Practicing Resurrection

What does it mean to practice resurrection? Among the stories about the first encounters the disciples have with their risen Lord, John remembers Jesus’ first words to his troubled and fearful disciples as being about not what has happened to him but rather what he hopes might happen among them: “Peace be with you,” Jesus says. Only then does he show them the signs of his suffering and death—the wounds in his hands and his side.

As with the most important lessons we have to learn in life, learning peace takes time—and practice. And so Jesus repeats the words, as if to make it clear that his resurrection is to be grasped in their own lives, not simply as some remote testimony about his: “Peace be with you.”

He follows with what we might read as an action plan, as if to clarify what it might mean to find this peace: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

We know this statement to be true in the grit and grime of our own lives: If we hold on to grudges, even if deserved because of some injury inflicted upon us, they will remain a weight—not only for those “others” but for ourselves. But if we forgive others, practicing resurrection at the places of what suffering they might have visited upon us, they will be forgiven.

How will we find our way into the deep mystery of the Resurrection? By risking forgiveness toward others, above all those who do not seem to deserve it. This brings the promise of peace—for them, of course, but also for us.