The Resurrection of the Lord

By Jesuit Father Larry Gillick
Creighton University

We have been prayerfully preparing for this celebration for weeks. These more recent days, we have been getting up close and personal with the drama of Jesus’ receiving more totally himself and our human family.

Today we receive the blessings which flow from his fidelity. Preparation is over; the reception is just beginning.

For the next seven weeks, we will hear much of the struggles and growth of the early Christian community. The Acts of the Apostles, written, apparently, by the author of the Gospel of Luke, is a collection of events which forms the fallout from the rising from the dead of Jesus. The little groups of believers move out from their birthplace of Jerusalem and begin the extension of Christ’s resurrectional embrace of all creation and all humankind.

The Gospel of Luke portrays Jesus as moving ever so slowly up toward the heights of Jerusalem. The Acts display the Holy Spirit as dispensing God’s grace downward from Jerusalem to spread like “Good News” to the ends of the earth. Jesus’ Easter rising begins the movement by beginning God’s second creation of creation.

We hear in today’s First Reading Peter’s short biography of Jesus. Peter has been summoned by a devout centurion named Cornelius, who during his prayer had a vision. He is told to fetch Simon, known as Peter, who will help him understand the vision. Peter arrives and speaks to those assembled the words of today’s First Reading. What Peter speaks is a compilation of the major aspects of his belief in this new way. It is almost a sort of outline –  topical sentences that each will be developed in later writings and preachings. It is important to note that Peter assumes that everyone has heard all he is saying. It is the author’s method to keep presenting and reminding the readers of the basic “company line.”

Our Easter Gospel is a story of hide-and-go-seek. Mary Magdala goes to the tomb and finds emptiness. The stone has been removed from the burial opening, and Jesus is gone. When she informs Peter and the disciple whom Jesus loved, they run and find emptiness as well, except they find evidence that Jesus had been there in a burial posture.

“Now-you-see-him, now-you-see-him-differently” continues during these Easter days. For us, it can seem like a game; for Jesus, it is a process of inviting his followers to deeper faith. He seems to hide, then appears, then vanishes – all so that his followers will keep seeking.

It is this “seeking” that is so central to Easter grace. Jesus is the primary seeker, and his foundlings are ourselves. He moves through the “Resurrection Narratives” – collecting, consoling, confronting and eventually missioning the early believers or doubters. In turn, we are the seekers as well. We are invited to keep looking for Jesus, even in the emptinesses of life. Jesus is “translocational.” We would like to grab hold of him, but he would say to us, “Do not cling to me, but go to my new body, my different, but real presence in community, in relationship and within your own emptiness.”

C.S. Lewis, in his wonderful book, “Surprised by Joy,” wrote that real joy is more in the seeking than in the finding. We might have trouble with that idea until we live it a while. What do we find when we find what we have been seeking? Eventually, we will find that every answer leads to the next question. Every good and more than wonderful experience, relationship, ecstasy does end or has certain little holes in them. So there is an empty tomb in all of life’s joys that invites us to “seek” and find. What will we find? We will gracefully discover the invitation to seek some more. Is that a terrible, tricky game that the Divine Magician is playing on us? Maybe!

We are believers because we do not know, but we grow more deeply as humans the more we keep reaching toward, looking for, hungering after – always in a spirit of gratitude.

Everything ends, including this reflection. Where it ends, Jesus is waiting to find us and be found. He has risen, but not disappeared. He has risen from the dead to bring life to the seekers.

I hope you can watch a group of little children at an Easter egg hunt and notice that their joy is in the looking for, and, if they find one, they will want to find one more. So again, by little children we learn basic human truths. Alleluia!