I Will Run Toward What Christ Makes Possible
Easter Sunday of the Resurrection
Maybe your experiences in life have been different than mine, but I have never seen a person resurrect from the dead. The people I know who have died stay dead; their bodies are there in the ground where we left them, and my expectation is that those I know who will die someday will also stay dead. Their bodies will stay there in the ground where we leave them as well; my expectation is that I won’t see anyone I know resurrect from the dead any time soon.
But what if someone did resurrect from the dead? Imagine. Someone you know who has died and who you left there buried in the ground returns to you, shows up one day, walking around again, talking, their body no longer in the ground. What might be our experience of resurrection? How would we react to seeing someone there in front of us, walking around and talking, someone who we know has died, whose body we have left buried in the ground?
My guess is that we would first ask ourselves a question: Is this true? Is the person I know who has died now here in front of me, walking around and talking, or is my imagination running wild? Is someone trying to deceive me? Can I trust my senses? Do my eyes really see what I think they see? My ears really hear what I think they hear? We would want knowledge, I think, certainty, if we saw someone we know who has died suddenly there in front of us walking around and talking. We would want a guarantee that no one is deceiving us, a guarantee that we can trust our senses.
Maybe another question would follow: How is this possible? My whole life people have died, and we have buried them and left them in the ground and that is where they have stayed and now someone we left buried in the ground is standing here in front of me and what I want is an explanation. Tell me how this is possible. Find me the book I need to understand what has happened; get me an expert; give me an account of the miracle. You tell me how this is possible and then I will say that this is true. I need to understand what is happening here; help my understanding.
Those are good questions to ask. Truth matters. Understanding matters. If someone did seem to resurrect from the dead, someone we left there in the ground now suddenly in front of us walking around and talking, we would do well to be concerned with matters of truth and understanding. Is this true? How is this possible? Give me certainty; give me knowledge.
There is a third question, a more important question, for us to ask, and it is a question given to us by the example of the disciples in the Gospel as they grapple with the experience of resurrection from the dead: Do I want this to be true? Do I want this to be possible? What is my desire? What do I care about most? What matters to me? Do I want to live in a world where my senses, my experience of reality, fix the limit of what is possible in my life, or do I want to live in a world where mystery is real? Do I want I want to live in a world where the horizons of what is possible in life are fixed by my own ability to understand what is happening, or do I want to live in a world where things happen that astound me, overwhelm me, and far surpass my ability to make sense of what is happening?
Peter and the disciple whom Christ loved run toward a reality they do not understand. Their running tells us something about their desires; about what they want; about what matters to them. These two men want to live in a world in which God is alive and at work. These two men desire to live in a world in which the limits and horizons of the possible are fixed by God, and not by their own ability to understand and make sense of reality. These two men run toward an empty tomb because deep within their hearts is a yearning to see what God has done. There is a hope in them that God has done something new, something different, something that will forever alter the limits and horizons of the possible.
Then the other disciple also went in,
the one who had arrived at the tomb first,
and he saw and believed.
For they did not yet understand the Scripture
that he had to rise from the dead.
Belief, and not understanding. There is the experience of resurrection for the disciples. We live in a world in which the verb ‘to believe’ has been reduced to an act of the intellect. I believe what my senses tell me. I believe what my mind can understand. Sometimes I believe what another person tells me, something I haven’t experienced or don’t quite understand, but there is trust between us. Faith too, for us, is something we do with our intellect. I go to worship on Easter Sunday because I know I am supposed to go worship God on Easter. I know I am supposed to go to worship on Easter Sunday because I know what my faith demands of me. I act on what I know; my actions follow from my understanding, and I have read all the books and learned all the rules and so now I am here, and I am worshiping God on Easter Sunday.
Here is a question for you: Did you run here this morning? To discover what God might have done? The Resurrection of Christ from the dead is an event in history; it happened, whether it matters to you or not. But do you care that Christ resurrected from the dead? Is there a yearning in your heart for God to astound you and overwhelm you and expand for you the limits and horizons of the possible in your life? What do you want? What do you desire? We can go deeper. What do you want to want? Do you pray for desires you do not have but want to have? What do you care about the most? What matters to you? Are you trapped within the vicious cycle of an ordinary, neutered, mundane existence where the limits and horizons of the possible are fixed by what you see on the news or hear people talk about on the streets? You know what happens to us when we get caught up in that kind of a vicious cycle of the ordinary? We tend to become vicious people. To live in a world whose limits and horizons are fixed by our senses or our understanding is to live in a cold, sterile, disenchanted world. We fight over the scraps that nature gives us; we get anxious and angry and envious and resentful. We become vicious people.
We don’t have to live in that kind of world, and we don’t have to live those kinds of lives. But living in a different world and living a different kind of life won’t happen unless we want to believe in the Resurrection of Christ from the dead. We have to want Christ to have risen from the dead; truth and understanding are not enough for us because we are creatures of desire and volition and free will. We are creatures who believe, and who do not only understand.
St. Augustine teaches us that our free will—grounded in the desires of our heart and the choices that we make—closes the gap between what we cannot understand and the work that God has done. He says that ‘belief’ is what we call a choice made for God that is grounded in desire. To believe in God is to possess a desire, a yearning deep within you, for something more than what you experience with your senses or understand with your mind. No belief in God is authentic, real, genuine, without the desires of the human heart driving us toward the reality of the Resurrection. The Resurrection of Christ from the dead is an event in history; it happened. But the Resurrection of Christ from the dead only matters to us if we want it to matter to us. We need belief at the root of our faith, not understanding.
The reality of the Resurrection makes a different kind of world and a different kind of life possible, for me and for you. That is what I want. My heart desires it. That is what I care about and that is what matters the most to me, that I live in a world where the Resurrection of Christ makes all things possible. What about you? What do you want?
For what it is worth, I think we need to be there with Peter and the beloved disciple, running toward what God makes possible for us on Easter morning.
Homily preached on Sunday, March 31st, at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.