3rd Sunday of Easter A - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2011

Osama bin Laden has been killed – a violent man has met a violent end. Was it a case of good overcoming evil? the righteous eventually triumphing over the axis of evil? Or was it simply the all-too-familiar working out of the power of the sin of the world? Where might God be in it all?

Let’s reflect on today’s Gospel. Cleopas and his friend had hoped that Jesus would be the one to set Israel free. In other words, they hoped he would be the Messiah, the Christ, the king-like figure that God has promised in the Scriptures through the prophets, and for whom Israel had longed for so long. To set Israel free … free from what? probably from Roman domination for a start; possibly from high-priestly corruption as well.

How did they expect him to do it? I don’t think they expected him to do it by armed revolt. There were others already suggesting that way, [and Barabbas may well have been one of them]. They were generally referred to as the Zealots. Well, if not by an armed revolution, then how? Probably they hoped that somehow God would work through Jesus, his Christ, and somehow evil-doers would be destroyed and faithful Israel would thereby be saved. In other words, they thought that, through Jesus as Messiah, as Christ, God would do the dirty work. God’s violence would break out against every evil-doer.

As a matter of fact, I think that a lot of present-day disciples, of present-day Christian people, still expect something like that – but now they tie it in to Jesus’ Second Coming in Glory. When you think of it, some Christians see hell in that light. “God is merciful – up to a point. God gives people plenty of rope, plenty of time, plenty of chances, but, eventually, if they don’t measure up, God will get violent – not just destroying them but torturing them for eternity. There’s a limit to God’s mercy – God is also just” – they say. But is torture, eternal torture, ever justice?

Let’s listen to what Jesus said in the Gospel:You foolish men! Was it not ordained that the Christ should suffer, and so enter into his glory? … ordained that the Christ should suffer … that the one sent by God, that the one sent to do the saving work of God, should suffer! 

What was ordained, what was inevitable, about it? Jesus was sent to love the world on God’s behalf, to save the world on God’s behalf. Jesus was, in a true sense, God at work in the world saving the world.

Saving it from what? from all the violent, destructive ways people relate to each other, from all the non-love, from all the self-interest, from all the national interest (which is the same thing). If non-love is the problem, then non-love won’t be the answer. If people’s mutual violence is the problem, then God’s violence won’t be the answer. Indeed, God’s answer was the direct opposite of violence. It was an act of total love. But total love in a violent world means suffering – that’s what’s inevitable, that’s what’s ordained about it.

Jesus said a deliberate OK to that. If that’s the way people are, that is the way they have to be shocked out of it. As the Passion reading on Good Friday put it:They will look on the one whom they have pierced. Has the looking worked? Did Jesus’ dying as the victim of the world’s violence work? Well, in fact, it’s a work in progress.

Remember last Sunday’s Gospel: as the Father sent me I now send you. Followers of Jesus follow the way of Jesus – loving in a violent world, and open to pay the price. In fact, empowered both to love and to pay the price. That’s what Jesus’ next line last week was about: Receive the Holy Spirit.  

Today’s Gospel tells us that Cleopas and his friend recognised Jesus at the breaking of the bread. In each Eucharist, the broken bread is the broken body of Christ. We know who broke that body and why that body was broken. In some ways, Eucharist can be scary… were it not that his love never ends and he will forgive without end. Indeed, he asks nothing of us that he does not lead us to want and to empower to do.