3rd Sunday of Easter B - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2006

Luke used a number of words to describe the initial reactions of the disciples that night when the risen Jesus stood in their midst: alarm, fright, agitated, doubting, unbelieving in joy, dumbfounded.

I wonder what words would suit us today as the risen Christ stands in our midst?

Some of the first disciples’ reactions are not surprising: after all, he had been killed.

What sort of things might they have been saying to each other all Friday night? all Saturday?

“We could see it coming." “Anyone could see that they would try to get him, and silence him." “He was really asking for trouble." “It was his own fault." “He went too far, far too far."

“It’s OK to criticise the way people were being oppressed and marginalised, and not just by the Roman occupation, but also by so much of their own religious system that had drifted drastically from its roots. But to be concerned for people – to take your own faith convictions so seriously as to flout the authorities to their very faces, and even to symbolically close down activity in the temple???

“Some of the prophets had tried that same sort of things centuries ago, Jeremiah among them. Everyone knows what happened to him! But that was centuries ago."

“What Jesus did was unreal: and to do it without any power backing was idealism gone mad! Not that violence would have achieved much anyway – the two guerrillas crucified with him made that clear enough! He should have just kept quiet! or stayed up in Galilee, out of reach of the power of the Sanhedrin....

If they were thinking like that, no wonder that Jesus’ sudden appearance in their midst affected them the way it did! There he was: up to the same thing! His first words were: Peace be with you! It was Jesus alright - the wounds were there in his hands and his feet; he ate with them.

What did it all mean?

If God had raised him from death, it could only mean that he had been right all along, that he had read the mind of God accurately. It meant that the fact that the religious system of Israel (and the military system of Rome) had oppressed and marginalised people, did matter enormously to God.

It meant that people mattered to God: what people did to each other; whether people interacted with respect, with justice and compassion touched into the very heart of God!

Having wished them peace, having enveloped them in his peace, Jesus went on: they were to proclaim forgiveness of sins to all the nations.

Forgiveness of sins... the world’s sins - those destructive things people and nations do to each other.

What does forgiveness involve? Forgiveness happens as love replaces self-interest; as justice replaces national interest; and as welcome and acceptance replace revenge, unwelcome and exclusive privilege.

But, as Jesus made clear, the necessary accompaniment is repentance. That’s where it becomes personal. We are his disciples, too. The mission continues through us.

We are to proclaim that. We are to give hope; to show what hope involves in practice; and to live it first ourselves.

Do the nations want to hear it? our own nation included? Not necessarily, indeed, hardly likely, but that makes no difference. Did Jesus expect the chief priests to listen to him?

Do the death and resurrection of Jesus throw any light on: how we deal with the Solomon Islands and the rest of the South Pacific nations? how we respond to the chronic poverty of so many of the people of our world? what we do with our uranium supplies? how we respond to the urgent issue of global warming?

Repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem, two thousand years ago, and continuing to the ends of the earth into the twenty-first century. If not by us disciples, then by whom?

Do we feel a bit like the first disciples that Easter night? alarm, fright, agitated, doubting, unbelieving in joy, dumbfounded?