April 1, 2024
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily for Easter Sunday on March 31, 2024 at The Paulist Center in Boston, MA. The homily is based on the readings of the day: 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 a special shout-out to those who are venturing back to Mass for the first time in several years! And welcome to everyone joining us online! No matter who you are, or where you are, we’re glad you’re with us on this, the holiest day of the year!
This Easter Sunday, we live in a world facing major problems: the pandemic has changed us in ways that we are only beginning to comprehend, the wars in Ukraine and the Holy Land threaten the geopolitical order around the world, new technologies are arising faster than the ethical systems needed to rein them in, and we face what will probably be a very long and nasty election season. We are uncertain of the toll exacted by recent events and we are uncertain about the tensions and stresses that lie ahead.
The good news is that our Scripture readings have sufficient depth to support the hard-won wisdom we have acquired in the past few years. With the that wisdom, and with the knowledge of Christ’s triumph over death, let us again sing our praises to God, beginning with the words first sung by the angels proclaiming Christ’s birth.
“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 few years, God knows – and we know – that Jesus Christ’s triumphant victory over death has not ended suffering on this planet. Injustice still abounds. In wars and pandemics, people of faith aren’t magically protected from anxiety, injury, 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. 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 of “I shall not die, but live” and “the stone which the builders rejected has become the corner stone.”
And today’s gospel passage features three unconventional people: 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 “the beloved disciple”? Well, many people think that he is John the Apostle. But there’s another theory on who the beloved disciple is. In the Gospel of John, people remark about Jesus’ love for only one particular individual. This person was close enough to Jesus that Jesus would entrust him with the care of his mother. And this person was uniquely qualified to make sense of the arrangement of Jesus’ burial cloths, as he had recently been raised from the dead himself. It’s Jesus’ friend, 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 group. Like Jesus, Peter was an ethnic 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 into the larger society – they were soon empowered by the Holy Spirit to accomplish great things for the reign of God.
Through our baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection, we are empowered by the Holy Spirit, too, here and now.
- In the first minutes of discovering the empty tomb, Mary of Magdala was the entirety of the Church. Through the papacy of Pope Francis and the Synod on Synodality, the Holy Spirit has allowed us to glimpse the promise of women having a greater role in Church leadership.
- Peter’s apostolic experience both with Jesus and after Pentecost was influenced by being an outsider. Today, the Holy Spirit reveals gifts of a universal Church blessed by immigrants and refugees.
- Lazarus’ unique experience gave him new insights into the nature of God. Our Church has begun to recognize the gifts of diversities within the human population – neurodiversity, physical differences, and wider understanding of orientation, to name a few. These gifts provide new avenues for the Holy Spirit to reveal the nature of God to all of us.
Like Mary of Magdala, Peter, and Lazarus, we emerge from the empty tomb to a world still filled with illness, injustice, hatred, and violence. But we also emerge with hope, a hope that has been buffeted these past few years 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 bring about God’s reign with a central role for those whom society has rejected. Our new hope knows that even if we die, we shall live forever.
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, as if we don’t already know about the existence of sin and death in the world. The point of Easter is that we, as members of Christ’s body, we will also triumph over sin and death. Let us pray that we have learned from the crosses we continue to carry. Let us continue on the spiritual journey ahead, better empowered by the Holy Spirit to kindle our hope, to expand our hope, and to proclaim our hope to the entire world!