Recently I heard an
Easter hymn in another language which said something like ‘soldier, tell us
what you saw, in the darkness of the night, as He rose’. We do not have such an
eye-witness account, however. In any case, if there were such a testimony it
would mean that a reality of the new creation could be seen with eyes that
belong to the first creation. The fact that there is not such a testimony is an
invitation to think about how the Risen Lord could be ‘seen’. What kind of eyes
are needed? What would such an experience be like? And what would be the
consequences for the seer?
Although we have no
report from the soldiers guarding the tomb, we do however have much evidence to
support our faith in Jesus risen from the dead, a collection of different kinds
of experience and different kinds of testimony. When we put it all together the
most reasonable conclusion is the one at which the apostles and disciples
arrived: Jesus is alive, He is risen from the dead, and His kingdom is
underway.
What is the evidence?
Firstly we have an empty tomb. It proves nothing just by itself since there
could be various explanations of it. But at least it makes us suspect a
plot of some kind, whether human or
divine.
In the second place we
have encounters with the Risen Lord and now the question raised by the empty
tomb begins to be answered. We see that there is both continuity and
discontinuity between Jesus alive and carrying out his mission in the first
creation, and Jesus alive and carrying on his mission in the new creation. The
disciples do and do not recognize Him. They need help, reminders, confirmation,
that it really is the One who was crucified who is now with them again. ‘Look
at my hands and my feet’, Jesus says, ‘and give me something to eat’. ‘It is I
myself’ and 'I am not a ghost'. They need to be pacified, their confusion lifted and their doubt resolved, if they are to make the transition from seeing to
believing. In this the wounds of Jesus play a crucial role, those marks in his
body which confirm that it is really He.
In the third place we
have the Bible, the scriptures which, Jesus says, already contain all the
information needed if we are to understand and believe what has happened. As he
had opened the scriptures for the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, so he
does now for the rest of them, showing how all that has happened is foretold in
the Law, the Prophets and the Writings. This is a way of referring to the
scriptures in their entirety. He is saying that we have a guidebook to the
Resurrection if we learn to read the scriptures in the light of that new
reality. This reading has two aspects. It opens the mind so that we understand
more than we did before, we see more in familiar texts and we now see what many
of the prophecies meant. But it is also a way of reading that enflames the
heart – ‘did not our hearts burn within us’, the Emmaus disciples say, ‘as he
opened the scriptures for us’.
It is not just about
truth then, it is always also about love. If we enter the scriptures keeping an
eye out for the Risen Lord we not only grow in knowledge, we grow in love. It
has to be so because the new creation, the world of the resurrection, is about
mutual knowing and loving, it is about new relationships, it is about a new
kind of communion between human beings and God, and among human beings
themselves, a new way of being together.
And this is the fourth
kind of testimony that supports our faith in the resurrection. We have the
empty tomb, we have encounters with Jesus risen from the dead, we have a new
way of reading the scriptures first taught by Jesus to his disciples, and we have the community of believers itself
which becomes a ‘proof’, evidence, testimony, a witness that generates and
supports faith.
We know we know Him,
Saint John says in today’s second reading, if we are keeping his word and
living according to his commandment of love. The kind of truth established by
the resurrection is not just a new kind of physics, or a new kind of biology,
interesting as those questions are. It is a transformation of relationships
because it means conversion, it means pardon for sins, it means expiation and
reconciliation, it means healing and new life. Human ignorance, which each day
kills the Author of Life, the sinfulness in us that would turn the whole world
into a tomb, this is undone and its consequences overruled by the
actions of God. In fact, says Peter in his sermon recorded in the first
reading, God even uses our ignorance and its consequences in fulfilling His own
purposes for the world and its salvation.
If we open our minds
and hearts to the evidence and testimony that are given then we can come to
only one conclusion: He is truly risen and everything is changed. This cannot
be simply a notional or intellectual conclusion. It must be a real conclusion
that involves faith and generates a great hope. It is a conclusion that opens
our hearts as well as our minds. It is a conclusion that requires conversion
and recognition, not just of a relationship with Jesus and the Father in the
Spirit, but also of a relationship to creation and particularly to other human
beings in the same Spirit. It presupposes not only faith and hope but charity
as well, the Love Jesus brought into the world. He is truly risen, we are in a
new world, alleluia!
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