Richard Bollman, S.J.

EASTER VIGIL -- C -- 2010

"Learning Resurrection"

(Luke 24:1-12, 36, 44-49)

I guess we’d all of us say we believe in the resurrection of Jesus.

And at the same time, I’m continually aware of how little I really get this,

not that I don’t believe, but that I hardly know what I believe.

And especially what kind of difference this might make to my life?

This announcement at the tomb, it is meant to change life for me right now.

That seems to be what happened to Mary Magdalene, to Mary and Joanna.

It was something shocking and unexpected and promising all at once.

Now first of all, here is what it most certainly was NOT.

These three women disciples

did not just feel relief or even joy: oh good, Jesus is okay now,

he’s gone on to heaven. Let’s go tell the others.

No that wasn’t it, and that is not what they were told.

They were told something else: that he is not here, not in the defined body

that you expected to deal with.

They were told: he is risen, exactly as he said to you in Galilee.

And what did he say in Galilee?

that he would be handed over to sinners, and crucified, and rise up again.

Yes, it comes back to them, that message, something they had heard,

but probably never talked much about, didn’t believe, didn’t want to believe.

Now it all comes back and it looks different, feels different,

and they start to assimilate it in a new way now.

Not that Jesus is okay and happy with his Father.

But it’s more like this: Jesus has risen up, has been raised up

out of something we had thought was a calamity,

a destruction, a shameful fate. Something we would have liked to change.

But actually is wasn’t shameful or a calamity.

Though it truly was death, it was also

the occasion for God to do something dramatically new in this world.

So what resurrection means is something like this:

through the very dark destruction that is real, that we’d like to avoid,

through that, God vindicates and claims and raises up Jesus.

Out of that terror and darkness comes something new, alive, and fresh

Now they wouldn’t maybe get it all at once, that morning, that dawn:

but Jesus would not withhold himself from them.

That’s the other amazing thing. It’s not just his words that come back,

he comes to be with them in the community of the believers.

He comes to be known, not as a dead body, ghostly and weird,

but as himself, fully loving and capable and present. PRESENCE,

that is the main element of it. Resurrection is Presence.

And the word that describes the presence is PEACE, shalom.

Let’s look at that, too!

"Shalom" is not just a hello and be well, it’s a vastly providential, deep,

and powerful gift of God: it is God’s way, in heaven and on earth.

It was the announcement at the birth of Jesus;

and it is the announcement at the resurrection.

It comes about through the work of sinners, through the reality of death,

it is given through all that. Peace. God’s redemptive harmony with us all.

Sometimes when Jesus is present, he says "Peace be with you,"

and he shows them his hands and side.

"You must look upon me and see what God has done

out of this woundedness.; it is all true."

This then is what the whole Bible has been leading up to.

The death of Jesus is in exact continuity

with the enslavement of Israel in Egypt,

with their dangers and wars and wrestling with God across the desert,

continuity with the years of exile and loss,

all places where God continually called them back,

but now you can see that Jesus is continuing Israel’s whole story

and coming through that story to a new place.

This is what God has been desiring to create and announce,

the mystery hidden from the beginning:

the forgiveness of sins, the radical reorientation

of how we are to stand in relationship to one another and to all the nations,

this is the good news. Out of calamity, out of a willingness to die,

through the heart of their suffering, our suffering, our cry and affliction,

through every political mistake and every embarrassment of our church,

Jesus has walked that story holding us as well,

and God has entered fully into the human community and its hopes:

through Jesus God has done that, and has done that forever.

This is Resurrection.

This is God’s shocking way of Peace and Presence.

We are witnesses of these things.

Not our reactive irritation at church or political figures,

but the witness of women and men who have loved their congregations

in Salvador, in the Sudan, in Over the Rhine,

in recovery centers and classrooms, trusting the impossible.

We are witnesses and we are also sent.

This is Resurrection.

It is hard to grasp. Maybe it is more than we want to grasp.

I wish Resurrection were just a simple trust that we can all get to heaven.

But it invites us see our calamitous lives with courage,

all the signs of our times that frighten us.Our church, our city of hidden injustices, people separated,

and then this happens: the descent of peace, of spirit, of courage.

Courage right in the midst of what we can’t survive and can’t change.

But God is ready to change your way of imagining things,

God is challenging you to set aside your belief

that you are the center of all solutions,

or that you have to play it safe and dream small dreams.

Not at all.

I’ve been helped in grasping a little of this:

learning the Resurrection, from an English theologian, N. T. Wright.

He encourages us in our difficult world

to "learn new ways of praying with and from the pain,

the brokenness, of that crucial part of the world

where God has placed you.

And out of that prayer discover the ways of being peacemakers,

of taking the risk of hearing both sides,

the risk of being shot at from both sides."

This is to be a follower of a crucified Messiah,

being in anguish so much

that the pain of the world and the healing love of God

are brought together in this prayer without words, without solutions,

without anything to trust but the resurrection of Jesus, right here and now.

In other words, it’s like this: the resurrection of Jesus requalifies us,

takes us out of our shame and despair,

and puts us directly in the heart of a power that we might as well use.

As the evangelicals say, it’s time to "live the solution" to "be the change."

Time to trust the baptismal waters of transformation,

time to taste the bread of life that nourishes only when it is broken,

his words coming back to us with a shock,

this time meaning so much more, so that our hearts are burning.

Oh, it is a terrible way to live, don't we well know:

it is the way of the cross.

But Jesus keeps finding us again and again in the middle of it.

It is also, Peace, Courage, and having a purpose,

and giving up everything.

It is Easter.

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N. T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Christ Was and Is, InterVarsity Press: 1999. Quoted material, pp. 190-191.