Third Sunday of Easter
St. Mary's Cathedral, Sydney
Third Sunday of Easter
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
30 Apr 2006
Yesterday at lunch in Cathedral House three of us priests were discussing what we might preach today for the third Sunday of Easter. I confessed that I was having some difficulty with the readings, which of course emphasise the reality of the risen Christ in his post-Resurrection appearances to the disciples.
It was not that we were lacking in appreciation of the importance of Christ Our Lord’s resurrection, or embarrassed by it in any way. It is just that it can be difficult to preach on the Resurrection, especially to the same congregation and avoid repeating what we said for the last two weeks.
Probably even this is a mistaken calculation because most people are more likely to remember something when it is repeated, but some variety and a spread of teaching from a preacher is vital over the liturgical year.
I am a regular reader of an English Weekly called The Spectator – always wonderfully written, often interesting, generally very secular, but with quite a few Christian, mostly Catholic writers.
This year The Spectator asked 28 English public figures whether they believed “that Jesus physically rose from the dead”.
Prime Minister Tony Blair, not a Catholic, but someone who attends Sunday Mass each week with his Catholic wife declined to answer. An assistant for the Archbishop of Canterbury said he was very busy, would not be able to give a quote, but wanted to be put firmly in the “yes camp”.
Cardinal Murphy O’Connor, the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster quoted St. Paul, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile” (1 Cor 15:17) and explained that as a bishop at Easter “he proclaimed this truth on behalf of the believing community”.
Richard Dawkins an atheist professor at Oxford University conceded St. Paul’s logic, but said the unpleasant truth is that our religion is null and void. “Nature does not owe us a meaningful life”, he explained. “It is up to us to make it so”. He did not explain the why and the how.
I was pleasantly surprised because most respondents believed in Our Lord’s bodily resurrection and in the empty tomb, although they acknowledged the special status of this belief in faith, the absence of scientific evidence and, in some cases, they acknowledged too their doubts and weak faith. In other words they were believers, struggling to embrace the truth, just like us.
Today’s gospel reminds us the first disciples needed a lot of convincing that the Lord had risen. They still did not believe as they discussed the Emmaus story and when Jesus did appear, they fell into a state of alarm and fear and thought they were seeing a ghost. It is not Catholic teaching that Our Lord’s risen Body was physical in exactly the same way as we are. He arrived through closed doors, but he himself emphasised his bodily-ness as he asked the disciples to touch him and he took grilled fish from them and ate it. The Resurrection does not simply mean that Jesus’ soul went marching on, while his body lay mouldering in the grave; nor can it be reduced to the simple survival of his memory among his family and followers.
Our faith insists that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob glorified his Son Jesus Christ after his suffering and death and Jesus explained to his disciples how passages in the Law of Moses, the psalms and the prophets (from what we call the Old Testament) prophesied his suffering death and resurrection and the remarkable fact that it would be announced to all Nations that sins can be forgiven whenever there is repentance. This is one of the supreme fruits of the redemption.
A couple of other Spectator writers had interesting and particular insight on aspects of the Resurrection.
The first of these Frank Johnson had spent most of his life as a political journalist and therefore he claims that at each Easter he feels especially qualified to refute the theory that the apostles faked the resurrection i.e. stole the body, paid the guards to be silent and stuck to their lies under persecution for the rest of their lives.
He says quite bluntly that no conspiracy to keep silent ever lasts. Someone talks. Most crimes are not solved by police break-throughs, but by someone talking. He pointed out that it is very difficult to die for the truth and that the disciples would have been constrained to lie for years despite imprisonment and torture.
Even the Watergate conspiracy to protect President Nixon of the United States, the most powerful man in the world, started to unravel after a fortnight. Someone talked. On top of this it is clear that many of the disciples started out as cowards.
Matthew Paris is another Spectator writer, an atheist, who was surprised that most of the respondents to the survey did not duck or fudge the extraordinary claim to believe in Christ’s resurrection. He too does not believe that the disciples made up any story, simply claiming that all the great religions Jews, Christians, Moslems labour under gigantic misapprehensions.
We have heard all this before, but what is interesting is Paris’ claim that Jesus must have existed and much of his teaching must have come down to us accurately because so much of what we Christians actually do is “the opposite of everything he (Jesus) was so plainly trying to teach”. He says that Jesus is “the fly in the Church’s ointment” and that is one reason why he, an avowed atheist feels such huge respect for Our Lord.
The examples he gives trying to prove this point make up a mixed bag and it is no argument against Christ that we his followers do not live up to his high standards. But Paris is right: “if Jesus had been a hoax, the Church could have invented somebody so much more convenient”.
Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. We profess this faith after the consecration with all the consolations and challenges that come in the package.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
