“Do not be afraid! I know that you are seeking Jesus the crucified. He is not here, for he has been raised just as he said.”

          Three days ago, as the Lord ordained as His first priests the men who are today called to be the witnesses of His Resurrection, He told them that, “I have called you friends, because you have understood everything that I have done in your midst.” The Mass of Easter Sunday, which completes the Church’s three days of living through the most monumentous events of world history and seeing the Lord at work in our midst, is full of ironies: We come rejoicing to encounter the Risen Lord, yet are told, “He is not here.” We will have to wait until next Sunday to hear of His appearance to the Eleven Apostles. The empty tomb is a sign of joy, but it is also a disturbing sign, because of the majestic and portentous signs that attend the Resurrection, coupled with the confusion which Mary Magdalene finds the empty tomb and mourns, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.”

          We see here the great contradiction that the disciples seem not to have understood all that the Lord has done in their midst. We heard on Palm Sunday that the Jewish authorities remembered the Lord’s words that He would rise on the third day, and asked Pilate for the guard that today is shaken with fear and becomes like dead men. But his own disciples, overwhelmed with grief at the death of their lord, master, and friend, have forgotten.

          Thus, it is with good reason that the angel tells the faithful women, “Be not afraid!”, the same greeting Christ Himself will give the Eleven when He appears to them for the first time this Easter Sunday. Fear has also been our theme throughout Lent, confronting the fears that keep us from the Lord. Through His messenger, the Lord tells them that He understands what they are going through, He understands and has redeemed their fears: “Do not be afraid! I know that you are seeking Jesus the crucified. He is not here, for he has been raised just as he said.” It is not “Jesus, who was crucified,” but “Jesus, the crucified.” Though He is raised from the dead, He is forever The Crucified, because his death continues to reach out and touch every man and woman in every age with the promise of forgiveness of sins.

          But Jesus the Crucified is the same Jesus raised from the dead. He is and remains alive, and in our midst. His Resurrection reveals the full meaning of the saving death we solemnly commemorated on Good Friday. Dying on the cross, dying in the humanity He shares with us, He took our humanity to His divine workshop, and now, risen from the dead, He gives back to us that same humanity redeemed and made capable of eternal salvation.

          Of the different fears we saw our Lord healing during the Sundays of Lent, surely the most surprising was the fear of Heaven. We said that sin expresses a fear of Heaven in that contained in every sin is a fear of letting go of something we treasure in this life. “If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that He might take something away from us? Are we not perhaps afraid to give up something significant, something unique, something that makes life so beautiful?”

          Now, celebrating the Lord’s Resurrection, we can see that every time that He seems to take something away, every time He asks for a sacrifice from us with the demands of His law, He gives us back something far greater than whatever we would seem to have lost. This is the sense in which we, like the Apostles, are His friends because we have understood everything that He has done in our midst. Immersed in the mystery of Christ’s life, not rejecting His demands to live in a manner worthy of our lofty calling as Christians, we come to understand on a deeper level than we first could have imagined all that He has been doing in our midst, even when His action in our life seems so mysterious and difficult to comprehend.

          We heard at the Easter Vigil, “We know that our old self was crucified with him, … that we might no longer be in slavery to sin. … If, then, we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.” Now the full meaning of the Crucifixion is revealed, and the meaning of our Lord’s cry on Palm Sunday after entering Jerusalem, “Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the ruler of this world be cast out; and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.”

          To be drawn to Him in this new life He offers today, we must pass by way of His Cross. Thus St. Paul tells us, “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.” “You have died” – what a strange word for Easter Sunday! Paul is writing to Christian converts who have made big changes in their lives to follow the Lord, who have died in their death to self in leaving sinful ways behind.

          To be “hidden with Christ in God.” This is the goal of our lives. To be absorbed in the mystery of His love, and even to become one with Him. To be a Christian is to see everything in the light of the mystery of Christ. Not just a passing or abstract recognition that God is in some way important, but a true confession that He alone can bring ultimate meaning and hope to this life, which is but a passing instant of the great eternity that can be yours if your life is also hidden in His.

          Do not be afraid! Do not be afraid to make faith in Jesus, crucified and risen from the dead, the defining feature of your life. Do not be afraid to sacrifice anything that would keep you from him. If you let Christ into your life, you lose nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great.” “Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing that really matters away, and he gives you everything” that really does, an eternal inheritance you can possess even now, because when your life is hidden in his, you too can hope to appear with Him in glory, unto the ages of ages. Amen.

The Rev. Royce V. Gregerson

Parish Church of Our Lady of Good Hope, Fort Wayne

Easter Sunday of the Resurrection, A.D. MMXXVI