Easter Resurrection Sets Us Free From Fear
Fr Dexter Brereton, CSSp
John 20: 19-31
In 1985 I received my driver’s license for the very first time. I remember bringing the document proudly home to my dad and showing him. It was also a moment of hesitation as well. There was a retreat in the countryside and the suggestion was made that I take the family’s second vehicle and go. I am a brand-new driver. Could I make it so far? I asked myself. My dad, putting his hand on my shoulder simply said to me: ‘Son just stay on your side of the road…and drive.’ I have never looked back ever since that day. I count this incident as the very beginning of my decades-long driving experience. It was literally my ‘sending-off.’ I am brought back to this incident by the words of the risen Jesus Christ to the disciples still sequestered in a room ‘for fear of the Jews.’ We read:Jesus came and stood among them. He said to them ‘Peace be with you,’ and showed them his hands and his side…As the Father sent me, so am I sending you.’ My fear, in 1985 was of a road network populated by so many drivers, some of them dangerous. Today, 2019, the Lord continues to send out his church, out of her self-isolation, out of her many ‘comfort zones’ into a world deeply marked by the specters of sexual scandal and terrorism. It is a very dangerous world into which God sends us, not accidentally but DELIBERATELY. As I write these words it is one week since 350 of our brothers and sisters in Sri Lanka, most of them Catholics at Easter services had to pay for their devotion to Christ with the price of their blood.
Reflecting on the wider passage, it is of great theological significance that the risen Jesus Christ carries upon his body the marks of this Crucifixion. This signals to us Christians that any attempt to separate a risen triumphant Jesus from the scandal of the cross is bound to lead to disaster. This is not the Christ revealed by the Gospels. The marks of the crucifixion on the body of the risen Jesus are an important reminder that the road that leads upwards to life with God is also the road that leads downwards to humility, service, self-denial and sacrifice. This is the paradox at the heart of Christian existence.
Christian history has seen, at various points in the past the rise of what is called ‘imperial Christianity’ an imperial church closely entwined with the power of the state. This is the church of the all-conquering Christ, Christus imperator (Christ the Emperor) which justified for example the conquest and decimation of the original inhabitants of the Americas by the children of European Christianity during the age of discovery. It was this same spirit that fueled the ‘crusades’, the series of wars sanctioned by the Latin Church in the medieval period with the aim of reconquering the Holy Lands in Palestine. This kind of Christianity has been the cause of much bloodshed in its past, but this is not the whole of the Christian story. That story also the story of service and heroism. It is the story of a Christianity that builds schools and hospitals and educates everyone, including women. It is the story of Christians who peacefully practice their faith and try to make a better life for themselves and their families.This church is wounded and battered because like Jesus, she suffers with and on the side of the poor. This church seeks to give a voice to those who have no voice.It is the story of Christians such as we find in the Church at Sri Lanka which lost many of her members to murder at the hands of suicide bombers.
Which Christ will we follow, the all-conquering Christ or the ‘wounded’ Christ?Let us pray that we all contemplate and understand why the risen Jesus carries the marks of the nails in his hands. Let us pray for ourselves that seeing the marks on the Crucified Jesus Christ, we may be inspired in our own lives to give our own lives in total service and commitment to others, so that we too may rise with him to true life. Amen.
