil. As we gathered in darkness and moved toward the light, the story has the two women coming in the darkness and moving toward an encounter with the resurrection as the sun rises. Matthew recounts it from the women’s perspective, not only what they see, say, or do, but also what they feel. He conveys how the first Easter is exploding with excitement and urgent energy. They run with both fear and great joy.

Matthew’s point is that there is no merely naturalistic way of speaking of the resurrection. It is not about human capacities and possibilities. It is wholly about God’s capacity and determination. God acts at the boundary of life we call death and does something all together new. Angels and earthquakes are the only way Matthew can make clear that we are confronted with God’s possibilities and not our own. Having dispensed with the guards through overwhelming fear, the angel speaks reassuringly to the women, “Do not be afraid” (v.5). The even more important thing that Matthew says is that Jesus is going ahead of his disciples to Galilee, where he will meet them. Galilee, the place where he first called them, the place of his ministry where he taught the crowds, healed the sick, fed the multitudes, showed compassion on the suffering, welcomed the stranger, blessed the children, challenged the rich, announced a Messiah who would suffer, die, and be raised. The risen Jesus is to be met in the place of his once and future ministry among those where healing, feeding, teaching, and blessing will be carried on by them and those of us who come after.

For us adults today, fears can be more complex and words of reassurance harder to come by. The longer we live, the greater the sense that death eventually claims everyone we love. When an angel or Jesus says, “Do not be afraid,” it is not assurance that nothing can go wrong, because often things do go wrong. It is not assurance that everything turns out for the best, because if we are honest about it, it seldom does. Rather, it is the assurance that, whatever may happen to us, God has the power to strengthen and uphold us; that whatever we must face in the days ahead, we do not face it alone; that nothing we can encounter is stronger than God’s love; that ultimately God gets the last word; that in the end, sometimes even before the end, God’s love is triumphant. +Amen.