Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily for Easter Sunday on April 4, 2021 at St. Austin Catholic Parish in Austin, TX. The homily is based on the evening’s readings: Acts 10:34a, 37-43; Psalm 118; Colossians 3:1-4; and John 20:1-9.

Welcome, welcome, welcome! Welcome to everyone here in-person, with special shout-outs both to those coming to Mass for the first time in over a year and to those who have not been able to gather with loved ones this weekend due to the pandemic. Welcome to everyone joining us online, especially to those who decided to protect others by staying home. No matter where you are, we’re glad you’re with us on the holiest day of the year!

This Easter Sunday, we are still in the grip of this pandemic. While there is hope in the worldwide vaccination campaign, we are still uncertain of the toll the past year has taken on us and what suffering lies ahead. The good news is that our Scripture readings have sufficient depth to support the hard-won wisdom we have acquired since celebrating the previous Easter Sunday 357 days ago. Let us pray that we will have the grace to act upon this wisdom and to open ourselves up to God’s mercy.

“They did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.” Even now, nearly 2,000 years later, I don’t think we fully understand the Scripture, either! What exactly changed in the universe on that original Easter Sunday? 

Given what we’ve been through in the past twelve months, God knows – and we know – that Jesus Christ’s triumphant victory over death has not ended suffering on this planet. Injustice still abounds. In pandemics, people of faith aren’t magically protected from stress, anxiety, financial fallout, illness, or death. 

So now, more than ever, we need to get beyond the usual tropes and platitudes of Easter Sunday. Fortunately, the Scriptures were written by people who were born before Christ’s resurrection and witnessed what changed – and what didn’t change – with Christ’s resurrection. What didn’t change? Pontius Pilate remained the ruthless governor of Judea, relying on crucifixion on a regular basis. Historians may call this period “Pax Romana,” but the Roman Empire continued to tamp down protests by Jews, Christians, and other political enemies by violent means.

What changed? Let’s start with our first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles. St. Peter’s speech is from another momentous day in Christianity: the baptism of Cornelius and his household, the first family of Gentiles to become Christians. The Book of Acts makes a big deal about this event by explaining it in detail, with repetitions, and with multiple revelations from the Holy Spirit. Peter’s speech begins, “In truth, I see that God shows no partiality.” Our reading from Colossians says that Easter should prompt us to “seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.” Christians quickly saw Jesus’ resurrection as the fulfillment of Psalm 118’s declarations, “I shall not die, but live” and “the stone which the builders rejected has become the corner stone.”

And then there’s today’s gospel passage, one of the few in the church lectionary that does not include an appearance by Jesus. It features three people who are unconventional: Mary of Magdala, Peter, and “the beloved disciple.” It was extremely rare for a woman to be identified by the town of her birth, which seems to indicate that Mary of Magdala had achieved some kind of independence in a patriarchal society. Peter was a fisherman, likely uneducated, who stuck out in the big bad city of Jerusalem because of his Galilean accent… and he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. 

And “the beloved disciple”? Well, most people think that he is John the Evangelist, who may have been quite young when he abandoned his father’s business to join Jesus’ inner circle of wandering disciples. But there’s another theory on who the beloved disciple is, the theory that I prefer. There is only one person in the Gospel of John that people remark on how much Jesus loved him. And this person was uniquely qualified to make sense of the arrangement of burial cloths, as someone who had recently been raised from the dead himself. It’s Lazarus.

So the three disciples at the center of our gospel passage share some interesting characteristics with Jesus. Like Jesus, Mary of Magdala exercised unexpected authority in a patriarchal, hierarchical, persecuted ethnic group. Like Jesus, Peter was an outsider who received divine revelations and eventually led the fledgling religious movement that is miraculously still with us nearly 2,000 years later. And like Jesus, Lazarus literally died, but that wasn’t the end of his story, either. In truth, we can see that God shows no partiality. The stone which the builders rejected has become the corner stone. 

So what changed on Easter Sunday? Once and for all, we now know that God wins in the end. Jesus Christ triumphed over political and religious injustices. Jesus Christ triumphed over sin and death. And those whom Jesus brought closest to himself – even if they didn’t fit in with the larger society – they were eventually empowered by the Holy Spirit to accomplish great things in building the kingdom of God. We are to seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. And then we, through the life of Jesus Christ crucified and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we will triumph over political and religious injustices. We will triumph over sin and death. We will accomplish great things in building the kingdom of God.

This year, we, like Peter and the beloved disciple, emerge from the empty tomb still fearful of injustice, illness, and death all around us. But we also emerge with hope, a hope that has been buffeted these past twelve months by the harsh realities of life, but a hope that still endures. It has been burnished in the refiner’s fire. 

Our new hope recognizes that peace is not the absence of conflict, but the internal confidence that we are loved by God no matter what. Our new hope empowers us to build God’s kingdom with a central role for those whom society has rejected. Our new hope knows that even if we die, we shall live forever. 

St. John tells us that Jesus rose on the first day of the week, making an explicit parallel with the original creation in the Book of Genesis. But God isn’t intending for us to start over today with a blank slate. Let us pray that we have learned from the crosses we continue to carry. Let us pray that we are no longer naïve. Let us set off again, better equipped by the Holy Spirit for the journey ahead.