Easter Vigil Yr A 2026

Title

Resurrection Means Transformation

Outline

The resurrection accounts were difficult to express

The various authors use various images trying to express something that is beyond our experience, often picking up on types and images from the Hebrew Scriptures. We have problems when we do not recognize this and go beyond the images to contemplation.

The death of Jesus ushered in a new era

The temple is symbolically destroyed, its curtain ripped from top to bottom. A new era is born. Since God is present in the new there is an earthquake (which might be missed in seismically active Palestine) and a resurrection from Hades/Sheol, but only of saints. Jesus is not among them, for he had business elsewhere in Hades. This is what make the centurion say in Matthew, “Truly this was the Son of God.” The divine sphere has broken into this world.

But the Mary’s that Matthew follows were observing the death, the burial, and then about 36 hours later the after-effects of Jesus’ resurrection, observing, for they had yet to get it. There is another earthquake and now a very visible angel appears, pulls out the cork shaped stone, and sits on it, as if saying, “Hey, look here, there is something not to see.” In Matthew the guards do not see, for they are “like dead men” who do not see the resurrection. The women are seeking Jesus and are told not to be afraid but to see, to see nothing, to see an empty grave. The angel did not let Jesus out, but showed that he was out. The women are to be witnesses, witnesses who would not be believed, but God’s choice of witnesses. “Go . . . tell” not the world but, as Jesus would add, “my brothers.” Obedience leads to seeing, but not exactly the same Jesus, for now they “embraced his feet” and “prostrated themselves.”

Let us look at what we have here

In Genesis ch 1 the humans find themselves in Eden, the temple garden, where God lives in the temple, but of course we know that they ended up excluded.

We tried to lock up Jesus in a tomb in a garden, a garden with a hole into Hades, but he has walked out. He is in many respects the same Jesus, but he is transformed. He leaves a sealed tomb, letting and angel open it later for the announcement. He appears to obedient women, but those who do not seek him never see him. He inspires worship in his disciples, a deeper more aware worship than ever in his previous life. He is the temple transformed. He turns the tomb garden back into Eden where humanity may still meet with God.

And that has implications for our worship

I will only name one implication - meditate on the readings to see more. We will follow his instructions and recall the Last Supper to the present, but we will not see his physical presence, for the transformation is into the body and blood, humanity and divinity of the resurrected Jesus, the transformed Jesus, who is in his humanity what we will be. And we eat this and are transformed, only rarely in our physical bodies, but inwardly into his body, becoming in part now, unseen by those not seeking him, what Jesus now is, including sharing in the divine nature. We await the coming earthquake and angels when we will fully become what we are now becoming. That is one bit of the truth of the resurrection.

Glory to God in the Highest