I have a folder full of wonderfully crafted pieces that believers
in the Risen One have written about Easter over the centuries. For this Easter
week, rather than write something of my own, I offer from this collection excerpts
from a homily preached at St. John’s Church, Lafayette Square, Washington DC
by Rev. James C. Holmes in Easter, March
31, 1991.
“Interruption is
fundamental to our experience of God. The story of creation is the story of God
interrupting, breaking into the nothingness which is called chaos and bring
order and life… God interrupted that meaningless void with something which is
our world, which is humanity. Clearly nothing was the same anymore, and a task
of that newly created humanity was to respond to its creator, to the one who
out of love had formed them.
Interruption is the
story of Easter. God interrupted death, interrupted the power and flow of
the forces of evil …Nations and people could have gone on as before, drawing near
to God then falling away in an assertion of their own independence in a never
ending cycle had not God interrupted in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and
interrupted supremely by walking into that tomb and raising Him from the dead…
In a profound sense, God interrupts our lives, whether we
like it or not, but the question for us today is how do we respond to the
interruption, particularly to the news of Easter? Is it an interruption only in
the sense that we somehow feel compelled to be in church?... The important
issue is are we willing to realize that our lives have been interrupted with
the assertion that power, money, status are but short lived symbols which we
have allowed to take hold of us…Are we willing to be interrupted by the needs around us?
The news of Easter is that God has interrupted and continues to interrupt our lives with unending, undeserved love for us. {Let us have} a renewed sense of our own ministry of interruption, as agents of the love of God breaking into our world.”
The news of Easter is that God has interrupted and continues to interrupt our lives with unending, undeserved love for us. {Let us have} a renewed sense of our own ministry of interruption, as agents of the love of God breaking into our world.”
In Brussels last week, many suffered interruption in the
form of death, injury, not knowing, not being able to get somewhere “important”
in a timely way. The forces of evil , present in ISIS and other demonic ways
people act toward one another, seem uninterrupted, but not for long and
certainly not forever. God interrupts evil . We participate in that
interruption. Make no mistake about it. God counts on our participation in
restoring the world to wholeness. The Easter season goes on in us.
As Robert Barron, Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles, recently
wrote "Let us not domesticate the still stunning and disturbing message of
resurrection. Rather, let us allow it to unnerve us, change us, set us on
fire.”
~ Sister Joan Sobala
