Keyword: Eastertide

Easter can be proclaimed in many ways. It can be proclaimed by nature when the deathly stillness of winter is reversed. A similar revitalizing charges Christ’s body. It can also be proclaimed by the Scriptures as the risen Christ speaks to his disciples. To hear the Easter proclamation today, let us turn first to nature, then to the Gospel.

Nature. St. Francis of Assisi understood how nature speaks of the resurrection in its (or her) own way. At this season of the year, plants and grass, “dead” all winter long, come to life in a riot of green and other colors. The days grow longer with brilliant and welcome sunlight. Winter’s numbing and discomforting cold retreats before the warm rays of the sun.

These are all manifestations of life. Cold, darkness, and stasis are all marks of death. Their opposites – warmth, light, and movement – are all marks of life. Nature proclaims that the life that you see in plants and animals is allied to the force that raised Jesus from the dead. The One who created the world and instituted the cycle of life and death raised Jesus from the dead to live. We are used to seeing death in the world, in the form of hatred, frustration, injustice, natural disasters, illness and death. We are less used to seeing life in the world, in the form of the triumph of the just, virtue rewarded, and the long and beautiful lives of the upright. We did not see with our own eyes the resurrection of the Jesus from the dead. We believe it, though we did not see it. But we do see the life, light, and warmth of spring with our very own eyes. That’s why nature’s proclamation of Easter is so important. When you see the reanimation of nature today, remember that it is the same life-ward thrust that brought Jesus to life and has brought you to life. Our God is a God of life, who will not let death definitively end our life and community.

John. The Gospel makes it clear we have received a great gift. We are receivers, not agents. “As the father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love.” We become part of the loving exchange between Father and Son that almost defines the Fourth Gospel A couple of sentences later, Jesus tells his disciples, “You are my friends (Greek philoi), no longer slaves (Greek douloi). It’s an important distinction. A slave carries out orders; a friend embraces his desires and eagerly carries them out. The Greek word for “friend,” philoi, also has a passive sense, “one who is loved,” which the English word “friend” does not quite capture. It is an attitude that Jesus has toward us, not a task we have to do. Nature and God’s biblical word remind us as the Easter season comes to an end that we have truly shared in new life.

Many of us find it difficult to maintain our joy throughout the lengthy Easter Season, much as we might like to. Don’t be surprised. There is evidence that the earliest followers of Jesus, though they had firsthand experience of those exciting days, took steps to continue their enjoyment in the Lord’s triumph and its effect on their lives. One indication is that Luke’s Gospel shows how those early followers even after their individual and group experience of the risen Lord needed to gather together and share their experiences. 

Though it would be understandable if the disciples and friends of Jesus had gone off after his death to grieve alone, Luke’s Gospel shows they remained together. The Gospel records that some of the disciples fled when Jesus was arrested. Their betrayal might have so filled them with shame that they preferred to be alone. Instead, their grief and confusion brought them together. As they gathered, Jesus comes into their midst just when they were listening to the account of the two disciples who encountered Jesus on the way to Emmaus. In that encounter, Jesus had been unrecognizable until the end of the meal. In this appearance, however, Jesus takes pain to ensure they recognize him. He shows them his hands and his feet still bearing the marks of his physical suffering. Then in full view of the disciples, he eats the baked fish. He is not a ghost; he is fully with them. 

He explains the Scriptures to them, instructing them how “everything written about me the law of Moses and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled.” An explanation of why the Messiah had to suffer was necessary, since the common understanding of the Messiah was that he would be triumphant and his glory widely acknowledged. Then Jesus takes a further step. What happened to him in Jerusalem cannot be limited to Jerusalem nor even to Judah. It was meant for the nations, “for the forgiveness of sins would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” And the disciples gathered around him are the vanguard of the preaching, “You are witnesses of these things.” In a different way than the disciples then, we are witnesses today.

Easter is the first day of the week, and the dawning of a new way of God’s presence among us in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ. Yet if we look at the Gospel the Church gives us, it seems strikingly un-celebratory. A lone woman checks out the tomb of Jesus, and notices the entrance stone rolled back. She lets the disciples know. Peter and an unnamed “other disciple whom Jesus loved” race to the tomb. The greatest morning in Christian history and these two seem more intent on getting to the tomb ahead of the other rather than to check out the tomb. 

Peter plays a pivotal role in the resurrection accounts, and the other disciple rightly lets him enter the tomb first. What the two saw was an empty tomb rather than the risen Christ. Christ was preeminently worthy of a stupendous victory celebration. No honor would have been too great, no celebration would have been too elaborate. Peter “went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.” Peter did not know at the time what to make of the placement, “For they did not yet understand the scripture that he had to rise from the dead.” “Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed.” Why did this disciple believe? The text does not tell us. Scholars suggest that the presence of the linens indicated that grave robbers did not steal the body, for they would not have left behind the valuable linen cloth. The scholar Sandra M. Schneiders thinks that the cloths outlined the original position of the body of the risen Christ, who passed effortlessly through them, leaving them undisturbed. If this is true, the beloved disciple put two and two together, and believed that Jesus had risen from the dead.

Reflect on this low-key scene. The disciples initially stood in front of an empty tomb, which stunned them and led them to shed their gloomy and defeatist thoughts. More was needed, of course, namely, the Spirit’s touch and personal encounter with Jesus. But they started to listen and be open and began to realize that something great had happened, even if all the details were murky. For most of us, this indirect and slow route will be our route. It begins with an “empty tomb,” not necessarily the vision of the risen Christ, but something that brings us up short. Then comes the spirit’s touch, and then the encounter with Christ, risen from the dead.

That is why we have the long Easter season–to give us time to let the empty tomb experience blossom forth into an encounter with the risen Lord who lordship is in this world now.