A Homily for Easter Sunday 2024
We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are. Let me say that again: We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.
This Easter morning we are invited to take part in a foot race alongside Peter and the Beloved Disciple. But what kind of foot race is it? Isn’t it just a foot race to the grave? People running, competing, sacrificing… just to see who can reach the tomb first? Life is so often and so easily reduced to nothing more than a mindless race to the grave because we don’t see things as they are but as we are. Unless we are willing to re-member (that is know who we are, know who Christ is, and know our life for the gift it is) and then realize (that is make real that intimate particularity of this body and this blood given for others) and then Christ rises up in us and we see things as he sees and we see ourselves as he sees us and so we are free to generously give ourselves away. We know it as Christ knows it. And he knows it as it is. We no longer see by the eyes of death but rather with resurrection sight!
As St. Paul tells the Colossians: “When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.”
In the gospel for today we find both Peter and the Beloved Disciple participating in the same foot race to the same finish line: the tomb. But what happens when they get there? Peter rushes in. He looks around. He sees the burial cloths scattered and the cloth that covered Christ’s face rolled up and set aside separately. But Peter doesn’t see things as they are. He sees things as he is. A man fearful and ashamed. A man haunted by death and failure. A man hopelessly lost in a grief he cannot comprehend.
But what about the Beloved Disciple? He is competing in the same senseless race to the tomb. He sees the same things Peter sees, but the evangelist tells us: “He saw and believed.” Even though they had not as of yet understood that Christ must rise from the dead. He saw things as they are because he knew the resurrection by heart. He didn’t see death, even in death’s own home, the tomb. Rather he saw life rising out of death… life always rising out of death! And he knew it by heart because Christ rose up in him. The Beloved Disciple is one who re-members, realizes, and rises up to the truth of who he is because Christ has risen up in him. Again: “When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.” Like the woman with the alabaster jar, the Beloved Disciple knows by heart. And he sees as he is. He sees as Christ. Because Christ is not who we see. Christ is always how we see.
The Johannine scripture scholar, Sandra Schneiders, when writing about this scene from the gospel, asks the question: “What exactly did the Beloved Disciple see?” He saw the same things as Peter, yet he sees and believes! Well, it all comes down to that simple face veil, rolled up and set aside. Schneiders writes:
“Jesus, the new Moses, had definitively left behind the veil of his earthly flesh as he returned to the glory he had as Son of God.”
Because the Beloved Disciple is one who re-members, realizes, and rises he sees a simple abandoned face veil and knows the reality of resurrected life! He would have remembered immediately Moses who hid his face behind a veil to protect the Israelites from encountering God’s glory. And he realizes now in Christ the veil is definitively removed. God doesn’t wish to protect us from his glory or from resurrection life. Rather he wants us to participate in it fully in the midst of a world too often caught up in a senseless race to the grave. The Beloved Disciple rises to the truth that St. Paul will eventually articulate when he later writes:
“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit.” (2 Cor. 3:18)
The Resurrection is the definitive unveiling of God’s glory and the definitive unveiling of our true faces… women and men who remember, realize, and know the power of Christ’s resurrection as he rises up in us. So we can see things as they are BECAUSE we see things as we are: ALIVE with Christ’s glory! Life is not a foot race to the grave, but rather the on-going unveiling of our own faces so we might participate fully in our own transformation from glory into glory.
“When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.”
“What I do is me. For that I came!”
And that is what we must come to know by heart!
Chiaroscuro Spirituality 