Homily Easter 1 - On the third day he rose again from the dead

 Homily for 1^st Sunday of Easter Year 2021

Acts 10:34,36-43; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-18

Introduction

“On the first day of the week,” we just heard from the gospel, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning”. Similarly, the Creed, based on Scripture (cf. 1 Cor. 15:3-4) says that on: “the third day he rose again from the dead.”  Have you ever asked why the Scriptures are so specific about the days when these things happened: the first day of the week, the third day?

Well, thank you for asking.  There is a good reason for this.  The writers of the Scripture are specific because they are telling real historical events, and not merely myths or fiction.  They are not telling the resurrection story in the way my grandmother, used to tell us fairy stories saying "once upon a time." They are not telling the resurrection events the way science fiction or George Lucas tells us "a long time ago in a galaxy far far away."  They are specific about the days, because these specific events happened on these specific days.

Scripture and Tradition

So, Jesus rose on the third day.  But was it really the third day?  If Jesus died on Friday afternoon and rose on Saturday night, that is at most one and a half days, according to my math.  So, what kind of math is the Bible using?

Well, they are using a different kind of math, a different way of measuring time.  You see in Western societies like ours, the full day begins and ends at midnight.  But that is not the only way to measure days.  In Uganda, we measure the full day beginning and ending at sunrise.  The Jewish people had another way of measuring time, whereby the day began and ended at sunset.  That is why the Jewish Sabbath dinner is held on Friday evening, after sunset, and the synagogue service is then held on Saturday morning, and by Saturday evening, it is bye bye Sabbath.

And so, for us to understand the three days Scripture speaks about, we have to shed our Western way of counting time and adopt the Jewish one.

The first day began on Thursday evening with the Last Supper Jesus had with his friends.  That night he was arrested, tortured and sentenced to death.  The next morning, they took him and crucified him before noon and then he died about three in the afternoon.  They then took the bodies down and buried the body of Jesus in the tomb, ensuring that this was done before sundown, when the Sabbath would begin, as we heard in Friday’s passion story.  Although today we celebrate these events on two separate days, Holy Thursday and Good Friday, for the Jews, all these things happened on the first day.

So, the second day, that is Friday evening begins with Jesus already entombed.  What happens on this day?  Nothing.  Nothing happens, because Jesus is in the tomb.  That is why we too don’t celebrate Mass on this day; for how can we celebrate him, who is now in the tomb?  We mourn and we mourn that the tomb has swallowed up our Lord and we do nothing, at least not on this side.  But something is happening on the other side.  We hear in the Creed, that after he was buried, Jesus descended into hell.  What is the good Lord doing in hell, you might ask?  Again, thank you for asking again.  The Catechism tells us that he went down there to free those who had been deprived of the vision of God, who were waiting for the coming of the Saviour (cf. CCC 633).  Even in death, the tomb cannot contain Our Saviour.  The man just keeps working and working for the salvation of the world.

And so, after a full day of apparently nothing happening, we come to the third day.  On this third day which began after sunset on Saturday, during the night, something unheard of before and since happened.  For when the women went to the tomb early in the morning, they found it empty.  “They have taken the Lord from the tomb," Mary of Magdala anxiously told the disciples "and we don’t know where they put him.”  The tomb is now empty.  What could possibly have happened?  An obvious thought is that those bad bad men who had killed Jesus had now discarded his body, in a final act of indignity.  For entirely the opposite reasons, the religious authorities accused his disciples of taking his body away.

But as the women and the disciples would soon find out, the tomb was empty because God had acted in a singular and spectacular way.  This was an emptiness filled with extraordinary meaning.  As the angel told the women in last night's gospel and in virtually all the resurrection narratives, the tomb was empty because Jesus "has been raised just as he said."  The tomb could not contain him permanently.  He did not belong there.  God the Father took him out of there and resurrected him as he had promised.  For "Christ is risen . . . he is risen indeed."

But what did rising from the dead mean?  Unfortunately, even with the benefit of 2000 years of reflecting on these things, we don’t always get it.

·        Some think that what happened to Jesus was resuscitation, being brought back to this life, like Lazarus or the widow of Nain's son.  But as we know these people died again; and yet Jesus does not die again.

·        Others think that what happened to Jesus was reincarnation, his returning as another person, a notion earlier on entertained by some disciples who thought that Jesus was John the Baptist, Elijah or Moses.

·        Others still think that what happened to Jesus was that his soul merely went to heaven, or became immortal as the Judaism of the late Old Testament as well as the Greeks believed.

But these modes of thinking do not capture the fullness and complexity of the resurrection. For resuscitation would simply bring back the old unchanged Jesus, while reincarnation would bring an unrecognizable Jesus; and yet Christ is truly risen, he is risen indeed.  And while immortality of the soul has much to commend it, it ignores the body of the crucified Jesus, the body we receive in the Eucharist, the glorious body no longer limited by space and time, but a body nevertheless.  This is the new reality of the resurrection, a resurrection of body and spirit.

Christian Application

My friends what happened on the third day to Jesus, has profound meaning for us too.  Let me offer three ways we can reflect on its meaning for us.

First, as we profess in the creed, when we say “I believe in the resurrection of the dead”, we too are destined to rise with our bodies to eternal life.  At the end of time, we too hope to do what Jesus did on the first day of the week, on the third day, to rise in body and soul.  We shall not be resuscitated to this life only to die again; we shall not be reincarnated as George Clooney or Eva Longoria; but we shall rise with our bodies and souls, in a better form, a glorified form of ourselves, a 2.0 version of ourselves, that God made us to be.

Secondly, to ensure our resurrection into life and not into death, we must live like resurrection people, following what St. Paul urged the Colossians: "Brothers and sisters, If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God . . .. not of what is on earth."  How do we do this?  We live faithfully by the teaching of Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life.  We let the resurrection inform everything we do.

Finally, like Mary Magdalene, Peter and John, "saw and believed" and then became witnesses of the resurrection, we must also share with others what we have received.  That is what St. Peter in our first reading was boldly proclaiming to anybody who cared to listen, that Jesus is risen and is risen indeed.  Especially during this time of the pandemic, a time of emptiness in our homes brought about by death and bereavement, by sickness and pain; the emptiness of bank accounts brought about by the closure of businesses and the loss of jobs; and of course, the emptiness of our churches brought about by the need to protect the lives of our parishioners, in case we are angels of death, let the good news of the resurrection of the empty tomb fill our emptiness.  For Christ is risen, he is risen indeed.

Conclusion

May what happened on the third day, happen every day of our lives.  May every day be for us a reminder that Christ is risen, he is risen indeed, Christ is risen, he is risen indeed.