2nd Sunday of Easter C - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2010

I find today’s Gospel passage fascinating.

Jesus said to that group of disciples: As the Father sent me, so I send you. We were informed earlier in the Gospel: God sent his Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but so that through him the world might be saved. So, Jesus sends us into the world, not to condemn the world,’ but so that through us the world might be saved.

We might well ask: “How on earth are we to do that? … to save the world from itself?”

Well, he did clarify it a bit.. He went on to say: For those whose sins you forgive are forgiven. For those whose sins you retain, they are retained. So, at least he says that people need not be locked in to their sin, to their violence, to their betrayals and compromises, their cowardice, their lies and cover-ups, their injustices – or to however else the messiness of the world, the sinfulness of the world, takes practical shape.

We’re not locked in to sin. But the question remains: How do we get out of it? How do we unlock the power of the world’s sin?

What was Jesus’ way? It is important that we reflect on that, because he sends us to do the same thing – whatever it is.

We have just remembered Jesus’ death in our Holy Week ceremonies. His death showed us two things: Firstly, it showed up the reality and the power of the sin of the world. Sin blinds people. Sin releases the violence of self-interest that lurks in every human heart.

Good, responsible people condemned Jesus. And they all had good reasons to do it. The soldiers obeyed orders. Pilate reasserted the power of Rome, and saved his own skin in the process. The religious establishment thought it blindingly clear and eminently preferable, as Caiaphas had stated, that one man die for the people than that the whole nation be destroyed. And his disciples chose not to be there.

The power of the sin of the world.

What else does Jesus’ death show clearly? What was he up to in all this? Jesus wasn’t a helpless, powerless victim – particularly in John’s Gospel. Had he kept quiet, no one would have taken any more notice of him or done anything to him. But he deliberately refused to back down on what he knew to be true. He would not compromise his own integrity. He kept insisting that the God whom he revealed was a God who loves simply because God is love.

God loves people, not because of what people were like, but because of what God was like. God loved … everyone, anyone – saints and sinners, and all shades in-between – real people in this real world – in this blind world, in this violent world, in this world drowning in its own self-interest and cowardice.

That sort of love in that sort of world is vulnerable, and, perhaps ineffectual; but that is how God loves.

Today’s story went on: Jesus came and stood among them – that bunch of cowards, that group of men who had so far managed to save their own skins but who were crowding together behind locked doors, paralysed by fear.

And Jesus said to them: Peace be with you! He said it a second time: Peace be with you. No recrimination – just forgiveness. No need to be locked in to their sin. But to break free was up to them – and proved initially to be too much for the absent Thomas to believe.

Such love in such a violent world was inevitably vulnerable, and potentially ineffectual. He showed them his crucified hands and the side that had been pierced by a Roman spear. Jesus’ way of saving the world from itself was to reveal its violence and its blindness and to show that they are totally unable to quench the possibility and the power of love.

The catch is: He sends us to continue the mission – yet we’re little different from everyone else: we are all caught up in the same self-interest, the same violence and the same blindness. What have we got that might enable us to break free – a bit – from all that weight of sin?

Jesus breathed on them, and said: Receive the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the power of God’s love at work in the world from within. The Spirit is what makes the difference, provided we are open to receive it. And we receive the Spirit as we entrust ourselves in profound faith to Jesus and to the way of Jesus. As the Gospel’s author put it: believing this, you may have life through his name.