The lectionary readings throw us into an unusual position of hearing over and over again events that happened within the first twenty-four hours or week of Christ’s resurrection. Though our outside world seems to have moved on to summer with our 80-degree weather yesterday, and the half-price sales of Easter candy have long disappeared, our lectionary keeps us back at that moment of wonder and bewilderment at Christ’s resurrection. It is almost as though the lectionary is telling us it is OK to experience the broad range of emotions of joy, exuberance, confusion, and doubt because, ‘Look! The disciples felt that way, too.’ It also seems as though we are being treated to an exposition of the different gospel writers’ take on the story: last week we heard from John, this week we hear from Luke, next week we will bounce back to John to a passage that happens before the passion.
Last week we thought about Thomas’ realisation that if Jesus really had risen, then the disciples had a big time task ahead of them. If Jesus’ resurrection were just a story, then the consequences would not be so drastic; they could all go back to their simple lives. But since Jesus had risen, then they would have to leave their locked hearts, leave their locked places, and enter into the world. Since Jesus had risen, they could no longer avoid the mission to the world that Jesus had given them.
The reading from the gospel of Luke gets to the same message but via a different story. Nonetheless, the implications of Christ’s resurrection are clear: We are called to repentance, to a change of mind for the forgiveness of sins, and we are called to preach that message and baptise, too. Despite the doubts of the disciples, it is clear what they and we must do: Embrace and live out Christ’s mission of reconciliation to a broken world. But it takes an awful lot to get them (and us) to understand that.
There are similarities between this passage and the one we heard last week from John. Jesus greets the gathered disciples with the words, ‘Peace be with you.’ Unlike in John, here the disciples think they are seeing a ghost. There is great effort on the part of Luke to assure us that this is no ghost. Jesus has a real body (he can eat — broiled fish! — and he shows the disciples his hands and feet), indeed the same body that was crucified. As Jesus exclaims, ‘It is I myself!’
Having established with the disciples who he is, Jesus then teaches them. Immediately preceding this passage is the well-known story of Jesus’ appearance on the road to Emmaus when he teaches the two followers using passages from scripture. For the two walking with Jesus on the road to Emmaus, their hearts burn having heard all that is said. Here, Jesus continues to teach. He explains the things written about him in the scriptures and how they show that the Messiah had to suffer and be raised from the dead.
Then, the scene turns into a commissioning of the disciples. They are commissioned under the same scriptural imperative as the passion, death and resurrection of Christ were written. Without missing a beat, Jesus declares to the disciples: ‘Repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in Christ’s name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.’
We do not hear the disciples’ reaction to this command… they may be a little like Thomas, realising what the real implications of Jesus’ resurrection are, and wishing that maybe it would be better if they were facing a ghost, rather than the resurrected Christ. For, preaching repentance of sins and forgiveness and baptising in Christ’s name is dangerous stuff… not only for the disciples then but also for us.
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Being a reconciler, a person seeking forgiveness is not always easy or painless. Perhaps that is why the disciples and we keep asking for proof of Christ’s resurrection. Perhaps that is why we want to linger, not daring to step into the waters of baptism and its demands.
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One local example of extreme forgiving comes to mind —and can serve as a model of reconciliation for the rest of us.
The friends of Michelle Gardner-Quinn, the 21 year-old UVM woman murdered in 2006, started a foundation in her memory, Michelle’s Earth Foundation. One of their projects is to plant sunflowers in the neighbourhoods of post-Katrina, New Orleans, that were inundated by water filled with toxins. The sunflowers leech out the poison and restore the land to its original state. Why sunflowers and this sort of project?
Michelle was an environmental science major at UVM and this foundation, that seeks to restore the earth to a healthier state, fits well with her belief that, ‘we should understand our place in our regional ecosystems and communities, as well as pledge our allegiance to the earth as a whole.’
The website states: ‘Michelle’s Earth Foundation (MEF) was created to pay tribute to Michelle’s inner and outer beauty, her kindness, her love for nature, and most of all, to carry on her life’s ambition to continue as a dedicated environmentalist. Her life’s goal was to build a healthy and sustainable habitat on earth for generations to come—and her motto was “small actions equal big change” – an adage now adopted by our organization.’
The foundation also seeks to ‘facilitate the role of the community, especially youth and minorities who are vastly underrepresented in the sciences, in regional, national and international efforts toward creating a healthy, sustainable habitat for humans and nature.’
In their own way, her friends are working on forgiveness, I think. On reading archived reflections, forgiveness not something that happens instantly, and one can see them struggling toward forgiving — one friend lanced a double-edged sword when she wrote in 2008, ‘I forgive the despicable human being who hurt her.’ She has not totally forgiven the assailant but she is getting there slowly.
While the word or concept, ‘forgiveness’ does not appear anywhere on the website, I think forgiveness underlies its mere existence. Her friends could have spent all their energy demanding retribution for Michelle’s murder but instead, they took their sorrow and anger and turned to life-giving actions that will affect many for the good. They are providing opportunities for others that might not have them. They are reconciling the earth to itself and in that action, demonstrating forgiveness for an act that so many find impossible to pardon. Out of death comes life. Forgiveness, especially when hard-won, can bring resurrection.
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We also are called to witness the resurrection, and to action… to action as forgivers and those seeking forgiveness. We are called to be a community of reconcilers. That is part of Jesus’ commission, as we have heard it in this morning’s gospel: acting as forgivers and reconcilers is also part of our baptismal covenant.
It takes a lot of energy and effort to forgive. Forgiveness is not always something that happens overnight. Sometimes it does not happen the way we want it to, and sometimes it does not happen at all. It takes a lot of prayer, a lot of time to create an open space in one’s heart to begin the process of forgiveness. It takes bringing those places and persons in our lives where we need forgiveness and those to whom we must extend forgiveness with us every time we come to the eucharist, offering them up with our gifts of time, talent and money. It takes trust to accept that they and we will be transformed through the shared meal of the eucharist. It takes faith to struggle towards change so that someday, those places and persons that need to receive our forgiveness and from whom we ask forgiveness can be let go of. And it takes the community gathered together, working together, praying together for one another, breaking bread together that we might become a community of reconcilers. We have to keep trying…
For how else can we say, ‘Peace be with you,’ as Jesus said to the disciples? How else can we be witnesses to the Resurrection? How else can we live out fully our baptismal vows?
So, come and be fed at God’s table so that we can be like sunflowers, leeching out the toxins in our collective life to become fertile soil — fertile soil where God can work.
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