Homily — March 23, 2008
Easter Sunday
by Fr. Dan Donovan (March 23, 2008)
Today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles contains one of several examples in that book of the kind of preaching that marked the beginning of Christianity. It briefly evokes the teaching and healing activity that were a part of the public life of Jesus and then focuses on his death and resurrection. It is this, Peter says, that he and the other apostles have been commissioned to proclaim.
The Christian religion as it exists today in all the great churches began with Easter. The death of Jesus had been devastating for the disciples. It seemed to give the lie to all that he had done and said. Had his story ended on Good Friday, that would have been the end of it for them.
Many people today find themselves, for whatever reason, unable to believe in the Easter message. Not willing to abandon their heritage, they try to create a different kind of Christianity, a Christianity based on some scholar or other’s reconstruction of what Jesus must have been like. The task is not an easy one because the only Jesus to be found in the New Testament is the one who died in fidelity to his mission and who subsequently was raised by God to the fullness of life. The New Testament knows no other Jesus.
The resurrection of Jesus, unlike that of Lazarus, has nothing to do with a simple return to this life. It represents a breakthrough to a new and definitive life. Faith in the resurrection is rooted in particular kind of faith in God.
The creed begins with an affirmation of belief in God as the creator of heaven and earth. Everything that is, however old and through whatever process of evolution it has developed, has ultimately come from and depends on God. Nor was God’s creative activity over and done with in the beginning; the biblical God cares about and remains involved in his creation. The call of Abraham, the liberation of Israel from slavery in Egypt, the covenant sealed at Sinai through Moses, the word of the prophets, all these things and more gradually reveal God’s hidden plan for human well-being. Jesus refers to and builds on what went before him. He comes from God in order to proclaim God’s will and to usher in his kingdom. To take God out of Jesus, to try to separate his life and mission from God, is to substitute one’s own fantasy for the Jesus who lived and taught in Palestine some two thousand years ago.
The radical new thing in Jesus is not only the intensity of God’s presence in him but also the way in which his life unfolded. In him God entered into and redeemed, as it were, from within every aspect and dimension of human life, including suffering and death.
Easter represents God’s “yes” to Jesus and to all that he did and taught and suffered. In raising him to the fulness of life, God reveals his creative power at work in our midst. Death is not the last word about human life. The one who made us is now drawing us, in and with Christ, to fulfillment. God is our beginning and our end.
Jesus lives, the liturgy of Easter proclaims, he lives in God, he lives for us. Christian life is fundamentally life in Christ. It is a life that begins in baptism and is meant to grow in the course of our lives. Such growth comes through God’s gifts and through our efforts to respond to, and live in accordance with, them. It comes through prayer and the reading of the Scriptures, through participating in the eucharist and the liturgy of the church, through trying to become, in the concrete circumstances of our own lives, more honest and faithful, courageous and generous, merciful and kind. The more Christlike we become, the more will the Easter message resonate in our hearts. It will fill us with joy and peace.