Easter 2: April 28, 2019 Our Saviour
It took a week to tell the story and it culminated with the proclamation of last Sunday. The Church understands plainly that last week’s “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” is the most important proclamation we know as Christians.It alots a week of telling the story, this Easter week, it has been a part of the daily readings each day. We conclude “Easter Week” with the passage that begins, “A week later …” Well, I guess that’s appropriate.
Thomas. The story focuses on Thomas today. But we will continue to tell the story throughout 50 days until the day of Pentecost.
I want to read to you a short excerpt from an Easter sermon, written some 1700 years ago. I have never done this before. But I do it because of the power and significance of the words for us today. And because it helps to teach us that this is a story, a proclamation, that has been repeated over and over again from that first Easter day.
St. Gregory Nazianzus “On Holy Pasch”
The Most Precious and Becoming of Gifts
Yesterday I was crucified with Christ; today I am glorified with Him. Yesterday I died with Him; today I am given life with Him. Yesterday I was buried with Him; today I rise again with Him. Today let us offer Him Who has suffered and Who has risen for us—you think perhaps I was about to say, gold, or silver, or precious things, or shining stones of rare price, the frail material of this earth, which will remain here. . . . [R]ather, let us offer Him ourselves, which to God is the most precious and becoming of gifts. Let us offer to His Image what is made in the image and likeness of this Image. And let us make recognition of our own dignity. Let us give honour to Him in Whose Likeness we were made. Let us dwell upon the wonder of this mystery, that we may understand for what Christ has died.
Let us become like Christ, since Christ became like us. Let us become Gods because of Him, since He for us became man. He took upon Himself a low degree that He might give us a higher one. He became poor, that through His poverty we might become rich (2 Cor 8:9). He took upon Himself the form of a servant (Phil 2:7) that we might be delivered from slavery (Rom 8:21). He came down that we might rise up. He was tempted that we might learn to overcome. He was despised that we might be given honour. He died that He might save us from death. He ascended to heaven that we who lie prone in sin may be lifted up to Him. 1 2
Easter is the key proclamation for Christians, it has been repeated over and over again to make that possible. On the one hand I think that every generation has to make the truth their own. At the same time I think that I am only here because of the countless saints who have gone before – many of them having done a better job of it than I.
We live in the echo of Easter. It’s a week echoing the Easter message. The Christian year is like a repeated echo – each week concludes with the “Day of the Lord” in which Easter is the underlying message. We are here only because of the empty tomb discovered by those women all those years ago. If they had been able to anoint and bury their teacher as they intended, they would have been impacted the rest of their lives with the sadness and disappointment of that. But instead they found the Lord Risen again and the rest of their life was one of joy.
The whole of history since that day is a repetition, an echo, of that event.
Never tired of telling the story
Tell me the old, old story … 3 A famous old hymn goes.I was trying to come up with examples of sacred stories like our Easter proclamation for my class earlier in the semester. I asked them to think of books they’d have known as children. Books they would have heard over and over again.
When I said, Good night Moon someone in the class spontaneously began the first words of the book:
In the great green roomWhen I said the word “Madeline”, another voice began that series.
There was a telephone
And a red balloon
And a picture of
The cow jumping over the moon …
In an old house in ParisThe Easter story is so much bigger than Madeline or Good night moon. It’s been told and re-told for seasons beyond counting.
That was covered in vines
Lived twelve little girls
In two straight lines
In two straight lines they broke their bread …
This is our story. This is the story. This is the only story there is. Everything else is a variation, a commentary.
It’s in the nature of this story that there’s “nothing there.”
It’s a curious kind of story in that in a way at the end we’re left with an empty tomb- It’s an empty tomb
- Only an old gardener …
- An angelic figure telling them to go ahead … he’s not here
- Thomas and his “show me.”
Thomas appeared a week later and – like the state of Missouri (Called the “Show-Me” State?) Thomas said, well, “show me.” 4
He is Risen, is the answer. But “show me?” The best we can say is, “Look around. What do you see and hear?” What comes after the empty tomb is the answer.
We live in the latter times. The end times – really. We live in the answer to the question. And the earliest Christians were very conscious of that. John explicitly wrote is gospel for “those who will come after.” It has been fulfilled – though we may not be able to see it clearly. The empty tomb is – well, – empty. And we look around – and well, – what we see is us.
And that it seems is our answer to Thomas question. “Show you?” Here it is. Alleluia.
Notes
Lectionary: http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Easter/CEaster2_RCL.htmlThe Second Sunday of Easter Color: White Assigned Readings Lesson 1: Acts 5:27-32 Psalm: 118:14-29 or 150 Lesson 2: Revelation 1:4-8 Gospel: John 20:19-31
- St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Homily on the Holy Pasch Gregory of Nazianzus (ca. 330–ca. 389) was one of the three great Cappadocian Fathers, along with Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa. He was Archbishop of Constantinople and is perhaps best known for his defense of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity against the heresy of Arianism. ↩︎
- a part of Easter Day Morning Prayer in Give us this day our daily bread. ↩︎
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tell_me_the_old,_old_story ↩︎
- Missouri History: https://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/history/slogan.asp There are a number of stories and legends behind Missouri’s sobriquet “Show-Me” state. The slogan is not official, but is common throughout the state and is used on Missouri license plates. … ↩︎
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