Easter Vigil Homily 2004
In northern Europe in the early 16th century
the artist Mathias Grünewald painted the Isenheim altarpiece.
This large painting with the crucifixion at the center
shows a Jesus that is utterly spent;
a body that has been ravaged by the ordeal of the passion.
The crossbeam bends under the weight of Jesus the Lamb
who carries the sins of the world.
The body of Jesus is marred by tears and festering wounds.
There is no beauty left in this stark and cruel picture of the Crucified.
His face bears an expression of utter agony.
He is the Man of Sorrows.
But Grünewald also paints the resurrection of Jesus.
In it the Risen Christ is utterly transformed,
not recognizable from the cross.
The rubble of the tomb lies in the foreground.
His face is golden light
surrounded by yellow, orange, and reddish colors.
The universe of stars around him
portray complete serenity and peace,
victory over suffering and death.
The explicit promise of this painting
is that anyone who believes in Jesus and follows him
on the way of the cross, will know this kind of transformation.
By contrast, our age does not know what to do with the resurrection.
Mel Gibson knew he had to do something with it,
but his depiction is vague.
Without a clear sense of resurrection and transformation
Jesus is just another good, innocent man who was beaten to death.
Tragic but not redemptive.
A scientific materialist could weep over the death of this good man,
perhaps thinking, "too bad he didn't hand on his genes."
The single best way to empty the resurrection of its meaning and significance
is to think that we can appropriate the rising of Jesus without conversion.
Note how confused the disciples are,
how difficult it is for them to get their minds and hearts around
the reality and the meaning of the resurrection.
This did not happen because they were dumb and we are smart.
The descriptions in the Gospels are wondrously human.
Mary Magdalene wanting to hold on to the Risen Jesus,
the Jesus she loved so much.
Thomas, resisting his friends with his statement,
"if I do not put my fingers into the wounds,
I shall never believe."
Or tonight's account,
the men deride the women disciples
and their telling of the empty tomb.
Jesus had predicted the resurrection
but there was no way to understand his words.
There was no conceptual framework for it.
The resurrection turns all the world's standards
for power, for kingship, for glory, for service of their head.
To believe in the resurrection requires conversion.
Another way to truncate the meaning of the resurrection
is to speak mistakenly of the Risen Jesus
as if he were still Jesus of Nazareth ,
still Jewish, still a guy, still in Israel.
In the Incarnation we celebrate that God,
who is greater than the created universe
becomes small, becomes human, becomes touchable.
In the resurrection Jesus becomes Christ;
he becomes once again the Cosmic Christ.
To be sure, this Word is irreversibly changed,
forever the Word made flesh,
the Crucified one,
but no longer localized in space and time.
Grünewald's resurrected Christ
bears the nail marks in his hands and feet.
As the great hymn in Colossians tell us,
Christ is the image of the invisible God.
In him all things hold together,
what is on earth, under the earth and in the heavens.
This Risen Christ transcends gender, race, and planet.
The salvation won by the Risen Christ
is for all humankind, for all creation.
Each one of us as baptized believer
is imago Christi, in the image of Christ.
In a miracle that is as great as the Incarnation,
we receive this resurrected Christ in Eucharist,
the One who has died and is now risen.
These are not modest Christological claims.
They test our Wobegonian world-view,
a world with Ralph's Pretty-Good Grocery.
Shouldn't a Pretty Good Redeemer be good enough?
The Scriptures say no.
If we have been grasped by the truth of resurrection
we will be oriented towards mission.
We see this clearly in the accounts of the resurrection
and in the Acts of the Apostles.
The experience of the resurrection impels the disciples to go,
to proclaim the Good News.
Life cannot go on, business as usual.
Just as when we read a good book, or go to a good movie or play,
we can't wait to tell somebody about it, friend or stranger.
As the disciples understand the resurrection
they become a community that is oriented toward proclamation.
Our love for each other will grow,
our desire for holiness will draw us into life-giving decisions.
Appropriating the resurrection expands our hearts,
our imagination for the future.
With God all things are possible.
Alleluia, Alleluia! He is Risen.
Abbot John Klassen, OSB
April 10, 2004
|
