Homily for Easter Sunday
Homily delivered by Fr Nicholas King SJ
Scripture Readings: Acts 10:34-43; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-9
Today, this morning, everything is utterly changed. Or is it, you ask, as you look at the newspaper or the reports on television? You will remember that we have been praying for peace in the Ukraine; but there is not much sign of it there, or in any of the other places where war has been raging for far too long, or where refugees set out on the miserable and hopeless trudge to safety.
But then, look at today’s readings: in the first reading, Peter is addressing a Gentile, a Roman soldier, and making the astonished discovery that the good news about Jesus is for absolutely everybody. Such a notion was unheard of in the Ancient Near East. So we are living now in a very new world, powerfully symbolised by the fact that, as Peter says, Jesus had cured so many people. But there is much more to it than that, “for they tried to destroy him”, but God was in the story, or as Peter puts it, “God was with him… and raised him up on the third day”. And we know it is true, this Easter story, because, as Peter puts it, “we are witnesses, who ate and drank with him” that “God raised him up on the third day”. So everything is now utterly different. Jesus unmistakeably died that horrible slave’s death on Friday afternoon, but it turns out it is not the end of the story. For God is there.
That is the message of the second reading also; and it tells us what we have to do, which is “Look for the things above”, which means concentrating on life coming out of death: “you have died”, he tells us, “and your life is hidden with Christ in God”. and there is something about Christ: he too has changed, for instead of a humiliating failure of a death, he is now “sitting on the right hand of God”. The point is, you see, that all is utterly different, because God is in the story.
And we have the same message in today's gospel; because God has been in the story, everything is utterly different today. It starts with that brave lady, Mary Magdalen, who has had the courage to go to Jesus’ tomb in the early morning. clearly, she is not expecting him to be resurrected; but nor, on the other hand, is she expecting the stone to have been rolled away and the tomb empty. The different mood of this morning is summed up in a whole lot of running, which on the whole you do not normally find in the Bible; Mary Magdalen runs to tell Simon Peter and the Beloved Disciple, and they then run (admittedly at different paces) to the tomb, to inspect the situation. So these two male disciples are suddenly in a very different place, as always happens when God is in the story. The Beloved Disciple wins the race, which is why we often think of him as young, and Peter as rather older. But, courteously, having got to the tomb first he lets Peter go ahead of him; Simon sees the grave-clothes, and the “sweat-cloth which had been on his head but now rolled up separately”. And that means that we are in a very different place: if the body had been stolen or eaten, all the clothing would be together.
Now the world changes: for it is said of the Beloved Disciple “he saw and he believed/came to faith”. So he is after all in a different place, and has recognised that God is indeed in the story. Up to that moment, says the evangelist, “they had not known the scriptures, that he must inevitably rise from the dead”.
But they still can't get it quite right: for instead of doing what Mary Magdalene does, and proclaim the gospel of resurrection, it says that “they went home”, while Mary remains weeping by the tomb. She has got it quite right, of course, but that is another story for another day.
For the moment our task is to notice that the world has utterly changed; that mocked and crazy criminal who was horribly executed on Good Friday afternoon, has after all been brought back to life by God. It is clear that none of his followers were expecting this; they were crouching terrified behind closed doors. But God is in the story, and that means that the world in which we are living this morning is a very different place.
A Happy Easter to you all!