“Homily for Easter”
Terry Quinn 07/04/2024
Readings - Acts 4: 32-35 Early Christian congregation.
Uniting in heart and soul, radical equality, no hunger or thirst.
Ps 133 A psalm of ascent, on ther way to Jerusalem.
The good oil, the cool & gentle dew, God’s promise of life for all time (in Christ, for lifw eternal). (Augustine +430 ‘this psalm inspired the foundation of monasteries. The ideal of people of faith dwelling together in unit)
1 Jn 1:1 - 2:2 Walk in the light
An exhortation to the early Johannine church of around 100CE and provides a framework for understanding better the Gospel of St John.
Jn 20:19-31 Risen Christ - a call to faith.
The Gospels describe the passion, death, burial and resurrection of Christ in some detail. All four Gospels relate the death of Jesus; Jesus cried out with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit; Jesus breathed his last; and bowing his head he gave up his spirit.]
I would like to reflect on three things this morning. First the Cross of Christ and its outcome; second a brief glance at today’s world 2024; and third what does hope really mean for us?
1. The Romans applied crucifixion extensively. After the suppression of the revolt of Sparticus and the slaves in Italy, 71BCE, the road from Capua to Rome was lined with 6000 crucified rebels. In 7CE there was a revolt in Judea which was brutally put down by cruciftying 2000 Jews. The historian Josephus +100, witnessed crucifixion himself, recorded the seige of Jerusalem by the Roman General Titus in 70CE. Titus was the son of the Emperor Vespasian. This attack on Jerusalem concluded the first Jewish Revolt (66-70CE). The scene was apocalyptic, the dead lay on the streets or under the rubble, any survivors were starving and full of fear. Jerusalem was utterly destroyed. Titus had 500 Jews crucified each day for several months after the fall of the city. Scholars say that the Gospel of Mark reached its final writing around 70CE, ‘just as the horror and significance of the destruction made its impact on the Markan community’’ possibly in Galilee. (Francis Moloney). In Mark 13,19, Jesus said ... ‘these are going to be hard days, nothing like it from the time God made the world up to the present’ (The Message, Eugene Peterson).
Now compare Jerusalem in 70 CE with Gaza 2024. We know what happened in Israel on October 7 ‘23 and we knw what has happened since. St Paul writes in 1Cor.2,1 ‘You’ll remember friends, that when I first came to you ... I didn’t come with with polished speeches and the latest philosophy. The only knowledge I claimed to have was about Jesus and only about him as the crucified Christ.’ This was written by Paul about 16 years before the destruction of Jerusalem. Indeed, the story of Christ is our story, can we say the history of Christ is our history? We say in faith, Christ saves us From what? From sin. What about sin! Sin is ‘joyless grabs for happiness, trinket gods, magic show religion, paranoid loneliness, all consuming and never satisfied wants, a brutal temper, uncontrolled and uncontrolable addictions ... I could go on’... says Paul, Gal 5 19-21. Sin is to fail when I should have done the right thing, ‘forgive whatever you have against anybody so that your Father in heaven may forgive your failings as well’ Mk 11, 25. Sin is me missing the mark, wandering away from goodness and truthfulness and beauty. Simone Weil wrote that truth is sought-after not because it is true but because it is good. We say in faith that every Christian is another Christ, that the Bible is a love story. We read in the New Testament that we are all ruled by the love of Christ and the substance of our faith is that Christ is the One who died for all, and this means that all share in his death.
As Paul puts it, ‘One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. Christ included everyone in his death so that everyone could be included in his life. A far better life than people ever lived on their own.’(2Cor 5,14 - The Message translation). C S Lewis in his little story called ‘The Great Divorce’, ‘There are only two kinds of people in the end, those who say to God,”Thy will be done”, and those to whom God says, “thy will be done”.
2. Today’s multipolar world is on a precarious cliff face. My reading tells me that big business is now trying to build volatility into its business models, to make supply chains more secure and encourages even more regulation rather than less [e.g. with AI]. The busiest maritime routes on earth are now threatened, and 90% of global goods are shipped goods. The crisis is deepening rapidly and all business can do, it seems, is to aim for “stabliised volatility”. UN UNCTAD (UN Conference on Trade & Developement) WHO.
So what of Christian faith? Can faith throw light on our shattering world order? John’s Gospel tells us the disciples were ‘filled with joy’ when they first saw Christ after his crucifixion. On reading the gospels we come to see that the first hour of Christ’s life was, in fact, a movement towards the hour of his death. On reading the letters of Paul we can realise that nothing has been held back by God the Father in giving human creatures and all creation a share in what is utterly God’s own. There is a kind of double love here in this season of Easter, the love of God the Father who allows the Divine Son to go the the very end of the abyss of self abandonment; and the love of God the Son who stands in place of sinful creation. Dear friends consider this picture, on the one hand there is one ‘reality’: Jerusalem in 70CE and Israel/Gaza in 2024; and there is another reality, the double love of God. And it was the Son who told us, ‘I have said things to you while I was still with you but the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of everything I have said to you’ (Jn 14.25-26).
3. Lastly a word about hope.
I want to tell you a story about Julian of Norwich, b.1342. She was a hermit who lived next to the Church of St Julian in Norwich in the 14th Century. The time of the 14th C was one of great suffering and death in England and Europe. There was war between Englsnd and France, and widespread plague and famine. Julian left us her writings called ‘Showings” or “Revelations of Divine Love”. She tells us of holding a crucifix before her eyes, looking lovingly on the disfigured body of Christ. In her vision she was asked to look up to heaven and she would be carried up there. Julian then says, ‘No I cannot look up, I cannot look up, for you are my heaven, you are who I want to be with’. Julian is not trying to get to another heaven, she is looking down on the crucifix and saying, ‘You are my heaven.’
Julian writes of another vision of Jesus giving God the Father a beautiful gift in heaven after his death and resurrection; a gift brought through his suffering. Julian wonders what this gift of Jesus to the Father was, and why it was so pleasing to the Father. What is this gift Julian asks? What is this gift? Then she answers, we are his gift, we are his reward we are his glory, we are his crown.
Julian of Norwich has Christ saying, ‘Love is it own gift’ ... when I suffered, says Christ, I wasn’t trying to get beyond you’. When we have loved, you and I, and have been loved, in a sense we have already arrived. And this is where I want to suggest that this may throw light on the end of Mark’s Gospel. The angel at the empty tomb says to the frightened women,
‘Don’t be afraid, I know you’re looking for Jesus the Nazarene, the one they nailed to the cross .. he’s here no longer. Now tell his disciples and Peter that he’s going on ahead of you to Galilee. You’ll see him there, exactly as he said’. They got out as fast as they could, their heads swimming. They said nothing to anyone’.
I also suggest that this conclusion of Mark’s Gospel may show another way of looking at hope...because hope is not for a pie in the sky. It is enduring, even embracing, pain and loss right in front of us, right within us. I suggest we need to grieve the crucified Christ; like the women in Mark, we need their kind of hope to go to the tomb, facing danger on their way, to receive and to embalm the body of Christ. We all need the courage of the aid workers from the World Central Kitchen to go to the tombs of Gaza to care for the body of Christ. At those moments, that was their heaven. We all know so well that we all live unpredictable lives. Yet is was us in all our unpredictability who are Christ’s gift to God for his own death. Stay with this kind of hope, and see what happens. This kind of hope is not an escape hatch to other than where you are right now - your very own Galilee, (dare I say Gaza?) “You’ll see him there, exactly as he said.”
Before I finish I want to refer to Vaclav Havel the first President of Czech Republic (1993-2003). He was a distinguished poet and playwrite. Havel believed that what we do has meaning whatever the outcome. That life has meaning is not at all clear to many people today, especially the young. When I was in the Seminary many years ago, our college’s spiritual director used to say that hope is the virtue of hard work. Vaclav Havel writes that hope is the willingness to work for something because it is good. It is not just because ‘it stands a chance of success’. In fact the more hopeless a situation is in which we work for hope, the deeper that hope is. Hope is the certainty of something that makes sense regardless of how it works out. Here we’re in common territory with other great philosophy and theology: The 4 immeasurables of Buddha;: ‘Loving Kindness, Compassion, Empathy, Equanimity’; the 3 Transcendentals of Aristotle: “The Good, the True & the Beautiful”; the Muslem call to daily prayer: “There is none worthy of worship except Allah, come to prayer. Allah is the greatest.’ Consider even, the better angels of a secular world: inclusion, non-violence, food programs, COP 29 Climate Conference. Does the UN work hard to feed the poor and starving, care for children etc? Yes. Is it successful? Is that the question? A better question is, Does the work of the UN make sense? Do our efforts in kindness, compassion, empathy and equanimity for others and for the earth itself, make sense?
Christ died a miserable death. We celebrate in word and worship the Resurrection of Christ. We believe Christ died for love of us. We believe God raised Jesus Christ for love of us. Our hope does not depend on success or failure. It is the concviction that God is at work in the world. Working in a hopless situation and refusing to capitulate makes sense because that work is based on a good - a good in itself. And jst as I said earlier that Christ’s birth was ordered to his death and resurrection, indeed the whole New Testament, the whole Bible is so ordered, so hope is ordered to love, to a God who is love and to his Christ, who is the slain lamb of God, wounded yet standing:
To paraphrase St Paul to the Romans, ‘We boast to expect the glory of God ... not only that, we also boast when we’re hemmed in with troubles because we know that troubles can develop patience and patience tempers the steel of virtue (justice, courage, prudence, love-in- action). A hope ordered towards love doesn’t disappoint because the Holy Spirit has been given to us pouring into our hearts the love of God.’ (St Paul to the Romans 5: 3-5. Paraphrase)