“What Just Happened?’

Why in today’s readings did we go from Christmas to the resurrection? From the celebration of the baby being born into this life to the wonder and awe that John and Peter felt when he was ‘born’ into the next life? 

“So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first; he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in. When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place. Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed” ( John 20:1-8).

The reason for this Easter gospel during Christmas is because today is the Feast of Saint John, Apostle and evangelist. I like how the church names this day. First John had to be an apostle before he could be an evangelist. And first he had to be a disciple before he could be an apostle. Before he could be a disciple he had to be born in that exact time and in that precise location. 

The reason today’s gospel is about Peter and John running to the tomb is because the Church wants to honor John. It is one of those 'only in John' stories. John’s gospel has a lot of those one off stories because his gospel had a different aim and it was written much later than Matthew, Mark and Luke’s gospel. More importantly, this moment when John entered the empty tomb is when everything changed for him. He saw and believed.

It was a confirmation of what he already knew in his bones That Jesus is the I AM, the Logos, the Word of God made flesh and it was a realization of what he had hoped for, that Jesus was the Resurrection, the Way, the Truth and the Life.

John stood in the empty tomb and looked at the burial cloths and just for a second he must have thought, “What just happened?’.

The answer to that question would take over seventy years for John to process and unpack before he could put down into writing a complete account of what he witnessed as well as his deeply profound theological conclusions on what it all means.

His gospel came about 30-40 years after the first written accounts of Jesus’ life first emerged from the nascent church. His gospel and later the Book of Revelation were truly the capstone or the summative account of the Jesus event.

He went from being an apostle to an evangelist and then to being a mystic as he processed on a very deep intuitive and intellectual manner all that had happened and continued to happen. Sometimes when we hear the gospel message when someone is evangelizing us we can be the rocky unreceptive ground which does not allow the seed to be planted.

The germination of the seed never even begins because we hear the words audibly but we never listen to them interiorly. This is why the evangelization effort must be incarnational and experiential before it becomes a mere exchange of words. 

In today’s first reading, also written by John, we hear words but they are conveying the experience of the incarnation which had taken root into the deepest places, into the very marrow of their bones. The result is that their message isn’t speculative theology but a super convincing, eyewitness account. 

“What we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon and touched with our hands concerns the Word of life —for the life was made visible; we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was made visible to us—what we have seen and heard we proclaim now to you…”( 1 John 1: 1-4). 

You can hear John processing the magnitude of his experience as a disciple and apostle of Jesus as if he is still in the empty tomb in a state of awe and wonder. 

Even though we can become excited by John’s contagious enthusiasm, experiencing Jesus first hand, and having a personal encounter with him must always be the end of evangelization and first hearing of another person’s account of how Jesus is very real and very much alive. 

After hearing a great homily or hearing about our friends encounter with God, we want to ponder it deeply and ask, "What did he say?” as we process it all. But it’s much better to ask, ‘What just happened?” (to me) as we reflect on our own encounter of the living and incarnate Word.