Easter Evening Year A.B.C

• Isaiah 25: 6-9
• The prophet imagines a “feast.” which is so vast and so abundant it is attended by all humankind. This feast celebrates the defeat of all the experiences that diminish the universal human condition– ignorance and death. At that feast, the Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces….” The God for whom we wait will be the cause for gladness and rejoicing.

• Psalm 114 The psalmist begins with an allusion that God’s people immediately recognize: God’s act of deliverance par excellence– :When Israel went forth from Egypt…..” Now a free people they find a new home, a “sanctuary.” God’s action was unexpected, unimaginable, chaotic and disruptive. The intention of “the God of Jacob” expands to the entire “earth.” This is the God who can change rock into life-giving “pool of water.”

• I Corinthians 5: 6b-8 Paul is dealing, again , with various questions of the Christian identity, including the values of the church within the context of society. He calls upon Christians in Corinth to be a new “lump” of unleavened bread. Christians have a new festival to celebrate, because “Christ, our Paschal lamb, has been sacrificed….” Christians should celebrate this new festival “not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

• Luke 24: 13-49 With sophisticated story-telling skills, the writer of Luke’s gospel tells a unique story of the events on the evening of the day the empty tomb had been discovered. After the chaos and violence of the last seventy-two hours– the arrest and execution of Jesus and the complete collapse of personal relationships and the human institutions charged with perpetuating justice– two disciples are getting out of Jerusalem on that Sunday evening. On their trip to a village called Emmaus, Jesus joins them, but they do not recognize him. The “stranger” asks what they are talking about. His question provides the opportunity to summarize Luke’s version of all that has happened. They say: “Jesus… a prophet mighty in deed and word…” who was “handed over to be condemned to death and crucified….” They continue, this morning, some of the women in our group went to the tomb where the body of Jesus had been placed, and he was gone! The women also reported that angels had told them “he is alive!” When others went to the tomb, they, too, found the tomb empty, but “did not see him.” The stranger speaks. “Oh how foolish you are….” Do you not know what “the prophets have declared!” The prophets clearly explained how it would be “necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory.” Starting with Moses and going through the prophets, the stranger showed them the fate of the Messiah. By now, the two disciples and the stranger were getting close to Emmaus and the disciples wanted to hear more from the stranger, so they insisted he stay with them, because “the day is now nearly over.” He accepted their invitation. At supper, the stranger “took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them, (which is an exact paraphrase of the words Jesus said on Thursday evening [22:19]). “[T]hen their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.” Their immediate reaction is to return to Jerusalem to find “the eleven and their companions.” When they are together, they announce. “The Lord has risen indeed….” Then they recount their encounter with the stranger. Among the followers in Jerusalem, now Jesus appears among them. He greets them, “Peace be with you,” but they are startled and afraid. They thought they were seeing a “ghost.” Jesus shows them the scars on his hands and feet and invites them to touch them to confirm that he is not a ghost. He asks for something to eat, (which is hardly a request a ghost would make). They offer him something from their supper table, a piece of broiled fish. Once again, Jesus reviews “the Law of Moses, the prophets and the psalms” regarding the fate of the Messiah so “that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem,” and “their minds are opened.” Now comes the surprise significance: because “you are witnesses of these things…” “I am sending upon you what my Father promised….” Jesus them tells them to remain in Jerusalem “until you have been clothed with power from on high.” Why did Jesus suffer? To expose the nature and scope of God’s love. How must he suffer? As the Law, prophets and psalms said the Messiah would suffer. What is the ultimate purpose of all these things? To create, inspire and empower human beings to witness to Gods’ love discovered in Jesus, that is, the church.

The Triduum–the seventy-two hours from sunset Thursday until sunset Sunday– begins with a meal and ends with a meal; begins with a familiar gesture (breaking bread) that Jesus foretells will soon have a new meaning and by Sunday evening is charged with a new understanding of the power of love and forgiveness; begins with cryptic suggestion of what must happen and concludes with an extraordinary full explanation of what has happened, why it happened and the importance of what happened for all people.

Luke’s gospel moves quickly to its purposeful conclusion: women and men who have personally experienced the power of love and forgiveness are now the authentic witnesses to others, in “word and deed” we should say. Ellen Charry includes an essay by Cornelius Plantinga, Jr in Inquiring after God: Classic and Contemporary Readings, (p. 244 ff). The Dean of the Chapel at Calvin College writes: “The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ occupy the center of human history, according to Christians….” Remarkably, God elects to salvage human beings by recruiting other human beings to preach Christ to them — other human beings who are just as damaged and foolish as their audience.”

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