Our Master is here

Homily for March 27, 2016 (Easter Sunday)
Acts 10:34-a, 37-43; Psalm 118; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-9

A man and his dog were inseparable.  Everywhere the man went—all around the house, to work, shopping, even church—the dog went there, too.  One night the man had an accident.  He was seriously injured and had to be rushed by ambulance to the hospital.  The dog ran after the ambulance, and once it arrived at the emergency room the dog kept vigil for his master outside.  Days passed and the dog stayed, wandering from entrance to entrance of the hospital, waiting for his master to appear.  Whenever a door slid open, the dog would look up hopefully; but his master wasn’t there.

Then one day, a door slid open.  The dog didn’t see his master but rather an older woman in a wheelchair.  The woman felt as if she knew the dog, and somehow the dog felt the presence of his master in her.  She was going home to her husband, children and grandchildren after receiving the liver of a man she never met.  He had designated on his driver’s license that, in the event of his death he would be an organ donor.  The dog followed her home.

Today we celebrate the presence of Jesus; but not in the way that we typically think of it.  He is not physically here as he was some 2000 years ago; yet he is really with us.

It’s not natural for us to think that way.  In St. John’s account, when Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early on that first Easter morning, she saw that the stone had been moved and concluded right away that Jesus had been taken away by others.  After she ran back to the other disciples and told them what she had seen, Peter and the beloved disciple ran to the tomb.  Although he got there first, the other disciple stopped at the entrance and looked in.  He saw a little more than Mary had seen.  When Peter arrived he went into the tomb and got a fuller picture of what had happened.  Yet even then, “they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.”

We often experience the presence of Jesus—and the power of the risen Christ—in a similar way: especially in moments of difficulty and pain, we start out in darkness and see a little; we get closer to the sources of that difficulty and pain and we see some more; then when we finally step into the reality, we see and believe…though even then we may not completely understand.

Even after he later encountered Jesus face to face in a locked upper room and still later on the shores of the Sea of Tiberius (John 21:1-19), Peter didn’t fully grasp what it meant to live in the presence of the Christ.  It was only when he heeded the words of Jesus, “Follow me” (John 21:19), that he began to understand.  It was only when he, in St. Paul’s words in our second reading, sought and thought about “what is above” that he was able to finally see that the mission of Jesus was his mission, too.  Just as Jesus reached out to those on society’s margins, so Peter was drawn into it by encountering Cornelius and his household—all gentiles.

In the face of terrorist bombings in Brussels; unrelenting wars in places like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan; and the daily violence that afflicts so many of our own cities we witness the power of death—the reality of the tomb.  Easter challenges us to believe in the presence of Christ and the power of life and in the power of the one who has left the tomb empty. Our Master is here.  +