The Feast of the Resurrection: Easter, Year A

Acts 10: 34 – 43
Psalm 118: 1 – 2, 14 – 24
Colossians 3: 1 – 4
Matthew 28: 1 - 10

A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois, on Sunday, April 24, 2011.

“CHRIST IS VICTOR!”

(Homily texts: Matthew 28: 1 – 10 and Colossians 3: 1 - 4)

“For you have died, and your life has been hid with Christ in God,” St. Paul writes to the early Church in the city of Colossae.

Ever think about what it means to be “hidden with Christ in God”?

This morning, we remember the empty tomb, with its massive stone rolled away. We remember the greeting of the angel to the women who had come to that tomb, as he said, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay….”

The empty tomb stands as mute testimony to Jesus’ victory over death. He emerges victorious over all the powers that seek to destroy: sin and death.
But what does Jesus’ victory mean, and how does His victory apply to your life and to mine?

The meaning of Christ’s victory, and its importance to us, is the topic of this homily.

Before we explore these two questions, let’s recall that, throughout this Holy Week, we’ve been focusing a little on the matter of the incarnation. That word denotes the reality that Jesus Christ came among us as one of us as fully divine and yet, fully human. He immersed Himself in our humanity, even to the point of a shameful death on a cross, as we noted earlier on.

Jesus Christ’s humanity is an essential ingredient in His ability to redeem us from sin and from the power of the evil one.

Theologians will say that, in order to save us, God had to assume our humanity to do so. The image I used during the Good Friday homily was that of the Old Testament idea of a person who ransomed a relative. Oftentimes, when a relative was either sold into slavery because of debts, or who was captured during wartime, the person who was the redeemer, who acted to redeem the person who was enslaved, had to personally go and pay the ransom, in order to obtain the freedom of the enslaved person.

By taking on our humanity, Jesus Christ shows us just how valuable we human beings are. Enslaved by sin, Jesus Christ comes and pays the price that frees us from our sin and from our bondage. He comes in person to pay that price.

Christ is Victor!

But there is another way in which Jesus Christ’s identity as fully human, yet fully divine, operates to secure us – to hide us (St. Paul’s image from Colossians) with Him in God:

Looking at it this way, we see that as Christ comes, His humanity seems to cloak (at least to some degree) His divinity. To Satan – our ancient enemy – Jesus the Christ looks just like another vulnerable human being, another person to claim as a slave forever. But Jesus Christ’s divinity conquers the power of the evil one to snatch us away from God. It is as if God tricks the ancient trickster (Satan) at Satan’s old game. By over-reaching, Satan is defeated by his own appetites, and we are freed from the power he wields over sin and death.

You may be wondering where this image comes from, of Jesus Christ as the “bait” for Satan, sort of like a fish hook which snares the catch just as the catch’s own desires prompt it to go for the baited hook. This image comes from one of the ancient Church Fathers, St. Gregory of Nyssa (c.330 – c. 395 AD).

If then Jesus Christ has beaten Satan at Satan’s own game, then we, too, are also freed from that same game.

We can claim Jesus Christ’s victory as our own. We can seek God’s help to put away the effects of sin and death, which can often be seen in things like despair, hopelessness, and a sense of powerlessness over the things that come into our lives.

For, you see, the effects of the resurrection are ours, here and now. The eternal life we will share with God in Christ is already present with us, now.

We are hidden with Christ in God, a here-and-now reality which will extend into eternity.

Because we are redeemed, we can be a joyful people, joyfulness being a state which is different than being happy. Joyful people are joyful because of the great blessings they sense are theirs, blessings such as being hidden with Christ in God. By contrast, being happy is often dependent on the things that happen to us, in other words, by the external events that come our way. Joy is not dependent on externals, but is dependent on the internal realities of Christ’s victory, in which we share, and His abiding presence in our lives.

Christ is Victor, and we claim the blessings of His victory by faith.

Thanks be to God.

AMEN.

Year A, The Great Vigil of Easter

Genesis 1: 1 – 2: 2Exodus 14: 10 – 15: 1
Romans 6: 3 – 11
Matthew 28: 1 – 10
A homily by: Fr. Gene Tucker
Given at: Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois; Saturday, April 23, 2011

“BOUNDED ON ALL SIDES BY THE WATER”

(Homily texts: Exodus 14: 10 – 15: 1 and Romans 6: 3 – 11)

Ever think about the nature of water?

Of course, it’s necessary for life to exist. Our human bodies, we are told, are mostly made up of water.

But water can also be the agent of death. It certainly was for the ancient Egyptian army who dared to venture into the dry space between the walls of water in the Red Sea as they pursued the children of Israel.

St. Paul seems to capture both aspects of the power of water. In Romans chapter six, he says, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” And just to make sure we get the point, he continues: “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”

Paul seems to be outlining a process much like the one that took place at the Red Sea: There, the ancient Israelites passed through the waters to new life on the other side. We, too, pass through the waters of baptism, defying their life-killing powers, only to emerge on the other side as new creatures in God.

You’ve heard me say on many occasions before that the early Church lived this out dramatically in the way in which converts were baptized: After a three year period of preparation for baptism (called the Catechumenate), those to be baptized entered the waters unclothed , and were completely immersed in the river, stream or pond. They then emerged from the waters and exited by another way, and were clothed in white garments, signifying their new purity in Christ.

These threads all come together during the Easter Vigil. In the ancient Church, the Vigil lasted all night, until the rising of the sun on Easter Sunday morning.

Israel’s deliverance at the Red Sea was recalled.

Christ as the Passover Lamb, the one who was sacrificed on the Cross at the great festival of Passover, the one of whom not a bone was to be broken, just as God had instructed the ancient Israelites to do whenever they observed the Passover meal, is remembered.

“Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us,” we say in our Eucharistic liturgy. For Christ’s blood acts as protection from the powers of death, just as the Passover lamb’s blood, smeared on the lintels and the door posts of the Israelites’ homes in ancient Egypt, stayed the hand of the angel of death.

So we are bounded by water on all sides, yet we live.

Having come through the waters, we find ourselves, as did the ancient Israelites and the early Church’s baptismal candidates, in a new place, a new land. We are citizens of a new kingdom, and can never go back to the life – or the place – where we were before.

Sometimes, it’s important for us to remember that we are citizens of a new kingdom, the kingdom of God. We have been redeemed from the powers of sin and death, ransomed by the blood of the lamb, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

As citizens of this new kingdom, we offer ourselves thankfully to Him who came to save us, to redeem us, recognizing that the Lord Jesus Christ has led the way into the waters of baptism, setting them aside for holy purposes for all who come to Him in faith, for He has also entered the veil of death, but lives forevermore.

Thanks be to God!

AMEN.

The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday, Year A

Matthew 21: 1 - 11
Psalm 22: 1 - 11
Isaiah 50: 4 – 9a
Philippians 2: 5 – 11
Matthew 26: 14 – 27: 66

A homily by: Fr. Gene Tucker
Given at: Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois; Sunday, April 17, 2011

“SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE INCARNATION”

Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength….” (Mark 12: 30)

Let’s enter this Holy Week by reflecting a little bit on the Incarnation. Put another way, what we are about to consider is the reality that Jesus Christ came among us to be one of us, to be fully human in every way. He took on our flesh and our humanity, to put it plainly.

You are I are incarnate beings. That is to say, we have bodies, minds, hearts and souls. Jesus addresses this reality in His command about how we are to love God, the one given above.

Put another way, we are a “package deal”: body, mind and spirit. The ancient Hebrews recognized the truth of our integrated being. By contrast, the ancient Greeks often separated the spiritual from the physical.

We cannot separate one aspect of our being from another. We cannot separate our physical reality or wellbeing from our spiritual or our mental wellbeing. What affects one area of our existence also affects others. Medical science has come to recognize the truth of this statement.

So what is beneficial in one area, also serves as a blessing in another area. This is one reason why we come to worship together on Sunday mornings, and at other times. We know that nourishing our souls can bring peace, comfort and strength with which to meet the challenges of everyday living as residents of the physical world in which we live.

Likewise, what is harmful in one area, also carries with it the potential for harm in other areas. An example of this would be the use of illicit drugs, which destroy the body, and which wear down our minds and our souls. Separation from God, whether real or perceived, can result. Often we call such physical acts “sin”. Sin is that spiritual condition in which we separate ourselves from God’s righteousness, and choose to go our own way, living our lives not according to God’s righteousness, but according to the desires of the mind and the body.

Recall with me that the account of the temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden began with an appeal to eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree which was in the center of the garden. A physical act followed (Eve, and then Adam, both ate of the fruit), and as a consequence, both were separated from God by their actions, and there were repercussions.

It is to deliver us from this condition that Jesus Christ came to be fully human, yet fully divine.

There are several reflections that we can make about Jesus Christ’s presence as the Incarnate One. In no particular order, here are some conclusions we can come to about Jesus Christ’s work and redeeming sacrifice on the Cross:

He demonstrates victory: Jesus Christ as Lord brings with Him a string of victories, most of them having to do with some physical aspect of His existence as a genuine human being.

Over temptation: For one thing, He defeats Satan when He is offered physical temptations. (See Matthew 4: 1 – 11.) Satan appeals to his hunger (notice how remarkably similar this temptation is to the one offered to Adam and Eve!), to physical comfort and safety, and to power. This repudiation of physical temptation marks the Lord’s first victory over sin and death.

By being a servant: Our Lord shows the servant-leader aspect of His ministry by submitting to John the Baptist’s baptism. (See Matthew 3: 13 – 17.) By physically going down into the water, Jesus demonstrates clearly that He has come not only as Lord, but in submission to the will of the Father. A little later on, Jesus girds Himself and washes the feet of His disciples on Maundy Thursday (see John 13: 1 – 20). By this physical act, the Lord takes up the role of a servant/slave to do a menial task reserved for the lowest rungs of society. By going to the Cross, the Lord descends to the lowest state that the ancient world knew, that of being crucified as a common criminal among two other common criminals. St. Paul acknowledges the reality of the depth of this descent into our human condition as we read his statement in Philippians 2: 6a – 7, saying “….(He) emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.”

Through His mastery of the physical world: The purpose of Jesus’ miracles is to show His power over the created order. Certainly in John’s gospel account, this is the clear reason for the physical demonstration of power and authority that Jesus Christ possesses as we see the blind healed, the five loaves multiplied so that 5,000 can be fed, the storm is calmed, the lame walk, and the dead are raised to life again.

By conquering the greatest and final enemy, death: The Lord demonstrates His power over our greatest and final enemy, which is death. He does so by raising Jairus’ daughter (see Mark 5: 22 – 43), and by the raising of Lazarus (see John 11: 1 – 45, which we heard on Sunday, April 10th). Having demonstrated His power over death, He then rises from the grave on Easter Sunday, bringing with Him is full humanity intact. In the resurrection appearances which follow, the Lord shows that He remains fully human, with a physical body which can be touched (see Luke 24: 39 and John 20: 27), and which could eat food (see Luke 24: 41). It is with this physical body that the Lord ascends into heaven forty days after Easter, and with which He will return again in power and great glory.

It is to redeem us, to reclaim us, that Jesus Christ comes among us. In order to reclaim us, our Lord must assume our humanity to the full. The image that comes to mind here is that the Lord “gets in the trenches with us” in order to pull us up out of the trench. He does not stand on the top of the trench and show us the way out, as if we could accomplish that task ourselves.

By coming among us to fully embrace our humanity, yes, even to experience sorrow, loss, pain and rejection, the Lord Jesus Christ makes our humanity whole. By His physical suffering and death, He shows us the depth of His divine love. He shows us just how special we are in God’s estimation.

This understanding, that God cared enough for us to take the initiative to come among us as a real human being is one of the unique markers of the Christian faith. God has acted in the person of Jesus Christ, who comes, not as a disembodied spirit, but as a man. He shows us by deeds and actions that were seen by those who were eyewitnesses of the miraculous acts and deeds of power that He did that God was with Him.

We today are also eyewitnesses of the power of God to save and redeem us through the person and work of Jesus Christ. We witness changed lives as He takes up residence in our hearts, and lives are changed. Addictions are conquered, and new life begins. Old, destructive habits yield to the power of God, and are gone forever. Temptations are defeated, and lives begin to show the stamp of God’s likeness.

The Incarnation is forever!

Thanks be to God.

AMEN.

5 Lent, Year A

Ezekiel 37: 1 – 14
Psalm 130
Romans 8: 6 – 11
John 11: 1 – 45

A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois, on Sunday, April 10, 2011.

“CHANGED LIVES”
(Homily text: John 11: 1 – 45)

“Your brother will rise again,” Jesus said to Martha. “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day,” she said in reply.

Sometimes, I get a real kick out of the ads that can be seen on cable TV. For example, this past week, I saw one on one of the news channels on cable which was advertising a copy of the ring that Prince Andrew gave to Kate Middleton in advance of their wedding. Listening carefully, I noticed that this ring (which cost $19.90, but whose purchase was limited to “one per household”, by the way) promised to have all the luster and beauty of the real one.

As I listened, I realized that one of the enticements that was being use to promote the buying of this ring was that it intended to connect the buyer to the royal wedding which is coming up in a few weeks.

Of course, the real ring and the real wedding are the stuff of dreams….marrying a future king and living in a palace belong in fairy tales. They happen to special people in far-off places. These things don’t happen to ordinary people like you and me.

I think that’s the gist of Martha’s response to Jesus.

As He says to her, “Your brother will rise again,” she says, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Put another way, she seems to be saying, “My brother is dead, and I won’t see him again until the last day.” Martha seems to acknowledge a reality – the resurrection of God’s people – but only in some far-off time and place. Certainly, such a reality is not the stuff of ordinary peoples’ lives such as hers, and it certainly isn’t the stuff of a time and circumstance such as hers. At least not as far as she is able to understand and experience at that moment.

All of that is about to change. Martha’s life will change forever. So will her sister Mary’s. So will her brother Lazarus’. And so will yours and mine.

Turning back to the text for a moment, we see that, following this interchange, Jesus presses His point. He says, “I am the resurrection and the life, he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?

Again, Martha indicates that this reality can’t possibly be one that she will experience in the here-and-the-now. She says in response, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world.”

Let’s pause for just a moment and reflect on the statement that Jesus has just made, that one which goes like this: “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.” At first glance, it looks like one of those statements that we often encounter in John’s gospel account. They don’t seem to make any sense. How can a person live, even though they die?

Jesus seems to be affirming the reality of physical death. Martha, who is the first one to have heard this statement, was squarely in the middle of that reality, for her brother had died.

Yet Jesus says that Lazarus, and all of us who believe, will never die.

In the midst of death, then, there is to be life, life which lasts forevermore.

Maybe that’s Jesus’ point.

I don’t know about you, but I need proof that Jesus’ statement is true, for His statement says that – in essence – that the power of life is stronger than the power of death.

For you and me, death is the ultimate enemy.

That ultimate enemy, death, is about to meet the more powerful, creative force, life.

Or, more properly, the One who has the power over death and the power to create life. That One is Jesus Christ.

Return with me to John, chapter one and verse one, which reads, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men….” (italics mine)

Here, Jesus Christ’s creative power over life is affirmed. He is the One by whom all things were made, the One who is life.

This theoretical reality is about to become physical reality.

“Lazarus, come out,” Jesus says, and the dead man came out of the cave in response.

Lives were changed in an instant by Jesus’ command, and by Lazarus’ response.

Martha’s theoretical belief in the resurrection was married forevermore to the physical reality, the physical proof, of the resurrection. So was Mary’s.

Lazarus, who eventually died in an unknown time and place after this event, could now face his own death with the full assurance that he would live forevermore. Perhaps he faced that death without fear.

The disciples’ faith should have been strengthened by knowing that Jesus had complete power over death. If they’d understood the full impact of Lazarus’ raising, the specter of the cross and Jesus’ death on it should have had no power over their fear. Perhaps we shouldn’t be too hard on those original disciples, for they understood the importance of the raising of Lazarus only in hindsight. Lazarus’ resurrection is a foretaste of Jesus’ own resurrection.

The chief priests and the Pharisees who now plotted to kill Jesus because of the raising of Lazarus ought also to have taken careful notes. No doubt they thought that they could wield the ultimate power that they possessed over Jesus by killing him, but they were wrong.

Your life and mine are also changed by this demonstration of the power that Jesus Christ possesses to create life and to defeat death.

For one thing, if we come to Him in faith, then our lives are completely and totally bound up with His in an intimate embrace. His power takes up residence within us. No one will ever take us away from Him, as Jesus affirms in John 10: 28 – 29.

For another, we can face death without fear, knowing that on the other side of that veil will stand a loving God who will receive us into His presence.

So, we stand with Martha, acknowledging the eventual realities of these things on the last and great day.

But where is the proof that Jesus Christ has to create life and to defeat death? Is there any proof in this life, some sort of proof such as the proof that Martha received when her brother came out of the tomb?

Is there any such proof for us as we live our lives today?

Speaking personally, I can tell you that there is such proof available. I have seen it in my own life experience. I have seen it in the new life that was granted to my father, whose life seemed totally and completely bound up with the forces of death. No earthly or human power could have turned by father around so dramatically. Truly, my father was raised to new life in God through the power of Jesus Christ to save, and through the awesome power of the Holy Spirit to convict.

So I have seen the Lord’s awesome power to call someone out of the living grave, for my father was living in such a grave. Only the progress of time prevented his total descent into that grave. But God called him out of the tomb that his life had become, and new life resulted.

May God, by His grace, provide each of us with the proof we need to see the power to create life and to defeat death in our own lives, and in the lives of others.

AMEN.

4 Lent, Year A

I Samuel 16: 1 – 13
Psalm 23
Ephesians 5: 8 – 14
John 9: 1 – 41

A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, April 3, 2011.

“A NEW DEFINITION OF SIN”

 A wonderful line from the hymn “Amazing Grace” goes like this: 

“For once I was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.”

The phrase seems to refer directly to the healing of the blind man, whose account we have before us in our gospel reading this morning, for this is the statement of the man born blind, “…one thing I know, that though I was blind, now I see.”

As we consider this incident, a question arises:  Who is/are the one/s who cannot see?  Is it the blind man?  Or is it the Pharisees?

In time, as the event unfolds, we come to see that it is the Pharisees who cannot see, despite their claim to be knowledgeable about the ways of God….for they say, “We are disciples of Moses.”

And what, exactly, can they not see?

What they cannot see is Jesus’ identity as the Son of Man, the one who had come into the world to show the way to the Father.

As the conversation between the man born blind who can now see and the Pharisees heats up, we see that the Pharisees deepen their hostility to Jesus, and entrench themselves in their hardened positions.  John tells us that those hardened positions included throwing anyone out of the synagogue who confessed that Jesus is the Christ. 

The Pharisees heap scorn on the man who was healed, saying to him, “You were born in utter sin, and you would teach us?”  What they mean by this statement is that the healed man is a through-and-through sinner, certainly no one whose spiritual authority could be trusted.

So, in the final analysis, it’s the Pharisees who come off as sinners.  They fail to see the true identity of Jesus as is revealed in His sovereign power, that power which comes from God the Father.  It is through the signs that Jesus has done that we see His true identity.  All throughout the first eleven chapters of John’s gospel account, we read of one miraculous event after another:  changing water into wine, feeding the 5,000, healing the blind man, raising Lazarus from the dead (which is our reading for next Sunday).  Noticing the structure of these first chapters of the Fourth Gospel, biblical scholars often label the first eleven chapters “The Book of Signs”.

The Pharisees’ sin isn’t one of having transgressed one of the hundreds of laws that the Law of Moses put off bounds. 

The Pharisees’ sin isn’t a matter of having committed a misdeed.  No, their sin is a matter of unbelief.

Now we have arrived at the root of the Pharisees’ sinful state, that of unbelief in Jesus as Son of Man.  Having reach this point, we are able to backtrack in John’s gospel account to chapter three, verse 16, which says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, to the end that all who believe in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”

In that statement, made by Jesus to Nicodemus, we find the heart of a new understanding of what sin actually is.

Sin isn’t strictly a matter of doing some act that is wrong.  Sin is a matter of turning away from God as God is revealed in the person, work, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And, if we are to look back at our actions through this lens of understanding of what sin is, we can see that, ultimately all of our actions that fail to meet God’s standards of holiness amount to a turning away from God.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be too hard on those ancient Pharisees.  After all, they are simply trying to live up to what amounted to their best understanding of the ways of God.  But their best understanding of the ways of God blocked any new or different understanding.  So blind were they that they could not see that the miraculous healing of the blind man, which was proved conclusively to them through the witness of the man, his family, and the man’s ability to see, amounted to proof that Jesus had at His command the very power of God.  In response to this reality, all the Pharisees can do is to complain that Jesus had done this loving act of healing on the Sabbath day!  How could they have possibly missed the evident power of God in their midst?

But the question comes to us, as well it should have to the Pharisees:  What do we think we know and understand about Jesus, His life, teaching, death and resurrection that block a deeper understanding of exactly who Jesus is?  Does our unwillingness to grasp the deeper insights into Jesus as He is revealed in Holy Scripture amount to unbelief?

After all, Jesus makes a very exclusive claim about Himself, saying in John 14: 6, “I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father, but by me.”  If we truly believe this claim, then shouldn’t we embark on a quest to come to know Jesus more deeply and fully, that we may come to full belief in Him?.

AMEN.