On the first Easter morning, St. Mary Magdalene stood weeping outside a tomb. Mark confides: “when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him” (16:1). They clearly loved Jesus. But they were in no way expecting, or looking for, the resurrection of the dead. It appears they desired to prepare the body of Christ in such a way as to create a memorial of his death. In this profoundly moving scene in John ch. 20, Mary is devastated. Not only has the one whom she called “Lord” died, but his precious corpse is missing.
The drama of the moment is palpable. We hear the voice of a stranger addressing her personally, by name — “Mary.” To borrow the phrasing of Elizabeth Bruenig, Mary knew her soul was exposed to something indescribably majestic and bracing—something that overwhelmed her: the unmistakable sensation of eye contact. The one whom she saw, saw her. She was shaken to the core: she had not so much perceived as she had been perceived by the risen Lord whom she had stood near when he had been crucified.
Another text commonly read after Easter similarly depicts how the word of God disrupts and remakes us. Those who hear Peter’s sermon in Acts ch. 2 are cut to the quick by the word of God. To encounter God is to have one’s world shattered — but a close counterpart is that God wills for us life and peace in the risen Lord of heaven and earth. Why does the word of God cut their hearts? Peter indicates twice the crowd was complicit in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The unsparing language is stark: “…this Jesus, whom you crucified.” Though Jesus was “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God,” simultaneously, Peter preaches, Jesus was “killed by the hands of lawless men.” If we contemplate that it was for our trespasses, for the forgiveness of our sins that Christ suffered, we similarly should be cut to the heart. Yet, the good news of Easter is that “God raised him [Jesus] up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be bound by it.” Such is the power and majesty of Jesus, that death could not hold him. As the church sings at Easter: “Vain the stone, the watch, the seal.”
But Peter then adds something astounding: by raising Jesus of Nazareth from the dead, God has enthroned him as the promised one who would reign as king on the throne of David forever, and after his resurrection Christ ascended into heaven, so that “being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he [Christ] has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.” Crucially, Luke and Acts form a two part story, and Luke’s gospel concludes as follows: “And Jesus led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God” (Lk 24:50–53).
The risen Christ blesses his people, who in turn bless God. Ponder that magnificent image — the risen Christ lifting his hands and bestowing a benediction upon his people. A benediction differs from intercessory prayer, which is an expression of desire that this or that might happen, if it be God’s will. But a benediction is a declaration of a state of affairs that actually exists. It is a bestowing of that reality on those to whom it belongs. Jesus has none of the uncertainty or hesitation in blessing his people, which we have in our intercessions for others.
The priestly benediction of the risen and ascended Christ grants us everything we need for salvation both in this life and in what follows; in it he guards, protects, and nourishes his church & governs the world. Robert Letham explains:
as our forerunner, Christ has gone before, we follow; we follow because he has gone before; in going before he brings us there by the Holy Spirit, whom he has sent. Indeed, all that occurs after the sending of the Spirit — his blessing of his church, his ministry to its members, his witness to the world—is entailed in this.
Christ, having obtained salvation by his death and resurrection, lifts up his hands, and bestows its blessings upon his people.
In Acts 2, Peter concludes by quoting from Psalm 110, that ‘‘The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’ And adds “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:33–36). Initially, it might sound like Jesus was not previously ‘Lord’ and ‘Christ,’ but was only ‘made’ both at his resurrection; this was a favorite text of adoptionist heretics. But this text is not denying the eternal Son of God had always been Lord. Peter already had rightly identified Jesus as ‘Christ’ at a previous, key turning point in Luke’s narrative (9:20).
The eternal Son of God is one person in whom are united two natures, truly divine and truly human. But the incarnate Christ also has two states within time: a state of humiliation, and a state of exaltation. Christ lowered himself to the point of death on a cross, and then was exalted above all by rising and ascending. Thus, in Acts 3, when Peter preaches the gospel, the word he uses to describe the resurrection is that Jesus was “glorified.” So, when Peter says Christ was ‘made’ Lord and Christ, he is not referring to the being of Christ; he already was Lord and Christ. But with respect to the office he holds, Jesus only now had been enthroned. He has assumed his triumphant place at the right hand of God to reign as eternal king, to speak as prophet, and to intercede for and pronounce blessing upon his people as our heavenly high priest.
At this, the crowd are stunned — as are we. In a state of crisis, they ask the apostles, “brothers, what shall we do?” Peter’s answer is the key not only to initial conversion and initiation, but to the whole of the Christian life—for growth into maturity, for endurance in the greatest trials, for the worst temptations, and for enduring hope amidst the most heartbreaking suffering: “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself” (Acts 2:38–39).
Notice how Peter speaks similarly in Acts 3, and the hope it gives us amidst the darkness of this present age: “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.” Peter’s listeners, then and now, are not only summoned to a continual repentance throughout the whole of the Christian life, but are given the precious gift of baptism as a sign and seal of Christ’s love, that he washes away our sin and gives us the gift of himself, who in time will return and restore all things.
Mercifully, in the sacrament of the Eucharist, our Lord Jesus gives us what St. Mary Magdalene had come seeking on the first Easter morning. In the words of the service for Holy Communion from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, our Lord Jesus Christ himself “did institute, and in his holy Gospel command us to continue, a perpetual memory of his precious death, until his coming again.” But rather than a grave, it is the living, risen, and ascended Christ who continually gives us his body from heaven as the Holy Spirit unites us with him, whenever we feed on him in our hearts by faith, with thanksgiving.