The Day After Easter
Have you ever wished a non-Christian friend a happy Easter…and then hoped they wouldn’t ask what Easter meant to you? While the social media posts proclaiming that “Christ has risen!” make their way around, this is for you, dear friend, who may want to ask — So what?
What did Jesus’ resurrection mean to those who walked with him? And what does it mean to us? There are two instances in the Bible that show, as plain as day, the difference between knowing Christ and knowing a risen Christ.
The gospels of Luke and John describe two very similar scenes — so similar that they look like the end and beginning of a circle. For while Luke describes the first time Peter meets Jesus, John is describing the last time he does — yet the feeling of deja vu is unshakeable. It is here, in the difference between the two meetings, that we find the meaning of Easter.
When we look at them alongside each other, the two incidents seem almost identical — involving the same miracle, at the same location even! And yet, the people in it are different.
Peter is still a sinner — in fact, he is now a sinner who has denied the Lord — but he is no longer afraid of the goodness of God.
Instead of saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man”, Peter can’t wait to run to Jesus — he jumps into the sea and swims the last few yards to get to his Master. He has more to be ashamed of this time, but he is no longer afraid to be in the presence of God. And while Jesus came out to Peter and stepped right into his boat to perform the first of these miracles, he now stands on the shore, calling to Peter — just as he calls to us.
We are no longer only witnesses to the goodness of God, we are now beneficiaries of his mercy.
In the light of the risen Christ, one who has been put to death by our sins, and still continues to bless us, our darkest feelings of shame, unworthiness and guilt have no power. God knows that it is our guilt and shame that keeps us from him — just as Adam and Eve’s kept them at a distance from him. When they realised that they were naked, they were ashamed to come before him, so God in his mercy made clothes for them out of animal skins. Here too, something that God loved had to die in order for the first humans to believe that they had been forgiven and could come back into the presence of the Lord. They could appear before him only once they had been covered in the animal skins, but God had not required this — they had! God had known them before, when they had already been naked.
In his mercy, God covered Adam and Eve in animal skins, the Israelites in the blood of the unblemished lamb… and us in the blood of the perfect sacrifice, Jesus.
For as St. Paul says in his letter to the Romans, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.” Although Jesus has been sacrificed, it is our faith that will help us accept the righteousness of Christ — to ‘put it on’ as our own, in order to cover our sinfulness.
Peter’s nakedness (or sinfulness) does not separate him any longer from his Master — unlike Adam and Eve in the garden, afraid to face their maker in the knowledge of their nakedness. He simply puts on his clothes and swims to Jesus — while he is aware that clothes cannot cover his sin, he knows that Jesus’s blood has already covered and washed him clean.
For just a few days before, Jesus had risen from the supper table to invert all social norms and proceeded to wash his disciples’ feet. At this time, Peter had objected to his master washing his feet, but Jesus had responded —
John 13:7 “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” 8 Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” 9 Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” 10 Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” 11 For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.”
Jesus tells Peter that he will understand “later” — and perhaps “later” is now — when Peter realises that Jesus washed the feet of not only his friends, but also the ones he knew would betray and deny him. Where God covered the shame of Adam and Eve with animal skins, and the father of the prodigal son covered him with the finest robe in the house, Peter knows now that Jesus does not only cover our sins with his mercy…he washes us clean of them, with the blood he poured out for us. All so that we could return to God, feeling not shame, but heartfelt remorse for our sins.
While sin keeps us away from God, his mercy, embodied in the resurrected Christ, draws us close to him. And the closer we are to God, the better we can know him.
Just before Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, he said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” [John 11:25] Since the first part of Jesus’ statement is true — Christ is indeed risen! — the second part of it must be too. Since Jesus is the resurrection, he is also the life —eternal life, for those who believe in him never die.
So, Jesus = Eternal Life. (A)
During his last meal with his disciples, Jesus tells them too what eternal life is, while praying to God his Father:
John 17:3 “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
So, Eternal Life = Knowing God. (B)
If the most incredible of all of Jesus’ promises — rising from the dead on the third day — was true, we can certainly extend this veracity to all his claims and deduce from the two syllogisms that:
Jesus = Knowing God
May we too be able, like Peter, to run to Jesus for everything, despite our sinfulness — knowing that if he is the resurrection, he is also eternal Life, the Way back to God when we have sinned, and the living proof of the Truth that God loves us.
