Easter Saturday Years ABC 2024

Title

We Must Obey God

Outline

The world outside the Church wants to deny the resurrection of Jesus

One means is by distracting us, making Easter into a spring festival, even a fertility festival. That can be a passions based event like “Spring break” often was and is or a romanticized event that one may even find in some Christian communities.

Another means is by forbidding us, perhaps by threatening danger if Easter is celebrated, as happened this year, or by heightened observation, arrests, and punishments of any visible celebration of Easter, as happens in Iran and other countries. We see that in our Acts reading.

There is also the ridiculing of Easter done by certain Christian groups who view Easter as unnecessary or pagan or by those who view Easter as a myth that shows Christian irrationality.

These can result in the privatization of Easter, i.e. the rule of the resurrected Christ

We may talk abut it, but only within the Christian community or the family or even only in our hearts.

Our readings show us the Christian response

First, the end of Mark points out that the evidence for the resurrection was objective. The situation at the tomb - its emptiness of a body, openness of its door, etc. - was covered in the previous section of Mark. Now we have a a series of witnesses, Mary Magdalene, who knew him well after her deliverance, two walking to Emmaus, and then the 11: different sexes, numbers, and situations. He then points out that the leaders were not at all credulous; in fact, they did not believe the reports until Jesus is standing in front of them rebuking them.

Second, Mark tells us and Acts demonstrates what we are to do with this narrative: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature. . .”

That “uneducated, ordinary men” who were not supposed to speak in the synagogue but simply listen boldly proclaimed Jesus before the Sanhedrin was itself a sign that could only be explained by their having been “companions of Jesus.”

When threatened if they continued to preach (for the healing of the lame man by Peter and John had been public and made punishment problematic), Peter says “Whether it is right in the sight of God for us to obey you rather than God, you be the judges.” It was a polite statement, but it also made clear that he had heard the command of Jesus to preach, that Jesus was God, and that he knew how he would answer his own question. Later, beatings and even martyrdom will not deter them, for they worshipped the one who had been dead but was alive and ruling.

And so, Sisters, we have our marching orders

We do need to make ourselves fully cognizant of the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, which should not be difficult for those in the Order of Preachers.

But we also have to deepen our acquaintance with the risen Lord, for our words spring to life if the objective facts of the resurrection are enlivened by a deep experience of the risen Lord and he is here to be experienced.

And then, though folk will not be surprised at us because we are ordinary and unlearned people, they will realize that we have been with Jesus and have a boldness that comes from knowing that he is alive and that even martyrdom can only bring us closer to him.

Then the leaders of the world may well not believe but will be confounded, for we have become dangerous agents of the living God since we serve the resurrected one who will judge the living and the dead.