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Homily for 2nd Sunday of Easter Year C - 11th April 2010
(Acts 5:12-16; Apoc 1:9-13,17-19; Jn 20:19-31)
Three questions:
Question: What was the last gift Jesus in his earthly life gave to the twelve apostles?
Answer: The sacrament of the Eucharist.
Question: What was the first gift that Jesus in his resurrected life gave to the eleven
apostles?
Answer: The sacrament of Confession.
Question: When was the last time you ever heard sermon about confession?
Answer: In 25 years as a catholic, I don’t think I’ve ever heard one, so let me try.
What the Church calls the Institution, or the formal founding by Christ, of the Eucharist implicitly dominated the reading about the Last Supper we heard from the gospel of John on Maundy Thursday. The Institution of Confession we hear about in today’s gospel of John: ‘for those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven.’
Theologians always stress that the whole Easter Triuddum, the whole Liturgical year, the whole of the Old and the New Testaments, and indeed the Faith as a whole, can only be understood precisely as that, a unified whole. They say the same of the sacraments; and today’s liturgy seems to make this latter point well. For if we wish to truly love God, our neighbour and ourselves, it is precisely the Eucharist which helps us to better understand Confession, and vice versa. For the Eucharist helps us see more clearly our need for the forgiveness of our sins by Christ in Confession; whilst Confession helps us see more clearly our need, not just for the forgiveness of Christ but ultimately for Christ himself, precisely what, or rather who, we are offered in the Eucharist.
Yet isn’t it odd that it is Confession, the power to forgive sins in the name of God, that should be the first gift of the risen Christ not just to his Church but to his apostles? To the very men who had proved themselves so unsuitable. A mere three days ago Judas betrayed Christ, Peter denied him, and all the rest, except John, fled. Pathetic? Or just like you and me?
The disciples seem to typify not ideal confessors but archetypal penitents. And in fact, isn’t that the deeper point? For who knew better than the apostles themselves the reality of their sins and their on going need for forgiveness? And so, thank God, Christ shares his authority to forgive sins not with the immaculate Pharisees or the infallible doctors of the Law, but with this motley crew of , let’s say it, sinners. To say the least, unexpected.
God’s choices are always unexpected somehow. The gospel of John we heard on Easter day itself told us that the risen Christ appeared first, not just to a woman, someone who in Jewish legal culture was not simply an unreliable but an inadmissible witness, but to Mary of Magdala, someone who was hardly the President of the Jerusalem branch of the Jewish Women’s League. We often think about the weakness our faith in God; perhaps we should think more about the strength of God’s faith in us.
And the gospel of John continues to provide us with more help to better understand confession in how it describes the actions of two of the apostles over the Easter Triduum. Peter on Maundy Thursday, who twice got it wrong. And Thomas who first on Easter Sunday got it blazingly wrong, but then today, the Octave or eighth day after Easter, got it stunningly right.
The gospel of John from Maundy Thursday was about Christ washing, or in St Peter’s case, trying to wash the feet of the disciples.
And with confession, we often tend to repeat Peter’s double mistake of that night. Either we sin by defect, claiming to be free of sin, saying to Jesus as Peter did then, ‘you shall never wash my feet’. The ‘I don’t go to confession because I don’t need it’ attitude.
Or the pendulum swings to the opposite extreme and we sin by excess, claiming to be nothing but sin, demanding with Peter that Christ must wash not just our feet but our ‘head and our hands’ as well. The ‘I don’t go to confession because I’m not worthy of it’ attitude. (cf Ratzinger, Easter Journey of Faith)
And what of Thomas? Today’s gospel tells us that when Christ appeared to the disciples on Easter Sunday, he was not there. When the others tell him of it, what does he say? ‘Unless I see the holes...unless I can put my hand in his side, I refuse to believe.’ And on our bad days, isn’t there something of our attitude to confession in his response? ‘Unless I can see that confession really will change my life, I won’t go...’ And more simply still, isn’t the root of all our sins, the root in fact of all sin, a refusal, like Thomas, to believe?
Yet today, eight days after Easter, what do we hear? Of all the apostles, it is ‘doubting’ Thomas who ends up making the strongest confession of faith in Christ by anyone in all the four gospels – ‘My Lord and my God.’
And the naturally impetuous Peter and naturally negative Thomas make a neat pair here; for they exemplify the double but interlinked meanings the word confession has in our tradition.
The last time I was preaching was some weeks ago on the 5th Sunday of ordinary time. Then, meeting Christ after a miraculous catch of fish, Peter makes a confession of his sins: ‘depart from me Lord, for I am a sinful man’. Today Thomas, meeting Christ in a locked room, makes a confession of his faith: ‘My Lord and my God.’
So perhaps this Eastertide Thomas can be our patron to help us better recognise the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and Peter can be our patron to help us better understand the grace of Christ, present in a different way, in the linked sacrament of confession.
With their help, this Eastertide may we come to recognise Christ more fully. And so, amidst all the current noise in the media about the Church, be able to hear with greater clarity what Christ said to Peter; ‘Be not afraid,’ and what Christ said to Thomas, ‘Peace be with you.’
Fr Dunstan
