Father Stephen P. KelleyFirst, I want to start off with something important. And that is, welcome, and thank you for being here, all of you, on this most important day of our Church year, the day on which we celebrate that Jesus rose from the dead. Even Christmas, which is so important and beautiful, points to this day. It was for this that He came. Especially for those of us here today who are not in the habit of regularly joining us to celebrate and renew ourselves in our faith and Christian identity on a regular basis, it is especially good that you are here, and I hope that because of your experience here with us today, that you experience an intensified call and desire to be with us more often, to come together as the Church and listen to the stories of our past as the family of God, to renew ourselves as God’s people, and receive the sacraments of God’s life in us, that make that renewal not only a decision in our own minds, but a spiritual true reality that we belong to each other, and together we belong to God as his beloved people. So, in the words of St. Peter at beholding the supernatural glory of Christ at his Transfiguration, “It is good that we are here.”
Today I want to look at the importance of Easter in two parts. The first is what it means for Jesus, and the second is what it means for us.
For the disciples of Jesus who knew Him, who were horrified at His crucifixion and confused by His death, after they confessed their faith in Him as the Messiah, the promised one who was to come, the Son of God, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the vindication of all that Jesus said and did.
When Jesus taught, it was not on the authority of some famous rabbi or teacher; He declared and taught it by His own authority. And the resurrection vindicates that authority. When Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I AM”; when He said, “The Son of Man is Lord over the Sabbath”; when He said, “There is something greater than the temple (or Solomon, or Jonah) here”; when He said, “I AM the Good Shepherd,” when He said, “Your sins are forgiven,” these declarations are proven true in Jesus rising from the dead, victorious over death. When Jesus healed the paraplegic, when He gave hearing to the deaf, and sight to the blind, and healed the leper, and raised the dead, these were acts that only God could do. And in fact, it became a key point and paradox in the ordeal of the man born blind, that Jesus would perform healing on a Sabbath, causing the pharisees to deny that Jesus was holy for breaking the prohibition on performing works on the Sabbath, and yet only by a divine act could a man born blind be healed and given sight. And so, Jesus not only vindicated His claim on divine authority and divine power, but redefined the new observance of the Sabbath on which we celebrate the new covenant. Jesus is God, as He said by His powerful teaching, as He proved by His divine works. He even said, if you don’t believe me, believe my works. And the greatest work was His victory over death, proving that all He said and did was in fact the work of God the Father working in Him. So that is the first part.
The second part is what that means for us. When the people of God in the Old Testament were freed from slavery in Egypt, it took them forty years to learn what it meant to be free, learning what it means to be God’s people.
They had to learn to stop looking back upon the luxuries of Egypt, because even though there were pleasures, they were slaves, and God invaded Egypt and drew His people out so that they could be free from slavery. But they had to learn what it meant to be free, and how to make themselves into a society that was more free and just than they experienced in Egypt.
It was a long process, and we can look back on some of those Old Testament laws as barbaric and unjust from our perspective now. But at that time in the world, and in their experience of being slaves in Egypt, the divine law given to Israel was revolutionary. And the point was that God gave them this law in their learning to be this people, that they would be a light of justice to the world, and their law would continue to develop, to be more just, more merciful, more free, and more wise as they allowed themselves to be transformed by it into a better people.
Of course, they recognized how easily and how often they fell short. And God promised that in the fullness of time, He Himself would come among them to shepherd them, and to put His heart and His life in them.
This is the second part of what we celebrate today. It may have been enough for Jesus to take away our sins by His death. By His death on the cross, the debt of our sin, all humanity’s sin from the beginning to the end, is paid. Humanity is free, redeemed by Jesus. And that may have been enough. But it wasn’t enough for God. As if God said, “But wait! There’s more!”
Through Jesus, who is God, rising from the dead, we not only have humanity’s debt of sin paid by His death, but now we have new life, freed from sin, reconciled with the Father, filled with divine grace, given to us in place of our sin. A double victory! We have new life, the life of grace, now, the spiritual life of Christ in us. And now we can see that the whole of the bible, the scriptures, and the whole of the tradition and teaching of the Church, is the instruction manual of how to take care of this new life of grace.
It’s not so much about “do wrong and you’ll be punished or do right and you’ll be rewarded.” It’s a matter of listening to God’s lovingly written instructions for His life in you; this is how you protect the divine life in you from the sinful temptations of the world, and your own sinful attachments and desires. The teaching is not primarily about how to avoid punishment, but about protecting the freedom of the life of grace. It’s how we need to choose to live our life if we want to remain free in His light. Or we allow ourselves to be enslaved by the error, the sin, the darkness of the worldly society around us, which keeps us too busy to worry about God and our obligations to Him as His holy people.
My brothers and sisters in Christ, today is our independence day! Today we celebrate the sacrifice and victory that earned our freedom! Today we rejoice that this freedom from sin, this life of grace, is given to us for us to honor, protect, and strengthen in ourselves, our loved ones, our children, our neighbors. Jesus our savior, our redeemer, our liberator from sin, has risen victorious! Alleluia! Let us praise God and sing His glory! Let us follow Him in virtue, in holiness, in joy, in love. Happy Easter, and may God bless you and your family.
(Father Kelley is the pastor of St. Francis Xavier Parish in Gettysburg.)
By Father Stephen P. Kelley, Special to The Witness
