Easter Message of  Reconciliation

Sermon Preached by Cardinal Charles Maung Bo. SDB., Archbishop of Yangon on Easter 2022

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ in Myanmar, 

Happy Easter. 

The message of Easter breaks forth amidst all darkness.   We are grateful to see the return to the churches after two years of the pandemic exodus.  We rejoice this Easter brings us a family around the altar.  It has been a long march. We have reached the mountain of hope, that this pandemic will leave humanity.  We have gathered here that the multidimensional crises that grip the nation will melt away in the power of resurrection.

As a people, we sailed through the extended lent of Covid and Conflicts. Now we stand at the shores of our own  Red Sea,  hoping that the Lord of history will part this sea and as a nation, we may enter the promised land of peace and reconciliation.

Sailing through the stormy seas of tears, blood, death and brokenness, we hope to reach the shore of humanity this Easter. Exodus and the event of the Cross are real to us. We have suffered enough. Now we look towards the ending of all this. 

Resurrection is the ultimate event of hope for humanity.   We have gathered here as Easter people,   with  prayer on our lips and hopes in our hearts saying :

Rejoice and be Glad, Jesus has risen.  Alleluia.  Let our healing start today.  With prophet Isaiah let us say " By His wounds, we are healed"   Isaiah 53:5,

Let our families be healed, let our nation be healed, let our world be healed. We greet the families that are coming out of many challenges.  May this Easter start the process of healing you; may the Lord of Last Supper continue to provide you with enough food, and may the blood of Jesus shed on the Cross wash away your wounds and make you whole.   The risen Jesus, appeared with his wounds, to heal his disciples. Let his wounded hands touch each one of us gathered here, heal us spiritually and physically and make us whole.

At Easter, we remember, re-enact and celebrate in ritual the central mystery of our faith, which we celebrate again every Sunday of the year: that Christ, out of love, lived among us and died shamefully as one of us, but was rescued from death by the Father. Because of Easter we are invited and enabled to live in a new way.

But we are not here in a denial.  We do not forget all the challenges.

We know that the holy week went through the celebration of Lord exultation on the palm Sunday,  his last supper on Maundy Thursday, his excruciating agony in the Gethsemane, his persecution and torture and humiliating death on the Cross.   The Myanmar people went through a palm Sunday, a decade of peace and celebrations,  but suddenly like the betrayal in the Garden, they saw their dreams evaporate. Pandemic stuck. Livelihood lost. Food became scarce. Church closed. Communion became a challenge, moving to online.  

Agony started, and a  Calvary experience ensued.   A real Holy Week has been enacted for the last two years.  Even last year I preached that our status is an extended way of the Cross and Myanmar as the modern Calvary. 

The holy week is not only the celebration of faith for Myanmar people, but it is an existential lived experience.   We do not deny these.

Not only our country.   The visceral agony of Ukraine has wrenched the hearts of the world.  Holy Father Francis whose heart was soaked in sorrow for the suffering of Myanmar is burdened with another global agony.    Millions have fled that war; millions are starving and thousands were killed.

            As we gather today,  this Easter gives mixed feelings: after two years, the suffocating lockdowns are relaxed, the virus seems to be merciful, we can gather around the altar as a family to celebrate this communion as a family.

For this spiritual grace, we are grateful to God.   We are like the women who followed Jesus on his way to the Cross, the Women who waited near the closed graves.  Suddenly they were given the great news of the graves being open and Jesus appearing joyfully as a savior, proclaiming the great message of hope:  Jesus has risen Alleluia.   Let us proclaim that Jesus will bring ultimate victory over evil and death.   Let this hope resurrect all of us from the graves of death and despair.

The whole of salvation history and the message of the Bible is centered around the message of resurrection. Without faith in the resurrection, faith is useless.  St Paul says

And if Christ has not been raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your faith is useless. (1 Cor 15:14)

And what is the message of the Event of Resurrection in 2022?

1.    The message of Easter to personal life and the families

2.    The message of Easter to the nation and the people  of Myanmar

3.    Pope Francis's message of Easter to leaders of countries who believe in the path of violence.

1. The Message Of Easter –

 In Personal Life And The Family life  In Myanmar:

 I see three major contributions we can make to this nation.

      I.         To become new Creation in Christ Jesus: Every human being and family are called to resurrection.  St Paul points the way. That is apparent from Ephesians 2, where the Resurrection in view terminates on being dead in your transgressions and sins (vv. 1, 5), and effects a radical, reversal in the walk or actual conduct—from walking in the deadness of sin (v. 1) to walking in the good works of new-creation existence in Christ (v. 10).    Can we move from the graves of hatred, graves of vengeance, graves of anger toward forgiveness and reconciliation?

    II.         Start the Hope of Resurrection Here and Now:  Death has become the culture now.  Despair kills every soul. What is the antidote?    Make hope incarnate. An important passage is 2 Corinthians 5:1–10 where Paul makes it very clear, that his ultimate hope is not simply to die and be with Christ. His ultimate hope is to be clothed again with a body, a resurrection body, a body like Christ’s glorious body, that will have the capacity to live and work and eat in this terrestrial, renewed earth, but also to be in the very presence of God. As Christians can our words and deeds may not promote death and destruction but peace and reconciliation?

  III.         A New Birth Into Living Hope:  The First Letter of Peter calls for a new birth saying:   Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus spoke of forgiveness from the cross.   Yes, we have suffered so much violence in this country.  But can this suffering become redemptive rather than vengeance-seeking? 

I understand thousands will disagree with me.  Many will regard our mission as nonsense, but it is a mission given to us by God and I repeat it: “So we are ambassadors for Christ; it is as though God were appealing through us, and the appeal that we make in Christ’s name is: be reconciled to God.” (2 Corinthians 5:20)

2.  The Message of Easter to the Nation and people  of Myanmar

o   The need for the resurrection of a  suffering nation into  Justice.

The Old Testament take on Resurrection is very relevant to Myanmar. It is not exclusively individual resurrection.   It is the resurrection of a nation, a people.   ( Is: 26:29; Ez: 37:13-14;  Hos 6: 1-2)  When tyrants mistreat people, God intervenes ( Exodus 3). 

The Liberation of a  people is a divine initiative. In the Old Testament  Yahweh is a God of Justice.   God takes them out through the great Pasch mystery.  God leads them out of bondage. God takes the suffering people through the Red Sea into the promised land. 

Myanmar is the modern  Israel on its Exodus.  God gave us a promised land, a land flowing with so many resources.  God wills its resurrection into a nation of justice, a nation where peace reigns among people.

“ He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.: Is 2:4

·    When God Intervenes even the Valley of Bones will turn into life:  The Old Testament talks of the restoration of people as resurrection. The most famous one of these is Ezekiel 37:1–14 where the prophet has this vision of the valley of dry bones.   The Spirit of God comes upon them and they stand up as a mighty army in the valley of what was dried bones, but now is full of life.

That is the hope of resurrection for this long-suffering nation. God will turn our great people from their valley of tears into a blessed nation.   This is the hope of those who died dreaming of a great nation.  They will say with Prophet Isaiah

But your dead will live, Lord. Their bodies will rise. Let those who dwell in the dust wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning. The earth will give birth to her dead. Is 26:18

3.       Pope Francis's message of Easter to leaders  who believe only in the path of violence

War and conflicts inflict catastrophic destruction.  Millions of innocent people are forced to flee with their children.  The latest conflict in Myanmar forced nearly half a million people into jungle camps.   Thousands are starving.   The plight of Ukraine is heart-wrenching.  Either a  Nuclear holocaust or a third world war is a frightening prospect.  War and conflict are brought by men who believe in the power of reckless violence.  

Pope Francis in the recent  Easter message warns of these dangerous men:  “Those who believe in the power of violence are idolators.”  The Pope makes a poignant link between the present conflicts to Mystery of Passover: Acceptance of violence anywhere is a blasphemous betrayal of Passover.

What does the Easter Message to Myanmar people?

Along with all people, Christians have borne the brunt of violence this time.  Many churches and convents were attacked.   Many thousands are displaced. Their plight is heart-wrenching.  We are afraid, some of us are angry.   Pope Francis noted that before His final Passover, Jesus told His disciples not to be troubled or afraid.  Myanmar Christians need to follow this advice. 

We need to move ahead.  We need to open the graves and let the message of the resurrection of hope fill this nation.

The Holy Father concluded his Palm Sunday  reflection by noting that the word “Pasqua,” the Italian word for Easter, signifies “passage.” This year, the Pope said, “it is a blessed occasion to pass from the worldly god to the Christian God, from the greed that we carry within us to the charity that sets us free, from the expectation of a peace brought by force to the commitment to bear real witness to the peace of Jesus.”

That is a great challenge to every  Myanmar Christian.   That is the demand made to Abraham, to Moses.  

In accepting this challenge, we too can take our Pasch journey and claim with joy:  

Happy Easter.  Jesus has risen. Alleluia.