THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER, YEAR A

April 19, 2026

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Luke 24:13-35

 

Today’s Gospel reading is possibly one of the best-loved stories in the New Testament. The Evangelist Luke narrates this episode with amazing skill, subtlety, attention to detail, and psychological insight.

 

The two disciples on the road are probably returning home by way of Emmaus after having gone up to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. So, when another traveler overtakes them and starts walking with them, they most likely assume that he’s another pilgrim like themselves.

 

Then something curious happens. Their eyes are kept from recognizing him. We, the readers, know who he is, but the two disciples do not. The stranger walking with them is Christ incognito. And so the dramatic tension builds around his concealed identity until the climactic moment when their eyes are opened, and they recognize him in the Breaking of the Bread.

 

If we pause and reflect at this initial moment when they’re kept from recognizing him, the question presents itself with considerable force: Why this charade? What purpose is served by this concealment of the risen Christ’s identity? Why doesn’t he just step out in all his glory at the very beginning and announce himself: Hey, it’s me! See my hands and my feet and my side! I’ve risen from the dead! Let’s go back to Jerusalem and tell the others! 

 

If only he’d done that, he’d have saved them the time and trouble of the round trip to Emmaus and the unfinished meal. His not doing so suggests that something important is happening as the two disciples make their way along the road with their anonymous companion – something that can only occur while his identity remains hidden from them.

 

The key to what’s happening lies, I suspect, in his very first words to them: “What are you discussing with each other as you walk along?” He wants to hear their version of the events of the past few days. They respond with amazement: “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” The irony is that, unbeknownst to them, this stranger is indeed the one person who knows better than anyone else everything that has happened. But instead of saying so, he calmly persists in prompting them to tell him: “What things?”

 

In other words, he’s asking them to put their experiences into words for him, to tell their story. This move strikes me as deeply significant, for several reasons.

 

Every once in a while, someone comes into my office to talk about some issue or problem, and I actually know a lot more about their situation than they think I do. But I’ve learned that it’s almost always a bad move to say, “Yes, I know exactly what you’ve come to see me about.” Much better to ask an open-ended question like, “Please tell me what’s on your mind,” and then sit back and let them tell me the story in their own words.

 

This telling of the story is often a necessary first step in dealing with the situation, and it shouldn’t be short-circuited. Sometimes at the end of the conversation, the person will thank me just for listening. Quite apart from anything I may have said in response, simply talking about it has been helpful in itself. Also, once the story has been told, it becomes easier for me to respond and offer advice— and indeed for that advice to be heard.

 

Something similar may be happening on the road to Emmaus. The two disciples are sad, confused, and full of questions. The crucifixion has crushed their hopes for the deliverance of Israel. And they haven’t a clue what to make of these reports of the women finding his tomb empty.

 

But before our Lord can interpret the meaning of his death and resurrection for these disciples, they must tell him the story that requires interpretation. Before he can offer any answers, they must articulate their questions. Only then can he show them how the story they’ve told fits into the larger story God has been telling all along, beginning with Moses and the Prophets.

 

The concealment of the Risen Christ’s identity thus serves the purpose of setting in motion the telling of the Christian story. Our Lord knows that in the future the Church’s life and mission will forever depend upon the ability of its members to tell and retell this very same story—especially to strangers on the road. So the two disciples may as well get started now.

 

The Risen Christ’s anonymity serves one further purpose. When the two disciples arrive at their lodgings in Emmaus, the stranger makes as if he’s continuing further. In this way, he gives them the option of whether to invite him in. They could just as easily tell him that it was nice talking to him, they hope they’ll meet again someday, and bid him farewell. Instead, their generous hospitality to a stranger provides the occasion for him to reveal himself in the Breaking of the Bread. In this way, the disciples will know that this is where they can expect to encounter him from now on.

 

What does all this mean for us today? New Testament scholar Marcus Borg suggests that, for Christians, the road to Emmaus symbolizes every road we travel, accompanied by a risen Christ whose presence remains unseen and often unrecognized. (While I disagree with much of what Borg says, on this point I think he’s on to something.)

 

From the Church’s earliest centuries, many commentators have noted parallels between the road to Emmaus and the Holy Eucharist. Here, after all, we first read and interpret the Scriptures concerning Christ; and then we proceed to the Eucharistic meal, in which we encounter that same Christ really and truly present among us.

 

But, again, today's Gospel points to a necessary prior step. Before we can expect to hear Christ speaking in the Scriptures, we need to tell him our stories. We need to bring our confusions, doubts, and questions to him. Only thus do we give him something to work with so that he can set our hearts on fire. And before we can expect him to reveal his presence in our midst, we need first to invite him in. 

WEDNESDAY IN EASTER 2

April 15, 2026

Parish of All Saints, Ashmont, Boston

 

John 3:16-21

 

 “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light …”

 

The word “judgment” in this verse translates the Greek krisis, from which we get the English word “crisis.” In contemporary English, the word crisis generally signifies a period of instability or danger; a time when the circumstances of personal, social, economic, or political life are in upheaval, and the future is uncertain.

 

However, the more precise etymological meaning of crisis is a situation calling for a decision, in which the possible courses of action chosen will shape the future in profoundly different ways. For example, there came a day in my twenties when I had to choose between staying in my job and going to seminary. That was a moment of crisis—an occasion of unavoidable decision when I had to choose between alternative paths that would lead irrevocably in very different directions.

 

In a Greek lexicon, krisis is variously translated as separation, sundering, trial, contest, selection, or judgment. And so our Lord says in today’s Gospel: “This is the krisis, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness more than light …”

 

The point is that, as our Lord also says in today’s Gospel, he came into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. But his coming into the world nevertheless creates a moment of crisis, krisis, for all who encounter him.

 

Confronted with the reality of the risen Lord, and the claim he makes upon our lives, we cannot escape the decision to accept or reject him, to follow him or to go our own way, to come into the light or to retreat into the darkness. This is the crisis: not that he judges us, but that, in our responses to him, we judge ourselves. When we stand before the divine tribunal on the Last Day, no new judgment will be rendered. The divine judge will simply ratify the choices that we’ve already made for ourselves during our earthly lives.

 

We all experience moments of crisis in our lives—and we tend to think of crises as unpleasant events. An old cliché holds that in the Chinese system of writing, the symbol for crisis combines the symbols for danger and opportunity. Apparently, that’s not entirely accurate and oversimplifies the matter. (I wouldn’t know.) Nonetheless, the good news is that every new day, every new situation we encounter, every new person we meet, presents an opportunity to say yes to God and to come into the light. And if we ask him, God will grant us the grace to make the right choices in precisely those moments.

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER

April 12, 2026

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

John 20:19-31

 

The key feature in the story of Doubting Thomas is not so much his initial skepticism on hearing the disciples’ report—“We have seen the Lord”—as his profound transformation when he does see for himself. What is truly remarkable is the contrast between before and after: between his initial expression of defiance—"Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."—and his subsequent confession of faith—“My Lord and my God!”

 

It would be a mistake, however, to regard Thomas as all that different from the other disciples. The Gospels of Mark and Luke tell us that when the women came back from the tomb and reported that they had seen the Lord risen from the dead, the apostles did not believe them. Luke even comments that the women’s testimony seemed to them an idle tale.

For the rest of the apostles, as for Thomas, it took an actual appearance of the Risen Jesus to transform their skepticism and despair into faith and hope. For them, as for Thomas, seeing was believing. Luke even mentions that Jesus showed them his hands and side to convince them that it was really him. The only real difference between Thomas and the others was that Thomas was a week late. In this sense, the detailed report of Thomas’s experience in the Gospel of John is emblematic of that of all the disciples.

 

Their initial response, their default position, was to disbelieve the previous eyewitness testimony until they saw for themselves. Their subsequent proclamation of the Lord’s Resurrection was thus in no way the product of some sort of wishful thinking. Instead, it was the result of an experience so overwhelming that it changed everything. Their worldview was completely reordered. They gained a new sense of identity and mission, empowering them to travel to the ends of the known world to proclaim what they had seen, heard, and touched. According to reliable tradition, Thomas ended up preaching the Gospel on the Malabar Coast of southwest India, where he died as a martyr. There, to this day, local Christian communities trace their descent from the Church he founded in the first century.

 

In response to Thomas’s confession, “My Lord and my God,” Jesus replies, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." But those words might raise a bit of a problem for us. If neither Thomas nor the other disciples were able to believe in the Lord’s Resurrection without seeing for themselves, then how can we, who live two thousand years later, be expected to believe without seeing?

 

Part of the answer is that we believe on the strength of the apostles’ testimony, and the way that the Lord’s Resurrection transformed their lives. The apostolic preaching is the foundation of the Church’s faith and life, handed down from one generation to the next even to our own day. That is after all the root meaning of the word “tradition”—from the Latin traditio, to hand down. The Resurrection narratives in the New Testament record the initial experience that got the whole process going to begin with. As John writes in the conclusion of today’s Gospel: “these [things] are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

 

But that’s only part of the answer. For us today, believing without seeing is not the same thing as uncritically accepting Christian dogma solely on the external authority of Scripture and tradition in the absence of any other confirming evidence. For my part, I think that faith is a gift that only God can give. It comes when we hear the Gospel being preached or the faith being taught, and we mysteriously receive an inner assurance and certainty that confirms the truth of what we’re hearing. And again, that experience changes everything. Our lives can never be the same again.

 

In this sense, we’re not that different from Doubting Thomas and the other disciples. They couldn’t believe in the Lord’s Resurrection until the Risen Jesus manifested himself to them personally. And neither can we. Even though he doesn’t appear to us in the flesh as he did to them, and even though we’re unable to travel back in time to the First Century to see for ourselves, nonetheless, he still comes among us in his Word and Sacraments—and in the community of his Body, the Church. By this gift, we’re able to recognize his presence in our midst. So, believing without seeing is not the same thing as blind faith. On the contrary, Jesus comes to us and enlightens our minds so that we may know him as he really is. And when that happens, we inherit the blessing that Jesus pronounces in today’s Gospel: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

 

 

 

 

WEDNESDAY IN EASTER WEEK

 April 8, 2026

All Saints, Ashmont, Boston

Luke 24:13-35

 

One question that’s occurred to me over the years about the two disciples on the road to Emmaus is this: Why does the risen Christ conceal his identity until the end of the story? Why doesn’t he just reveal himself in all his glory at the outset?

 

The answer, I think, is that something crucially important is happening as they walk along the road. Namely, he’s explaining the Scriptures to them:

 

“And he said to them, ‘O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.”

 

These words hark back to what Jesus said earlier in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead.” 

 

In other words, to understand the Lord’s Resurrection, we need first to listen to Moses and the Prophets. As the Nicene Creed puts it, “And the third day he rose again, according to the scriptures.” That is, the Lord’s death and Resurrection were not only foretold, but are also integral to the story God has been telling all along. Only in the context of Moses and the Prophets can the two disciples even begin to understand the full meaning of what's happening now.

 

At the Easter Vigil on Saturday, we listened to a service of Old Testament readings. How many Old Testament readings did you have here? (Five.) At my church, we had three. But if we’d done it the traditional way, according to the old rite, there would’ve been twelve. And, in the old rite, these readings—like Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis, the Hebrews crossing the Red Sea in Exodus, the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel, and the three young men in the burning fiery furnace in Daniel—were known as the Prophecies, because the Church understood them as allegorically anticipating and foreshadowing Christ’s own death and Resurrection. 

 

The point is that before we can truly and fully receive the good news of Easter, we need to know the story of which it is the culmination. We need to understand how it fulfills God’s purpose of redeeming the world and inaugurating his kingdom. Otherwise, we lack the only narrative context in which Christ’s death and resurrection make sense. Without that context, a dead man rising to new and glorious life would be a wondrous feat, but we wouldn’t know what it meant. “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead.”

 

Now, it’s true that in his Resurrection appearances, the risen Christ doesn’t usually follow this sequence of first appearing incognito, then explaining the Scriptures, and finally revealing himself. But what is clear is that during the forty days between his Resurrection and Ascension, he takes great care to interpret the Scriptures to his disciples. In this way, he prepares them to proclaim the Good News of his death and Resurrection as the fulfillment of all that God has been doing for his people all along. 

 

Notice how the Christian liturgy follows the structural sequence of the Road to Emmaus story. At Mass, we first listen to readings from the Scriptures. We preachers then do our best to interpret their meaning in reference to Christ. Finally, we come to the Liturgy of the Eucharist, where the risen Lord gives himself to us under the forms of bread and wine.

 

Word and Sacrament go together. Close attention to the scriptural witness is essential preparation for recognizing and receiving Christ in the Sacrament. As the two disciples exclaim, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?” With that preparation, we’re able to join the two disciples in testifying that the Risen Christ has made himself known to us in the breaking of the bread. 

EASTER DAY

Sunday 5 April 2026

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

John 20:1-18

 

The Church’s faith in Jesus Christ’s bodily Resurrection from the dead hinges upon two pieces of evidence. Both are attested in the Gospels. The first item is the empty tomb. The second is the series of appearances by the Risen Christ to the women and disciples beginning on the first Easter Day.

 

Notice that these Gospel accounts are remarkably spare and restrained. Nowhere do they attempt to describe what happened inside the tomb when Jesus came back to life. They confine themselves simply to reporting the eyewitness testimony of those who were there that morning of the first day of the week, and in the days and weeks following. And that eyewitness testimony consists, once again, of two parts: the empty tomb and the Risen One’s appearances.

 

Neither signifies that much on its own. An empty tomb by itself could result from the body being stolen or hidden, just as Mary Magdalene supposes. And appearances of the spirit of a recently deceased person to the living were not all that uncommon in the ancient world, just as some would argue that they’re not all that uncommon today either. Over the years, a number of people have told me of a departed loved one appearing and speaking with them in the days following the death and burial. Ghosts, spirits, hallucinations, deceptions, or overactive imaginations? You decide. But the Risen Christ belongs to a completely different category. He’s not a disembodied spirit but a whole person raised bodily from the dead to new and glorious life.

 

So, it’s the combination of the two, the empty tomb and the bodily resurrection appearances, that affords the strongest evidence that something utterly unique happened that first Easter morning. And the Gospel reading from John, traditionally appointed for the principal Mass of Easter Day, explicitly brings out both these elements in wonderful detail: the tomb is found empty; the Risen Lord appears to Mary Magdalene.

 

Part of the beauty of John’s account is the way he describes the responses of the three principal characters: Peter, the Beloved Disciple, and Mary Magdalene. Before dawn, while it’s still dark, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb, finds the stone rolled away, and the interior empty. She runs to tell Peter and the other disciple, whom Jesus loved. This other disciple is generally identified with John, the author of this Gospel, so this account really does present itself as eyewitness testimony. 

 

Peter and the Beloved Disciple run to the tomb. John is younger and in better physical shape than Peter, so he gets there first, but he doesn’t go in – perhaps out of deference to Peter’s age and position of leadership. When Peter arrives, they both go in. At this point, John’s description really does suggest eyewitness testimony: the linen cloths are lying there, and the linen napkin which had covered the Lord’s head is rolled up separately in a place by itself: the sorts of precise details that are unlikely to be made up.

 

John does not explicitly tell us what Peter’s reaction is. Peter seems to take it all in, not knowing what to think. By contrast, the Beloved Disciple sees and believes. Neither of them yet knows the scriptural prophecies foretelling that the Messiah must die and rise again. But the Beloved Disciple—that is, John himself—has an almost mystical intuition that if Jesus isn’t here, he must be alive. Then, having seen all that there is to see, the two disciples return to their homes.

 

I’ll wager that some of us here today are more like Peter, and others are more like John. Some of us come to church, listen to the biblical stories, take them all in, and don’t know what to think. The jury is still out. Others have no difficulty hearing and believing. John doesn’t say that either response is better than the other. He simply notes them both and moves on with the story.

 

Mary Magdalene doesn’t return home, but remains outside the tomb, weeping. Unlike Peter and the Beloved Disciple, she’s sure she knows exactly what’s happened. Even when she encounters two angels who ask her why she’s weeping, she explains: “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” And when Jesus himself appears and asks why she’s weeping and whom she seeks, she doesn’t recognize him. Supposing that he’s the gardener, she pleads, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”

 

It’s only when Jesus addresses her by name that the realization dawns. The penny drops. We can only imagine her joy as she exclaims, “Rabbouni! Teacher!” 

 

Down through the centuries, commentators have spilled much ink trying to decipher the mysterious words that the Lord utters next: “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father …” But at least part of their meaning must be that the Jesus Mary Magdalene has been seeking is Jesus as he was, the Jesus who died, the corpse for whom she wanted to complete the rites of burial. He exhorts her to let go of all that. Instead of holding on to the past, her mission is now in the future: go and tell the disciples what she’s seen and heard; bear witness to the Lord’s Resurrection.

 

And again, I’ll wager that Mary’s experience exemplifies a pattern for many of us. We may search for God’s truth all we want, but ultimately our quest ends not when we find God but when God finds us, calls us by name, and gives us some task or mission. This was certainly my experience when I came to faith in Christ: not finding God, but being found by him. It’s unnerving when one realizes that one isn’t nearly as much in control of one’s life as one thought.

 

And so, the third piece of evidence supporting the Church’s faith in the Resurrection is the difference it makes in our own lives here and now. I believe in the Resurrection of Christ not only because I find the scriptural testimony persuasive, which I do, but also because I have encountered the Risen Jesus here, in his Church, in his Word and Sacraments, and not least, in the faces of his faithful people. The Church’s Easter proclamation is that Christ is alive. And if we seek him, he will certainly find us.

EASTER VIGIL

April 3, 2026

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Romans 6:3-11

 

I’ve long found the Easter Vigil the most exciting and powerful service of the entire Church year. Maybe you agree, or else you wouldn’t be here this evening.

 

It’s one of the most ancient Christian liturgies we have on record. By the third century, it was firmly established as the Church’s annual occasion of administering Holy Baptism. While practices varied from place to place, the typical pattern was for adult converts to prepare for baptism for three years or more. During this period, they were called catechumens. The forty days before Easter—which gradually evolved into that we now know as the season of Lent—were a final period of intensive instruction in the essentials of the faith, as well as fasting and prayer undertaken by the whole Church together with and on behalf of the catechumens.

 

Finally, between sunset and sunrise on Easter Eve, a long vigil service would take place, lasting many hours. (What we’re doing this evening is a highly abbreviated and streamlined version of that.) Over the centuries, various ceremonies evolved to punctuate the stages of this liturgy: kindling new fire; lighting the Paschal Candle; chanting the Exultet; proclaiming the Easter Alleluia. 

 

From the earliest days, however, the liturgy’s core comprised three basic components: first, a lengthy service of readings from the Old Testament, each anticipating Christ’s death and Resurrection; second, the administration of Holy Baptism; and third, the celebration of the Eucharist, at which the newly baptized would receive Holy Communion for the first time. 

 

From the beginning, then, the Great Vigil was the annual occasion of Holy Baptism – although eventually Baptism ceased to be confined to Easter and was administered at other times of the year. (Over the years, I’ve administered a number of adult baptisms at the Easter Vigil, although I generally encourage scheduling infant baptisms at some other time, such as a Sunday morning in Eastertide.) 

 

In any case, I want to emphasize that this pairing of Holy Baptism with the Easter celebration was neither accidental nor arbitrary, but deliberate and intentional. To see why, we need look no further than our Epistle for this evening, from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Chapter 6, verses 3 through 11.

 

Here, the Apostle describes Baptism as a kind of virtual participation in Christ’s death and Resurrection. “Do you not know “that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” 

 

It’s a remarkable passage. Here, baptism appears as a symbol not only of washing and cleansing but also of death by drowning. And Paul is saying that this enacted sign of death-by-water becomes for Christians the means of participation in Christ’s own death and burial. In other words, Christ saves us not merely as external beneficiaries of, but rather as virtual participants in, his crucifixion and entombment. And the vehicle by which we share in his death and burial is none other than Holy Baptism.

 

It’s not just that Christ pays the price of our sins on the cross as a kind of divine bookkeeping transaction. Instead, through baptism, we participate in Christ’s death, so that, as Paul writes, “we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin.” In the background here is the ancient idea that a slave is a slave only for this life. In death, the slave gains freedom from the former master. So, by dying with Christ in Holy Baptism, we gain liberation from sin’s mastery over our former lives.

 

As if that weren’t enough, however, there’s more! Through Baptism, we participate not only in Christ’s death but also in his Resurrection from the dead. We share in his risen life. This sharing is both a future and a present reality. On one hand, Paul writes, “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” That’s the future aspect: the hope of resurrection glory on the last day. But in the meantime, Paul writes, “The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

 

In other words, through Baptism we enjoy an anticipatory foretaste of the life of the world to come, making possible new lives in this world marked by faith, hope, love, joy, self-giving, and service. As Paul puts it, we were buried with Christ by baptism into death, so that “we too might walk in newness of life.” 

 

Holy Baptism is thus the link between that first Easter Day two millennia ago, and our life together in the Church today. The Easter Vigil liturgy commemorates not only Christ’s victory over death, but also our death to sin, and our resurrection to new and eternal life in him. On this most holy night, then, we fittingly renew our baptismal commitment, and we celebrate the power of Christ’s resurrection in our lives today.

GOOD FRIDAY, 2026

March 3, 2026

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

John 18:1-19:42

 

During the Trial of Jesus in the Passion Gospel that we’ve just heard, Pontius Pilate declares not once but three times, “I find no case against him.” 

 

Pilate initially questions Jesus, asking whether he is King of the Jews. Jesus responds that his kingship is not of this world; otherwise, his servants would fight, but his mission is to bear witness to the truth.

 

Pilate then goes out to the crowd and declares the first time that he finds no case against Jesus. He offers to release Jesus, according to the custom of releasing a prisoner at Passover. But the crowd insists, “Not this man, but Barabbas.”

 

Pilate then has Jesus scourged; the soldiers place on him the crown of thorns and the purple robe. He brings Jesus out before the crowd and declares, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no case against him.” That’s the second time he says this. But on seeing Jesus, the crowd cries out, “Crucify him, crucify him!”

 

Pilate responds, “Take him yourselves and crucify him; I find no case against him.” That’s the third time. Pilate wants to find a way to release Jesus, and questions him once more. But when the chief priests threaten Pilate for being soft on threats to Caesar, he finally relents and turns Jesus over to be crucified.

 

In the Jewish law of the time, to declare something three times was to make it irrevocably binding. This is why Peter’s threefold denial that he knows Jesus, also in the Passion Gospel that we’ve just heard, is such a problem. But that is a topic for another time.

 

Some contemporary biblical scholars have argued that John and the other Gospel writers crafted their accounts of the trial to exonerate the Romans for the death of Jesus and shift the blame to the Jews. But John’s account of Pilate’s conduct is also fairly damning. Pilate three times declares that he finds no case against Jesus, and then hands him over for crucifixion anyway. He perverts justice by openly condemning an apparently innocent man to death. 

 

This highlights the point that Jesus suffers and dies as an innocent victim. Those who conspire to gather evidence against him, bring charges, and secure his condemnation are not administering justice but rather committing a grave injustice. Whatever else the figure of Jesus on the cross signifies to us, we need to recognize first and foremost the unjust suffering of an innocent victim.

 

The problem of unjust and undeserved suffering remains with us today. When we witness the wholesale slaughter and maiming of noncombatant men, women, and children in war, our inmost selves cry out to heaven in protest: “Why, Lord, why?” It’s bad enough that combatants should have to suffer and die—and no one’s suggesting that they deserve it either—but nonetheless, the unjust suffering of innocent victims rightly scandalizes and outrages our consciences.

 

Down through the centuries, second-rate philosophers and religious teachers have proposed facile solutions to this problem. Suffering, they say, is good for us. It strengthens our character and makes us better people.

 

But that’s a myth. During the Second World War, the British pacifist Vera Brittain wrote that far from strengthening character and ennobling people, most unjust suffering has precisely the opposite effect. It brutalizes and dehumanizes its victims, creating a legacy of bitterness, resentment, hatred, and thirst for revenge.

 

The one exception, she wrote—and much more the exception than the rule—is when a victim accepts such suffering freely and offers it up sacrificially in the service of a higher cause or principle. In that case alone, unjust suffering can become redemptive and transformative. But very few people have any natural capability for such sacrificial self-offering.

 

The Gospel that we proclaim today, on Good Friday, is that Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God, fully human and fully divine, is the one and only innocent victim who has ever accepted suffering and death with such perfect humility and resignation that his self-offering on the cross constitutes, to quote the Prayer Book, the “one, full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.”

 

We need not go into the various theologies of how the Atonement is supposed to work. The Universal Church has never defined as dogma any of the competing theories of how and in what way Jesus’ death on the cross accomplishes the forgiveness of sins and the reconciliation of a fallen world to God. It just does, and that’s all we really need to know.

 

Two consequences follow for us, however, in our living the Christian life. First, following Jesus in this world means walking in the way of the cross. We’re never called to seek suffering for its own sake. But when we find ourselves facing an injury, disease, or other calamity that entails pain and loss, we can accept it as a way to be close to Jesus. This acceptance comes to us not naturally but by divine grace, as a gift of the Holy Spirit. So long as we stay close to Jesus, we can bear anything for his sake – and then our pain and suffering do have the potential to become redemptive.

 

Secondly, however, while we may freely accept this path for ourselves, we never have any right to impose it on others. It’s particularly cruel and wicked to tell people in pain to accept their suffering because it will make them better people. And it’s downright blasphemous to inflict pain on the pretext that it’s somehow good for the victims.

 

No. Throughout the centuries, the Church’s best wisdom has drawn precisely the opposite conclusion from Christ’s suffering on the cross. Our obligation as Christians is to do everything we can to prevent, stop, and relieve the unjust suffering of innocent victims whenever and wherever we encounter it. The Church’s mission is one of healing, reconciliation, restoration, and justice.

 

At this time in our history, we have a particular obligation to work to end the systemic violence that disproportionately victimizes the poor, members of racial and ethnic minorities, and migrants. Still, we have the assurance that whenever innocent victims suffer unjustly, Jesus suffers with them. And whenever we minister to them with compassion, we minister to the crucified Christ himself.