Glimpse, Week 1: Easter Sunday - April 5, 2015
What did we expect in coming here to Easter Sunday Mass today? Think back to an hour or two ago and what you were thinking and feeling as you got ready to come here. Probably a lot of us were stressed just about the logistics of getting everyone out the door and ready on time—put that part aside for a moment, and think about what else might have been in your heart, your thoughts about EASTER. It’s important for us to try to locate what we are feeling about being here, even if we’re not 100% sure why we’re here. And that’s totally OK. Because this is where God wants to meet us today. At some level you came here because today is a celebration. But maybe you’re not exactly sure why, or what it means. Maybe we honestly only have only a vague idea what it is about this story of Jesus rising from the dead that is supposed to make us happy.
We’re all in different places with this. Some of us aren’t sure if we believe that Jesus rose from the dead. Maybe you aren’t sure that the answer to the question of “Did Jesus rise from the dead” is really all that important, or makes that much difference in our lives one way or another. Maybe you feel like you should have all these things figured out already if you’re going to be here. If any of those kinds of questions and doubts are floating around in your head as you come here today, it’s not a problem, in fact it’s kind of normal. You definitely don’t need to have it all figured out. We’re not alone in this: so many people, even his close friends, didn’t get it for a pretty long time.
So we don’t have to have the answers figured out, but we have to ask ourselves where we are with this, this year. There’s no better day than Easter to ask: Is this real? Did this really happen? There is very definitely no empirical proof that Jesus rose from the dead. There were no cameras, there was no one there to see it happen. But if you think about it, you actually believe all kinds of things for which there is no proof, all the time. Every day even. Every relationship involves belief without proof--spouses promising their love to each other, parents trusting teachers to take care of their children, patients trusting their doctors, etc. Whether it’s beginning a new relationship, or trying to heal a relationship that’s broken, there is no way to prove that you should trust someone. You just have to take the risk of trusting, or there could be no real relationships. But if you trust, the relationship can grow.
It’s the same with believing in the Resurrection. Believing, having faith, is a different way of knowing that invites us to give up our need for proof so that we can experience a relationship. Maybe I need to suspend my disbelief, my skepticism, my usual way of seeking factual knowledge about things, like the details of the life of Jesus or teachings of the church, or how challenging life can be and how sometimes it seems like things always turn out wrong. Maybe today I can give up my need for proof of the Resurrection so I can experience a relationship with something totally new, the Risen Lord.
This first step can be a way of opening ourselves to the possibility that it really happened, that he really rose from the dead. Imagine what happened in the tomb before anyone got there. What was it like for Jesus in that dark, cold place? He was dead. And then he wasn’t, but was alive in a brand-new way. Was he surprised? Did it seem too good to be true? Did he say I barely dared to hope that this could happen--but somehow I hoped it could? As difficult as this is to believe--that this could happen to him--it challenges us to believe that it could happen for us.
Coming to believe in the Resurrection is a process. It takes time. It doesn’t have to happen for us all at once. It definitely didn’t happen all at once for the first disciples. For them, too, there was this mix of belief and unbelief, this gradual process of growth and recognition. A first step in this process is to give up the need for proof so I can open myself to the possibility of believing that the Resurrection really happened. A second step is opening myself to the possibility that the Resurrection actually means something for me.
Maybe the Resurrection seems like something that only has to with Jesus or the special group of people that he handpicked. Or maybe it seems like the Resurrection only means something to an exclusive group of people who have some special kind of connection to the Church. Maybe you feel like you’re not one of those people, and you just can’t see how this could mean anything to you personally, that it could be relevant to your life. But if you can take the first step of opening yourself to the possibility of believing that this actually happened, maybe you can also take the second step of opening yourself to the possibility of believing that the Resurrection is good news for you.
Why is the Resurrection good news for you? It is only because of the Resurrection that you and I can know Christ at all. We can know a lot about a person who died long before we were born, but we can’t know that person. If Christ hadn’t been raised from the dead, we could never know him. But Christ is Risen--that’s why it is possible for us to know him and be known by him. Ever since he came out of the tomb, he has been present to us and among us, drawing us to him and working to bring us the gift of new life. Being able to know Christ is an incredible source of joy. [“With Christ joy is constantly born anew.”]
I can’t prove this to you, either. You have to take the risk of believing in the possibility of good news so you can experience the good news. I can’t prove to you that knowing Christ will make a difference in your life. I can tell you about the difference it has made in mine.
Rachel's reflection:
Coming to know Jesus—to really know him, to know him like we know the people we are closest to—works differently for everyone. For some people, it’s a gradual process that begins in childhood or adolescence and deepens in adulthood. For me, it was not particularly gradual. Over the course of about six months I began to develop a relationship with Jesus Christ that I had never known before, and even though it is still very new, that relationship has changed my life. I now see my life divided into two parts. There was the time before I knew Christ, and there is the past few years, when I have really just begun to know him in a deeply personal way. If I had to sum up in one phrase the difference that beginning to know Christ has made in my life, it would be that I feel more alive. Through Christ I feel like I am connected to this well of amazing life that never runs dry. I feel more confident and much less afraid. I feel like I have found the one sure thing there is, the One I can absolutely always count on, the One who knows me best and accepts me just as I am, the One who is with me always. When I first began to try to talk to Jesus, it was really hard for me to do. But after a few weeks of trying to do this really intentionally, I began to feel his presence and was able to talk to him. And then I began to be able to listen to him. And now I can hear him all the time, promising me, “It’s OK. We’ll work it out.” Life makes more sense to me when I can talk to Christ about it and live it with him. Knowing Christ just feels right in a way that nothing else does. It’s the peace of knowing that in him I have all I need. It’s the feeling of finally coming home to where I’m supposed to be. Now that I know Christ a little bit, and have begun to have a sense of how he works in my life, I can see that he has always been reaching out to me, trying to draw me close to him, for my whole life.
Fr. Thom's reflection:
I can’t prove to you that knowing Christ will make a difference in your life. I can tell you about the difference it has made in mine. It comes with a confession, though. You see, I’m not really that good of a person. Some of you already know that before I was a priest, I was married, and that my wife went home to God after we were married only three and a half years. But that’s not the important part of my story today. What I want to tell you about is before I was married. I was really struggling to find my way. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life. I had a few different ideas and I wasn’t really sold on anything. I was very focused on what would make me happy and had kind of a narrow perspective about that. I really didn’t know where my life was going. And I felt some pressure to be successful and do something great or important but I didn’t think I could measure up to those expectations. And then I met Jill. And I fell in love. And it wasn’t long before we got married. But that’s just a love story, and there are lots of those. As beautiful as that can be, there’s more to the story. As our relationship grew, I really felt that we were a part of something much bigger than the two of us. Loving Jill and being loved by her made me want to be a better person. I began to have real purpose and direction in my life, and it wasn’t just about what would make me happy. The experience of real love helped me recognize that I was living for more than myself. Success in life seemed so much more achievable. I felt that Christ was present in our relationship, giving us this opportunity to do something great and be successful together. Knowing Christ in this way gave us the strength and courage we needed. And He gave me the strength and courage I needed when Jill got sick, and helped me bear the sadness of her death.
We have to look for encounters with Christ in our lives, because they can be easy to miss. And even people who have been working on this for a long time have to keep coming back to this. Over the next few weeks we want to explore with you when and how each of us may actually have experienced the Risen Lord ourselves. We’re calling this series of reflections Glimpse, because it’s all about learning to pay attention to those sometimes-fleeting moments when we experience the Risen Lord. It’s about being able to recognize Christ. We may find ourselves in different places with this at different times in our lives. As a next step, spend some time reflecting on what it means to you right now that Jesus rose from the dead.
There is so much potential here—learning to experience the Risen Lord, believing in the Resurrection, can transform our lives. Knowing Christ can make the good parts of life so much more joyful and meaningful, and that can make the hard parts of life so much more bearable. Knowing Christ means always being able to see the new life that lies hidden in every death, the new possibility that lies hidden in apparently hopeless situations. Knowing Christ means that I can have the same relationship with God that Jesus had, a relationship that makes all things new. It means I can see that relationship at work not only in the lives of people who tell me about it, but even in my own life (which could be the hardest place to see it). God wants each of us to have this gift, to experience this joy, and God wants us to help one another find it. That’s a big part of why we gather as a community each week--to learn how to recognize the presence of the Risen Lord in our lives, to find that source of joy, to help one another in this journey.
I can’t prove this to you, but I hope that being here today at least gives you a glimpse of what that joy could look like for you. I can’t prove this to you, but I can invite you to take the risk. It’s worth it.
We’re all in different places with this. Some of us aren’t sure if we believe that Jesus rose from the dead. Maybe you aren’t sure that the answer to the question of “Did Jesus rise from the dead” is really all that important, or makes that much difference in our lives one way or another. Maybe you feel like you should have all these things figured out already if you’re going to be here. If any of those kinds of questions and doubts are floating around in your head as you come here today, it’s not a problem, in fact it’s kind of normal. You definitely don’t need to have it all figured out. We’re not alone in this: so many people, even his close friends, didn’t get it for a pretty long time.
So we don’t have to have the answers figured out, but we have to ask ourselves where we are with this, this year. There’s no better day than Easter to ask: Is this real? Did this really happen? There is very definitely no empirical proof that Jesus rose from the dead. There were no cameras, there was no one there to see it happen. But if you think about it, you actually believe all kinds of things for which there is no proof, all the time. Every day even. Every relationship involves belief without proof--spouses promising their love to each other, parents trusting teachers to take care of their children, patients trusting their doctors, etc. Whether it’s beginning a new relationship, or trying to heal a relationship that’s broken, there is no way to prove that you should trust someone. You just have to take the risk of trusting, or there could be no real relationships. But if you trust, the relationship can grow.
It’s the same with believing in the Resurrection. Believing, having faith, is a different way of knowing that invites us to give up our need for proof so that we can experience a relationship. Maybe I need to suspend my disbelief, my skepticism, my usual way of seeking factual knowledge about things, like the details of the life of Jesus or teachings of the church, or how challenging life can be and how sometimes it seems like things always turn out wrong. Maybe today I can give up my need for proof of the Resurrection so I can experience a relationship with something totally new, the Risen Lord.
This first step can be a way of opening ourselves to the possibility that it really happened, that he really rose from the dead. Imagine what happened in the tomb before anyone got there. What was it like for Jesus in that dark, cold place? He was dead. And then he wasn’t, but was alive in a brand-new way. Was he surprised? Did it seem too good to be true? Did he say I barely dared to hope that this could happen--but somehow I hoped it could? As difficult as this is to believe--that this could happen to him--it challenges us to believe that it could happen for us.
Coming to believe in the Resurrection is a process. It takes time. It doesn’t have to happen for us all at once. It definitely didn’t happen all at once for the first disciples. For them, too, there was this mix of belief and unbelief, this gradual process of growth and recognition. A first step in this process is to give up the need for proof so I can open myself to the possibility of believing that the Resurrection really happened. A second step is opening myself to the possibility that the Resurrection actually means something for me.
Maybe the Resurrection seems like something that only has to with Jesus or the special group of people that he handpicked. Or maybe it seems like the Resurrection only means something to an exclusive group of people who have some special kind of connection to the Church. Maybe you feel like you’re not one of those people, and you just can’t see how this could mean anything to you personally, that it could be relevant to your life. But if you can take the first step of opening yourself to the possibility of believing that this actually happened, maybe you can also take the second step of opening yourself to the possibility of believing that the Resurrection is good news for you.
Why is the Resurrection good news for you? It is only because of the Resurrection that you and I can know Christ at all. We can know a lot about a person who died long before we were born, but we can’t know that person. If Christ hadn’t been raised from the dead, we could never know him. But Christ is Risen--that’s why it is possible for us to know him and be known by him. Ever since he came out of the tomb, he has been present to us and among us, drawing us to him and working to bring us the gift of new life. Being able to know Christ is an incredible source of joy. [“With Christ joy is constantly born anew.”]
I can’t prove this to you, either. You have to take the risk of believing in the possibility of good news so you can experience the good news. I can’t prove to you that knowing Christ will make a difference in your life. I can tell you about the difference it has made in mine.
Rachel's reflection:
Coming to know Jesus—to really know him, to know him like we know the people we are closest to—works differently for everyone. For some people, it’s a gradual process that begins in childhood or adolescence and deepens in adulthood. For me, it was not particularly gradual. Over the course of about six months I began to develop a relationship with Jesus Christ that I had never known before, and even though it is still very new, that relationship has changed my life. I now see my life divided into two parts. There was the time before I knew Christ, and there is the past few years, when I have really just begun to know him in a deeply personal way. If I had to sum up in one phrase the difference that beginning to know Christ has made in my life, it would be that I feel more alive. Through Christ I feel like I am connected to this well of amazing life that never runs dry. I feel more confident and much less afraid. I feel like I have found the one sure thing there is, the One I can absolutely always count on, the One who knows me best and accepts me just as I am, the One who is with me always. When I first began to try to talk to Jesus, it was really hard for me to do. But after a few weeks of trying to do this really intentionally, I began to feel his presence and was able to talk to him. And then I began to be able to listen to him. And now I can hear him all the time, promising me, “It’s OK. We’ll work it out.” Life makes more sense to me when I can talk to Christ about it and live it with him. Knowing Christ just feels right in a way that nothing else does. It’s the peace of knowing that in him I have all I need. It’s the feeling of finally coming home to where I’m supposed to be. Now that I know Christ a little bit, and have begun to have a sense of how he works in my life, I can see that he has always been reaching out to me, trying to draw me close to him, for my whole life.
Fr. Thom's reflection:
I can’t prove to you that knowing Christ will make a difference in your life. I can tell you about the difference it has made in mine. It comes with a confession, though. You see, I’m not really that good of a person. Some of you already know that before I was a priest, I was married, and that my wife went home to God after we were married only three and a half years. But that’s not the important part of my story today. What I want to tell you about is before I was married. I was really struggling to find my way. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life. I had a few different ideas and I wasn’t really sold on anything. I was very focused on what would make me happy and had kind of a narrow perspective about that. I really didn’t know where my life was going. And I felt some pressure to be successful and do something great or important but I didn’t think I could measure up to those expectations. And then I met Jill. And I fell in love. And it wasn’t long before we got married. But that’s just a love story, and there are lots of those. As beautiful as that can be, there’s more to the story. As our relationship grew, I really felt that we were a part of something much bigger than the two of us. Loving Jill and being loved by her made me want to be a better person. I began to have real purpose and direction in my life, and it wasn’t just about what would make me happy. The experience of real love helped me recognize that I was living for more than myself. Success in life seemed so much more achievable. I felt that Christ was present in our relationship, giving us this opportunity to do something great and be successful together. Knowing Christ in this way gave us the strength and courage we needed. And He gave me the strength and courage I needed when Jill got sick, and helped me bear the sadness of her death.
We have to look for encounters with Christ in our lives, because they can be easy to miss. And even people who have been working on this for a long time have to keep coming back to this. Over the next few weeks we want to explore with you when and how each of us may actually have experienced the Risen Lord ourselves. We’re calling this series of reflections Glimpse, because it’s all about learning to pay attention to those sometimes-fleeting moments when we experience the Risen Lord. It’s about being able to recognize Christ. We may find ourselves in different places with this at different times in our lives. As a next step, spend some time reflecting on what it means to you right now that Jesus rose from the dead.
There is so much potential here—learning to experience the Risen Lord, believing in the Resurrection, can transform our lives. Knowing Christ can make the good parts of life so much more joyful and meaningful, and that can make the hard parts of life so much more bearable. Knowing Christ means always being able to see the new life that lies hidden in every death, the new possibility that lies hidden in apparently hopeless situations. Knowing Christ means that I can have the same relationship with God that Jesus had, a relationship that makes all things new. It means I can see that relationship at work not only in the lives of people who tell me about it, but even in my own life (which could be the hardest place to see it). God wants each of us to have this gift, to experience this joy, and God wants us to help one another find it. That’s a big part of why we gather as a community each week--to learn how to recognize the presence of the Risen Lord in our lives, to find that source of joy, to help one another in this journey.
I can’t prove this to you, but I hope that being here today at least gives you a glimpse of what that joy could look like for you. I can’t prove this to you, but I can invite you to take the risk. It’s worth it.
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