Suddenly

Easter 2011
Gen 1:1-2:1; Exodus 14: 10-21, 15: 1-2; Zeph 3: 14-20; Rom 6: 3-11; Matthew 28: 1-10


“Suddenly Jesus met them.”
What brings us together tonight is a God beyond our words and images who does something surprising in Jesus. No symbol or idea is up to it. The ongoing event, the dawning reality of resurrection and risen life, is always new, beyond our imagination, and a surprise when it breaks upon our minds and souls.
Tonight we read the long text of creation from Genesis. The text is so familiar it threatens to lull us to sleep with its rhythm likes waves on the sand. “In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth…” We miss how surprising, how new, is this poetic account of the astounding ongoing dynamism of creation. Science is completely in accord with the poetry of Genesis, as science describes a process of breathtaking complexity and elegant diversity that is completely unlikely. Creation is always fresh and new and astounding.
Surprising too is the tale of a God who cared enough for the freedom of a ragged bunch of Hebrew slaves that he went to war with the powers of the greatest empire of the ancient world. The world was full of slaves and masters and is so today. Why intervene, why care, why risk freeing this group of rude people and asking them to live in a new way, in justice and gratitude? Surprise from God, surprise when people follow through with justice and gratitude!
Surprising too it is when that same God, who has been cheated on and rejected time and time again, still cares and still reaches out to a fickle people who constantly try to return to slavery, serving new masters or acting like the masters who abused them. I will remember, I will act, I will not forget, I will free you and bring you back to the land, I will give you another shot, says this God, the God of surprise.
Dead to that old life, dead to slavery, dead to an endless round of desire and frustration and abuse and regret, that is our life in Christ says Paul. Dead to that old life with its endless slaveries, alive to God with Jesus who sprung from the tomb like a new plant springs from a buried forgotten seed.
And the Gospel tale is a tale of complete surprise.
Thos who looked for the body of Jesus expected to find nothing find Jesus just where they left him, dead in a hole in the rock. Instead they find nothing, an empty tomb. The tomb is exactly where Jesus is not. He has left the building. No one actually sees the resurrection, no one is there, and Jesus is not waiting for them on his slab. His appearances are a surprise. And he never says, “Now let’s go back to Jerusalem and have a little talk with Pilate and Herod and the high priest, pick things up where we left off.” No, instead there is a new mission, and new direction, and Jesus goes to meet them in that new future.
One priest said recently, “(Resurrection)is not a message of tolerating misery or of having less death…The way of resurrection requires death, not just a winter of dormancy. Resurrection requires a radical surrender or letting go of that which is not working…Rather than let go of our understanding and see things the way God sees them we struggle to get God to bless our understanding…What we need is resurrection not reincarnation and that requires that we as a people have courage to let our old ways die rather than getting our way.”

“Suddenly Jesus met them.” How new a life do you want? How much do you wish resurrection, the new life of God, and not just re-incarnation, fixing the life you already have? How much surprise from the surprising God are you ready to embrace?