The Fifth Sunday of Easter: May 6, 2007

Acts 14:21-27
Revelation 21:1-5a
John 13:31-33a, 34a, 34-35

Dear Jesus,

We have been in Easter almost as long as we were in Lent. What is supposed to be happening? Is this a time when we are supposed to be getting used to the idea that you have risen? Sometimes I wonder about that. There is a temptation to see Easter as a conclusion. Lent is over. The Passion and Death narrative have been told. We’ve heard the story that spells out defeat so perfectly. The world looked on and saw you broken. Your disciples went away sad, caught up in your defeat even as they thought you would be the one to set Israel free.

In this age it is easy to get caught up in defeatism. The signs are all around us. You know what I mean. There is no need for me to reiterate here. Christianity is losing ground, caught in the backwash created by sins of previous generations, political alliances between the Kingdom of Darkness and the Kingdom of Light. The children of those who suffered at the hands of those who abused power, those who should have been servants of the poor and the weak, now rise up and say, Enough! No more! Never again! Faith in you has been tested and found wanting because those who witnessed to it professionally were themselves so seriously found wanting and there are scars physical and emotional that attest to the tyranny.

Churches all around the world fill up to overflowing for Easter Sunday services. But what does that mean? Is it a testimony to the fact that somehow faith survives? Is it people gathering, hoping against hope? Are they disciples, seasoned, gasping as they arrive because they are not as sprightly as they used to be when their faith was young? Do they peer in to soak up the signs again, hoping their faith will be reignited? Do they ask themselves how all this is compatible with what is happening in Iraq, this generation’s holy war? Are they struggling to reconcile the church bells and the alleluias with the AIDS epidemic and starvation and malaria and sleeping sickness all ravaging Africa? Where is the evidence for the triumph being celebrated when those gathered realize that it often is profit that gets in the way of making those medications accessible that could alleviate and even eradicate those plagues?

I noticed something today. You will probably wonder what took me so long to hear this. How many years have I heard the story only to hear it for the first time today? What I noticed is in these last weeks of Easter in the John’s Gospel we are back in the upper room on the night before you died. Betrayal, that most bitter blow in your sufferings, is at hand. You speak of being glorified with the glory you share with God, the glory that is your own. Now. How? How are we supposed to recognize your glory in what is about to transpire? Is it that we are to hear again the passion story in light of the triumph? Are we to see your resurrection as part of the whole? All these actions mingle and commingle to emerge as the source of a new creation in which we are all called to participate.

Are you challenging us to see glory in defeat? Are we supposed to understand that if we recognize and follow you in resurrection, suffering ought not surprise us? Is that the mistake I have made in Easters past? I thought it was over when the Candle entered the church and scattered the darkness. Christ, our light? Thanks be to God! The strife is over. The battle done! Now is the Victor’s triumph won. It sounds finished. And if that is my expectation, no wonder I leave myself open to disappointment when I am confronted by signs that the Victory is still a work in progress.

I think of those people who entered the font during the Vigil of your rising. They emerged gleaming with oil and dressed in white, signs of their identification with you. There sins all washed away. Their new life now is theirs. Now is the Victor’s triumph won! But what happens when they are confronted with the reality of sin that has survived in their lives, when they have to deal with the fact that the struggle must still go on. They must press on for their participation in the Victory that lies before them.

Am I correct in seeing that if I recognize you in your rising I must let you help me see all reality in a new light. Sometimes what seems like victory will be a defeat. What seems like triumph will be a failure. I must struggle to continually say no to sin, to the temptations subtle and otherwise, to lord it over others, to see myself as superior to others, to see myself in any other role than that of a servant to the rest.

I hear your words: As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. It is all about Love. But this is not a love that takes anything to myself. It is a love that empowers me to empty myself of self, to pour out myself in service. In the midst of all that seems to spell the defeat of Christianity, those who have peered into the empty tomb and seen the garments of death and the cloth that covered your face lying apart by itself, those who have seen must dare to enter and seeing, believe. They and I must hear your command and live it. We must walk with you on the Way and let our hearts burn and you challenge us to live the new creation we are through Baptism. We must dare to be signs of contradiction. The triumph is in the cross. The victory is in the dying. The glory is now.

Sincerely,

Didymus