Easter Sunday 2025 – Mystical Word
Readings for Easter Sunday: Acts 10:34a, 37-43 | Colossians 3:1-4 | John 20:1-9
The Risen Jesus is the promise of eternal life, that death is not the end, but, in fact, God is The End.
There is at least one major reality uniting everybody on this earth. Each and every single person, whether they want to or not, is going to die. Deep questions arise from the thought of death. Is this all there is? Is there life beyond death? What will happen to me? What will happen to my body? We can extend these questions to cosmic proportions. What happens to planet earth? What happens to the whole universe? Where is this all going? Is life just “a tale told by an idiot” that is meaningless and ephemeral? Or, is life the beginning of something far greater than we could ever imagine? Dare we hope for this unimaginable something? The reality of death, when we face it without denying it, can raise the question of hope. Each one of us can ask ourselves, “Do I hope that death is not the end and that there is life beyond death?”
The solemn feast we celebrate today is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The women find an empty tomb three days after Jesus dies on a cross. An angel confronts them and proclaims, “You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified. He has been raised.” The Risen Jesus is the promise of eternal life. He is the ground of our hope. Death is not the end, but, in fact, God is The End. The Risen Jesus is what we be like in the final divine transformation of the whole universe. So, existence is not meaningless nor does death win out. God will take care of us.
The risen Christ is the summary of all our hopes. The early Christians described the crucified and risen Christ as ‘the beginning, the first born from the dead’ (Col.1:18; Rev.1:5) and ‘the first fruits of those who have died’ (1 Cor.15:20). They perceived that what God had done for Jesus held absolute meaning for the world. It represents the dawning of God’s final intention for all of creation, the Eschaton. The crucified and risen Christ signifies The End, in Greek “Eschaton,” of creation, which means the fulfillment and completion of creation. What happened to Christ is what God wants to happen for the rest of creation: radical transformation unto divine oneness.
We live between the first coming of Jesus and the second coming of Jesus, which is called the “Parousia.” The early Christians believed that God’s final purpose for creation, the new creation, had been made manifest in Christ and is available now. The risen Christ is the eruption of divine oneness into present existence. But, the old ways are still here as well. New life is available while old life still goes on. In other words, injustice, death, selfishness, violence, and illusion are still a part of our present existence. They constitute the old world and the old creation, which is separated from God.
By raising Jesus from the dead, God has brought the new creation into the present world of selfishness, injustice, and death. We are already saved, but not yet fully saved. We are already one with God, but we have not yet fully integrated this deepest dimension of our identity with the rest our lives. We live between times. God’s new world of divine unity and gratuitous love symbolized by the Risen Christ has erupted into this old world of sin and division. Hope lives in this tension. We have plentiful evidence of sin and evil, yet because we trust God in the Risen Jesus we can boldly hope that in the end divine mercy wins out. Death and evil do not have the final word in anyone’s life, even in the ultimate fate of the cosmos.
Christ is now the goal of creation. It is what we are all meant to be, that is, radically one with God and fully human. Since Christ is the goal of creation, dying-rising is the how of salvation. Dying-rising is what must happen to us if we are to become one with God. We all must radically let go of self and allow God to raise us into the new life of divine oneness. If we but consent, God will transform us into other Christs: persons fused to the mystery of God. Dying is the reversal and de-centering of the self. Resurrection is the breakthrough into the mystery of God caused by God.
In this series, stretching from Easter Sunday to the Ascension, will reflect on eschatology, that is, the theological study of the last things. Heaven, hell, purgatory, judgment, a new heaven and a new earth, the second coming of Jesus, and universal salvation will be our topics. Christian eschatology is “hope seeking understanding.” Because of the Risen Jesus we know death is not the end. God’s mercy is The End, the definitive and final reality in all our lives.