Christ is Risen! So, Repent!

3^rd SUNDAY OF EASTER
Acts3, 13-15, 17-19 / 1Jn 2, 1-5 / Luke 24, 35-48

We continue our Easter celebration.  “Christ is risen!”  We continue to proclaim the resurrection of Jesus.  But our readings today would have us add something to our Easter celebration.  What’s to be added?

In our first reading Peter is preaching in Jerusalem.  He’s preaching the resurrection of Jesus.  Loudly and publicly he proclaims:  “Christ is risen!”  And then he adds an invitation to his fellow Jews to join in the celebration by saying this: “Therefore, repent and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away.”  As Peter would have it:  Christ is risen! – and so let us repent.  Peter adds repentance.

The gospel reading from Luke presents the Risen Lord appearing to his disciples.  He says to them: “Peace be with you.”  Then Luke continues: “…he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.  And he said to them:  ‘Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.  You are witnesses of these things.”  If our minds are open to the way Jesus understands the Scriptures, then Luke would have us hear Jesus saying to us:  I have suffered, and I am risen.  So, repent, for the forgiveness of your sins.  And preach – be witnesses to – the repentance that you do!

Easter repentance!  Resurrection repentance!  Repentance is what’s been added.  But I thought repentance was for Lent.  We’re into the Easter season now.  We’re supposed to be into joy and peace and love.  Someone’s raining on our Easter parade.  We need to look more closely at repentance.

Repentance is the New Testament word for total transformation, total personal change.  What Peter and Luke would have us realize is that the resurrection of Jesus is not merely a belief we have in what happened to Jesus.  Much more importantly it is an experience – an experience we can step into.  And when we step into Jesus’ resurrection experience, we know the forgiveness of our sins; we are totally transformed and changed.  We repent.

There’s an ancient Christian legend that I think captures what the Scriptures are trying to tell us.  The legend is about Judas.  After his suicide Judas finds himself at the bottom of a slimy pit.  For years crying about what he had done, he cried so much there were no more tears left to him.  Then he looks up and sees a glimmer of light and begins to climb toward the light.  But the walls are so slimy that again and again he slips back into the pit.  Finally, after many more tries, Judas manages to drag himself out of the pit.  Suddenly he finds himself in an upper room with twelve people seated around a table.  “We’ve been waiting for you, Judas” Jesus says to him.  “We couldn’t begin until you came.”

Judas had stepped into the resurrection experience.  He repented – was totally transformed in the forgiveness of his sins.

A theologian, Karl Rahner, wrote: “We are always tempted to stay in our sin because we do not dare to believe in the magnificent love of God.”  For us to enter into the presence of the Risen Lord – for us to step into Jesus’ resurrection – is for us to undergo God’s magnificently forgiving love – is for us to repent, to be totally changed.

We should note this.  The Risen Lord missions us to preach the repentance we undergo – to preach the forgiveness of sins by becoming ourselves vehicles of that forgiving love.  And we are to preach and be witnesses, Jesus says, “to all nations”.  We preach and bring the forgiveness of sins to all.  We may not diminish God’s magnificent love by reserving it only to some.  We may not preach to all – except to the Judases in our lives.  We may not preach to all – except to those who harm and ridicule us.  We may not preach to all in our church – except to those we disagree with.

We truly proclaim Jesus’ resurrection and our own resurrection – our own new, risen life in Jesus – when we are able to say to all the Judases – to all who have succumbed to life’s deadly elements, including those deadly elements we find in ourselves – when we are able to say, together with Jesus: “We’ve been waiting for you, Judas.  We couldn’t begin until you came.”

Christ is risen!  And so, let us repent and come to know the total forgiveness of our sins.  Then, joy undreamt of – peace unimagined – and love unmeasured – will be ours, ours unending.

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

Easter Vigil

Easter is our feast of feasts.  It celebrates our truth of truths.  Here we are standing at the very source of our Christian faith.  Here we say a basic yes to what the power of God can do.  On Easter we affirm and commit ourselves to this fundamental truth: God’s power can take what is dead and lifeless and raise it to new life.  Jesus, crucified, now lives!  He is the Living One.  And this living Jesus now brings us to new life.

Jesus lives and he is Our Lord by bringing us to new life.  He is our God by making of us a new creation.  That is the Easter proclamation.  We hear the proclamation.  We may even repeat and sing the proclamation.  But has the proclamation of resurrection reached deep enough into our minds and hearts so as to shape our real-life expectations – shape our expectations of life and of ourselves?  Above all, has the Easter proclamation reached deep enough to shape our expectations of Jesus?

It makes a big difference to our expectations whether we think someone is dead or alive.  When someone is dead – even someone we knew alive – we may be able to learn more about him/her as time goes by, but the information is about someone no longer here.  We are hearing an echo from the past.  And we expect nothing more.

But when we think someone is alive, we have a completely different set of expectations.  People who are alive are still capable of doing and saying new things.  They can show up at times, places and in ways different from how they used to show up previously.  They can surprise us.  When someone is living – and we are in relationship with that person – then our knowledge of the person can grow and change.  New data is always coming in – sharpening our understanding of earlier words and actions.  We are not limited to old data and past memories.  With the dead, on the other hand, their deeds are ended.  Their words are complete and their power to affect change gone.

The Easter proclamation raises for all of us who hear it this most crucial of questions: do we think Jesus is dead or alive?   Are our expectations of Jesus of someone who is dead or of someone who is alive?

For those who do not share our Christian faith – Jesus is another dead man.  His deeds, however wonderful in life, are now done, finished.  Now he does nothing more.  His words are complete.  Now he speaks nothing new.  His power is gone.  Now he brings on no change.  The non-Christian can always learn more about Jesus but can never learn more from Jesus.

For the Christian Jesus is alive.  The empty tomb calls on us to search for “the Living One”.  Jesus is not to be found among the dead.  His deeds continue – he does new things among us and within us.  His words continue – he speaks new words, new meanings into our lives.  His power continues – he affects change in our lives.  We find ourselves being changed – being transformed.  We receive his love by becoming his love.  Jesus is becoming our life-giving Spirit, as Paul tells us.

Jesus lives.  Jesus is Lord.  Jesus brings new life.  That is our Easter proclamation.  And while it raises for us a fundamental life-question, it also comes as amazing grace.  It is God’s own invitation to learn from the Living Jesus – to open mind and heart to Jesus’ life-giving Spirit.  This is my Son, my Beloved; learn from him [Mk 9, 7].  He is your way.  He is your truth.  He is your life [Jn 14, 6].

In the Book of Revelation we hear the classic Christian prayer spoken in Aramaic, Jesus’ own language: Marana-tha!  Our Lord, come! [Rev 22, 20].  Every liturgy acts out that prayer.  We here intend to address a real, living person fully capable of manifesting his presence ever more palpably, ever more clearly and closely.                                                              

As we begin the Easter season together as a parish, let us pray Marana-tha each day.  Let us look for and learn Jesus’ life-giving presence in our lives.  Our Lord, come!

Fr. Pat Earl, S.J.