Easter II 2024

This is thankworthy, that if a man for conscience endure grief,
Suffering wrongfully.
(1 St. Peter ii. 19 )
 
Our Epistle reading for The Second Sunday after Easter taken from St. Peter’s First Epistle speaks of suffering. This might seem strange. After all, we are in Easter Tide. Suffering was studied at length on Good Friday. Easter Tide should be about joy – the surging relief and rising happiness that come to us when we meditate upon Christ’s victory over sin, death, and Satan. But dear old Saint Pope Gregory the Great, who is mostly responsible for our Church Lectionary, wants us to remember that our Resurrected life in Christ is a treasured gift to be received and perfected in willing hearts through constant suffering and warfare. As joyously focused on Christ’s Resurrection as we should be, the Church Fathers knew only too well that the prudent and cautious pilgrim who seeks to enter God’s Kingdom must fight a daily battle of suffering and dying in order to rise and be joyful.
         
Easter Tide teaches us that suffering is a necessary component in the process of our sanctification and redemption. Last week, we learned that Christ’s Peace comes to us to infuse the forgiveness of sins and the New Life into our hearts. Today, we learn that the assurance of its rule in our lives demands a kind of spiritual struggle that tends to be threatened by the devices and desires of our own hearts. (General Confession, BCP p. 6) And what better teacher have we than St. Peter himself, to teach us about the taming of premature zeal as we embrace the reality of the Risen Christ? He writes: For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. (1 St. Peter ii. 19,20) Peter believes and knows what Christ has done for us already. Peter, too, knows how his own character had to suffer the consequences of a faith that had not been tried by fire. Peter had to die to his own sinful betrayal of Christ before the Holy Spirit could rise in him. Peter knew too that for as long as he lived, he would suffer the temptation to betray Christ or to become soft on his own past weakness. The union of Christ’s Suffering, Death, and Resurrection had to become for him the pattern of New Life. The Peace and Forgiveness of Sins which Christ had established would become his own prized possession only by way of dying and rising. For I have given you an example, that ye should do [to one another] as I have done to you. (St. John xiii. 15)
         
For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. (Ibid, 15) The message is clear. By embracing the forgiveness of sins, Christians are called to suffer and die as they are habituated to the forgiveness of sins. Christ is the forgiveness of sins that rises in man’s heart only by way of suffering for the Truth. A man suffers to die to malice and ill will and come alive to the well doing. God’s well doing has overcome sin in Jesus Christ. Christ’s mercy tempers judgment, His generosity destroys selfishness, and His forgiveness breathes love and hope into new lives. St. Peter is quick to admit that this process is difficult. He writes his Epistle to a community that is struggling to allow Christ’s Resurrected goodness to overcome the instinctive urge to repay others with an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. St. Peter acknowledges that most men, including Christians, must struggle to die to the old man and come alive to the new. Most men’s souls are tempted not to forgive. Evil’s assault upon men from the outside in other people is of secondary importance to him. It is only when men begin to suffer inwardly and spiritually that the forgiveness of sins is received as what we neither desire nor deserve but desperately need if we would be Risen with Christ. This will put to silence the ignorance of foolish men since God’s love is rationally consistent with His being and offered always through Jesus Christ and by the Holy Ghost.

St. Peter reminds his flock today that Christ Jesus was the only Person in history who endured and overcame evil through goodness because the loving forgiveness of sins was perfectly alive in His heart. St. Peter reminds us that Christ embraced the forgiveness of sins as what was natural to Him, as God’s Son. He did not sin, neither was guile found in his mouth; who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered he threatened not; but committed himself to Him that judgeth righteously. (1 St. Peter ii. 22,23) Yet Christ, in a sense, had more reason not to forgive, since He did not wrong and committed no sin. So, He responded to man’s sin against Him with God’s love or the forgiveness of sins. God forever intends that man should repent and believe so that he can live and not die in his sins. God’s goodness saturated Christ’s heart. In turn, Christ intends to love His enemies into friendship with God. In His suffering death, Christ was made sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Cor. v. 21) St. Peter agrees.

Who in His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes you were healed; For ye were as sheep, going astray, but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls. (Ibid, 24,25)  
 

What the Apostles realized long ago was that the Crucified Jesus, who rose up from death on Easter Day, was God’s Good Shepherd. But what became clearer and clearer was that the Good Shepherd, in laying down His life for them, was still seeking out His lost sheep from the hard wood, the rod, of the Cross. Christ’s own struggle to conquer sin through suffering is the model for Man’s victory over sin. Christ pursues His end, our salvation, come what may. As God’s forgiveness of sins made flesh, Christ loves the sinner much more than his sin. Today, Jesus likens himself to both the Good Shepherd and the door through which He will carry us back to the Father. We can become His sheep if we begin to confess that we were lost sheep needing to be found by Christ the Good Shepherd.  Dr. Farrer explains Jesus’ words in this way:

What does Jesus say?  A man cares naturally for his own things.  He does not have to make himself care.  The shepherd who has bought the ground and fenced the fold and tended the lambs, whose own the sheep are to keep or to sell, cares for them.  He would run some risk, rather than see them mauled; if he had only a heavy stick in his hand, he would beat off the wolf…He says that he cares for us as no one else can, because we are his.  We do not belong to any other man; we belong to him.  His dying for us in this world is the natural effect of his unique care.  It is the act of our Creator. (Weekly Paragraphs for the Holy Sacrament: Easter II)
 
Christ would run some risk rather than lose His lost sheep. Belonging to Christ comes when we confess that we are lost sheep now being found by the Lord who is our Shepherd, the rod and staff of whose Cross comfort us. (Psalm xxiii. 4)

But we protest: All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every man to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah liii. 6) Our false pride, masquerading as humility, exclaims that the Good Shepherd is too good to heal us. But though we are lost in sin and death, we must remember that He is greater than our sins, or His forgiveness is greater than our sins. I am the Good Shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known by them. (St. John x. 11, 14) Jesus implies that He knows us better than we know ourselves. His knowledge penetrates the secrets of our hearts. He knows how sin has enslaved us. He understands that He must struggle and suffer, as He alone can, to conquer our sin. The Rod that comforts us is His Cross, from which He becomes the forgiveness of sins for us. The Staff that comforts us is His Resurrected love that can extend the forgiveness of sins to others. The Rod of the Cross awakens us to how much He loves us. The Staff of the Resurrection herds us into the comfort of hope in His New Life. From His Cross, Jesus the Good Shepherd invites us to participate in His Good Death. Jesus the Good Shepherd now desires to lift us onto His shoulders in the New Risen Life where sin, death, and Satan can harm us no more.

Because we belong to Jesus, we can reciprocate His desire for us. We can begin to know Him as the Good Shepherd, who prepares a table before us in the presence of [our] enemies; [who will] anoint [our] head with oil; [so that our] cup runneth over. (Ps. xxiii. 5) His forgiveness of our sins can lead us into sin’s death. His Resurrection can mean that we can forgive all men their sins against us. Suffering the assaults of malicious men can become the occasion for overcoming evil with good.

Today, my friends, as we continue to wend our way through Easter tide, let us remember always, with St. Peter, that we have erred and strayed from [Christ’s ways] like lost sheep. Jesus insists we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture. (Ps. c. 3) We belong to Him and He longs to have us forever. And, always, with Cardinal Von Balthasar, we shall remember that

Without Easter, Good Friday would have no meaning. Without Easter, there would be no hope that suffering and abandonment might be tolerable. But with Easter, a way out becomes visible for human sorrow [and suffering], an absolute future: more than a hope, a divine expectation.
 
Amen.
©wjsmartin
 
 
 
 

---