Readings: Acts 10, 34-43; Psalm 118, This is the Day the Lord has Made, Lus Us Rejoice and be Glad; 1 Corinthians 5, 6-8; John 20, 1-9
The Readings:
It is almost impossible for us today to understand how significant the story told in Chapter 10 of Acts was for the Jewish people at the time Luke wrote it. Our first reading is part of that narrative. The two main characters are Peter, who is in Caesarea, and Cornelius a Roman Centurion, in Jaffa, about 30 miles south on the Mediterranean coast. The scene is the home of Cornelius a centurion.
Remember up to this point the Jews had felt like they had a monopoly on God. In this chapter 10 Luke uses two separate incidents taking place in different locations to set the stage for our reading. We meet Cornelius having a vision of an angel who tells him to send for Peter. Meantime Peter is sitting hungry on the roof in Caesarea and has a vision of all different kinds of animals and being told by God to eat.
There is the usual discussion about unclean and Peter is made to see that God only makes clean! The folks from Jaffa arrive and summon Peter to go see Cornelius. Peter heads off to Jaffa, worried about his dream and then when he hears about Cornelius’ dream he sees the connection and proceeds to baptize Cornelius and his household. Our first reading today is what can best be described as a quick lesson from Peter about Jesus.
Our second reading is from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. I am going to take a certain amount of license in focusing only on the word yeast in the reading, as the full topic of this section of the Letter does not need to be brought up here. Read it for yourselves! Yeast is used in beer making and bread making and basically it converts sugars into bubbles. So we are to be bubbles in society! Gas pockets! But seriously, when I think about yeast, I think about the huge effect just a little has on the dough. And for us in society as Christians, I believe that we too can have a huge effect on society.
Easter Homily:
I remember one Easter when I was studying in seminary. We normally had to stay in the seminary until Easter Sunday morning before we could go home for Easter holidays. This one year I skipped out and caught the boat from Dublin to England arriving at about 6AM. I found a church and went to early morning Mass on Easter Sunday and then took the tube out to my cousin Eileen’s flat in Kensington. She was married to Bill who was protestant, Church of England. Bill was going to church that morning and invited me to my first protestant Easter Service.
I can remember being amazed by the fact that most of the service was all about Easter eggs. The whole sanctuary of the church was full of them. I had never associated the Resurrection with eggs before then. Yes, we always got chocolate Easter eggs, but I put them in the same category as toys at Christmas, nothing to do with the Birth of Jesus, just a very happy coincidence!
Right now in our front garden at home there is a dove, patiently sitting on some eggs in a nest in one of the trees. Our next-door neighbor has a duck doing the same thing in their front garden in some bushes. The Church, by some happy coincidence chose spring as the time of year to celebrate the Resurrection and I think this gives us our first clue in how we should view the Resurrection. We can’t understand it, it is a mystery, but analogies can help us part of the way. The Resurrection requires an act of Faith, end of story. Don’t try to understand it. It is outside our human capability.
And it was outside the expectations of the apostles and also of Mary of Magdala in our Gospel reading today. She was heading to the tomb to properly bury Jesus. As you will recall, when Jesus was arrested it was abandon ship, everyone fled, Peter didn’t hesitate to deny that he even knew Jesus. We know that the apostles went back to their old trades, Peter, James and John to being fishermen.
The event we are celebrating today was not what any of the people who had walked with Jesus before his death had expected. And it is not an easy event to describe and understand. So the accounts in the New Testament are all over the map on what exactly happened, but one thing was certain in the minds of the early church; God had raised Jesus from the grave and that made all the difference in their lives.
If we look back at the different gospels readings we have listened to during this lent we will recall the Temptation of Jesus, were Jesus is tempted and so can understand when we are tempted.
The story of the Transfiguration, when Peter attempted to capture the impossible moment by putting up tents, again a perfectly human reaction to being faced with the Divine, the second chance being given to the useless fig tree and then the two very powerful stories of forgiveness with the Prodigal Son and the Woman caught in adultery.
The strong message of forgiveness from these stories has to give us hope and encouragement. We can always start anew with God his love is constant. And the message of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus is that an indication of how unreserved that love is. Armed with the knowledge of God’s love and forgiveness, we can be like yeast to the lives of those we meet in the world. Lets not worry about how big a difference we will make, let’s just be sure we make a difference.
The message, the victory of Easter, is that mankind’s biggest fear, death is finally laid to rest.
We have a God who not only loves us unconditionally, but who wants us to be in His presence forever. Not something which we can prove or even understand, except thru faith. The presence of the Holy Spirit helped the early Christians believe, and that same Spirit can help us today too. We too have a new life. Happy Easter.
Picture 1: Mass beginning
Picture 2: Want to know what happens to priests who marry? They become grand dads. Fr. Tony with Emma.
Picture 3: And with mom, Julie
Picture 4: Quads with mom & dad
Picture 5: Quads with grandmother & aunt
Picture 6: Holy Thursday, Washing of Hands, at the Robinsons
Picture 7: Good Friday Stations at the Robinsons