CHRIST IS RISEN FROM THE DEAD!HE IS RISEN INDEED!!!!
ALLELUIA, ALLELUIA!!!
Happy Easter everyone! Here is my homily for THE RESURRECTION OF THE LORD – EASTER SUNDAY – APRIL 4, 2010. The Gospel reading comes from the Easter Vigil Luke 24: 13-35 (you can find it at https://www.usccb.org/nab/040310.shtml#gospel). Thanks for reading and all your feedback and comments. MAY THE RISEN CHRIST BRING HIS LOVE AND PEACE TO YOU AND ALL YOURS!!! Fr. Jim Chern
HOMILY:
You ever realize that whenever you hear the name of a big city, usually some visual landmark comes to mind? Even if you’ve never been there and seen the place for yourself. When people hear New York City, the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building seems to instantly come to mind; or Paris – the Eiffel Tower is almost that city’s logo. When people hear “San Francisco,” the visual that most imagine is the iconic landmark known as the Golden Gate Bridge. When it was completed in the 1930’s it was the longest suspension bridge in the world – connecting the city to the rest of California, and to this day, it is still an amazing structure.
While the Golden Gate bridge is an internationally recognized symbol for San Francisco, it sadly holds another distinction. More people have killed themselves there than at any other place in the United States. In fact it’s the place where the most people throughout the entire world have committed suicide. Back on September 25, 2000, a young man named John Kevin Hines was only 19 years old and a freshman in college. Over the years that he was growing up, he had battled mental depression, and was on a bunch of different medications. But that fall morning, nothing seemed right; something terribly wrong was happening. The voices in his head seemed louder and stronger to him. Convincing him that he had to take his own life. So he kissed his father on the cheek, got on a local bus and headed to the bridge with his plans to end it all.
As he sat on the bus – he was crying. He promised himself that if anyone asked him what was wrong, he would not go through with it. No one did. So he got to the bridge, walked to the midway point where he stood, staring down for over 40 minutes. Out of nowhere, this woman approached him… he turned as she asked “can you take my picture?” He took 5 snapshots with the camera she handed to him, and gave the camera back to her, as tears continued to stream down his face. At which point she turned and walked away. With that, he took a few steps back, rushed the railing and threw himself over.
Amazing isn’t it? This unidentified tourist got her picture, got what she needed or wanted and couldn’t be bothered to simply ask “are you okay?” All that would have prevented him from making this leap was someone reaching out to him to ask him “what was the matter?” – more importantly to say to him that he mattered. Because at that point, what was causing such dark thoughts, what he was looking to be freed from was poverty – the poverty of isolation.
How many of us are afflicted by that same poverty ourselves? Maybe, (hopefully) not to the extreme that Hines experienced. But that poverty seems to be widespread; coming in all kinds of forms and sadly affecting people both inside and outside these walls: We feel isolated by the bad things we experience at work, at school, at home. We feel alone as we struggle with the same sins we can’t seem to resist and feel worthless because of our failures with them. We experience the dark solitude that can come from physical illnesses that afflict us. We’ve heard words, voices of despair in our lives . We fear death as we witness loved ones passing and know that we will not escape from it ourselves.
In this gospel we encounter people going through those same emotions, those same feelings – experiencing that poverty of isolation themselves. Think of all those who were gathered together and the realities of their situation that they could not hide from:
-the failures, the sins, the betrayals of the apostles;
-the violent, terrifying, horrifying images of the torture, the crucifixion, the death of Jesus seared in their minds
– the fears over what would happen next – if that’s what they did to Jesus, what could they expect;
Yes Easter Morning starts with the apostles, the disciples, the earliest followers of Jesus experiencing tremendous darkness in their own lives – that poverty, that poverty of isolation themselves. They had left everything to follow Him. They believed Him as Jesus taught them in countless ways that THEY MATTERED TO THE ONE WHO REALLY MATTERED that they mattered in God’s eyes. But with the events of the Passion and Death of Jesus, that hope seemed to have disappeared, as does their faith. We hear in today’s Gospel, after the women first discover the empty tomb, after the first report of Jesus’ resurrection the apostles don’t buy it. “Their story seemed like nonsense, and they did not believe them” – Luke says in the Gospel. Except for Peter … Peter who sobbed after he denied Jesus Peter most desperately wanted to hear again, wanted to believe again that he mattered in the eyes of the only one who really mattered, in the eyes of Jesus Christ. So when Peter hears this report from the women, his faith is stirred out of the dark sleep it had been in. He runs, he sees the empty tomb, and believes – Luke tells us, he returns amazed.
That is the gift of Easter. To move us from disbelief, to move us from dismissing this message that God loves us, that God’s interested in us, that God wants to save me and you from the prison of isolation and to bring us to experience the amazement that comes from the empty tomb.
In this triumph of Jesus Christ over death, God reaches out to humanity to tell us we’re not some random creatures meant to be sell-sufficient, floating about as some insignificant strangers. We matter enough that God has been reaching out to us throughout all of history. We matter enough that God sends his son Jesus Christ to express the fullness of his Love for us. When humanity was (and is) at it’s worst and turns on God, denies and betrays His Son Jesus, DARES to call for His crucifixion, all of which should have been the final straw convicting us to an eternity in that poverty of isolation, our God surprises us again. He shows what love really means and exactly how much we matter to him. Pope Benedict XVI said “Once Christ is risen, the gravitational pull of love is stronger than that of hatred the force of gravity of life is stronger than that of death… The Lord’s saving hand holds us up…!” We matter enough to God that He holds us up and takes us from the darkness of aloneness and isolation into intimate relationship with Him.
The thing is we can’t just hear those words, we need to experience that. We cannot simply recount this story of Jesus being risen from the dead like we’re reading from a history book. This word is God’s Living Word – so we need to experience that transformational love of the Risen Christ in our own lives in our own day and age. Just as John Kevin Hines did that fateful morning on the Golden Gate Bridge. Sadly no one reached out to him…he never heard the words he longed for from his fellow passengers or the tourist more interested in his taking her picture. We know this because miraculously John Kevin Hines survived . He is one of only less than 2 dozen individuals who have survived such an attempt. And it has changed his life. As he talks about how that darkness had enfolded him, driving him to jump, he says almost immediately he regretted what he had done, crying out “I don’t want to die.” He hit the water at 75 miles per hour, yet somehow did not lose consciousness. As he tried to swim to the surface, he realized his legs were numb and useless. He could not stay afloat when suddenly he felt a large sea animal brush against him. So now his fear was, great, I jump off the bridge, somehow survived that to have shark come eat me. Witnesses later would report that it was a sea lion nudging him to the surface. The Coast Guard picked him out of the water, and rushed him to a Hospital where he had multiple injuries and it was not clear if he would survive the next 24 hours.
We know that he did, and as he shares his story he says “I thank God [that I lived]. One regular visitor [I had] was a Franciscan monk. As we talked he suggested that I was spared for a reason, perhaps to tell my story, maybe to help put an end to almost 70 years of preventable deaths off the Bridge.” So that’s what he’s working to do. He works with a foundation trying to raise awareness about this problem on this bridge, he goes to schools where he tells his story he counsels at-risk youth. His life has been forever changed as God revealed a new plan from that moment on.
Yes, John Kevin Hines matters – to the only one who really matters. It’s sad that he had to go through all that he had to in order to know that, to believe that. But now that he does, it has changed his life. And he has become an Easter messenger reaching out to spread that Good News to the world.
What about us? What about you? Do You believe that you matter to the ONLY ONE who really matters? God loves us – He loves YOU personally. And we are challenged to move from our own disbelief to amazement by that fact. When we do, Jesus Christ calls us to make his death and resurrection, to make his Love real to others. To be that person to share His message to that person who is alone. To be His presence to that person who’s experienced death, to be His voice drowning out the voices of despair and fear and doubt saying simply, sincerely, that they too matter to the only one who really matters.
