The Sunday after Easter is sometimes called “Low Sunday.” Well, why not? After all the emotional highs of the week before, after all the lovely spring flowers in the chancel and on the window sills, after all the special Easter music, after seeing the usually empty pews filled with many visitors on Easter Sunday, --after all this, the next Sunday is understandably “Low Sunday.”
Truth be told, we might also call it “exhausted Sunday.” On this Sunday not a few of us are worn out. We’re what might be called “recovering saints,” good folk who have expended high levels of energy preparing for Holy Week—the triumphal procession of Psalm Sunday, the solemnity of Maundy Thursday, the darkness of Good Friday, and the climax of it all, the joy and hallelujahs of Easter Sunday. Now we’re probably out of breath. Maybe that’s why some call today “Low Sunday.”
But maybe there’s another reason. Just maybe when we arrive at Sunday after Easter, we have understandably concluded that things are now back to normal. We’re inclined to think that all the events of the preceding weeks were “a great run”--as the Broadway producers or the political campaigners might say--but now it’s over. The great show is finished, the curtain is down, and the lights are turned off. Life will now, alas, go on as it did before. After Easter, how could there possibly be an encore? So we’re now in a post-Easter mood in a post-Easter world. We know we have to return to the old routine of everyday life where we contend with rush-hour traffic and the often depressing evening news—the news from Paris, and San Bernardino, and Brussels—news of a world where, in short, nothing has really changed, except maybe for the worse.
So it’s “Low Sunday,” a Sunday of “reality-check”-- low in spirit, low in hope, a Sunday when the hallelujahs of Easter have faded away. And we secretly wonder: Does the risen Jesus ever show up in the post-Easter world? What do we know for sure in the world after Easter? In this post-Easter world, are we limited to saying, as the poet W.H. Auden puts it, “I know the kitchen [floor] exists because I scrub it?”
Into our post-Easter world comes the message of the Apostle Paul, and his message is one we need to hear again and again, and maybe especially on “low Sunday.” Paul writes: “God has reconciled the world to Godself through Christ” (2 Cor. 5: 18), and therefore: “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new” (2 Cor. 5: 17). That’s the Easter message of the church of the New Testament: See, Christ is risen! Hallelujah! We heard and proclaimed that joyous message on Easter morning. But now on this “low Sunday,” are we able to proclaim with Paul: “See, everything has become new”?
Well, maybe it depends on what we are looking for, and where we are looking. When the Apostle says. “See, everything has become new,” the question for us becomes: Can we see everything new, can we see at least the beginning of a new world, can we at least catch a glimpse of the living Christ around us and in us? Where do we look to see signs of the work of reconciliation and renewal of the world accomplished in Christ?
Remember the story of the two disciples walking on the road to Emmaus after the crucifixion? They say to each other, “How we had hoped that Jesus was the one to redeem Israel.” “How we had hoped,” they say,--their language is telling. These forlorn disciples talk about Jesus only in the past tense. His life, his proclamation, his ministry, all that has become for them a thing of the past, something over and done with. Now sadly, they think, it’s time to get real and once again plod along the road of life in hopeless resignation. Their attitude is something like this: “We had such great hopes. But now it’s clear that nothing ever really changes. We just have to get used to it. The one we hoped was the redeemer is dead, and his death is also the death of every human longing for fulfilled life and every human longing for a new world.”
As the Gospel writer tells us, it’s only when the risen Jesus—risen, present, but unrecognized--meets them on the road, and then at the end of their journey together, he breaks bread with them. Then, we are told, “their eyes are opened,” and for a moment they see him, and just as quickly he vanishes from their sight. Their Easter experience all came down to being able, at least for a moment, to see as they had been unable to see as they plodded along that Emmaus road.
Mary Magdalene had a similar experience of seeing the living Lord on Easter morning. Jesus meets her near the tomb, but she doesn’t recognize him. “For whom are you looking?” Jesus asks. Mary is deep in grief and has come to the tomb looking for the body of her dead Lord. It’s only when Jesus speaks her name, “Mary,” and assures her that he is indeed alive that she runs to tell the other disciples exclaiming, “I have seen the Lord.”
Common to these and other stories about the risen Jesus is this moment of the disciples’ “seeing” what they had not been able to see before. Before the resurrection, the disciples were blind, but on Easter morning, they unexpectedly encounter the living Jesus, and at last they see. Their experience of seeing, however, is very special. In many of the resurrection stories, Jesus is seen briefly, and then he vanishes from sight. The risen Jesus is alive and present, but he can’t be grasped and held on to. He escapes from our efforts to hold him back and instead beckons us to follow him. In faith, we can only catch a glimpse of him.
But where? Where can we catch a glimpse of the risen Jesus? Scripture and the Creed say: The risen Jesus ascends to heaven. But that answer doesn’t entirely satisfy, does it? Where is the living Jesus to be seen here and now, post-Easter, on this low Sunday when all the hallelujahs have become a distant memory? Where might we see the risen Jesus, even if only dimly, even if only momentarily, so that we can joyfully affirm with the Apostle Paul: everything old has passed; See? Everything has become new!
As I read Scripture, to say that the risen Jesus is in heaven, is to affirm that that he is now—everywhere, everywhere he chooses to be in the power of the Holy Spirit. The living Lord is not confined to the first century. He is not imprisoned in Palestine. He is not locked up, so to speak, in heaven. No, for the person of faith, in our post-Easter world, everywhere you look, you may see the presence of Christ in the power of his Spirit--if only your eyes are open to see. If you have eyes to see, you may catch momentary glimpses of the grace of God still at work. You may have a fleeting glance of the living Christ present and bringing to completion the new world of God’s coming kingdom.
We don’t have to look very far. Look with open eyes at the new community in Christ that is formed by the eating of the bread and the sharing of the cup at the Lord’s table, this Sunday as every Sunday. Look and truly see this event of gathering around the Lord’s table as a visible sign that the old world of division and hostility is dying, and a new world of peace and reconciliation is being born.
What’s more, the presence of the grace and goodness of God is not limited to the life and worship of the church. It’s there in the world of nature if we look with the eyes of faith. Now I know, the world of nature is not unambiguous—there are dark forces at work in it. There’s the mosquito-borne zika virus and the mutation of genes that cause cancer, to mention a few. Nevertheless, see the lily about to bloom in your garden--the flower of whose beauty Jesus praised—see and delight in it as a sign of God’s goodness and faithfulness. Indeed, look--really look, at a lowly dandelion, -- as your pastor did after being released from a long period in the hospital-- and behold in it, maybe for the first time, the beauty of God’s creation in this lowliest of plants along the side of the road.
And it’s not only in the world of nature that one may catch a glimpse of God’s goodness and love. Look—look in some amazement—at the courage of Dr. Laura Billiet and other people in Brussels who in the aftermath of the bombing did not flee from the mayhem but stopped to assist the wounded. And don’t overlook the many people in that city who posted on their cell phones a message to the stranded: We have plenty of space in our home if you have need. See? See? Your eyes may catch a glimpse of the all-too-often unrecognized presence of the living and unconquered Spirit of the risen Christ
The Spirit of the living Jesus is everywhere--if only we could see. Everything has become new, says the Apostle. Well, maybe the Apostle’s capacity to see God’s new world dawning everywhere is just greater than ours. Maybe his seeing the presence of Christ all around him is far more than our eyes of faith can manage. But maybe we too can catch a glimpse, just a glimpse perhaps, and just for a moment, of the grace of God in Jesus Christ still at work in our world. I’m not talking here about turning stones into bread, or jumping from the top of the temple without being injured, as Satan tempted Jesus to do. I’m talking about delicate signs, precious parables, “little miracles”—call them what you will—they are there if only we could see.
Return for a moment to Charleston, South Carolina in June of last year. Listen to Ethel Lance, daughter of one of the nine members of the African-Episcopal Church in that city murdered by Dylaan Roof. Dylaan, a young white man, you remember, had unexpectedly entered the church, and had been welcomed into a Bible study class with open arms. But after an hour of sitting with members of that class who had warmly welcomed him into their company, he proceeded to mortally shoot nine of them. Now I ask you to listen--really listen-- to what the daughter later says softly and slowly to her mother’s murderer: “You took something really precious from me. I will never talk to [my mother] again. I will never be able to hold her again. But I forgive you, and may God have mercy on your soul.”
Did you really hear what she said? Not a word of bloodthirsty curse, or vow of revenge, as we might have expected, but “I forgive you, and may God have mercy on your soul.” This is not a woman resigning herself to brutality and injustice. Hers is not an act of cheap forgiveness. True forgiveness is a miracle, and it’s always difficult. It’s costly; it cost God dearly, and I am sure it cost this woman too. She is struggling, she’s hurting, she’s lamenting. But she’s a woman of strong faith-- so strong, she forgives. Maybe it’s not yet complete forgiveness. Maybe it’s a wavering promise to forgive. Maybe it’s a prayer to God to give her the strength to forgive. But the fact is: in that moment she returns brutality with mercy, and for eyes to see and ears to hear, it’s a glimpse of a new world born of the resurrection of the crucified Christ.
If we have really heard the response of that woman, doesn’t her story remind us of the word of our Lord from the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” The risen Jesus is alive even if mostly out of ordinary sight. Sometimes, even if momentarily, we can see him still at work in our broken and divided world. Glimpses of his presence are there to behold. Granted, what is seen is not something you can seize and hang on to, not something you can take a video of and put it on You Tube—that current criterion of reality--but for the discerning eyes of faith: See? Everything is becoming new.
So on this “low Sunday,” maybe the most important thing to remember is how Jesus describes where we are to look to be ready to see him. Remember the parable of the last judgment that Jesus told his disciples? The parable assumes that it is no easier for us to recognize the living Christ in our midst than it was for those disciples on the road to Emmaus. Now as then, seeing the crucified and risen Jesus, seeing the world that God is making new, requires a good eye. In the parable of the last judgment, Jesus tells his disciples they will surely see him, but they will likely be totally amazed when they are later told they had repeatedly encountered him on their life journey. “Lord, when did we see you and give you water when you were thirsty, or food when you were hungry? When did we visit you when you were in prison?” You know the answer Jesus gave: “When you did it to one of the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.”
My friends, Easter Sunday is wonderful. How we love the trumpet blasts! How we love all the hallelujah choruses! But the question we cannot evade is this: What happens after Easter? . . . after the singing of Handel’s Messiah stops, after the flowers of Easter fade, and we’re back to the world where the kitchen floor needs to be scrubbed. What happens when the living Jesus seems to have vanished, when he’s nowhere to be seen, when nothing has changed, nothing is different, nothing is new? Or…..?
“If anyone is in Christ,” writes the Apostle Paul, “everything old has passed away; See? Everything has become new.” The living Christ has not gone away. By the power of the Holy Spirit, he is everywhere. He is present in the lily and the dandelion; he is present in the witness of prophets and apostles; he is present in the communion of people from east and west, from north and south at the Lord’s table; and not least, he is present in the poor and the abused and in those who minister to them.
The risen Lord is on the loose, in solidarity with a groaning creation, and in mostly overlooked ways, he is making everything new. He is everywhere—if only our eyes could see. When our eyes are open, we will catch glimpses of him present in our everyday life and in our world, right here, right now. We trust in God’s promise that one day there will be more than glimpses. But for the time being—for the time being--the momentary glimpses, the always surprising signs of his presence in our everyday life, will give us hope and joy until that day when we see him face to face. Amen.
Daniel Migliore
United Presbyterian Church of West Orange - April 3, 2016
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