How can you tell that there’s a gang of really faithful Catholics here? No one’s sitting in the front. I often dreamt of building a church that had only one pew, then one day I found one. I was visiting a Byzantine rite church in Ulster County. The church is built as a circle and there were benches all around three-quarters of the walls, and the last quarter of the wall was where the altar was hidden behind an iconostasis. But everybody got to sit up front and in the back at the same time.
1959 was a banner year for an otherwise obscure country western singer named Stonewall Jackson, named after the great Confederate general. At the beginning of the year he had a number one hit called “The Battle of New Orleans,” but later on in the year he made it into the top five, which means he sold several million copies of a song called “Waterloo.” And, if you remember the song, as maybe two or three people in the congregation might, the first verse went like this.
Now old Adam was the first in historyThen the refrain goes:
With an apple he was tempted and deceived
Just for spite the devil made him take a bite
And that's where old Adam met his Waterloo
Waterloo, Waterloo, Where will you meet your Waterloo?Interesting thing is that the verse encapsulates, in the simplest language, the basic about original sin. But the refrain completely contradicts Catholic doctrine about Christ’s redemption of the human race.
Every puppy has his day [Why he didn’t like puppies, I don’t know, but …]
Everybody has to pay
Everybody has to meet his Waterloo
So, I asked you, before the first reading, “Do you love God?” It’s a difficult question because we can’t see or feel or touch God. He’s an intellectual concept. How do we love an intellectual concept? Even if we talk about loving Jesus, the stories we know about Jesus took place 2,000 years ago. And we’re told that He’s with us in the Church and in the Eucharist but, aside from that little piece of bread, we can’t see Him or feel Him or touch Him, so it’s hard to love Him.
Today’s gospel provides one avenue through this puzzle. But, before we talk about it, we have to talk about today’s gospel. Because last Sunday, at the end of the gospel, John, the writer, told us that, “… there were many other things that were not written down in this book, but these are written so you may believe and, believing, have life in His name.” End of story! He just finished writing his gospel, then this morning we read the next chapter of the gospel. It’s got two endings. And the two endings are very different.
We must not mistake the title, Divine Mercy Sunday, to have an exclusively individual or personal meaning. It has a much broader meaning than that. In order to understand today’s gospel, a couple of things we need to keep in mind. The first is that scripture scholars caution us not to read modern psychological motivations into the scriptures. That doesn’t mean that the ancients didn’t understand human psychology much the same as we do, but they didn’t have the same analytical approach to human emotions and human intentions. And so, they would not be thinking in the same framework that we think. So, what I’m about to do, I say with a caution.
The other thing to realize is that there are not 1, but 3 elephants in this upper room and each of them is huge. The first elephant is denial. Peter, one of the disciples in that room, had denied knowing Jesus, not once, but three times. The second is abandonment. The other ten, along with Peter, had run away at the crisis hour. They ran and hid in the very room they’re hiding in now, with the doors locked. The third is, for want of a better word, withdrawal from the community. Thomas, who is another of the ten, refuses to enter into the community’s newfound faith. Although he’s still a member of the community, and sitting there with the rest of them, he has shut himself off from their view of reality. And so, as Jesus enters the room, He has to deal with all 3 elephants. And he does it in the simplest way. All He says, as He enters the room, is, “Shalom.” “Peace be with you” in English. And that one word contains so many meanings it’s just incredible.
It’s like a very serious game of “Where’s Waldo Now?” Who’s missing from the story? This is the great feast of Easter, the Lord’s Resurrection, and He’s the only one that doesn’t show up in the gospel story.
There are four gospels. Each one tells a different story of the Crucifixion, the Death, the Empty Tomb, and the Resurrection. But all of them have the three elements that we heard in today’s story. The women go at dawn. The tomb is empty. Strange messengers tell them, “He is not here. He is risen. Go tell.” Go tell. The story ends there in two of our three Easter celebrations. This is Year C, the year of Luke. In Year A, the year of Matthew, Jesus does show up in the last line of the story. In Year B, the year of Mark, Jesus isn’t there. This is not the gospel. This is the liturgy, the church’s use of the gospel to make a point.
Pilate’s renown line, “What is truth,” is found exactly in the middle of St. John’s Passion gospel. There are just about 40 lines leading up to it, and just about 40 lines leading away from it. Which meant that, when this gospel was composed, its writer meant it to be the high point of the story. As though Jesus and Pilate are standing on a stage that represents the whole world, and they are looking backwards and they are looking forward.
How can we preach on today’s gospel and on what we celebrate these four days without further dividing humanity into “them” and “us?” That’s the real problem. We don’t live in Christendom anymore. We live in a secular society where we have been taught, since we were little children, that all religions are of equal value. And, yes, they are, in the public arena. But, no, they are not from the point of view of truth. And that is why Pilate’s question is extremely important. Because it represents the rest of the world, asking the one person who represents all of Christianity, “What exactly is truth?”