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I’ve always felt sorry for my friends in Australia at this time of year when they’re getting ready for winter. Easter was made for the northern hemisphere. Springtime holds so much of the Easter message that resonates through nature and through our own persons as well. Easter is spring in the soul, with all of the surprise, the amazement, the newness, the possibility, the profusion of resurrection. And with all of this going on, there is also the questioning and confusion and unsettledness that accompanies such changes in life, be they in the soil and the breezes and the rising temperatures, or in our hearts and our minds and our deepest spirits.
The image that comes to me of this season of liturgy and of nature is that of turning over the earth. The hard crust of winter is broken again by those who love the land, and the soft dirt underneath is laid open to the warm sun and the spring rain. One can almost see the ground soaking up fresh air and moisture and breathing in a newness and youth that it had forgotten could be again. There’s so much promise in spring, so much excitement over possibility, so much stimuli to incorporate and make sense of. There are so many signs of life all around, but mostly in seed form and with more expectation than fulfillment, or even a sense of what the fulfillment will be. And that pretty much describes Easter for me, too. In the spiritual life, there is movement, but what does it mean and where is it going? And can it really be true or is it just illusion? The inner soil is turned over much like the ground is, and it foreshadows something that seems marvelous. But just what is it and how will it come to be and are we a little crazy to think it’s really happening?
And don’t we sound like the first Easter people? Today’s Scriptures are full of persons inundated with astonishing happenings springing up all over, of a new confidence and power, and a sort of pinching themselves because it can’t be real—or can it? The Gospel opens with the scene in which Peter and some of the other Apostles determine to go back to their ordinary lives. There have been marvelous happenings, but what are they to do in the midst of such events? Perhaps just getting into the every day will settle things down, will give them some perspective again, will return them to what their lives were in the past. Dare they even think that Jesus is alive? They’ve gone from despair to realization to doubt to hope many times, I would guess, in their recent history. They can’t live on that roller coaster much longer, though roller coaster wouldn’t quite be the image they would use, of course. But going from up to down and up again, over and over, can’t be a way of life—or can it? Is this what Jesus’ message leads one to? How can they know? So they go fishing; they return to the familiar, with some hopes that life is not desperate and despairing and that death won’t conquer life after all.
Then Jesus enters the scene. They tell him that their day is producing nothing, that the long hours have yielded no fruit. He tells them to try once more; to look in another place, and they follow his suggestion. When their work produces an abundance, the Beloved Disciple recognizes that it’s not their skill, but the fact that they are following what Jesus suggests that brings this fulfillment. And they hurry to him, realizing that he is the one who made their efforts worthwhile.
They gather at a meal with Jesus, who has prepared nourishment for them in their labors. They don’t ask who this is who feeds them because they know, without being able to quite say why, that it is Jesus. They believe even as they experience, faith being something that is known, though it can’t be proven in the usual ways they would use to prove something.
After the meal Jesus confronts Peter with that most radical of all questions: Do you love me? Peter’s three answers take him deeper and deeper into the meaning of the question that calls him to give himself for others. We see where that commitment led Peter in the first reading today. Nothing would any longer stop him from sharing the resurrection and the ongoing companionship of Jesus with those he would encounter. The vision of the Revelation reading became Peter’s focal point of courage, hope and patience; its conviction led to his lifelong expression of the love with which he had answered Jesus by the Lake of Tiberias.
It seems that we, who are called to enter into the resurrection at this season every year are meant to be Easter people in much the same way as the Apostles were. Like them, we’re not quite sure what to do about the resurrection. Should we hope? Is it true? How does it affect our ordinary, daily lives? The Apostles get their answer when they experience the abundance their work produces. In that abundance, they know that it comes from Jesus and not from themselves. They reach out for his power; they gather to him to be fed in the meal that alone gives strength in their labors. And so do we, gathered here in this place to be nourished in the Easter mystery: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ comes again through us as we live our lives.
And like Peter we are asked over and over if we truly love. Each of our assuring answers grounds us further in reality, deepens our commitment, helps us grow in that power that made Peter and the others fearless in the face of death. We grow strong and rooted not only as we face our final death, but all the deaths we encounter as we dedicate ourselves to being Easter people.
While the springtime and its stirrings to life are the image that comes to me each year at this season, there is another one that Jesus himself used in his conversation with Nicodemus, an image we’ve heard about in our recent weekday readings. Jesus says what I’ve been trying to put into words in this way: “The wind blows where it likes, you can hear the sound of it but you have no idea where it comes from or where it goes. Nor can you tell how a person is born by the wind of the Spirit.?”
Maybe we don’t know how it happens, but we see the flowers growing out of hard soil and feel warm April breezes on our faces. We experience stirrings in our bodies, hearts, souls. There is new life all around and our old life is gone forever. Mysterious and unimaginable as all this is, we respond with “Alleluia.”