FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER A

[cappie]

One of the more common readings we hear at funerals is that portion of the gospel we just heard: “ Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God still, and trust in me.” If the congregation at a funeral recalls that the deceased lived a long life,  shared love and kindness with others, then the words of Jesus sound consoling: an acknowledgment of present sorrow and a solemn promise of comfort and life in Jesus. “ I shall return to take you with me; so that where I am you may be too.” It is a beautiful promise, and it is true. It marks an end even as it opens a beginning.

But when funerals are occasions where sorrow is  when the cause of death is violent or when life is cut short by disease or disability or war or accident, then death comes as the ancient enemy—not the natural end to life, but the thief who breaks in and steals. 

 In these times, Jesus’s promise of resurrected life comes crashing down as fickle comfort in the wake of such loss. 

We see evidence of such experience among the disciples in the wake of Jesus’s resurrection. Even after they’ve rationally accepted the reality of the bodily resurrection of Jesus; even after seeing the scars from the nails and his pierced side; even after watching him eat—thus confirming that he was neither a ghost nor a zombie but a resurrected person—the disciples still had a spiritual problem that it took them time to overcome.

 The resurrection overturns the order that we have come to accept. 

The bodily resurrection of our Lord  invades and overthrows what we thought we know, revealing that the world does not have to be the way it is, and that, in the fullness of God’s time, through the resurrection of Jesus, by the power of the Spirit, it will not be. Violence and war, hate and malice, pain and tears; the stones hurled at Stephen in our passage from Acts and thrown still at martyrs today; even death itself: all of these are being overcome—in real time.

 Jesus says, “ I tell you most solemnly, whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself, he will perform even greater works, because I am going to the Father.” The ascension of Jesus to the Father and the giving of the Spirit to the disciples unleash and disperse the power and life of Christ among the baptized in all time and space. 

Jesus has ushered in the kingdom of God, and it is up to us to listen and watch for the Spirit to speak and move among us, leading us to receive what God has done in Jesus and continue to build the body of Christ.

You have heard it said that in the midst of life, we are in death; but it is also true that in the midst of death, we find life. 

 When we stop listening to one another; when we stop listening for the Spirit; when our concern is focused on the preservation of the self, rather than the flourishing of all, our own faith becomes impoverished, and the bread and wine of the Gospel is turned into stone and vinegar.

The task St Peter gives us in this letter today is to keep faith, to run along these apostolic creases, making them the track down which our lives run. In this way we are built up together into that spiritual house as the living stones, he’s talking about. Meditating on his words (and digging down into their Old Testament roots) will give us a much deeper awareness of what is at stake in our faith, what it is we are hoping for, and how to understand the trials and temptations always threatening to derail our path.

Fidelity to that hope despite its apparent failure—perceiving it, through God’s faithfulness, as strangely and wonderfully the first moment of victory—is what he means in this passage by faith.

Jesus has called us to build his kingdom, and he has entrusted us with all the tools we need to do it. When we take those stones in our hands, do we use them as building blocks for the work to which we have been called, or do we use them as weapons to defend and isolate ourselves from risk, vulnerability, and honesty? 

Because, in the end, one response requires us to lay down our life so that we may participate in God’s resurrected life…

…And the other?