The Third Sunday of Easter (Fr. Robinson)

​     We are in my favorite season of the year, Easter, the season of resurrection.  This season lasts 50 days, beginning with Easter day and ending on the fiftieth day, Pentecost.  Each Sunday during this season the Gospel focuses of a different aspect of the resurrection.  The first Sunday, Easter Day, we heard about the empty tomb.
    
     One such Easter Day a young priest used the tomb of Jesus to drive home a point about contemporary burial practices.  He said, “People waste many thousands of dollars on ornate coffins, fancy mausoleums, and monuments to their dead bodies.”  The young priest continued, “Jesus was so unconcerned by death that he had to use a borrowed tomb.”  From the back of the church a voice said, “Father, he only needed it for three days.”
 
    That’s the message of the account of the empty tomb.  Jesus only needed it for three days.  After that, the tomb was empty, and no matter how hard skeptics try to explain away and demythologize the resurrection, they find it very difficult to explain away the significance of the empty tomb.
 
     The Second Sunday of Easter, last Sunday, we heard the account of the risen Christ appearing to the disciples in a room where the doors were locked.  In this incident we gain some insight into the nature of Jesus’ resurrected body.  They could see him.  He could be touched.  He could breathe on them.  They could even see the print of the nails and the pierce in his side.  It was his body all right, but he could appear and disappear at will.  St. John the Evangelist also makes clear that the doubter among the disciples would settle for nothing less than physical evidence in coming to belief in the resurrection.
 
     Thus, on the first two Sundays of Easter, we hear about two classic pieces of evidence for the resurrection.  Today, the Third Sunday of Easter, we hear once again another argument for the truth of the resurrection.  St. Luke tells us about that same experience that the disciples had in the locked room where Jesus stood among them.  Like John, Luke reports a Jesus who has been physically raised from the dead.  But he doesn’t leave his story at that.  He points out that the risen Jesus tells his disciples how his resurrection had been foretold in Scripture and was a fulfillment of Messianic prophecy.
 
     An empty tomb, hundreds of witnesses, and fulfillment of Scripture—these accounts and arguments are set forth for the Church’s hearing year after year during Easter.  Make no mistake about it—our faith rests on the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
 
     There have been skeptics from the beginning, even in the Church.  St. Thomas was the first, although when he did see the risen Christ he made one of the greatest statements of faith ever made.  In response to seeing Jesus he exclaimed, “My Lord and my God.”  Read the 15th chapter of the First Letter of Paul to the Church at Corinth to find out about Christians in that church who did not believe in the resurrection.  In our own day, especially at this time of year, the media take great delight in Christians who doubt the resurrection of our Lord.  Articles appear in magazines and newspapers about biblical scholars and even clergy who state a lack of belief in the resurrection.  Such skepticism has always existed and will continue to exist until the end of time, I suspect.
 
     I believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus because that clearly is the witness of Scripture.  That is the witness of the Church through the ages.  I believe in the resurrection because I don’t think those first disciples would have been on fire for the proclamation of the Gospel after Jesus’ death except for the resurrection.  The crucifixion was a defeat of all of their hopes in Jesus.  It was only after the risen Jesus’ appearance that they knew he had not been defeated.  They believed it so strongly that they were willing to suffer and die for him.  I don’t believe they would have been willing to do so for a metaphor. 
 
     But most of all, I believe in the resurrection because I know the resurrected Christ in my own life, and in the lives of others.  We have not had the experience of the physical presence of the risen Christ with us.  Since the coming of the Holy Spirit, we have had his spiritual Presence. Yet that presence is the most powerful, truest reality in this life.  In other words, I experience the presence of the risen Christ as I live in community with the members of his Body.  People living according to their faith in a culture that is faithless; integrity in the midst of hypocrisy; charity in a society that is self-serving; people leading Christ-centered lives when it would be much easier, and more natural, and more generally accepted to lead self-centered lives—these things are what ring true, and bear witness to the reality of the resurrection in our own day. 
 
     May God grant each of us the grace to live as we believe and truly to witness to the reality of the resurrection in our lives each day.