Christ
is Risen!
Do you hear the full import of
those words, as spoken to us in the course of today's Liturgy? From
the first lesson at morning prayer today, the prophet Isaiah says:
"For thou hast made of a city an heap; of a defenced city a
ruin: a palace of strangers to be no city; it shall never be built."
(Is. 25:2) Since the Fall of mankind in the commission of Original
Sin, we have built up many needless edifices. Out of self-generated
fear, our forebears in the garden became ashamed to show themselves
to the God who created them and knew them better than they knew
themselves. To the civilising Law of Moses costly and useless
personal burdens were added. The worship of the Temple, intended to
be on behalf of the entire nation of Israel, became impossible
without the exchange of currency. The glory of the Messiah was
replaced with the poverty of human conceptions; no longer an emissary
of the very life of God, but a political or a military leader who
would do nothing more than improve conditions here on earth for a
select few.
Way back on the second Sunday
in Lent, the bulletin insert contained the following commentary on
the Epistle: "God loves us enough to accept us as we are, but
too much to leave us as we are." And indeed, the Law of Moses
and the rites of the Temple were not only fulfilled but surpassed in
the Upper Room, on Calvary, and in the empty tomb on the third day.
What was destroyed were any fallible conceptions that had been added
to these things and which did nothing but discredit the practice of
religion and veil the covenant that God Himself had given to us. Thus
we read: "And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the
covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all
nations." (Is. 25:7) And yet, how often are we tempted still to
veil our faith? In a long string of "what ifs", "I
don't knows" and "if onlys" our own poverty is exposed
and our hope is hidden. But, our worry really is quite needless. All
of these things have already been taken care of. "For thou hast
been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his
distress." (Is. 25:4a)
Consider what has been done for
us. From an ancient, anonymous homily on Holy Saturday: "For
your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of
a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth
and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became
like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you,
who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was
crucified in a garden....I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my
side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your
side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you
from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the
sword that was turned against you."
This is quite earthy, dramatic
imagery, but it corresponds exactly with the passion, death and
descent into the place of departed spirits that Jesus undertook. And
this is exactly what St. Paul is exhorting us to this morning. "For
ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." (Col.
3:3) I don't know about you, but whenever I find myself at a
graveside, the first thing that comes to mind isn't: this is great,
how fortunate we are to be here! A grave is not a nice place. It is
dirty, cold and confined. Neither is a cross. It is both physically
and psychologically mortifying, meant to make death as ugly as
possible. But these terrible things have been truly converted. The
veil of uncertainty, anguish and despair is now permanently torn
away. For, you see, our God has the uncanny ability to turn that
which is hideous and filled with death into something perfectly
beautiful and lifegiving. And just as our Lord Jesus Christ passed
through the Cross into the Resurrection, so are we, of our very
nature as Christian people, called to do likewise. In the words of
St. Gregory Nazianzen: "Let a man give all things to him who
gave himself for us as the price of redemption and as the substitute
of our guilt. Nothing so great, however, can be given in return, as
the offering of ourselves, if we rightly understand this mystery, and
if we, for his sake, become all things, whatsoever he for our sakes
became."
After all this, the beauty of
our false constructions being torn away and the conversion of death
into the way of eternal life, I admit that I find the Gospel
selection for the principle service today somewhat more subdued than
I think it ought to be. There is not the great proclamation of faith,
'My Lord and my God!', that Thomas will make later on during the
course of the Liturgy. There is the fact that only the Beloved
Disciple seems to have had immediate faith in the Resurrection. There
is the troubling fact that we are told "as yet they knew not the
scripture, that he must rise again from the dead." Mary Magdalen
immediately assumes the worst, that someone has removed the body. The
whole scene is almost too anti-climactic. What we won't hear
liturgically is that Mary has remained behind and questions the man
she assumes to be the gardener who in fact is the only one able to
comfort her sorrow and reveal the truth of the situation.
"Mary Magdalene came and
told the disciples that she had seen the Lord." What a
tremendous relief it is to read those words. The faith of the Beloved
Disciple is confirmed. The other Apostles are awakened to at least
the possibility that what they had learned and received from Jesus
were not in fact the ravings of a madman, but the truth of the living
God.
And that, my friends, really
speaks to the heart of why we are here doing what we do and believing
what we believe. From the ancient Baals, to the fickle and
self-serving deities of Mt. Olympus, from the humane wisdom of
Confucius to the obedience demanded by Allah, right down to our own
day where numerous self-declared atheists have rejected an
anthropomorphic parody of God; none of these objects of our fear and
devotion have ever spoken to the deepest need of the human heart,
which is to hear: "I love you" from one who actually means
it. Only in Jesus Christ, while He healed and preached, drove out
demons and welcomed sinners, gave of Himself at the Last Supper and
on Calvary, when He rose again and appeared to His first friends, has
our God declared His love for us and shown us what it really means.
And so it is most chiefly in
these things, but also every day that we are privileged to draw in
the breath of life, both when we are filled with great faith and
during those moments of crushing despair and fear of what is unknown,
that we are able to "[b]ehold what manner of love the Father
hath bestowed upon us." Again, from that same ancient homily:
"Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the
earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will
enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol
of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I
appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make
them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you,
its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the
banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the
treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven
has been prepared for you from all eternity." And if all that
sounds too good to be true, way beyond our deserving, we have only to
read again II Peter 1:4, "Whereby are given unto us exceeding
great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of
the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world
through lust." As our need was indeed beyond our condition to
repair, so the remedy freely given is ten thousand times beyond our
wildest imaginings. And it is not begrudgingly given, but generously.
So ought it to be received in the hearts of all believers. "It
was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother
was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found."
Christ
is Risen!
