(Please read the Scripture passage before reading the homily.)
The icon is a picture-prayer, just as the Our Father is a word-prayer. It is of Eastern origin. It is not painted but prayed into existence. It shows Jesus kicking open the doors of death and lifting out of death an old man and an old woman, whom we are to identify as Adam and Eve. It shows the risen Lord accompanied by saints from the Bible. It is so constructed as to draw us into the picture, into the resurrection with Jesus.
If I were giving a quiz, I should ask how many people rose from the dead in this Easter mystery. I should expect the usual, “one, Jesus”, and perhaps a tentative, “more than one?” Matthew tells us that after the resurrection many rose from the dead and appeared to many. This Eastern icon represents Jesus as rising and bringing with him Adam and Eve, the whole human race. We from the Western world usually portray Jesus as rising by himself.
Today we have Matthew’s account of the resurrection; Wednesday, we shall hear from Luke, and Friday we shall hear from John. Mark’s account comes on Saturday morning.
The icon proclaims our resurrection with Christ. This is what Matthew taught in the Gospel and what Peter preached on the first Pentecost. This is what the Church continues to teach in the ritual for baptism.
Our passage from Matthew gives us a glimpse of the struggles of the Church towards the end of the first century. Christians were mocked by some who asserted that Jesus’s body was stolen and not risen.
The resurrection of the dead is a dangerous teaching. It threatens the financial stability of wealth and defies the use of armies and conquests like the practices of ancient Rome. It is as dangerous as a true and lasting peace throughout the world would be. Yet the resurrection from the dead and a true and lasting peace, with the total destruction of death, is what we preach. It is what we proclaim when we say that God’s love and power is so great that God has turned death into an entry into life without end.
We have risen with Christ. We are brought into communion with the resurrection of Jesus. We have new life.