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Be Prepared to Be AstonishedApril 08, 2007 Easter Sunday If you have questions or doubts about the resurrection you’re in very good company; at least it would seem so from the biblical accounts. We only read one of them today, from John, but really, all of them speak of disbelieving, non-understanding, and questioning disciples. John’s story unfolds in a very human scale. No trumpet exclamation or full-out organ like we have. No majestic choruses accompanied by orchestra. No pre-arranged delivery of flowers and so on. No, just a series of small, confused, and confusing vignettes about an empty tomb, neatly managed burial linens, and a case of mistaken identity concerning a supposed gardener. Next week the story continues with the portion famously entitled, “Doubting Thomas.” So-called, because Thomas stipulates that unless he can see and touch Jesus for himself, he’ll have none of the hearsay evidence concerning the hypothetical resurrection. Matthew reports that some of the remaining eleven disciples doubted. The original ending to Mark goes like this: “So [the women] went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” [1] In Luke’s version, after the women make their report, we’re told that for the disciples, the women’s words “seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” [2] So, like I said, if you have questions and doubts you’re in good company. But then, you are here, after all. I mean, you’ve come out on Easter Sunday to get a good blast of something – something good and positive, I’m guessing. Something hopeful and reassuring. And we surely do want to oblige that insistent, implicit request. Still, I imagine that some of you are not entirely sure what you’re doing here, or just what it is exactly that we’re really celebrating. A short while ago, a woman came to speak with me about the trouble she was having with Jesus. That’s the way she put it – the whole “Jesus thing” troubled her. She didn’t know if she should stick around. On the one hand, she was profoundly attracted to everything that went on at Christ Church. On the other hand, she didn’t really know what she could realistically say she believed. She thought it was a matter of personal integrity that she come clean with me. I responded that I very much appreciated her honesty, but did she realize what good company she kept here, especially considering the historic records we hold so dear, for instance? That led us into an interesting conversation about the nature of faith, what it was and was not. I told her that faith was not the same thing as belief in a set of propositions. We don’t have faith in propositions. Instead, faith was more of a leaping into relationship; it was more like falling in love with someone than figuring out a discreet solution to a complicated equation. Had she ever loved someone, deeply and truly? I asked. She said she had, which led us into a brief history of how that had come about. The first meeting, the initial questions she had about the other, her uncertainty at first, and then a developing recognition of growing affection and respect, even love. In a similar way, I said, Jesus’ friends had come to love him. It was personal and relational, not propositional. They weren’t asked to take a test about him and score above a certain percentage to be included among his company. Instead, they were asked to follow along, listen in, and see if what they experienced rang true. He loved them, and they loved him. Indeed, a good portion of his message pertained to the matter of loving. That’s why the events of that final week were so poignant. How Judas’ betrayal wasn’t just a two- dimensional plot device to bring about the conclusion God had in mind. It was instead a deeply personal betrayal, with a kiss, no less. And the disciples’ cowardice at the end, especially Peter’s thrice repeated denial, were personal devastations. This, following on the night Jesus took their feet into his hands and washed them. A profoundly intimate, touching and poignant event. Then he broke bread with them and drank wine with them and said, “This is my body, this is my blood.” Deeply felt, profoundly human, astonishingly intimate; yes, also laden with layers of symbolism, but very, very personal. It’s no wonder that what came next would be cloaked with doubt, confusion and questions. How could it have been otherwise? And I think to myself, how could it be otherwise for us? Why should we be so cocksure of what actually happened with resurrection? That it was ultimately not only claimed, but embraced by Jesus’ friends is evidenced in the very existence of this building and the people now filling it, notwithstanding the myriad reasons for your presence. Those initial friends discovered their relationship newly reborn. And it wasn’t just like old times. It wasn’t the Jesus they knew before, before the betrayals and cowardice. They didn’t have a relationship with a resuscitated corpse. No, this was a Jesus transformed, whose power of love had been released from the imprisoning limitations of flesh and bone, time and place. Still, it was relationship that bound them together. And it was faith in this relationship that got them moving and ultimately sent their spirits soaring. Resurrection then was not about a resuscitation of the past, but a movement into the future. By the way, that’s what forgiveness does to us; we have a mistaken notion that forgiveness is concerned with healing the past, but that’s not it at all – forgiveness gives us back the future. Peter and the rest discovered that in resurrection. But here’s the thing, though: Easter creeps up on us in the darkness, in the confusion, in the despair, in the sense of failure and profound loss. Easter comes for those who, like Mary, find themselves crying their eyes out some days, maybe many days, and remarkably finding transcendent relationship that inspires hope, a hope that seems the very creative power of love itself. Just so you know, I didn’t go into all of this detail with the young woman in my office, but I did allow as how this loving, empowering relationship is what we were peddling here. Like Jesus, I said, we seek to love God above all things and our neighbors as ourselves. And she was more than welcome to stay. In fact, I hoped she truly felt the warmest of invitations to do so, notwithstanding her doubts and confusion at just who she was greeting on Easter day…say, a gardener perhaps, or even Jesus. And maybe, faith would displace her need to know the details. Faith born of relationship with the God of love and hope. Faith that had its origins buried in fear, confusion and failure. Faith that dared to go where reason alone could not traverse, traveling the very same pathway as love. In the John Masefield poem, “The Widow in the Bye Street,” a young man is about to be executed for crimes against the state, and in the crowd that is gathered to witness this event stands his widowed mother who is about to be left all alone in the world. When the trap door opened and the rope had finished its work, this crushed woman crumpled to the ground and began to sob uncontrollably, and those nearby heard her say something about “broken things, too broke to mend.” Part of this anguish had to do with the past and her sense of failure as a parent. But an even greater part of that anguish had to do with the future and the utter sense of hopelessness that was now closing in upon her. [3] It is a terrible thing to feel that your existence is not just broken, but “too broke to mend.” Surely it’s the rare person who at some point in their life never knocks at that door. Moments come to all of us over the course of our years, in our physical, emotional and spiritual health, in our marriages, with our children, our career, our politics, our justice, the state of our world, or just plain recognition of our own eventual death, and the thought occurs, “It’s too broke too mend.” But now, what sort of Redeemer absorbs and then transforms life too broke to mend? Another man’s execution was witnessed by his mother. An enemy of the state, they said. By the time they cut him down from the wooden cross beams, his body was too broke to mend. That fact alone accounts for the bewilderment and confusion of those early resurrection witnesses. How could they comprehend resurrection when the world they knew seemed defined by days like Good Friday? Indeed, didn’t they live in a Good Friday sort of world? Wasn’t that the truest thing to be accepted? Didn’t Good Friday win the day? And didn’t that suggest that killing your threat was the way to go forward? Isn’t that what defined the future – just more of the same old, same old, past? Frederick Buechner put it this way: “Resurrection means the worst thing is never the last thing.” And in the words of Bill Coffin, “Easter has to do with the victory of seemingly powerless love over loveless power.” I don’t know how one comes to say such things except through the eyes, ears and heart of faith. You can’t force anyone to say such a thing. It can only be invited. Like, please come to dinner and share our hospitality. Which, by the way, is exactly what we’ll be doing in a few moments. We’re going to invite you to Easter Sunday dinner, right in here. We’re going to say that everyone is welcome. Everyone. No one excluded from the invitation. Especially welcome are those who believe that this is a Good Friday sort of world, too broke to mend. Those who might feel its best just to go along, to get along—if you can. And if you can’t, well, that’s just the way it is. The invitation is especially for you. We’re not going to make you agree to any propositional statements in order to get your bit of bread and wine. You won’t have to fill out a questionnaire, or a multiple choice test. All that’s required is your coming. And your receiving the gift. That’s all. Of course, I think it would be best if we come to the table with integrity, like the woman who visited me in my office. In other words, I don’t think we can leave our doubt and confusion, our pain and despair in the pew when we come forward. Bring it all with you like the women who first visited the tomb. Bring all of it. Be prepared to be astonished. By the way, she’s here today – that young woman who came to speak with me. Don’t ask me afterwards for her name, because I won’t tell you. But she’s here. She’s here because she senses that hope is somehow inextricably bound up in resurrection. That’s what she told me. In her words, she ached for the relationship that would give her that. 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