New understanding...new learning

Readings for Sunday May 8 2011, the Third Sunday of Easter: Acts 2:14a, 36-41; Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19; I Peter 1:17-23; Luke 24:13-35 APBA also includes Matthew 28:1-10 in today's alternatives

It took a while for the first Christians to understand just what was going on.

Gradually they began to understand

what it meant to encounter the living Christ.

Gradually they started to piece together

what God might be doing

through the life and death of Jesus.

So we see Peter standing up at Pentecost

and proclaiming (at some risk to his life) that

"We all crucified, this Jesus"

And THIS JESUS is the one who we have all been waiting for

He is both Lord and Messiah.

He is the one who God has anointed

to effect change

fundamental change to the world.

They were on what we call jargonistically

a steep learning curve

Having to learn a lot of new things

and get a lot of changed understandings

in a very short space of time.

Peter's message is perhaps more theological and scriptural

he says

You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.

They are rich words

You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish.

Words that speak about a new found freedom

which is at the heart of what resurrection is about.

What we might learn is, I think, that we are called

to grow into this experience of resurrection

and it takes time and reflection.

It is, indeed, as the disciples pay attention to what is going on,

that the mystery begins to be understood.

And they learn

that it is not knowledge that they are to acquire

but a way of life that they are called to adopt.

How might we go about this?

The key belief about the resurrection

is not in some bizarre resuscitation story

but in the reality of Matthew's tradition where we read in the very last verse of his gospel

Jesus says to his disciples: 'And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.'

It would be easy to dismiss this

as pious funereal rememberings

in the face of the death of a much-beloved friend and leader

until we also realise that the stories

are narrating the changing experience of the disciples.

We do this through paying attention to the movement of God in our ordinary life

what else can we do?

The disciples realise that Jesus is with them

as they gather for worship,

as they break bread,

in the Eucharist and in their fellowship,

he is also there as they reach out to others

in need both physical and spiritual.

This happens as we, too, pay attention

we see God is with us

and that God's hand touches everything both ordinary and extraordinary

Perhaps each day, a couple of minutes sitting on your bed before you sleep

look back and see where God has been moving.

Maybe too on the weekend,

a quiet moment on Saturday or Sunday

think back through the week gone.

Where can I see God acting,

where have I turned my back?

The disciples discovered as they experienced the risen Christ

their world changed

that is the invitation for you and me too.

Pay attention to it, and join and enjoy the steep learning curve. Where

God who is rich in mercy out of his great love even when we were dead through our sins makes us alive together with Christ.