2nd Sunday of Easter A

The temptation facing anyone looking for the earliest New Testament account of the Resurrection is to go straight to the Gospels. But this would be a mistake. In fact the oldest accounts of Easter are found, not in Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, but in St Paul. Some of his letters pre-date even the earliest parts of the Gospels by a generation and in his first letter to the Corinthians, written about twenty years after the events of Holy Week and Easter, we have the earliest account of those crucial days. And I would like to read it to you. It’s in chapter fifteen and this is what it says: Well then, in the first place, I taught you what I had been taught myself, namely that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; that he was buried; and that he was raised to life on the third day according to the Scriptures; that he appeared first to Cephas and secondly to the twelve. Next he appeared to five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still alive, although some have died; then he appeared to James, and then to all the apostles; and last of all he appeared to me.

So why am I reading this today? Well, the first thing is to help us see that St Paul’s version of events is very different from what we read in the Gospels these weeks. The Gospels make no mention of any appearance to James or to any group of five hundred who saw the Risen Jesus and Paul makes no reference whatsoever to Mary Magdalen, to Peter and John running to the tomb, to the apostles in the upper room or to the appearances of Jesus in Galilee, found in Mark and John. So why is this and what are we to make of these apparent inconsistences? Well, I hope the answer to that will help us understand today’s story better.

Essentially, the stories are different because they are written at different times for different reasons. Paul is writing at a time when there are many people still alive who had lived through those early days and so were able to give a personal acount of what had happened. By the time the Gospels are written, however, especially John’s Gospel, from which the story of Thomas is taken, these early eye-witnesses were long dead. And it’s against this background of second, third or even fourth generation Christians who have no longer any direct contact with the very early Church that we have to hear those words of Jesus to Thomas; You believe because you can see. Happy are those who have not seen and yet believe. The Gospels, unlike Paul, are not a first-hand account of the original event. They are interpretations of that event written to meet the needs of later generations. And, of course, we are included in that. We are those later generations and the question faced by those who came after the beginning are the same ones we face today. How do we know that Jesus is risen? Where do we meet him? Paul met him outside Damascus. Those five hundred couldn’t all be imaging things given that they all saw him at the same time. But what about us? Where do we see him? And to answer that question we have to turn to the first reading and to a passage from St Luke we will hear next Sunday.

The passage from Luke, of course, is the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaeus. And in this story, written possibly as late as the year 80 AD, we have not so much a real historical event as a parable, an answer to the question about where we and others down through the ages will meet the Risen Jesus. And it is in the Scriptures and in the Breaking of Bread. In the story, Jesus opens up the minds of the two disciples to understand these Scriptures and ends by revealing himself to them in the Breaking of Bread. And what is this opening up of the Scriptures and what is this Breaking of Bread but the Mass, with its Liturgy of the Word and its Liturgy of the Eucharist.

But we should not think that the Mass and the Eucharist are only about doing what we do here on a Sunday. And that is where today’s first reading comes in. When St Luke tells us that the faithful all lived together and owned everything in common; that they sold their goods and possessions and shared out the proceeds according to what each one needed; that is the Eucharist. The Eucharist, is not about coming to Church and then going away again an hour or so later. Mass and the Eucharist, properly understood, are about a whole new way of living which makes the Risen Jesus present in the midst of the world. The weekly gathering at Mass is merely the centre of a great wheel, the spokes of which reach out to the world. When St John has Thomas touch Jesus’ hands and feet he is telling us and all future generations that this Risen Jesus is real. He is not a ghost. And it’s the job of those who follow Jesus to make him real for the world in which they live at any given moment in history. And we do this by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, reaching out to those in need, sharing what we have with others, not just as individuals, but as parish community’s all over the world living out that ideal as best we can in the circimstances we find ourselves in.

And how the men and women of our time need that kind of witness. Millions of them have no idea who Jesus is. The idea that he is Risen, alive and present in the world means absolutely nothing to them. And yet all it would take to change this is communities of men and women like ourselves who really believed in the Gospel and, despite our human failings, which are many, stood out in society for our commitment to the poor in all their shapes and forms. Ghandi famously said that he liked our Christ but didn’t think much of our Christians. And some of us are old enough to remember how that great champion of atheism, Malcolm Muggeridge, was converted to Christ and to God by the example of Mother Teresa in Calcutta.

That’s how we meet him. Led by his Spirit, we learn to live according to his teaching. We love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, stop judging others, share our food gladly as people did in that first reading, and before you can say Pontius Pilate, Jesus is right there among us.

BIDDING PRAYERS

St Luke tells us in the first reading today that the very first Christians went to the Temple every day but met in their houses for the breaking of bread. Very quickly, however, these two things came together in one place to form the Mass as we know it, with the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. And so we pray today for a deep sense of the fact that what we do each week here in this church has been done by people before us for two thousand years……………...……Lord hear us

Sadly, the Mass has, at times throughout history, been reduced to an action to be performed out of obligation. Too often, over the years, we have lost sight of what it means in terms of the way we live our lives. And so, as we hear St Luke’s account of how the first Christians owned everything they had in common and shared their food gladly and generously with those who were in need, we ask God to stir in us a deep awareness of the profound implications of what we are doing …………..Lord hear us

In a globalized world, the Eucharist, too, takes on global proportions. And so we ask God to stir in us a deep sense of our connection, through the Eucharist, with every man, woman and child on the face of the earth. We ask him to lead us beyond the xenophobia and racial prejudice which bedevils us as a country and to replace it with the openness and generosity the Word demands and the Eucharist both symbolizes and makes present wherever it is celebrated………..Lord hear us

Three times in today’s Gospel, Jesus greets his disciples with the words, ‘Peace be with you.’ The peace he speaks of is a peace the world cannot give. It is not the result of political negotiation or military victory over an enemy. It the peace that comes from meeting the Risen Jesus and being changed by the experience. At the heart of it lies conversion to the new way of living Jesus speaks of and we pray that the world of the third millennium will come to know that peace………………………Lord hear us

In Thomas, we can see a symbol of today’s world. He demands physical, tangible evidence. But there are realities that cannot be known in this way. Science teaches us a great deal, but so does poetry, art and mysticism, opening us up to realities that cannot be measured or tested in a laboratory. Like faith, hope and love, they cannot be seen until we choose to see them or believed until we choose to believe them. And so we ask God , through his Spirit working in history, to open the modern world up to the truth of Easter………………….Lord hear us

St John tells us today that there were many other signs that Jesus worked which are not recorded in the book he has written. The story of Jesus’ presence and action in the world is never-ending and continues today in the life of each one of us. And so we pray for the grace to recognize this happening until the life of each one of us becomes itself a Gospel which helps and enables others to meet and recognize the Risen Jesus in the midst of their own experience………………….Lord hear us