Easter Sunday
Readings: Acts 10: 34-43
Colossians 3:1-4
John 20: 1-18
The readings for Easter Sunday celebrate the universal significance of Christ's triumphant resurrection from the dead and exhort us to a newness of life based on faith in God's victory over sin and death. We may all rejoice in singing the refrain of the Easter Psalm: "This is the day the Lord has made;/let us rejoice and be glad. (Ps 118).
The first reading proclaims the universal implications of the Resurrection as the event which is to bring the good news of God's forgiving love, first revealed to the Jews, into the whole Gentile world. Peter begins the Gentile mission in Acts by baptizing Cornelius, a God-fearing Roman centurion. As always in Luke-Acts, the initiative for this important decision comes from God who, in a vision from an angel, tells Cornelius to send for Simon Peter who also has been told in a vision that all foods are clean and therefore Gentiles are not excluded from God's community on the basis of the Jewish food laws. (see Acts 2:14-33).
Peter's sermon at Cornelius' house, like the one at Pentecost (Acts 2: 14-36), bears witness to the good news of the Gospel in favorite Lukan terms. God has shown Peter, through the events described in Acts 10: 1-33, that anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.
Peter, therefore, proclaims to Cornelius' household the word of God, which was first sent to Israel through Jesus. It is the "good news of peace" about the way God anointed Jesus with his Spirit to do good and heal those who were oppressed by the devil. It is also a word that could not be silenced by the death of Jesus on a tree in Jerusalem, for God raised him on the third day and revealed him to the chosen witnesses who ate and drank with him (Luke 24). Now Peter is fulfilling Jesus' command to witness to his resurrection (Luke 24:48; Acts 1:8,22) by testifying that Jesus is the one ordained by God to judge the living and the dead, and that in his name forgiveness of sins is available to all.
The second reading exhorts the Colossian Christians to live out the consequences of Christ's resurrection. They have been raised up in company with Christ and are now to set their hearts on the higher realms, rather than on things of earth. The contrast between "the things above" and "the things of earth" is spelled out in Colossians 3:5-17. On the one hand, the Christian has died in an earthly way of fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness and more. (3:5-9). On the other, the new life of the Christian is one of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience and forgiveness (3:10-17).
In the Easter Gospel, John presents Mary Magdalene as the first person to encounter the risen Jesus and the one privileged to announce to the disciples that Jesus has risen and returned to the Father. She discovers the empty tomb but meets no angel/s or man to interpret its significance, as in the other Gospels. Instead, she thinks that the body has been stolen and runs to tell Simon Peter and "the beloved disciple." When Jesus later appears to Mary (20:11-18), he transforms her from a weeping mourner (mentioned four times), who is seeking a corpse, to a believer and messenger, who has heard and seen her risen Lord.
His admonition, "do not cling to me" (20:17), is a warning not to hold on to the Jesus that she knew, for he is returning to the Father as he said he would. To cling to the earthly Jesus is to have faith based on signs only (see John 2-12), which is not enough. Mary must tell the disciples that Jesus, who died on the cross, is now ascending/returning to the Father, as he had promised (20:17). But the most striking feature of Mary's message is that this return has now made them children of God and sharers in Jesus' relationship to his Father:
Do not hold on to me, for I have not ascended to the Father, but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.
(This column originally appeared in The Providence Visitor)
