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On the WHY? of it all
Third Sunday of Easter
April 15, 2024
Peter said to the people:
"The God of Abraham,
the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,
the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus,
whom you handed over and denied in Pilate's presence
when he had decided to release him.
You denied the Holy and Righteous One
and asked that a murderer be released to you.
The author of life you put to death,
but God raised him from the dead; of this we are witnesses.
Now I know, brothers,
that you acted out of ignorance, just as your leaders did;
but God has thus brought to fulfillment
what he had announced beforehand
through the mouth of all the prophets,
that his Christ would suffer.
Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away."
My children, I am writing this to you
so that you may not commit sin.
But if anyone does sin, we have an Advocate with the Father,
Jesus Christ the righteous one.
He is expiation for our sins,
and not for our sins only but for those of the whole world.
The way we may be sure that we know him is to keep
his commandments.
Those who say, "I know him," but do not keep his commandments
are liars, and the truth is not in them.
But whoever keeps his word,
the love of God is truly perfected in him.
The two disciples recounted what had taken place on the way,
and how Jesus was made known to them
in the breaking of bread.
While they were still speaking about this,
he stood in their midst and said to them,
"Peace be with you."
But they were startled and terrified
and thought that they were seeing a ghost.
Then he said to them, "Why are you troubled?
And why do questions arise in your hearts?
As he said this,
he showed them his hands and his feet.
While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed,
he asked them, "Have you anything here to eat?"
They gave him a piece of baked fish;
he took it and ate it in front of them.
He said to them,
"These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you,
that everything written about me in the law of Moses
and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled."
Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.
And he said to them,
"Thus it is written about me forgiveness of sins,
would be preached in his name to all nations,beginning in Jerusalem.
You are witnesses of these things."
I imagine many people might wish they could have been in that room with the disciples, to see for themselves. I wonder how you'd tell someone about it afterwards. What is there that is absolutely convincing? "Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself," Jeshua says. "Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have."
But a dream sometimes feels totally real, and the feeling can last for some time after waking. What convinced those present might not convince anyone else. In fact, I don't think the gospel narrative is offering their experience as proof. It is their word that we trust, and these descriptions of their experience are only part of it. They tell us that they met up with Jeshua as the person they knew! The "See me, Touch me" are only pointing to the sure knowledge they came to. One person's experience cannot provide another with certitude. There is a lot more to knowing than the experience of seeing and touching. People in the witness box are often cross-examined with questions about whether they might have been sleepy, or a little intoxicated, etc. Replies alway, in the end, come down to: "I know what I know."
Jeshua, breathed on them and imparted the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit who made all things plain to them. Yet they still had to make their choice to believe. That need to freely choose is never by-passed or overridden.
However the texts we have read last week and today are focused not on proving the resurrection, but on something else. On the WHY of it all. The texts all pivot on the statement: "He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures." And as Peter put it in that first basic declaration to the crowds (first reading) , "God has thus brought to fulfillment what he had announced beforehand through the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer."
And Luke a little earlier, in the Emmaus story: 'He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.'
Did not the Messiah have to suffer? This is the question, the great mystery: Why? Richard Rohr in Things Hidden: Scripture Spirituality has perhaps the best treatment of this I have ever come across. He brings us to face the fact that we have tried many explanations, but even now we still lack understanding. This is a dreadful state of affairs, and yet I believe Richard is correct. We still haven't come close to the heart of the mystery.
We've tried to explain it as a matter of justice. Divine Justice demanded equal atonement for an offence against divine dignity, so the Son had to become man and suffer torture and a shameful death to restore the balance! We are not going to pursue this line today. Suffice it to say that any explanation based on justice does not work for here we are in the realm of grace, of free gift, of Love giving itself.
"He died for our sins", writes Paul. For what sins? Not so much for 'sins' against the moral code; rather for the basic sin of humankind which is pride. Pride expressed as self sufficient independence. We have the capacity to think we can go it alone, and we have the cheek to ignore God on whom everything depends. The recent Vatican document, Dignitas Infinita, refers to 'the age-old temptation to make oneself God.'
Our 'usual sins' are against good order among humans, but our sin against the first commandment is to see ourselves as if we were God - and that is a sin against the order of the Cosmos.
Our sin involves a serious misconception of God and our relationship with God. Since the beginning God has been pictured as a dangerous, vengeful threatening, distant tyrant. In the bible narrative we can trace something of the journey we have made from negative ideas about God to seeing God as merciful, generous and loving. God's geatest desire in our regard is not that we repent and do penance for our 'sins' but that we respond to a warm relationship of familiarity, a family relationship, a friendship in sharing life. That change of mentality is the metanoia we're called to.
To slip under the defences of our pride, God approaches us as gentle and humble. When Jeshua said: "Learn from me for I am gentle and humble of heart", we need to remember 'Like Father, like Son'. As the Son is, so is the Father - humble and gentle.
But how to show the world that God is humble and gentle, i.e., a non-violent creator/reformer? It is the key purpose of Jeshua's life, and to drive the lesson home he goes forward towards humiliation and shameful execution in an accepting, non-violent way. He allows his dignity to be trashed to show us that love simply loves, and God is love.
Jeshua overcomes evil, not by aggressive resistance, not by force as if this could annihilate the evil, but by absorbing it in himself and refusing to be corrupted by it. Evil people are rendered powerless when, having done their worst, their victim retains a dignity they cannot match. "Truly this was a son of God," the Roman centurion had to admit.
The lesson of the cross can only be really understood in as much as we make it our way of life. But to get to that point we need to spend time before the figure of a tortured, unresisting man reduced to a despicable state and mocked by passers by.
That man led the way through death to life. In living a humble, non-violent life we will die a dozen times a day, and also we'll become a channel of life, bleeding off the venom of evil that troubles our world, conveying the love of our humble, gentle Father to our sisters and brothers.