Not resuscitation, but resurrection [Easter homily]

Listen to this homily

It's impossible, really, to do justice to all the events of this day, but I thought of trying to link the resurrection of Jesus to us here in our own lives as Christians. First of all, the event. We're not talking about resuscitation. Jesus's friend Lazarus was resuscitated. Jesus raised the widow's son Nain. He was resuscitated. So he had to die again. We're talking about resurrection. It's the only one that has ever occurred on the initiative of the resurrectee, so to speak, and this sets it apart from any other religious account of life and what goes on in life. It simply sets it apart.

Our faith is not the remembrance of a dead hero. If that were the case, as the New Testament makes clear, dearest brothers and sisters, you and I would still be in our sins. There would be no forgiveness for them. There's nothing that we could really do to make up for the things that have crossed our paths in life to which we have yielded, freely or not. But it's only because Jesus Christ is not a dead hero. He's not a figure locked into the past which we annually commemorate with flowers and candles and what have you.
 
Rather this is a person who Himself rose from the dead. It was a corpse that was buried on Good Friday, and the Gospels are very clear to make sure you understand that. It was a corpse that was buried, and it's this corpse that is not revivified, but rather resurrected in a way that was recognizable to others and yet was very, very, very, very different. It's this Jesus risen from the dead who is the source of any kind of salvation or freedom from our sins.
 
And that's the central truth about Him, but it's more than that. And today's Gospel has a lot about it. One of the things today's Gospel talks about is that there are people that saw the empty tomb. They didn't know what to make of it. And so they go back and they talk, and somebody says, "No, that can't happen." They go back and they speak about it, and people say, "Well, that's not really possible. That sounds like"—well, they used the word “nonsense.” Scripture doesn't use that word often. And that's a picture of you and me. It's a picture of you and me and our lives with regard to Jesus Christ.
 
If I only see Him as a dead hero, then there is no forgiveness for my sins, and there's no new life for me apart from the one I now live. And that's the truth of it, dearest brothers and sisters. It's uncompromising. Either I come to Jesus Christ resurrected from the dead, and I say, "I want your life to live in my life, so that my life can share in the power of your life," either I do that or I make of Him a dead hero to be commemorated once a year on Easter Sunday.
 
And we can do that. I suppose there are folks who do. Yeah, a nice memory, but after all, what has it got to do with life? And that, dearest brothers and sisters, is the key. What has it to do with life? Because if it doesn't have anything to do with life, if it's some religious act from the past, well, okay, we can have our candles and flowers and all the rest, and come to Mass, and it doesn't do anything. It doesn't change me. It doesn't cause me to look at myself in light of this risen person who rose from the dead for me, and not just for Himself.
 
He rose from the dead so that I could have access to a life which a dead hero does not provide. No matter how much you may like Abraham Lincoln or whatever, he's dead. He's only a memory, whereas Jesus Christ presents himself to you and to me as living in our present moment, if only you and I open our hearts to Him. If our hearts are closed to Him, well then He's simply a historical figure, which having come to Easter Sunday Mass, that's that. But He's more than that.
 
At least the church, over twenty centuries, has viewed Him through the saints, and innumerable people, despite her sins and scandals, she sees Him, and He has brought life to anyone who has encountered Him. And so today's Gospel is not just a Gospel about something in the past. For heaven's sake, don't do that. It has to do with you and me. Where am I this day with regard to this risen person? Do I strive to encounter Him so that I can experience Him in my heart speaking to me about myself and about the life He wants me to live? Because He knows what will make me happy.
 
The University of Minnesota doesn't know what makes you happy. They hand out degrees. Whether you're happy with them or not is another question. And it's not their business to make you happy. Or the job where you make $3 million a week at 3M. Okay, but it's not 3M's business to make you happy. But He is interested in your happiness. He is risen from the dead, and He lives so that my life is just not a sequence of years ending in the cemetery, but rather opens out into this person's life. I live now not I, but Jesus Christ lives in me, Saint Paul said. And that was a matter of experience, and that wasn't a formula.
 
So dearest brothers and sisters, as you and I are here this morning by our own volition, our own choice, to hear the word of the Lord, the Lord Jesus wants you to hear the word of the Lord. He wants to be part of your life. He wants to enter into the circumstances and the direction of the life that you live on this earth. It took me a long time to come to realize that. I took the route of official Catholicism. I learned all the stuff and I did all the things I was supposed to do, but Jesus was not in my life. He was outside it, as it were, looking in.
 
And I suspect that I'm not the only Catholic who lives that way. But when I encountered him, when I finally put aside my pride, put aside my resistance, put aside, “No, what's going out there is really important, more important than anything else,” when I put that aside finally and came to Him and said, "Lord Jesus, I don't know you, and you know that. I'm your minister, your public minister in the church, but I don't know you, and you know that," finally I was able to say, "Oh Lord have mercy upon me in my closedness, in my interior life that I guard and protect and defend against anything, because it's mine, and I want it.”
 
"Oh Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner." And you know, He did. He did. If I were Him I wouldn't have, but He did, and that's Christianity. He did. He did have mercy on me, and He said, "You know, Phillip, you're a real ass, but I love you. And so I will come to you." And without the coming of Jesus—well I certainly wouldn't be standing here—without the coming of Jesus, my faith, whatever it was, would be dead, dead, the faith of belief in a dead man, but it's not. And that's what we want. I want that for you.
 
I want that each of you would encounter the person of Jesus alive, and that He would speak to your heart, and you would gradually see, maybe for the first time in your life, who you really are in God's sight. And through the forgiveness of sins, and Jesus says, "Give them to me. I'll take them," you can experience a new kind of life. So that's the Easter message, if you like. Many people thought it was simply words, but 2,000 years ago up to the present it is proved otherwise.
 
And so may it prove otherwise in your life and mine. Let none of us ever say, "Oh, I'm okay. I know him. That's okay. I don't need anything else, thank you." Let none of us do that, but say to him, "Lord Jesus, come to me. Come to me and take your place in my life. Take your place in my heart. Help me to come to you and say, 'You know what an ass I am. You know that, but you love me, and you want for my life something I could not have without you.'"
 
If we do that, dearest brothers and sisters, then this Easter will be like none other. It will mark a point in our life where we finally say to him, "I give in. I yield to you. I will not stand up against you with my will." And if we do that, dearest brothers and sisters, I think the joy that comes from that, the joy that comes from that is very different than anything else. It's different than any other kind of happiness. It's different than any other kind of joy, because it's centered in somebody who lives, who lives. I love my mother, but she's dead. She's in heaven, but she's dead to me. But not Jesus. No, He is alive to me. May that be so for you. Happy Easter.