Surprise!

Luke 24:1-12

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.’ Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

Last week we had a Palm Sunday reading with no palms or hosannahs. This Sunday we have an Easter reading with no Jesus. As usual, I’m finding myself up here wondering why I went with Luke instead of a different option, John specifically—the beautiful and intimate passage in which Jesus shows himself to Mary Magdalene—so I could have a more joyful, more Jesus-filled story to tell you all. In fact, at Bible study just a few days ago, we were all a little disappointed that this passage just kind of leaves us hanging—Jesus never appears and we end it with Peter peeking in the tomb and then walking home, dumbfounded. To add to this, a lot of scholars believe that that last verse was added years and years after the fact; so the passage could’ve just ended with “…these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”

But, also as usual, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this absence of Jesus is perfect for yet another strange Easter—we’re back together, in person! Alleluia!—but the specter of COVID still hangs over us; the news of war and violence is still constant; Jesus is risen, indeed, Jesus is here, but where?

So I’ve been here in Vermont for about a year and a half now. And to my dismay, I still haven’t seen a moose. I’ve never seen a moose in real life. Because of how massive they are, because of taxidermy I grew up seeing in natural history museums, they’ve always held this special, almost mythical place in my mind. I trust they’re real, but I’ve yet to actually have the pleasure of seeing a live one. The author and naturalist Helen Macdonald had a similar mindset about wild boars in her home of the United Kingdom. She had grown up reading about them in King Arthur tales, but growing up, as most were kept captive and bred for food, she had never seen one in the wild in the forest—boars, resilient and aggressive creatures, are now thriving on the English countryside after a few dozen were let out into the wild or escaped—there are estimated to be around 1,000 out there roaming now. Macdonald writes of her first face-to-face encounter with this creature that has only ever existed in her books and her imagination: “When we meet animals for the first time,” she writes, “we expect them to conform to the stories we’ve heard about them. But there is always, always a gap. The boar was still a surprise.”[i]

Jesus told the disciples that what would happen—and yet, there was apparently a gap. “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” the angels say to Mary, Mary, Joanna, and likely Susanna. “Remember what he told you in Galilee.” They remembered, and yet the empty tomb was a surprise.

Macdonald goes on to reflect on the scarcity of certain animals in our world—she writes, “When animals become so rare that their impact on humans is negligible, their ability to generate new meanings lessens, and it is then only that they come to stand for another human notion: our moral failings in our relationship with the natural world.” So these creatures, whether they’re endangered like wild boar once was, or whether they simply make themselves scarce as moose do, they become mirrors of our own wonderings and assumptions, for better, and certainly for worse. Macdonald goes on to say, “The single boar appearing from behind the trees felt like a token of hope; it made me wonder if our damage to the natural world might not be irreversible, that creatures that are endangered or locally extinct might one day reappear.”[ii]

Today, we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection; Jesus’s victory over death, over extinction. But we’re still waiting for him to come back—we’re still waiting for the ultimate victory, for an earth as it is in heaven. And we’ve been waiting a long time. And after these thousands of years, we’re left with this book, passed down through the mouths and hearts of disciples; then sifted through over and over by the eyes and pens of those in power. So I’m wondering—has it been too long? Is Jesus’s impact on us negligible? Does Jesus still have an impact on us without his physical presence? Have our own imaginations and our own wants and selfish tendencies made Jesus’ presence extinct in this world?

And when I say this, let me be clear—I am not talking about praying in public schools; I am not talking about making sure the ten commandments are erected outside statehouses; I’m not talking about using the Bible to enact laws that that hurt those who are already struggling, or using the power of God as an excuse to not wear a mask. If that was the criteria for Jesus’ impact and presence in the world, then there would certainly be no doubt that Jesus is here and very active. But that is not the criteria for the presence of Jesus. In fact, I would say that these are examples of our own moral failings, and of Jesus having less of an impact in this broken world, no matter how often his name may be invoked by those oppressors in power.

I remember in divinity school, a classmate saying something that’s always stuck with me—that Christianity wasn’t founded to be a majority religion, as a religion of the powerful. Yes, Jesus told the disciples to spread the Good News of his teachings and the resurrection; but this brand new Jesus movement was founded as a belief system to bring equity and justice to the oppressed peoples of the world; to bring down the status quo, to topple the oppressive and suppressive regimes and empires. It was indeed not meant to cement some kind of theocratic hierarchy. It was meant to do away with all hierarchies.

Now, to fast-forward a little in the book of Luke here, later in the day, Jesus finds his disciples on the road to Emaus—he has a full conversation with them, and yet they do not recognize him. And so despite what Jesus had told them, what the four women at told them, and what the angels at told those four women, they don’t even recognize him when they see him in the divine flesh. If even these good friends of Jesus, who had seen him just days earlier, who had been told the prophesies and the truth, couldn’t comprehend Jesus’ presence in the world, how do we? We certainly can’t comprehend it by listening to those who claim to work in Jesus’ name and yet use their power to censor and subjugate the already oppressed even more. We certainly can’t look at the news and see his presence.

I want to go back to Helen Macdonald’s experience coming face-to-face with that wild boar for the first time. Despite the fact that she is a scientist, a naturalist, that she is incredibly knowledgeable about zoology, biology, flora and fauna, that she still describes that “gap” being there, between her knowledge and studies and reality; she describes the encounter as a “surprise.”  How joyful!

Now, your prayer of invocation in your bulletin was inspired from the Christian theologian and mystic Howard Thurman, who writes,

The meaning [of the glad surprise] has to do with the very ground and foundation of hope about the nature of life itself. The manifestation of this quality can best be witnessed in the coming of Spring. It is ever a new thing, a glad surprise, the stirring of life at the end of winter. One day there seems to be no sign of life and then almost overnight, swelling buds, delicate blooms, blades of grass, bugs, insects—an entire world of newness everywhere. It is the glad surprise at the end of winter. Often the same experience comes at the end of a long tunnel of tragedy and tribulation. It is as if a person is stumbling in the darkness, having lost their way, finds that spot at which they fall is the foot of stairway that leads from darkness into light. Such is the glad surprise. This is what Easter means…[iii]

This is especially, apt, I think for us up here in the northeast, on an Easter Sunday when the forecasted high temperature isn’t too far above freezing. It truly can feel like the warm weather will never come. I remember last year, my first Spring here in Vermont, after the snow had melted, there was a dry spell, everything just looked so dead and bleak. And one evening it rained, and I was truly blown away by how green and lush everything was all of a sudden, that change that came literally overnight. We know the warm weather and the lush green will come again, and yet, we’re so gladly surprised and elated when it does. Does this mean we didn’t believe the better, warmer sunny days weren’t going to come? No. It just means we had a long and hard winter. And we grieved and we struggled and we persevered and we worked through it and we made it to the other side, and things are going be okay. That is the glad surprise.

So if we want to be cynics and pessimists, we can assume the worst of the Jesus’ disciples—that they were surprised by his resurrection because they didn’t listen to him or that they didn’t really believe, or that their faith wasn’t strong enough. On the contrary—as Jesus wept with and for us, they wept with and for Jesus. They cared and loved so much that they stayed with their feelings after watching what Jesus had been through. And so, when they found the tomb empty, it was a glad surprise, not because they didn’t believe, but rather, because they were full of so much belief, and so much Love. It was a glad surprise that Jesus fulfilled the prophesy and the promise that he would turn the very notions of life and death upside down. What person wouldn’t be gladly surprised by such a thing? What person wouldn’t be full of shock in awe witnessing the destruction of death?

I think about today’s know-it-all culture, where we can whip out our smartphones in order to prove someone wrong, in order to prove ourselves right; I think about how the 24-hour news cycle that riles us all up in the name of viewers and clicks and profit; and I wonder about how the resurrection story would all go down today—if there would be some killjoy, wanting to feel superior, would whip out their phone, “duh, you guys, I don’t know why you’re so surprised, Jesus texted us all that this would happen,” as they show the text receipts from Jesus’ prophesy. Church, we need to let ourselves be surprised sometimes. We need to experience the glad surprises in life, we need to feel Jesus’ presence in this world in ways that motivate us, in ways that lift us, in ways that make us optimistic for a brighter future.

A few sermons ago, I talked about my trip to the Salton Sea—that strange, barren wasteland out in California, and seeing the shore birds that made this polluted place that we humans tried and failed to destroy their home during migrations. I talked about seeing God at work in that strange place, seeing God in those stilts and ducks perched on that trash of tires cemented on the shores of the Salton Sea. What a strange and glad surprise that was—that in the midst of decay and death, there is hope and life; that in the midst of destruction and desolation there is renewal and regeneration. I needed that hope and that glad surprise in that moment. I had been feeling lost and angry and I was grieving. I needed to know that there would be new life. That there will be new life. I needed that glad surprise.

We live in a harsh and cruel world. It tries to break us down and give up. It tries to convince us to succumb to the oppression that those in power would gerrymander and scheme their way into codifying. It tries to numb us, to make us despair, or worse, to make us apathetic. Those in power would try to make us believe that Jesus’ presence in the world is one that would keep us down; a world that would keep queer kids closeted and scared, a world that would keep state violence running rampant, that would keep the war machine moving perpetually.

Normally, in my sermons I talk about the work we need to do in the name of Jesus, the work we are called to do to make this earth as it is in heaven. And it still holds true that we have to continue that work, of course. But today, I want us to focus on the glad surprises that this world gives us, that glad surprises where Jesus is present; the surprises that those in power try their best to stop us from seeing or experiencing. I want us to really sit and be with the joy of this surprise, to think about all the ways Love conquers hate and that Life conquers death in a world that is not at all hospitable to Love or the lives of so mnay.

I want us to find hope in the unexpected. Like Helen Macdonald discerning what this wild boar really meant for her—this kind of ugly, strange creature turning into a beacon of hope in a world where it was almost eradicated; this beacon of hope that new life is possible. And let me tell you—I look forward to that day where I am finally in awe of some magnificently mammoth moose that will surely defy any of my expectations—that will surely be a glad surprise when I finally have that experience.

So let’s go from today, thinking of the awesome surprise that the four women found at the tomb; their faith and Love fulfilled. Let’s not think of this absence of Jesus in this passage as a disappointment—let’s think of it as this open-ended anticipation of what is to come; this hope in the knowledge that there is still time, and there is a better world possible. And so let’s let ourselves be surprised, knowing that our imaginations, our memories, what we’ve read or heard, will never match up with the experiences and the glad surprises of this real and strange life. Let us ever stop being amazed at what can happen. Amen.

[i] Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights (New York, NY: Grove Press, 2020), 12-13.

[ii] Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights (New York, NY: Grove Press, 2020), 13.

[iii] Thurman, Howard, Meditations of the Heart (Bonston, MA: Beacon Press, 1953, 1981), 108.