Join us today as we celebrate Holy Communion for the Third Sunday of Easter, 5/1/22. To follow along at home, click here and print the Holy Communion Program. Text of today’s homily below.
CLICK HERE to receive email updates about the mission of St. Barachiel Chapel.
CLICK HERE to receive daily motivational text messages in your phone.
If you would like to have prayers offered for you, a loved one, a friend, for someone who is suffering, ill or who has departed, please email Archdeacon Mitch at mitch@heritageartsinc.com and we will pray for you. Please click here to schedule a chat with archdeacon Mitch if you are in need of pastoral counseling. And if you’d like to assist in the beautification, improvement and maintenance of St. Barachiel Chapel, or support our educational mission, please click here to make a donation.
Homily Third Sunday of Easter
Readings: Acts 5:27-32, 40b-41, Ps 30:2, 4, 5-6, 11-12, 13, Rev 5:11-14, Jn 21:1-19
As a young man and an aspiring author, I used to be a huge fan of Mickey Spillane. Spillane was one of the most prolific and successful authors in history. Hardly anybody remembers him nowadays. But those who do remember two things: he created a fictional private eye named Mike Hammer and he appeared in Miller Lite beer commercials in the 1980’s.
One of his most famous books was the result of a bet. Spillane said the climax of a book should be pushed to the absolute end, to the final paragraph if possible. His publisher said it couldn’t be done. Spillane bet his publisher that he could, in fact, push the climax of a book to the very final word. Spillane won. I’ve read the book, and wow – when you read that last word – bang! All of the clues make sense. Every confusing dead end, every red herring, every mystery is solved. Now, I think Spillane got this idea from the Bible. He was a Jehovah’s Witness, and the book of Revelation is very important to Jehovah’s Witnesses. I think Spillane saw how powerful it was that the apocalyptic climax of the Bible is at the very end, and I think he imitated that pattern. My proof? Revelation depicts Christ’s return and final judgment, and the book that Spillane’s wrote is called Vengeance is Mine.
The way that the ending of God’s great story reveals the beginning, which Spillane imitated, can be found in all our readings today. Look, and you will find it.
In our first reading, Peter and the apostles are brought before the Sanhedrin and told to stop preaching in Christ’s name. The rabbis and elders understand the implications of Christ’s resurrection. The apostles’ message is going to send waves of change through the Jewish community. All of their prophecies and predictions, teachings and interpretations, all of their codes and customs, will need to be reevaluated by the light of this new revelation. They don’t want their entire community and religion turned upside down, so they try to stop it.
In the reading from the book of Revelation, we see the risen Lamb of God revealing himself. And “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, everything in the universe” cries out, “blessing and honor, glory and might” to God the Father and to his Son, the Lamb of God, forever and ever. This is near the beginning of Revelation. Afterward follow seventeen chapters of turmoil, plague, famine, war, trial, and tribulation as existence itself is re-arranged by the news of the resurrection.
And finally, in our reading from the Gospel of John, the risen Christ appears to the apostles. In three steps he recapitulates the apostles’ story. First he leads them through a new version of the miraculous catch of fish –the start of the apostles’ journey. Second, he presents to them a eucharist of fish and bread. Then, lastly, Christ gives Peter a chance to promise three times to love and shepherd the church as a way to undo his three-times denial of Jesus.
At that time, everything looks different to Peter. And that’s how it is with everyone who finds Jesus Christ. When a person accepts the fact of the resurrection, everything is called into question. Nothing’s ever be the same. Many of the things your past triumphs now look like failures. You question your line of work, your choice of friends, and your entertainment. Take me – I no longer like reading violent action books like the ones by Mickey Spillane I used to enjoy, and I no longer aspire to being a popular novelist. When you accept the fact of the resurrection, you talk differently, behave differently, think, act, and believe differently. Those ripples pass out into the world, even out into the cosmos.
Brothers and sisters, the Easter miracle’s transformation of creation never ends. It is. It was. It shall ever be. Jesus Christ, the creator of the universe and of time itself, holds the keys to how reality unfolds itself for both individuals and for the world.