1st Reading: Acts 10:34,37-43
Response: Ps 117:1-2,16-17,22-23 ”This day was made by the Lord: we rejoice and are glad.”
2nd Reading: Colossians 3:1-4
Gospel: John 20:1-9
Christ has Risen from the Dead! He is Alive! We rejoice and sing, ‘Alleluia’. But what does it mean when we say that ‘Christ is Alive’?
We must start with what is does not mean. The Risen Jesus was not a resuscitated corpse. He had not been brought back to life in the way Lazarus was brought back to life. Nor is Jesus a spectre or ghost. He explicitly says he isn’t. In St Luke’s account, (Lk 24: 36ff) when he appeared to the disciples, they thought they were seeing a ghost and Jesus says to them, ‘A ghost has no flesh and bones as you see I have… … Touch me and see for yourselves’. He ate with them. Jesus is alive with a physical body, but a body not subject to the limitations we know. Jesus has Risen to a New Life; an eternal Life which death cannot touch.
But doesn’t this imply that a different ‘Mode of Physical Existence’? Yes, it does. Jesus is alive now in mode of existence which far transcends our limited material universe, but in which he can be physically present in our material world. It is the mode of existence which pertains to the Kingdom he has inaugurated. And immediately we have a problem, because many people immediately want to ask, ‘What is this new mode of being? Explain it; we want to know everything about it.’ And they focus on the mechanics of this new mode of being and miss the essential point entirely. Namely, that Jesus is alive. In all the post-Resurrection appearances the disciples are clear. It is Jesus; He is alive; and physically present. But getting obsessed with the mechanics is not a new issue. St Paul addresses aspects of these questions in 1 Cor 15:35ff, and calls them stupid questions. Because, how Jesus’ risen body functions and how Jesus appeared is secondary and of no importance for the central reality being revealed to us. Namely - that Christ is Alive and present with us, and in us, now.
When St Paul encountered Christ on the road to Damascus and heard the voice, he knew with utter certainty that Christ was alive and present and had spoken to him. This certainty was so complete that the whole of his life after this was devoted to proclaiming this fact that Christ had died and Risen and is alive and present now. The disciples too knew with an utter certainty that Jesus was alive and present with them, and their lives were devoted to proclaiming this Good News. So certain were they that they were even willing to die rather than deny it.
At this point I am going to quote a former non-believer who expresses more eloquently than I can what St Paul knew. When this man was in his teens, he had no time for God. He heard a priest speaking and found what was said profoundly repulsive; and he set out to disprove what he had heard. He borrowed a copy of the Gospels and picked St Mark’s Gospel because it was the shortest, and started reading. He said, ‘…before I reached the third chapter, I suddenly became aware that on the other side of my desk there was a presence. And the certainty was so strong that it was Christ standing there that it has never left me. Because Christ was alive, and I had been in His presence, I could say with certainty that what the Gospel said about the crucifixion of the prophet of Galilee was true… …It was in the light of the Resurrection that I could read with certainty the story of the Gospel, knowing that everything was true in it, because the impossible event of the Resurrection was to me more certain than any event of history. History I had to believe; the Resurrection I knew for a fact.’ The writer became Metropolitan Anthony Bloom.
A person can be brought up a Christian and go to church and keep the rules, can also learn a lot of theology and intellectually be committed but it can remain something coming to them from outside themselves. When Jesus said, ‘Come, follow me’ he was not a learned teacher inviting people to follow a school of thought; it was a personal invitation to a relationship with Him. When our relationship with Jesus deepens and we truly come to know Him, then we experience and know the certainty which Metropolitan Anthony Bloom expresses so well. Christ is Alive, and the impossible event of the Resurrection is more certain than any event of history.
In our Western Society, knowledge is considered to be something in the intellect. But there are other modes of knowledge which are as certain, and in some cases more certain. If two people love each other – especially if it is a love what has deepened over many years – they know with utter certainty that they love this other person. And it is not an intellectual knowing. If asked where in their body this knowing is centred it will be the heart centre and not in the head, in the intellect. And if someone tried to prove to them intellectually that their love was an emotional delusion; they would know their interlocutor was talking rubbish; had no idea what love means. It is on this level we know with utter certainty that Christ is Alive and present with us now. And this is what the Saints and mystics have spoken about over the centuries. It is expressed so well by the author of ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’ who said, ‘By love may He be gotten and holden; but by thought never.’
When Jesus appeared to the disciples in the room where the doors were locked, He did not come in some mysterious way through the locked doors. He was fully present in that room all the time and then chose to be manifest in His Resurrected body. He is fully present here, now, with us. And when in a few minutes time we do what He commanded us to do in commemoration of Him, He will be as truly physically present with us here, as He was with the disciples in that locked room, but now under the outward form of bread and wine. ‘This is my Body. This is my Blood.’
Christ is Alive. But we are not just rejoicing for Jesus’s sake; as if to say, he has been through a dreadful time but we are pleased He is now safely back home with His Father. We rejoice because He Suffered and Died and Rose to new life for our sakes. He gave His Body for us. He poured out His Blood for our sakes. It was all done for us. He has given us a full share in this new eternal life and desires to lead us to the fulness of this new life with Him and His Father forever.
Incidentally, when we speak of the resurrection of our body, (as we will in the Creed in a few minutes) we are not speaking of our corpse being resuscitated, we are speaking of the body we will have in the mode of being in which we will exist in the Kingdom. And when we receive communion, we are receiving the Risen Body of Christ under the form of bread and wine. So we receive and share in the life and mode of being of the Kingdom already through Christ’s gift of Himself in the Eucharist. Such is the gift and reality won for us by Christ in His Passion, Death and Resurrection.
Christ is Alive, and present now. Present here with us; present in us, for we are temples of the Holy Spirit; and we are present in Him as members of His Body of which He is the head. We rejoice and give thanks. But we are also aware that we can refuse or ignore the gift of Life He is offering us. Satan will do all he can to sow lies and draw us away from Our Loving Saviour. St Paul is clear, ‘Since you have been brought back to true life with Christ, you must look for the things that are in heaven, where Christ is.’ We must fix our eyes on the Lord. He is Risen – that is utterly certain. He is with us now – that is utterly certain. United in Him we can come to the fullness of life and glory for ever – that too is utterly certain. Rightly do we sing, ‘Alleluia’.
Fr Peter Craddy OCSO
