Easter Sunday - Homily 4

Homily 4 - 2014

Did you notice how the risen Jesus referred to his disciples? to that group of profoundly frightened men, all of whom had deserted him in his time of profound need, and one of whom, when questioned by a slave-girl, had denied even having ever known him. He called them brothers. Go and tell my brothers that they must leave for Galilee; they will see me there.

It is only recently that the power of that word has struck me. It says two things to me particularly.  Firstly, Brothers speaks of friendship, of lovely close friendship. In the context of how the disciples had abysmally failed, it speaks also of forgiveness. And what forgiveness! before they had any chance to say sorry; before, probably, they even felt sorry. Forgiveness before repentance; forgiveness without conditions.

And the one offering it was the risen Jesus – the perfect human expression of God. That is what God is like. The risen Jesus has revealed to us the essential, the only, face of God. The first thing that Jesus said to the women was, Do not be afraid! Do not be afraid of Jesus! Do not be afraid of God! For some reason it is hard not to be afraid of God. Perhaps, unfortunately, that is how we have been taught. We certainly pick it up somewhere. But why fear God? God will do nothing to us that we do not choose – with one exception. God loves us before we ever choose, and keeps on loving us irrespective of whatever we choose.

[Then what about Hell? Hell is not God’s doing.  Hell is simply the stark reality of our own choices to make our interests the driving focus of our lives, the centre of our world.  We manage to ignore the frightening reality of that choice by distraction, by psychological denial, and by our cultural and personal illusions.  We get little touches of it only occasionally – when the evasions stop working. There is no need to be afraid of God; though there is every reason to be afraid of ourselves.]

Now my second point. Tell my brothers … Brothers says something else to me.  Jesus had never referred to the disciples as his brothers while he was living with them. I think that the simple reason was because they weren’t. Brothers share the same life. Resurrection is something that happened to Jesus; but it is more than that. Somehow we can all share in his resurrection. Remember the Sunday Gospel two weeks ago when Jesus said to Martha, the sister of Lazarus, I am the resurrection … and the life… Whoever believes in me will never die. Life that will never die, eternal life, is life proper to God. Through believing in the risen Jesus, through entrusting ourselves and surrendering to him, we become one with him in his reality as risen Lord.

Tell my brothers … but not just the first disciples. Tell the world that they can all be my brothers and sisters. The way we ritually say yes to that reality is through baptism; and, for those of us baptised and Christed as infants, through living out that baptismal surrender to him across life.

That is what we celebrate today. Happy Easter!