Jubilate Homily

[Is 40:25-31 / 1 Pet 2:11-20 / John 16:16-22]

“But I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice and no one will take your joy from you.” If there is one thing that characterized the first Christians, it was their overflowing joy. They went forth into the world as witnesses of joy, witnesses of “good news of great joy for everyone.”

But what happened? Friedrich Nietzche, the German philosopher who grew up in a Lutheran parsonage and then abandoned his faith, this man spoke telling words: “You Christians lost the world when you lost your joy.” Today we hear of the struggles everywhere for Christians to witness to the faith. Why is it that our witness is so weak and limpid? Why is it that every new program that comes down the road and is offered as the sure fire way to fix the Christian witness, falls on its face and fails? Oh, it is simple, my friends. It is because our joy in the Lord has grown weak or even been lost! But how is this possible when Jesus promised “no one will take your joy from you”?

It is quite simply the case that far too often we have forgotten entirely what our Lord meant when He said: “But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice.” He spoke these words to comfort His disciples on the eve of His arrest. He was about to be arrested, tried, convicted, and killed. He was about to die. Thus “in a little while you will not see me.” But he told them not to despair when that moment came, because his departure from them was only “for a little while.” “In a little while you will see me.” That came to pass on Easter at the Resurrection! Do you recall the Gospel from two Sundays ago?

There they were, huddled behind locked doors in the Upper Room. Fear griping their hearts. And suddenly, suddenly Jesus himself is there in the room with them. He shows them His hands and His side. They know then that it is the Lord. And He is alive again. He had died and yet death had not finished Him off. There He was before them: shining in a body that was like theirs, and yet had been made incorruptible, imperishable, never to fall apart or fail again! He had said “I am the Resurrection and the Life” and now they saw that He was indeed. And so their hearts filled with overflowing joy.

But why should His rising be the source of their joy? Because His rising is the pledge and promise of their own rising. Because what the Father did in raising His Son from the dead in a body that would never die again is what He promises to do for them, for you, for all who are baptized into Him. And so that night Jesus breathed into them and said: “Receive the Holy Spirit.” That’s the Spirit of Him who raised Christ from the dead. “And if the Spirit of Him who raised Christ from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” Romans 8:11

This same Spirit, the Spirit of the Father, the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit who raises the dead, has been breathed into you! It happened right there in the font. And with that the promise that death is not the end of you. Oh, no! Because the Spirit dwells in you, you too will live forever. Not some piece of you, mind you, not your soul floating off to the sweet by and by! What a load of nonsense! No, the joy of the resurrection is that the whole of you will live again and that God will through the resurrection change your lowly body to be like His glorious body by the power that enables Him to subdue all things to Himself. Is not this cause for overflowing joy? Jesus is raised from the dead, and He is just the “first fruits.” The whole harvest will follow.

If you want to get a handle on what impelled the early Christians to go forth and witness with such boldness, you have to get a grip on what the joy of the resurrection is all about! Listen to how St. Athanasius expressed it: “There is proof of this too: for men, who before they believed in Christ, think death horrible and are afraid of it, once they are converted despise it so completely that they go forth eagerly to meet it, and themselves become witnesses of the Savior’s resurrection from it… Death has become like a tyrant who has been completely conquered by the legitimate monarch; bound hand and foot as he now is, the passers-by jeer at him, hitting him, and abusing him, no longer afraid of his cruelty and rage, because of the King who has conquered him: O death where is thy victory? O grave, where is thy sting?”

THIS is the great joy that Jesus promised that no one and nothing can take from us. No one but ourselves, if we are foolish enough to forget it! Unless we are beguiled into forgetting what the Resurrection of Jesus means for us and for all who have been baptized into the Savior and who cling to Him in living faith!

That we might never forget it, that our joy might constantly overflow, week by week the Holy Church sets before us a Feast of Resurrection victory. Week by week the Savior calls His baptized people to His table to eat His body and drink His blood – the very body and blood that once died and now die no more. It is the Risen One who presides at His table and this is what He promises: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood HAS eternal life and I WILL raise him up at the last day.” This table is the Resurrection banquet of your Lord! Just as Baptism first placed you into Jesus’ death and resurrection and marked you with the promise of everlasting life, so this Table constantly renews that resurrection life within you. How can death ever hold those who have partaken of the Body and Blood which long ago defeated death and left him a bound and miserable captive? It cannot!

If we are ever to recover the joy that will make us credible witnesses to the world, it will begin with nothing less than the realization that our bodies will be made incorruptible by Christ and that He, the Risen One, in the Eucharist still is among us in His body and blood that are the wiping out of our sin and the gift of His righteousness, a foretaste of our resurrection every week.

True God, He first
From death has burst
Forth into life, all subduing.
His enemy
Doth vanquished lie;
His death has been death’s undoing.
AND YOURS SHALL BE
Like victory
O’er death and grave,
Saith Him who gave
His life for us, life renewing!
(Hymn of the Day - 483:2)