April 9, 2023
Easter Sunday - April 8, 2023 – Acts 10:34A, 37-43; Colossians 3:1-4; Mark 16:1-7
I’m sure you picked up on the phrase that was repeated twice. It sort of jumps off the page at you. “Be not afraid.” Be not afraid. It’s said twice. Once, basically, before the spectre of death. “Don’t be afraid to come in here and enter this tomb.” And once, before the presence of light. Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid.”
One of the interesting things about preaching on big days, like Easter and Christmas, is that you have a crowd of different kinds of people. And you have to figure out what to say to people who may not always be here, to people who are visiting, to non-Catholic relatives who might be up for the weekend.
And so, you wind up, on a day like Easter, saying something about all crucifixions lead to a resurrection, Good Friday leads to Easter. And it winds up being just happy talk. You know, “the sun will come out tomorrow.” “April showers bring May flowers,” that sort of thing. We preach that after every crucifixion comes a resurrection in our own lives. But suppose we turn that the other way. In order for there to be a resurrection in our lives, there has to be a crucifixion. That’s a darker message even though it sounds exactly the same as the first one.
And there are three different ways in which we experience crucifixion. Sometimes others crucify us. Sometimes we crucify ourselves. And sometimes things just happen, and they leave us wounded and broken. So, how do we address those things?
When things just happen, our task is to get beyond them. And, in order to get beyond them, we have to accept their reality, on their own terms, and recognize what’s real. When people have wounded us deeply – and, at some point in our lives, somebody will - when people have wounded us deeply, the task is not to excuse them, but to forgive them. That’s hard work.
Excusing people simply means you pretend that they didn’t hurt you in the first place, or that what they did was ultimately alright. Forgiving people means that, first of all, you recognize that they have done you a terrible wrong. And secondly, you decide that they have a right to be wrong. It is everybody's right as a human being to make a mistake. Even a terrible mistake. Even a whole bunch of terrible mistakes without our desiring their annihilation. That’s the path to forgiveness.
And, if we discover that our crucifixions have been self-inflicted, there are several things that could be true. We could have made a series of wrong decisions. One after another after another. We need to give ourselves the right to have been wrong. We could be subject to one of the many addictions that fill this world. We need to recognize that, if we are addicted, we need to seek some sort of help. And, if what we have done is wicked, is sinful, then we have to make amends, if we can make amends, and ask for other people’s forgiveness and God’s forgiveness.
The problem with doing that is that our world teaches us three things that aren’t true. The first one is that people can have superpowers. We don’t. At all times we’re teetering right on the edge of being powerless. That we need to go it alone, pick ourselves up by our bootstraps. That’s not true. We need to move forward as community. And thirdly, that some things we do can never be forgiven. And that is not true either. God always forgives.
So, here we are at Easter, and the challenge before us is to go from the crucifixions that we know are present in our lives to the joy of Easter.
The Easter song is not actually Hallelujah. There’s a phrase taken from the psalms. “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.” This is the day. Sorry, Annie, not tomorrow. Today.
St. Paul admitted, at one point, “Now is a very acceptable time. Now is a day of salvation.” And at that point he wrote, “Because we have been dead in Christ. In sin we rise with Christ in salvation.”
Let us begin today.