That's Easter

3 Easter B 2009
Acts 3: 12-19; Psalm 4; 1 John 3: 1-7; Luke 24: 36b-48


The lilies are faded and gone. We still wear white and speak of Eastertide, the Great 50 days when the church partied and kept the Easter party going. We have time to ask—what is Easter? What is the risen life?

One Sunday in Eastertide, a few years ago, the whole church sat in post-Easter shock. The clergy looked dazed, attendance was down. There was an empty feeling. The lilies were starting to look pretty sad.

The priest sitting next to me whispered, “This is probably more how it really was, that first Easter. Not many people, energy low, people in wonder or disbelief.” He smiled. “This is Easter,” he said. “This is real.”

This is Easter. This is real. When the drama is over, when we’re all dealing with our lives and wondering how the Easter news fits in—that’s real. That’s Easter, that’s the risen life.

“Do you have something to eat?”

That’s how real is Easter, that’s how real is this risen life. As the disciples speak, Jesus appears and insists that he’s real. He’s hungry, they give bother to say they give him broiled fish, he eats, and then he “opens their minds” to understand the Scriptures. I wonder why food and need and giving had to happen before their minds were opened? I wonder if we do things backwards in church—maybe we should eat first and then talk about God! That would be real. It has to be real to be Easter, it has to be real to be the risen life.

Years ago, a young priest named Ernesto left his comfortable city church and went to live with dirt-poor fishermen and their families on an island in Nicaragua. He abandoned the position of awe that clergy traditionally hold for Latin American folks and shared their lives. Ernesto worked with them setting the nets at night and mending the nets by day. One night a week he would gather with them by firelight. They would share a little food, then Ernesto would read a passage from the Gospels and ask people what they thought it meant. Slowly, shyly, they spoke aloud their fears and hopes—their fear of their own government and its soldiers, their hopes in God who came to live among them in Jesus and who promised them the risen life. Real people shared food and faith—that is Easter. That is risen life.

Easter is real lives transformed. Easter was in that first reading, where people are shocked because a real lame man was really healed by Peter’s word. In a world of illusions and shadows and fears, what is real will cut through the fog and will make us free. We are loved as beloved children, says the letter from John. That is what is real—all else is illusion. So if we are loved so deeply, act like the loved children that we are. Live into Easter, live into the risen life.

Easter is real and the risen life is real if we name it and grab it and let it take bones and flesh in our lives. I saw some real Easter yesterday. Something remarkable happened at the celebration of a wedding here, something that has nothing to do with flowers or cake or first dances or romantic pop songs sung by wedding singers.

During the Mass, the couple washed each others’ feet.

We wash feet once a year during Holy Week. But a couple chose that as part of celebrating their life. A demanding life lived together—raising kids, paying bills, doing it all over again each and every day. Washing feet to say all that—that’s Easter. That’s the risen life.

Long ago a saint called Benedict was praying alone in a cave. It was Easter Day, and the local priest was worried that Benedict had been alone so long that he did not even know it was Easter. He went to the cave with some food and said, “Greetings brother! It’s Easter Day!”

Benedict looked up and said, “It truly is Easter, brother, because you are here.” A kind visit, some food. That’s Easter. That’s the risen life.

People caring enough about their church to wear their work clothes and share work on a Sunday—that’s Easter. That’s the risen life.

O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work…Bread blessed and broken. Simple life shared. Eyes opened, so that we may know that nothing is ordinary, ever again. Risen life quivers beneath the surface of all things, ready to dazzle us if our eyes are open. That’s what’s real. That’s Easter, that’s the risen life.