Easter 3, April 15, 2018
Acts 3:13-15, 17-19; 1 John 2:1-5a; Luke 24:35-48
Brookdale
“Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.” The Resurrection changed the way the disciples understood the Scriptures, which they already knew very well, just as for us, everything we know changes when we see it from the perspective of the Resurrection.
The first change is that the disciples came to see the suffering of Jesus as necessary: “it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day.” That’s new. In no place in the scriptures does it actually say that the Messiah would be crucified and rise from the dead. But the Hebrew Scriptures are full of suffering and new life: Joseph is sold into slavery in Egypt but that enables him to rescue his family from starvation and be reconciled with them; the Israelites suffer as slaves in Egypt but the Exodus takes them to a new life in the promised land; the kingdom and the temple of Israel are destroyed by the Babylonians, but the Judeans later return home and build a new temple. The book of Isaiah includes beautiful poems about the suffering servant, who we despised but by whose stripes we are healed. The new life is never what anybody could have expected; it always comes as God’s unforeseeable new creative and redeeming action in the world.
Because of the Resurrection, the disciples came to understand that for them, as for Israel and Jesus, whatever they suffered, it would not be the end of the story. God raised Jesus from the dead and would also give them—and us—new life. God Himself promises that our suffering will not be the end of the story.
The second change that the Resurrection makes in how the disciples saw things is that “repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name.” We all mess up, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes out of cowardice or selfishness. The things we’ve done wrong tend to cling to us as a sort of karma, weighing us down. In ancient Israel, such things could be expiated—after appropriate restitution to injured parties—by offering an appropriate sacrifice in the temple. Jesus taught that what was really needed for God’s forgiveness was repentance—meaning a true change of heart. Today’s second reading says, “if anyone does sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one. He is expiation for our sins.” But Christ is our advocate only if we keep his commandments, of which there is just one: Love one another.
Of course, “love” here is not just a warm fuzzy emotion, but a genuine caring. And truly loving other people also means forgiving them even when they hurt us. Jesus will advocate for us when we mess up, if we forgive others, as Jesus forgave his murderers from the cross. That’s not easy, but like the crucifixion itself, it’s the price of resurrection. Grace is free, but it never comes cheap.
Finally, today’s Gospel passage says that repentance and forgiveness will be preached “to all the nations.” If all God requires from us is genuine good will and a willingness to forgive, as Jesus commanded, then it’s not required to be a Jew. God’s gift of resurrected life is for all the nations, and a Christian is anyone who follows Jesus’ commands to love and to forgive. The first Christians saw the “church” as a world-wide community of people of good will—people who, like Jesus, genuinely cared about other people and who committed to practicing forgiveness and sharing the good news.
We all know the result. The Christians went out offering ordinary people of all nations new life in Christ. They welcomed slaves, supported the poor, started soup kitchens, and tended the sick. They blessed the people who threw them to the lions. They conquered the world. Because the Resurrection made them see everything in a new way.
It’s so easy to hear today’s readings without hearing their revolutionary message. Resurrected life is for you and me; Jesus showed that it can happen. We can never deserve it, but it can be ours if we share it, accept the suffering that comes our way, genuinely love all other people, and forgive people who hurt us.