easter 3 Year C

Acts 9:1-20 NRSV text
Psalm 30 NRSV text
Revelation 5: 11-14 NRSV text
John 21: 1-19 NRSV text

Resurrection is about re-creation and transformation. It’s different from resuscitation. Remember the film, Groundhog Day? That’s about the same events repeating themselves over and over again. Resuscitation – life beyond death – is meaningless and doomed without re-creation. It’s simply prolonging the same agonies (and pleasures, to be sure); the cycles of despair and sin and death remain unbroken and human beings are doomed to repeat the same sorts of ghastly mistakes and evil that resulted in the crucifixion of Jesus. Without resurrection, the world cannot be saved, because it cannot be transformed.

I’m not trying to be a “doom and gloom” merchant about human life! Life is an incredible gift. Yet we have to be wilfully naïve and blind if we do not recognise the crying need for transformation. If we experience the world as “okay”, we need to recognise that we are inordinately lucky! The fact is that the world is not okay for billions of its inhabitants, and if it is okay for us, then we cannot escape the fact that it can only be so for us at the expense of others. Life is good. The world is good. Creation is astonishing – but it needs transformation. Desperately.

Today’s texts are about precisely this sort of transformation that resurrection makes possible. The resurrection of Jesus is not just something that happens to him. He is the World-Maker, according to John. He is the Lamb that is slain on behalf of the world. Resurrection happens to Jesus in order for it to happen to the world. And so the post-Easter world is a radically new world. It is a world of grace and Life and Light. It is a place of transformation. Easter Sunday is not just the first day of a new week: it is the dawn of a new creation and things can never be the same again.

A world of restoration and new beginnings (John 21: 1-19)
Imagine being Peter. He’s come full circle. He’s back on the lake – where Andrew presumably found him and told him the startling news, “We have found the Messiah!” (John 1:40-42) What a roller-coaster ride he’s had since then! But here he is, back at the beginning, where it all began. There’s nothing left of his hopes, dreams and the events of the last three years. He’s denied three times that he even knew Jesus. This is Peter’s Groundhog Day – and so he decides to go fishing.

It shouldn’t be possible for things to get worse, but they do – they fish all night, and catch absolutely nothing. Then Jesus appears on the shore. He’s unknown to them. Now, of course, they don’t expect to see Jesus. And interestingly, John has not, to date, explicitly told us that Peter has seen Jesus. But the point here is different. Everything has changed after the resurrection – even Jesus! There’s something unrecognisably different about him. And so it’s as though he appears for the first time again. This is a new commissioning – as, indeed, are all Jesus’ resurrection appearances. And, as before, Peter has to be told, “It’s the Lord!” Bless him – he doesn’t hesitate! He pulls on some clothes, leaps into the water, and wades ashore, not even waiting for the boat.

Here’s Peter, trapped between love and loyalty. It’s his love that makes him respond as he does. He’s always loved Jesus like that. It’s just that, when it came to the particular crunch, fear won out. He ended up denying his Lord – and his own love for Jesus. Can you imagine the inner turmoil he’s been wrestling with? Not only did Jesus die, but he died believing (as far as Peter was concerned) that Peter did not love him.

But this is a new world. It’s a world of restoration and second chances. In this new world, Jesus offers him the chance to take it back. Three times he asks the question that is driving Peter nuts: “Peter, do you love me?” Three denials, three chances to affirm his love, three times the affirmation that Peter is till the Rock and that Jesus has important work for him. This is the world of resurrection.

A world of grace and new community (Acts 9: 1-20)
Imagine being Saul of Tarsus. He’s the self-appointed Guardian of Truth. His divine mission is to wipe out the members of the dangerous sect who are going around proclaiming that Jesus is the Messiah – the blasphemer who’d been crucified. More than that, they were proclaiming the unthinkable: God had raised him form the dead! Saul wasn’t a Sadducee. He had no difficulties with resurrection: it just couldn’t possibly happen to Jesus! That would make a mockery of all that Saul knew Yahweh to be. The problem he faced with the Christians was two-fold: one, they were a heretical sect, whose bizarre beliefs were an affront to Yahweh. Israel needed to be purified from such distortions of the truth. Two, they were disturbingly successful! For some reason, people were flocking to hear the so-called “apostles”. But Saul was being pretty successful, too. He was cutting the cancer of the Jesus-followers out of the heart of Israel before it could infect the nation of Yahweh’s people. He was preparing the way for the long-awaited deliverer – God’s Messiah.

And then the Damascus Road! “Who are you, Lord?” asks Saul. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting!” comes the reply. This is Saul’s “Oh s*&t!” moment. Everything that he had thought and believed suddenly unravels before his blinded eyes. He was as wrong as it was possible to be! The unconscionable had happened: God had raised Jesus from the dead, and that meant that Jesus was God’s Messiah! The resurrection – the hope of Israel – had begun … with the very man the religious leaders had had put to death. And on a cross, for God’s sake!

The point here is that Saul’s world crumbles in an instant. All he understands about God and God’s ways is in tatters. Everything that he has been and done has been wrong. He’s been waging a holy war – and he’s been on the wrong side! Yet, in the very moment of the utter disintegration of his world, there is a word of promise: “But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do” (Acts 19:6). What Saul will come to understand – perhaps more keenly than anyone else – is that the new world brought about by the resurrection is a world of grace. This is a world constituted by the Good News that God’s salvation includes those who are least worthy. And he is the unworthiest of all. Yet grace means that a persecutor has a place in this new world – as an apostle.

But what about Ananias? If life is hard for Saul of Tarsus, how hard must it have been to be Ananias and to receive his commission from the Risen Christ? “Find Saul of Tarsus and lay hands on him so that he might regain his sight!” (v12) This is the man who has been hunting and killing Christians. And now Ananias is to receive him as a brother, and lay hands on him, and pray for him! Small wonder that Ananias responds as he does. This is a world of grace that is far to big and inclusive for him. Grace is fine for people like him – and for the other Christians. But surely Jesus cannot be serious. Grace isn’t for the likes of Saul of Tarsus. And if it is, why does Ananias have to be involved?

Can you imagine the fear and loathing Ananias has to overcome in order to do what is asked of him? It must have been as difficult for him as it would be for one of the parents of the murdered V-tech students to be asked to pray for the gunman who slaughtered the students. But that is what grace is about. It’s about receiving grace – and then being commissioned as an agent of grace. It’s about learning to see others through God’s eyes. God loves murderers. God loves evil people. The new community that God is bringing into being – the community of salvation – is not made up of good people. Saul was wrong: God doesn’t create a godly community by purging the world of evil people, but by transforming them through grace. And so Ananias lays hands on Saul and prays. And he addresses him as “brother Saul”. This is the world of resurrection.

A world of “power-on-behalf-of” (Revelation 5: 11-14)
Here is a vision of the heavenly court. God is there, in full, unhidden splendour. The hosts are there. It is as dramatic a scene as the best of human pageantry can envisage – and then some! This is power.

And yet, look at how human notions of power are deconstructed and transformed. “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and blessing!” It’s a victory parade – yet this is not a victory gained by the exercise of military might and annihilative power. It hasn’t been won in a field of carnage and death. There has been death – but only one: that of Jesus. And Jesus is called the Lamb. He is the sacrificial Lamb who is slaughtered on behalf of the world. He is slaughtered so that others might live.

What a contrast between the singing hordes of heaven and the howling crowds in Pilate’s court! These latter voices were screaming for Jesus’ crucifixion – saying, in effect, “This man is not even worthy to be considered a human being! He is a piece of refuse to be disposed of!” Jesus’ was no glorious death. It was horrific, not only in its manner, but in its association. Crucifixion wasn’t even spoken about in polite society.

Jesus’ death was the absolute antithesis of what was thought of as “powerful”. And yet John portrays Jesus’ death as the crucifixion of a king – the king of the world. That is a truth visible only to those who have eyes to see – to see that God’s power isn’t to be defined in terms of the ability to nuke enemies, but in self-giving. It is not the power of force and hatred, or of oppression: it is the power of Love. It is not the ability to inflict death, but to overcome death. God’s “might” is to be defined by God’s ability to save, not to destroy. And in so doing, death itself is destroyed.

John presents us here with a vision of a new world, in which “power over” is obsolete. The will to power is at the heart of the biblical story of human rebellion against God. We have built a world based on human autonomy – the refusal to bow down. And it is a world of death and destruction. Our world is one in which billions starve while a few wrestle with obesity and eating disorders. It rewards the rich and powerful and despises and annihilates the poor and vulnerable. It values standard of living and cheap goods above the survival of the planet. It proclaims human freedom while making us slaves of our own ambitions, possessions and addiction to power and possessions.

Here power is deconstructed. The “might” of God is seen in God’s self-giving. It does not demand slavish obedience, but evokes worship and love and the celebration of Life. It is the new world of Resurrection. And at its it centre is Jesus – the Lamb who was slain and who has been raised for the transformation of creation. Christ is risen! Alleluia!

Amen.