Sunday Homily 4-15-12, 2nd Easter
Readings: Acts 4, 32-35, They had everything in common; Psalm 118, Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, his love is everlasting; 1 John 5, 1-6, Everyone who loves the Father loves the one begotten by him; John 20, 19-31, Jesus came and stood in their midst.
Homily for the Second Sunday of Easter, Mike Carrell
In the Smithsonian Magazine that I was reading in my doctor’s office recently, there was a photograph entitled Tricycle and Memphis, 1970. It was a color photograph presented in the first showing of color photography as an art medium at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1972. It was a colorful picture of an old but sturdy tricycle with a blue seat with red rubber grips on a curved handlebar. It had some white spots of paint that had somehow been splattered on the seat, frame and wheels.
I could tell that the camera had been held at a very low angle to indeed give the tricycle the look of elegance, like a chariot it encompassed almost the whole picture. In the diminished background you could see a couple of one story flat roofed houses, one with a carport. One art critic found it perfect, another perfectly awful.
The critic who found it perfect understood the context within which it had been placed—the diminished background, the fading away of the old Memphis was the result of a blossoming Southern culture that had begun in the Memphis of 1970, with bold new music, art, and literature. The paint splatter an indication that the blossoming was a work in progress.
Today we are told of the importance of signs within the gospels. However, if we want to understand the signs, we too must understand them in the context of the gospel teachings in which we find them!
Some of you will remember being taught by question and answer. First we were given the question, ‘What is a sacrament?’ Then we were given the answer to memorize: ‘A sacrament is an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace.’ If one were to translate that word sign into Greek, the Greek word chosen would be the word used for sign in our reading today.
Remember a couple of months ago when the leper came and knelt before Jesus saying, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean,’ There is a sign being given when Jesus says, ‘I do choose. Be made clean.’ We can come to understand the sign because of the context of the teaching in which it was placed. At the end of that teaching Jesus was proclaiming the good news to those who crowded around him.
This good news, ‘In the Father’s plan of salvation the Messiah had come to us as the Lamb of God,’ fulfills what came before it in the teaching that stated that the Mosaic Law required the offering of an unblemished lamb for the leper’s sins. So we know that these words of Christ has brought forgiveness to the man—the meaning of the sign.
I presented you a sign from the Luke gospel during a Christmas season homily. I told you that of the Christ child in a manger dressed in swaddling clothes was a sign of the Church. The manger was a feeding trough; the child wrapped in the shroud of the linen strips was the Lamb of God from which were come to be fed the Word and the Bread of Life. We come to understand this from the context of the teaching because the shepherds watching over the flock by night are the twelve watching over their lambs, that’s us, who desire for us to be fed with Christ’s words and the Loaves blessed and broken to become the bread blessed and broken for others.
The Catholic catechism teaches that, ‘The Church draws its life from the Word and the Body of Christ, and so she becomes Christ’s body.’
Today’s gospel reading just happens to be an entire teaching from the initial ending of the John gospel. To paraphrase, we are told the signs of the gospels were written so that we might believe that the Messiah has come to us as the Christ, the Lamb of God, to bring forgiveness to our sins and union with the Father through him.
This is why, like Thomas, we are to place our hand into the pierced side of the body of Christ, because Christ’s body symbolizes the Church, the body of Christ alive in the world through the power of the Holy Spirit. This wisdom must give specific meaning to the story within the context of this last teaching: ‘For as the Father has sent me, so I send you, in the peace that comes from being forgiven and with the power and authority of the Spirit breathed upon us to be the bread blessed and broken to the ends of the earth.
Over time, I will help you come to understand that all of the resurrection teachings of the Gospels are about the Church!
Now, let me give you a brief insight as to why the inspired writers added another ending to the John gospel that consists of two additional teachings. Both the Mark gospel and the Matthew gospel have a second teaching about the loaves and fishes. The loaves, fishes and leftovers are signs, when understood correctly, that describe the mission Christ gives to his disciples, and us, to take the good news to the ends of the earth. The 5 loaves and the 7 loaves are the twelve disciples who have been called to become the Bread they eat. We are the leftovers! From us are to come other leftovers!
The gospel of Luke was not written with this second teaching because its writers wrote a whole book, called the Acts of the Apostles, to describe the mission to the ends of the earth; one of its teachings is about the 7. Since the inspired writers of the John gospel placed an obvious ending to their gospel, they must have envisioned another book to complement Luke’s Acts of the Apostles. Later, after a decision was made not to do this, two inspired teachings were added to the original John gospel—one a teaching about the 7.
The first would present how all the stories of the four gospels were used in the mission to the ends of the earth. Since Luke’s Acts continuously describe the persecution of the Apostle Paul, not one of the twelve, the last teaching in the John gospel was written to incorporate the persecution of the Apostle Peter. Recall that I suggested to you to read the Sermon of the Mount from the Matthew gospel during Lent. The beatitudes end with, “Blessed are you when you are persecuted for the sake of the Christ, ‘Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.”
The context of each of our personal stories is not complete. How will others remember us as leftovers blessed and broken for others?