Acts 3: 13-15, 17-19; 1Jn 2: 1-5; Luke 24:35-48
The Appearance to the Disciples in Jerusalem
OTHER HOMILY SOURCES from Fr Munachi E. Ezeogu, cssp
Homily for 3rd Sunday of Easter – on the Gospel
Sharing the Faith
By Fr Munachi E. Ezeogu, cssp
|
Acts 3:13-15, 17-19 |
1 John 2:1-5 |
Luke 24:35-48 |
If the point of last Sunday’s gospel was on experiencing the risen Lord, the point of today’s gospel seems to be on sharing our faith with others. Christ wants his followers to be his witnesses. Witnessing, like a coin, has two sides. One side has to do with seeing an event, having knowledge of something through personal experience and not on hearsay. The other side has to do with being able to give an account of it before others. That we are called to be witnesses of Christ means that we are called first to have a personal experience of Christ and then to share this experience with others. Many Christians, unfortunately, only go halfway as they focus on knowing Christ more and more without a corresponding interest in sharing the knowledge. Yet, faith is like a flame: the more a piece of wood passes the flame to others the more brightly it burns, but if it refuses to pass on the flame, it stands in danger of losing even its own flame.
The grandfather of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber was lame. Once day they asked him to tell a story about his teacher, and he related how his master used to hop and dance while he prayed. The old man rose as he spoke and was so swept away by his story that he himself began to hop and dance to show how his master did it. From that moment he was cured of his lameness. When we tell the story of Christ, we achieve two things. We enable others to experience him and we ourselves experience his power even more. We can see that happening in today’s gospel.
Two disciples met the risen Lord on the way to Emmaus. They came back to Jerusalem to share their experience with the apostles. We read that “While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you'” (Luke 24:36). Christ makes himself present in the process of sharing their faith experience with the other unbelieving disciples. Now the eleven apostles and their companions are in turn enabled to experience the risen Lord. And it takes no stretch of the imagination to see that for the two who shared their experience this would be a big strengthening of faith, a big empowerment.
What does Jesus do to those who experience him? First, he communicates peace to their troubled hearts. Then he tries to convince them that the same Jesus of Nazareth who suffered and died the shameful death on the cross is the very one who is now alive in glory with God. He goes as far as eating broiled fish which, of course, he does not need, in order to make the point. Then he opens their minds to understand the Scriptures and how they point to him. Finally he commissions them to be his witnesses. “You are witnesses of these things”(Luke 24:48). This is what Jesus did when he appeared in the gathering of the disciples that Sunday morning 2000 years ago. And this is what he does when he appears in the Sunday gathering of the faithful here today.
Notice how active Jesus is. He is the one who gives them his peace. He is the one who strengthens their faith and takes away their doubts. He is the one who opens their minds and explains the Scriptures to them. He is the one who declares them his witnesses. The disciples do not do much in the encounter except open their eyes to see him, their hearts to let in his peace, their minds to receive his instruction. And in the end when he says, “You are witnesses of these things,” they would be expected to respond, “Yes, Lord,” and then go out and try to be just that.
How do we witness to Christ? Here many wayside preachers get it wrong. It is not by threatening people with eternal hellfire. It is not by arguing with them on controversial theological issues. It is simply, as the two disciples on the way to Emmaus did, by telling the story of our personal encounter with Christ. It is sharing with them why we are Christians. As St Peter tells us, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15).
Homily for 3rd Sunday of Easter – on the Epistle
Christian Inclusiveness
By Fr Munachi E. Ezeogu, cssp
|
Acts 3:13-15, 17-19 |
1 John 2:1-5 |
Luke 24:35-48 |
Sin is a very serious affair, for John. How seriously John takes sin can be seen in today’s 2nd reading. Earlier in his Gospel, John had told us why he wrote. “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31). In today’s 2nd reading from 1st Letter of John, he again tells us why he wrote. “My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin” (1 John 2:1). If we take these two statements of purpose as two sides of the one coin, we can see that, for John, to believe in Christ means to stop being a sinner. As John sees it, being a child of God and being a sinner are a contradiction. This he states more forcefully in 1 John 3:
No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. … 8 Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. … 9 Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God (1 John 3:6, 8-9).
For John, this is as it should be. This is the ideal to which every believer should aspire. Yet John is realistic enough to admit that, in fact, most Christians do not measure up to this ideal. In reality many Christians still succumb to sin occasionally, if not habitually. Some modern-day preachers would consign such sinful believers right into the bottomless pit of hell fire. But not John. For John, there is hope even for the sinful believer. The same Christ who is the strength of the upright believer is also the remedy for the sinful believer. “My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin; but if any one does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; 2 and he is the expiation for our sins” (1 John 2:1-2)
John’s open-mindedness and inclusiveness does not end with the incorporation of sinful believers. The sacrifice of Christ is universal in its effects. John, therefore, sees Christ as the expiation of the sins of all humankind, believers and non-believers alike. “He is the expiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (verse 2).
In this short passage, John appears to be challenging popular, narrow-minded Christianity of his time. In the English translation of the passage, we notice that the word “but” marks each point where John challenges the traditional view and introduces his own more inclusive viewpoint. Attention to the “but’s” in this passage is a good way to highlight the inclusive teachings that John is giving here. There are three or four occurrences of “but” in this passage, depending on the translation one is using:
(1) “My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin; but if any one does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (verse 1). Here John challenges the view that believers who sin are lost forever without any hope of reconciliation with God. This view, which came to be known as Donatism, was rejected by the universal church, which maintained John’s view that the grace of Christ is sufficient to restore a repentant sinner to a state of full reconciliation with God and the Church. No wonder Christ gave us the Sacrament of Penance!
(2) “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (verse 2). Here John challenges the view that the atonement and salvation won by Christ is applicable only to Christian believers. This does not mean that the believer and the unbeliever have equal chances of salvation. The believer certainly has wider access to God’s grace through the word of God and the sacraments. Nevertheless, God’s love in Christ cannot be limited to the confines of the Church. Non-believers might be groping for truth in the darkness of their unbelief, yet if they search for truth with sincerity, the grace of God will find them even in the dark.
(3) “He who says I know him but disobeys his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him; 5 but whoever keeps his word, in him truly love for God is perfected” (verses 4-5). In some translations, “but” occurs in this sentence only once; in others it occurs twice. Here John challenges those who claim that they know God and love Him but make no serious commitment to keeping God’s commandments. What John is saying here is that the degree to which one keeps God’s commandments is a true measure of the degree to which one knows and loves God.
These teachings of John to the Christians of his own day apply equally to us Christians today. With regard to others, we need to be more understanding, knowing that noone, absolutely noone, is outside the orbit of God’s love and mercy. With regard to ourselves, we need to be more demanding in so far as observing God’s commandments is concerned.
************
See Today’s Readings: Cycle B
See Homily Option
Back to Other Homily Sources
Justmehomely's Blog 