Easter Sunday Morning 2023
Last night once again we lit the great candle of Easter that burns before us still this morning, and proclaimed Christ Risen. We proclaimed how the power of his life shatters the confines of death, and radiates its possibility across time and space, so that we too, now, can encounter him, hear his voice, be touched by him, enjoy his friendship, and follow his invitation.
Yet, how foolish we must look gathering here this day to proclaim Christ Risen! How foolish it must seem to the onlooker when they see us light a fire, light a candle, and sing Alleluia! What is happening here? Is it all some elaborate fantasy? How serious can we be to affirm that the dead have come back to life, that Jesus has risen from the dead? To the onlooker, to many of our friends, and even some within our own families, it is a nonsense, and we are fools for believing it to be so.
Are we to be pitied for what we believe, for what we gather to proclaim this day? We are those who have staked our life and our hope on this affirmation of a resurrected Christ. If he has not risen then we have based our life on a mere fantasy, a mere myth. And how solid, then, are the foundations on which we wish to build our life and our future? What then of our hope that we remain united in life even in death?
Yet this morning we affirm once again that our faith is not in vain. We utter deep in our hearts and souls, Christ is risen. He is not among the dead. He lives. Can you not see this life? Can you not hear it? Can you not touch it? It is in the transformation of disappointment into joy, the change from uncertainty to purpose and meaning, the delivery of delight from disillusionment, the power of love in the face of fear, the encounter of fullness of presence in the emptiness of absence, new beginnings in dead ends. We have seen a life of shame given its dignity; we have touched a life of fear transfigured into courage; we have heard a word that has changed despair into hope. We have witnessed the power of life, a force given its meaning in our memory of the One whose life could not be extinguished by death.
We are not proclaiming a resuscitated Jesus. We are proclaiming a risen Christ. Resuscitation and resurrection are not the same thing. Resurrection is a moment of eternity in which life in all its power bursts forth and which continues to unfold even in our own stories. In the words of Pope Benedict,
If in Jesus’ Resurrection we were dealing simply with the miracle of a resuscitated corpse, it would ultimately be of no concern to us. For it would be no more important that the resuscitation of a clinically dead person through the art of doctors. For the world as such and for our human existence, nothing would have changed.”[1]
No, the mystery of Resurrection that we proclaim this day is not about mere resuscitation. As Pope Benedict went on to teach,
Jesus’ Resurrection was about breaking out into an entirely new form of life, into a life that is no longer subject to the law of dying and becoming, but lives beyond it ‑ a life that opens up a new dimension of human existence . . . In Jesus’ Resurrection, a new possibility of human existence is attained that affects everyone and that opens up a future, a new kind of future, for [us].”[2]
If the power of life has not burst through in Christ, and if Christ is not risen from the dead, then we are trapped in our past, our mistakes are final, our wounds are toxic, our beginnings are limited, our separations are complete, our death is to be feared, and life is no longer free.
However, the miracle of the Resurrection goes beyond even this. Our hearts are astounded in the knowledge that in the Resurrection we have become the Body which bears his life to others. It is in our commitment to one another, in the quality of our life together, that the world is blessed with the presence of the One whom we proclaim to be risen. The Resurrection celebrates how Christ lives now in the body. The body that Christ lives in now is the body of the community: the community of disciples, the Church, our Christian community, is what bears the life of the Risen Christ. Thus, to proclaim the Resurrection is at one and the same time to profess the Church and the power of the communion we have with one another in his name – a power that is not a fantasy because we have seen it, we have heard it, and we have touched it.
And so, on this day let us gladly be fools, fools for Christ! For in this foolishness, there is a wisdom that alone can open a possibility of life we never dared imagine left to ourselves!
[1] Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week- From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 243.
[2] Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 244.
