Readings, Acts 9:1-6 and John 21:1-19
Image, The Conversion of Saint Paul, Luca Giordano, 1690
 
We know there are many ways to be beckoned for a task, that our name can be called in myriad tones. And the sound of the name and the nature of the task sometimes run in paradox. The saccharine sweet, upward intoned ‘heeeey Liam’ is usually a precursor of some arduous, inconvenient demand. On the other hand, the recourse to a formal greeting in a familial setting, such as a parent calling out your full name (‘Liam Andrew Miller’) is a sure sign that the task you’re being beckoned to do is one you ought to have already done.
 
In today’s readings, two people have their name called by Jesus, beckoned into an important task. But let’s situate ourselves a little first. Last week we noted how the upturning of the resurrection signalled the shift from the story of Jesus, to that of his followers taking up his work in the power of the Spirit. We are being moved, in this season of Easter, toward the Day of Pentecost and the birth of the church. Last week, Jesus breathed his spirit and bestowed his peace upon his followers. Today (though these stories are some time apart chronologically) Jesus appears to and commissions two pivotal figures in the story of the early church: Peter and Paul. Though their beckoning could not be more dissimilar.
 
Peter gets breakfast on the beach, a stroll at sunrise, and his commission is graciously bestowed in a threefold way which symbolically erases his earlier threefold denial. In contrast Jesus blinds Paul, confronts him with the truth, and sends him off to be dealt with by someone else.
 
Now this contrast is understandable – we might even say earnt. Peter is despondent. There’s almost a reversion to childhood at play in Peter’s decision to go fishing. After everything he has been through these last years with Christ, he is seeking comfort in the familiar of his former life. Perhaps feeling unworthy after his threefold denial of Christ, perhaps feeling unready for the responsibility laid upon him as an apostle, perhaps unsure as to how any of this is going to work if Jesus isn’t there with him, he does the thing he knows how to do. It is in this posture, this place of emotional and spiritual turmoil that Jesus finds Peter. And so Jesus helps them with their catch, cooks some breakfast, and allows Peter to say again and again I love thee, while hearing again and again you are the one I have chosen.
 
Paul, on the other hand, is far from despondent, far from feeling unready for the task ahead. Triumphant and focused, he knows exactly who he is and what is required of him, and he is out on the road attending to business. Of course, this is the business of harassing, arresting, and even executing Christians. And so, Jesus does not appear at the soft light of dawn, but as the blinding light of judgment. Saul, the name booms from heaven, why are you persecuting me? And then, upon revealing his identity, Jesus simply tells Paul to get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do. No pastoral walk, no restorative breakfast, just blinding light, get up, and I’m handing your case off to someone else.
 
Now, I won’t get too flippant. The rest of this story, when Ananais goes to meet the one who has been persecuting his friends, and calls him brother Saul, is one of the more moving in Scripture, further testament to shift of focus to Jesus’ followers taking up to work of Christ in calling the unlikely into the movement and breaking down dividing walls of hostility. But nonetheless the contrast between these two stories, between the treatment of Peter (who had denied) and Paul (who had persecuted) is stark.
 
But perhaps we recognise that sometimes this is what is required. That while of course we wish to be beckoned by Christ in a manner similar to Peter’s – filled with tenderness and patience – if we are honest, there are times we need to be beckoned like Paul. Times when we need an indelicate wake up call to change our ways before we go on causing harm. These are, in their own ways, loving responses, both aimed to lead someone off a destructive path and into meaning and truth.
 
And just as these are both, in their ways, loving responses, it is also important to grasp, that despite the variance in tone and approach, Paul sees no distinction in these appearances. When he writes to churches defending his apostleship, he lists all the people Jesus appeared to (Peter among them) and then, in the same list, he names himself. The appearance of Christ might have been different; indeed we might question whether “appearance” is even the right word, but Paul sees no distinction. Jesus appeared to him and called him to be an apostle. He is not of another category, or a second-class, he simply is among those Jesus beckoned and commissioned. Which is not just a claim Paul invents for his own ends, it is consistent with Jesus’ own words spoken to Thomas: Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.
 
And this is where it comes to us, where the contrasting stories of Peter and Paul converge with our own. Some of us heard the beckoning call of Jesus in the dulcet tones of our parents and grandparents, or in Sunday school songs and household hymns. Some of us heard the urgent call of Jesus at our lowest points, a radical interruption of our self-destruction and self-loathing. Some can pinpoint the moment and recall the sound of his voice, for others it is more life a wave in the ocean – we can’t pick where it started we just know that at some point we were being carried by its momentum. There are no distinctions or hierarchies in the ways we were beckoned, and thus no ground for boasting or shrinking based on how and when Jesus called our name and led us into life. All that matters is that having been called we are now, all of us, disciples. Christ has made us his own and entrusted us with the work of the kingdom and the heralding of the gospel. We have one Lord, we have received one baptism and have become one priesthood. As we heard last week, when Jesus appeared to John on Patmos, he who loves us and freed us from our sins… made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father. And as a body of priests beckoned and commissioned by Christ, we are invited to the one table, to the one bread and one cup. For you and me, and all other Christians however we come to the table of grace come because of grace, come because of the invitation of Christ, which might meet us in radically different ways, but comes only ever from one source, Jesus Christ the living one.

Readings, Revelation 1:4-8, 17-18 and John 20:19-31
Image, Caspar David Friedrich, Easter Morning, ca. 1828–35. 
 
Last week at Easter we meditated on and celebrated the faithfulness of Christ and the mighty acts of God. We marvelled at Christ’s tender care of his friends, his mercy amidst trial and terror, his victory over death and the surprising upturning of his resurrection. The Easter weekend is the crescendo of the work of Christ and all he finished and made new.
 
Now today, in our first readings following Easter there is still much to marvel. Jesus appears to his disciples offering them his peace, and to Thomas offering his wounds, he is envisioned at the end of the age coming on the clouds in glory, and he appears to John with all care and tenderness, offering words of comfort and hope: Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive for ever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of Hades. Yet, despite all this we also glimpse the turning point the resurrection proves. The turning point in the narrative of the New Testament, as we move from the story of Jesus to that of his followers, living in the age between his resurrection and return.
 
For in the gospel reading, when Jesus brings his peace and presence, he says also, As the Father has sent me, so I send you. The disciples, still reeling at his arrival in their locked room, are already receiving their commission. This shouldn’t come as a shock. Jesus didn’t exactly hide that his work would be continued by them - going so far as to say they would perform greater works than he. But perhaps they were struck by the rapidity. Perhaps they, like Mary in the garden, thought they would get to cling to their Teacher a little longer before being sent. But the resurrection is a rupture, a new age has already begun.
 
The words in Revelation also signal the shift. As John remarks in his doxological greeting which we borrowed in our call to worship: To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. The sentence moves quickly from the action of Jesus (who loves and frees us) to what this makes us (a kingdom and priests). The great action of Christ swiftly reveals its meaning upon our lives. The great shroud of death is barely pierced, the reign of Sin is only recently deposed, the depths of hell just now harrowed, and already priests are being called to serve. The stone is barely rolled away and already the word is entrusted to the mournful pilgrims: Christ has gone ahead of you, hurry along after him. 
 
Now you might be thinking, yes, of course, no real surprise there, that is Christianity after all… but we must not lose sight that this turn was not made without surprising a few passengers. That the great work should begin after Easter is hardly expected or inevitable. When Jesus ascended to the heavens after commissioning his disciples, they stay looking at the sky expecting him to come right back (likely with fanfare and angel armies precipitating the Day of the Lord when every knee shall bow). And yet, like at the empty tomb, mysterious messengers have to idle up to Jesus’ followers to remind them, hey, the work is only beginning, remember, as the Father sent him, so he is sending you.
 
The One who loves and frees us makes us a kingdom, makes us priests, and sends us out. We who are baptised into Christ’s death also share in his resurrection which means to receive his peace, his breath, his Spirit, his commission. We are entrusted with his message, bid to follow in his way, called to carry on his work to the ends of the earth and the end of the age.
 
But of course, we do not do this alone. The focus may have shifted to the action of Christ’s followers, but Christ has hardly exited the story. As we heard in John, he breathes out his spirit upon the disciples and as we shall celebrate in a handful of weeks at Pentecost the Spirit will descend upon all those who call on the name of the Lord. This Spirit, our advocate and counsellor, enlivens and accompanies us as we go forth in the name of Christ. The Spirit, our friend, pours out fruit and gifts, until the day of Christ’s glorious return.
 
The presence of the Spirit and the promise of Christ not only ensure that we are not alone as we carry on the work of the Kingdom, but also ensure that in so doing our labour is not in vain. That the work we undertake as part of the great work, that the acts of mercy, justice, grace, love, joy we endeavour in the image of Christ - the faithfulness we show to the gospel call - will not be in vain. Our labour for Christ (in whatever form it takes) will not be the thing that saves the world, it will not usher in the return of Christ, it will not bring the kingdom in its fullness, but it is nonetheless part of that story. Our labour (however much is it recognised or noticeable in our day) will be swept up on that day, vindicated and incorporated not only into the slow progressive labour of the church, but also the expansive, surprising, mysterious, and ultimately victorious work of the Triune God in history.
 
Easter Sunday unfolds into the Easter season, as the story of Christ unfolds into that of his disciples following after him in the power of the Spirit. And in this season we take up our part in the great work, sent by Christ as he first was sent into the world in love and service. And as we go forth in Christ’s peace and with his Spirit, we take heart, because like Christ’s own labour which was vindicated in the resurrection, we know that our own labour (even if it sometimes feels small, perhaps sometimes even futile) will also be vindicated on the great and glorious day when Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth comes on the clouds with the restoration of the cosmos trailing on his heels.

Readings, Acts 10:34-43 and Luke 24:1-12
Image, Maurice Denis, Easter Mystery (Mystère de Pâcques), 1891.
 
There’s this brilliant exchange in the film, Men in Black. For those who don’t recall, the film is about a bureaucratic agency which deals with the hidden alien population on earth. A new agent, made aware of the secret, asks why the government doesn’t just tell people about aliens, people are smart after all. To which the seasoned agent responds:
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the centre of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.
 
It’s a line that has no reason to be that good. Without the alien reference it could be from Death of a Salesman. It expresses, succinctly, a profound and fundamental truth: our understanding and comprehension of the world around us is hardly fixed, and no one is immune to surprises that would upturn our worlds.
 
The Easter scene is one such upturning, a fundamental shift in the comprehension of the world. Those who go to Christ’s tomb hear the world-shaking, reality contorting words, Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Death, surely about as true an absolute as we have, has been undone. Christ is risen, he who died is not among the dead but out and about calling his friends to follow. So ludicrous is this claim, so contrary to what everyone knows, that when the women rush back to Jesus’ other friends with this good news, it is dismissed as an idle tale. Dismissed as the new agent in Men in Black might have dismissed a UFO sighting just 15 minutes ago. Indeed, the post-resurrection scenes in the gospels are a continued reversal of what everyone has known, as Christ gathers up his grieving and confused followers, demonstrating those beautiful words of John, Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The great upturning of Easter, is that not even death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
 
And it is this great upturning, this triumph of Christ’s victory, that Peter announces in Acts. It is easy to hear this speech as a kind of summation of what has happened and to conclude (borrowing some of Jesus’ famous last words) that it is finished. That Peter declares there was the great upturning of Easter and now the surprises are left behind, belonging to another generation. And yet, if we were to read on just a few more verses, we find the following: While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles.  
 
Just when Peter thinks he has grasped the great upturning of Christ’s resurrection, he is witness to another foundational shift in his comprehension of the world. Because contrary to everything he knew, here he beholds the Holy Spirit fall upon the Gentiles. Contrary to everything he knew and was proclaiming about this new Jesus movement, contrary to everything he believed about clean and unclean, and what was required in order to covenant with God, he sees that Christ’s resurrection means something more still. Then Peter said, ‘Can anyone withhold the water for baptising these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?’
 
Contravening the practices of the early Jesus movement, the Gentiles are baptised. For there is no distinction, Peter realises – they have received the same Spirit, just as we have. This, for those familiar with the story of the early church, is a fundamental turning point. Gentiles shall be able to take up their place in the emerging church of Jesus Christ, without first having to undergo circumcision and keep dietary laws. For the upturning of the resurrection, the surprise of the empty tomb, is not one and done. The resurrection continues to fundamentally shift the way Jesus’ disciples comprehend the world.
 
Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the centre of the universe. So says our seasoned veteran in black. After the Copernican revolution we know that the sun is the centre and the earth gently revolves around this point (I mean, we’ve all made a diorama or two in our time). And it is easy to approach such a proclamation as Peter’s and say, of course, it is finished, dust off our hands and move on. However, it is not the case. Because recently I saw this – admittedly terrifying – footage of what’s really going on beneath our feet. (Kind of makes you want to hold onto something)
 
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the kind of revolutionary upturning that keeps on surprising, expanding, and leading us into a new and remarkable comprehension of the world. For the resurrection is more than a fact. It is more than something which happened. The resurrection is the very inbreaking of the new creation. It is the foundational shift in reality where the world moves from being in Adam, to being in Christ. To know that Christ is risen, is to know that Christ is alive and on the move, leading us forward and upturning our world. To know the resurrection is to be led by the Resurrected One, out into the world, to see where the Spirit is at work, pouring out Their gifts.
 
To be a Christian living after the resurrection of Christ is to live with a possibility ever before us: imagine what you’ll know tomorrow. Imagine what the resurrection is making possible in light of what it has already made possible. Christ is risen, he is alive, and through the Spirit he bids us follow. And so while at Easter we look back to that first morning, and allow it to upturn and reshape what we know of the world, we also look forward. For then as now the living will not be found among the dead, and we follow a living God. A Living God calling us to participate in work which breaks down the dividing walls of hostility, proclaims freedom and jubilee, reconciles and restores creation, pursues justice and deliverance, demands solidarity and mercy, proclaims and pursues God’s peaceable kingdom. And like Peter, this work does not leave us undisturbed, rather it hurtles us on like a planet after the sun, asking us to remain open to wonder, surprises, grace, and love beyond perhaps our own imaginations, but not the imagination of our God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead.

Readings, Exodus 12:1-14 and John 13:1-17, 31-35 
Image, Sieger Köder, “The Meal,” from the Lenten veil Hope for the Excluded, 1996

​There is a delightful paradox at work in both our readings. That right on the precipice of the two most dramatic displays of the majesty and power of God, we would have stories replete with tender, quiet affection.
 
The Exodus and the Cross and Resurrection reveal the fundamental nature of God, reveal, that is, what it means when God says I AM WHAT I AM. The mighty acts of exodus and resurrection testify to God’s power, be it over the gods and armies of Pharoah, or over the grasping dominion of Death. These acts give us confidence and hope that we shall not be put to shame or left alone, that God does not abhor the affliction of the afflicted, nor forsake the sorrowful and maligned. God is the one who raised Jesus from the tomb, having first raised the slaves from Egypt. For this we give thanks, in this we take heart, and by this most excellent truth we live.
 
But how do we live? Because such a sense of assurance, trusting in such magnificent displays of divine might, could promote an arrogant life where we live as enclosed selves with nothing to learn. Could shape the posture of a winner, perhaps even a sore winner: where we have the answer, have the light, have the power. And truly many Christians (and many institutions of Christians) have acted just this way and the world which Christ loved and for which he lay down his life is worse for it.
 
But on the precipice of the two most dramatic displays of the majesty and power of God, we take note of the paradox, that these stories are replete with tender, quiet affection. In the instructions for the Passover meal God says, If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbour in obtaining one. The meal celebrating God’s mighty deliverance is one shaped to promote neighbourliness and hospitality. The later instruction, You shall let none of it remain until the morning, is a further a prompt to share, for if you don’t want leftovers, you need more mouths, you need to send more invites, you need to extend a table. The feast remembering and anticipating the mighty acts of God is not one of individual excess, but neighbourliness, aimed at promoting connection and affection between those about to be free.
 
So too our gospel reading. In which we hear some of my favourite words in scripture: Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. Love drenches the whole passage. Jesus washes the feet of his followers, refers to them lovingly as his little children, and entrusts them with a new commandment: love one another.
 
But what precedes all this love and service is vital. In the verse preceding the foot washing, John offers us an insight into Jesus’ feeling: And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. It is in full knowledge of God’s power and glory that Christ takes this moment to kneel at the feet of his friends and tend to them, serve them, love them. Knowing that he had come from and was going to God, that the hour of his glorification was at hand, Christ does not act the gloating monarch, nor the self-assured acolyte, but models to his followers what he yearns to see from them.
 
This is what we learn from the mighty acts of God. This is how we live in the assurance of God’s triumph, and how we exemplify the glory of God: through tender affection, generous love, humble service, and neighbourly care. In both the instructions of the Passover and the example of the Last Supper the memory and anticipation of the mighty acts of God brings people together to share food, tend to bodies, and grow together in faith. All of this is so we may be known as those God has set free, and Christ has loved to the end.    

Readings, Isaiah 50:4-9a and Luke 19:28-40
Image, Anslem Kiefer, detail from "Palmsonntag" (Palm Sunday). 2006
 
Let us consider these words from the prophet Isaiah, long associated with the figure and struggle of Christ:
I know that I shall not be put to shame,
he who vindicates me is near.
To hear these words on the brink of Holy Week carries some dissonance. For between the hosannas of today and our hallelujahs a week from now, Christ will undergo a great deal intended to put him to shame. He will be stripped naked in public, assaulted, tormented, mocked. He will be dressed ironically in robes, adorned with a crown of thorns. Even his object of execution – the cross – will bear the inscription King of the Jews, designed to display the discrepancy between Christ’s supposed delusion and grim reality. Christ’s crucifixion and the abuse preceding it is a punishment aimed as much at humiliation as execution – the snuffing out of dignity as the snuffing out of breath. And yet, we hear these words, I know that I shall not be put to shame, he who vindicates me is near.
 
How do we contend with this discrepancy? Let us consider the gospel passage of the day. Let us picture the scene, cloaks and palms strewn about, the hosannas shouted aloud, the donkey and the itinerant preacher the centre of this hubbub. Jesus’ detractors are nervous what such a demonstration might mean for all of them. After all, if this display of the supposed arrival of a new king gets the Romans nervous enough it is going to end bad for all the Jews of the region. ‘Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!’ can sound a lot like the cry of insurgency in the ears of an occupier. So some Pharisees press in and implore Jesus, Teacher, order your disciples to stop. To which Jesus most memorably replies: I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.
 
It’s a killer line. Naturally we can take it as a kind of poetic effusion, a non-literal turn of phrase that communicates the frenzy of this moment and the impossibility of reeling in such joy. We can take it as a proclamation in line with many a psalm, where rocks, hills, oceans, and stars sing out the glory of God. Creation knows the hands, breath, and voice that formed it and worships in its way… the rocks, Christ alerts us, are just begging for an opportunity to join this triumphal moment as the one with God since the beginning moves amongst them.
 
In the context of today’s question, the discrepancy raised by the question of shame, these words of Christ might teach us something about vindication. Perhaps we might apply the words of Isaiah to the experience of Christ, because in acknowledging the readiness of the rocks, Jesus conveys his belief that the whole force of the cosmos bends toward this moment, the whole weight of creation sings his victory. Perhaps Jesus knows that even if his followers fail (or perhaps better, knows that when his followers fail) something primordial will pick up the slack. The rocks, Christ declares, know the score. They would cry out if the people fall silent, because they know that even if people fail, God will not.
 
For it is not the failure, betrayal, desertion, and abuse of the people that would put Christ to shame. The only thing that could is if he were failed, betrayed, or deserted by the one he calls Father. And the only way he could be failed by the one he calls Father is if Jesus Christ were crucified for his words and ministry, and was not raised again. For if that were the case he would be put to shame, he would not be vindicated. Shame would be heaped on his head like coal and all the mocking reverence of the crown of thorns and entitled cross would prove the last word.
 
The resurrection of Christ is often referred to as God’s great YES. For where the world sought to say no to Christ – to his message, his way, his hope, his challenge – God, in raising Christ from the dead says Yes. Yes, the resurrection proclaims, yes, this is the one who comes in the name of the Lord, this is my Son the beloved, this is the Anointed One. Yes, the resurrection proclaims, yes, the kingdom of God is like seeds and shepherds, it is a place where last are first, and poor are blessed. Yes, the resurrection proclaims, yes, true greatness is known in service, true love in laying down one’s life, true power in peace-making. In the Yes of the resurrection God vindicates the life and ministry of Jesus ensuring that who he was, and what he inaugurated, cannot be put to shame.
 
And so we can say of Christ the words of Isaiah, I know that I shall not be put to shame, he who vindicates me is near. And we can say this even while acknowledging the humiliating torture, abuse, and mockery Christ will face in his passion. Because the vindication of Christ is not obliterated by the fact that he faces attempts to put him to shame, just as our own vindication as beloved children of God, made in the divine image, is not obliterated or marred by the humiliations, abuses, violence, and mockery which we have and may face on account of the cruelties of the world. Because the vindication of Christ is the act of God which reveals such mockeries and abuses as lies, the act which denies them the last word.
 
The vindication of Christ is the confession that the torturer does not get to define the worth the tortured, the tormentor does not tell the truth about the tormented, the abuser isn’t right about the abused, the judges of the world do not pass final judgment on the worth of a soul. For in the breaking of the tomb, the conquering of death, the resurrection of the body God vindicates Christ, and in Christ vindicates all of those the world has unduly sought to put to shame, all those it has stripped and scorned, pierced and punished, killed and buried. For this is, at least in part, what it means to share in Christ’s resurrection. It means to share in Christ’s vindication, and if we share in this, we can also claim those words of Isaiah for ourselves, we can say for ourselves the words Christ may well have held close in his hour of need: I know that I shall not be put to shame, he who vindicates me is near.          
 
Stand strong friends, even when the things we have held dearest and fought longest for appear to be shamed, scorned, and abused by the cruelty and ugliness of the world: the author of life is writing the story, God commands the final word. The things of God shall not be put to shame, the one who vindicated Christ will vindicate what is Christ’s, for God is near.