Easter Sunday
March 27, 2016
Acts 10: 34, 37-43
St. Vincent’s Hospital, Harrison, N.Y.
“We are witnesses
[that] … this man God raised on the third day.
Everyone who believes in him will receive forgiveness of sins thru his
name” (Acts 10: 39, 40, 43).
You’re in the wrong
place! You want Stop ’n’ Shop or the
mall or a park.
We’re here because
Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the 3d day after his crucifixion. We’re here because he commissioned his
apostles to go thruout the whole world to continue his mission of extending
God’s pardon, God’s mercy, to sinners “thru his name.”
The 1st reading
this morning comes from the Acts of the Apostles, which is the 1st book in the
NT after the 4 gospels (and one of the easiest books in the Bible to
read—hint!). We read from Acts thruout
the Easter season, hearing the Church’s 1st preaching of the resurrection of
Jesus and the “forgiveness of sins thru his name.”
One sample of that
preaching is our 1st reading, and it’s from a very significant chapter of
Acts. St. Peter is addressing a Roman
centurion named Cornelius and his household, addressing Gentiles—pagans!
Romans! the hated occupiers of Judea—offering even to them the salvation won for us by the cross and resurrection of
Jesus. Until this point, the apostles
and all the 1st followers of Jesus have been Jews, and they believe that Jesus
fulfilled all the prophecies of the Jewish Scriptures (the OT) for the benefit
only of the Jews. Too bad about everyone
else!
 |
Cornelius the
Centurion
Chapel of the
Centurion at Fort Monroe, Va.
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But God sent Peter
a vision, a revelation, commanding him to broaden his outlook, to go also to
the pagans with the Gospel of Jesus (10:9-16).
So Peter does that,
starting by reminding Cornelius and the others of what they must already have
known, of all Jesus’ good deeds all over Judea and Galilee and in
Jerusalem. Everyone had either seen and
heard Jesus, or at least had heard of what he was preaching and the healings he
was performing. And surely everyone
knew—especially an officer in the Roman army like Cornelius—that the Jewish and
Roman authorities had executed him.
What not everyone
knew, and certainly not many believed, was that 3 days after that execution,
Jesus rose from the dead and—as we heard in the gospel reading (John
20:1-9)—his tomb was empty when his followers went to complete his burial
rites, which they couldn’t complete on Friday evening because of the
Sabbath. Few knew that “God granted that
he be visible … to us, the witnesses chosen by God in advance, who ate and
drank with him after he rose from the dead” (Acts 10:40-41). The Jewish leaders had put out a story that
the disciples had stolen his body—a story spread by the very guards who
explained that they were sleeping while it happened (Matt 28:11-15).
But the disciples
themselves were slow to believe he was truly alive. After all, who’d ever heard such a fantastic
story before? Next Sunday we’ll hear the
gospel of “doubting Thomas” (John 20:19-29).
The apostles and other disciples believed because, as Peter says, they
really had seen and spoken with Jesus, had eaten with him, had touched his very
flesh and its wounds.
By the time Peter
preached the resurrection to Cornelius, he and the other apostles had already
experienced harassment, arrest, and flogging on account of their
preaching. 2 chapters later, King Herod
will execute the apostle James and try to execute Peter too—who will make a
miraculous escape from jail. The
apostles are men so thoroughly convinced that Jesus is alive that they no
longer fear persecution or death. They
are thoroughly convinced that Jesus has truly been “anointed with the Holy
Spirit and power” by God (Act 10:38) and has been “appointed by God as judge of
the living and the dead” (10:42), as we profess every Sunday in our creed—or
today in our baptismal promises.
Peter gives witness
to the resurrection of Jesus and to what that means: “everyone who believes in him will receive
forgiveness of sins thru his name,” and on the day of judgment Jesus will award
eternal life to those he has forgiven, and allow those who have rejected his
pardon to go their own way—which is not
the way to eternal life.
The Church
continues the mission of the apostles, the mission to testify to the
resurrection and to God’s mercy—mercy offered to everyone, Jew and Gentile, man
and woman, rich and poor—offered but never imposed.
That’s why we’re here this morning: to rejoice that Jesus is risen, to rejoice
that he forgives our sins, to rejoice that his Holy Spirit empowers us to live
a new life—no more “malice and wickedness” but, instead, “sincerity and truth”
(1 Cor 5:8).
All of us who are
followers of Jesus now are his witnesses—by living holy lives, by practicing
kindness toward one another and patience with one another, and by our joy, the
joy that comes from believing that Jesus is alive and from being in a
relationship with him.
“Christ indeed from
death is risen, our new life obtaining.
Have mercy, victor King, ever reigning!
Alleluia!” (Sequence)
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