Crooked Lines

Readings

“For the one whom God sent speaks the words of God.”

In some ways, this is a curious passage from John’s Gospel.  Vss. 31-36 come after the conversation which Jesus had at night with Nicodemus, and sound rather similar in style and even content.  Yet just before these verses we have what some call the final witness of John the Baptist (vss. 22-30) which separates today’s verses from the Nicodemus dialog.  That final witness ends with John saying, “He must increase; I must decrease”, a sentiment totally consistent with John’s witness.

So we are left with the question, who is speaking these verses about the “one who comes from above”?  It certainly could be something John might say.  There are no first person statements in the passage, and John certainly attempted to describe who and what Jesus was.  The verses could also be something that Jesus himself said, for it is not unusual for him to speak of himself in this way.

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Readings

Yesterday, the Second Sunday of Easter, we concluded our celebration of the “Octave of Easter”, marked by the praying of the Gloria and the Alleluia dismissal, as well as a series of resurrection stories from the Gospels.  Today, we return to Gospels taken from the public ministry of Jesus, such as this passage from his conversation with Nicodemus.  There aren’t that many resurrection stories!

Yet the progression of our Gospel selections in these weeks points to something significant about the Gospels themselves.  It is sometimes said that they were written backwards.  What that means is that in the early days after the Resurrection, the main message was that which we hear proclaimed in our readings from the Acts of the Apostles, often on the lips of Peter.  That message was that this Jesus of Nazareth, who had been put to death, was now alive.  This is the central message of the Gospels, and was the heart of that early proclamation.

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Readings

Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.”

Peter was a fisherman.  So it’s not surprising that finding himself on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias, he would decide to go fishing.  Or is it?

They had just been through all the events of the horrible/glorious Passover.  Jesus had appeared to them in the upper room, and they had heard the story of the two traveling to Emmaus. I can’t help but wonder what Peter was saying when he told the other disciples he was going fishing.

Remember that when Jesus called Peter, he left all that behind.  He left boat and nets and fish to go and see where Jesus stayed.  Was he now just going back to fishing?  Did he mean that the little three year adventure of following Jesus the Nazarean was over with?

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Readings

“The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,
the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus, . . . “

Sometimes what is new flows directly out of what has gone before.  It is much more fulfillment rather than replacement.  This is what we hear announced today by Peter with regard to Jesus and his resurrection.

After the cure of the crippled man, Peter’s proclamation to the people calls attention to the the faith that have already received, faith in the “God of their Fathers”.  He asserts strongly that everything done in and through Jesus, risen from the dead, is done by the God of Abraham, the God of Issac, the God of Jacob (Israel).  While there is something new here, it is being accomplished by the God of old, the God of the ages, the God of creation.

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Readings

Mary Magdalene stayed outside the tomb weeping.

It was early morning, before dawn.  Miserable hours had gone by since those horrible events that ended the life of the Beloved one. Yet here she was, weeping in the darkness,   As if his death were not enough, now the tomb was empty.  His body, all she had left of him, was nowhere to be found. Yet still she searched.  She was driven by love.

“Tell me where you laid him, and I will take him.”  Thinking she spoke to the gardener, she uttered her heartfelt request to Jesus himself, though she did not know him. Trying to cling to the little she had left of him, his broken, lifeless, anointed body, she sought him in desperation, driven by love.

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Readings

“On the day of Pentecost, Peter stood up with the Eleven,
raised his voice, and proclaimed: . . .”

As we gather on this first weekday of our Easter Season, we recall well the events we celebrated so recently during Holy Week.  We recall well the proclamation of the Lord’s Passion on Palm/Passion Sunday, as well as just last Friday, Good Friday.  In those stories we heard of Peter, lurking in the shadows, following, but at a distance.  Not once, not twice, but three times did he deny even knowing this Jesus the Nazorean.  How things have changed.

In these days, when we celebrate in a special way the Resurrection of the Lord, we rejoice in that victory over sin and death, and the way in which the power of God’s love touched the death of Jesus and brought forth something unheard of, something radically and forever new.  The one who died now is alive.  Christ is risen, he is risen indeed!

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Readings

The homily for this Sunday in audio format is available.

The Sunday bulletin is posted in pdf format, and the bulletin article is available here