Home->Easter Vigil Sermon
An Unexpected Life
Luke 24:1-12
They come to the tomb expecting death. The women come - the women who have been with him from Galilee - Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and the other women. They come at early dawn, in that in-between time - in between the darkness and the light - they come with the spices to cover the stench of death. They come knowing what to expect. They know what everybody knows. How does Leonard Cohen put it? “Everybody knows that the dice are loaded, everybody rolls with their fingers crossed. Everybody knows that the war is over, everybody knows that the good guys lost. Everybody knows that the fight was fixed, the poor stay poor, the rich get rich. That’s how it goes. Everybody knows.”
But the women who come to the tomb do not find what they expect. They do not find what everybody knows. They do not find the predictable return of flowers in spring. They do not find a cocoon transformed into a butterfly. They do not find a metaphor that turns their grief into hope. In this in-between time between the darkness and the light they discover something that no one yet knows. They discover an unexpected life.
The stone has been rolled away. There is no body. It perplexes them. The first response to the unexpected life of Jesus Christ is perplexity, confusion, bewilderment. To be perplexed is to be, literally, entwined. Sorting out what has taken place at Easter requires untangling what everybody knows. An honest encounter with the events of this night begin with perplexity, with a time of slowly and patiently untangling our assumptions about the ways things are with God, with life, with death, with the world, with us. It is a good thing that the season of Easter is fifty days long. Fifty days gives us time for untangling, for sorting out, for understanding - for standing under - the unexpected life of Jesus Christ.
And then the unexpected message: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you. Then they remembered his words.” Remembered. How could they have forgotten? How could they have misunderstood? Well, of course, everybody knows what is - and what is not - possible. Everybody knows that death wins. Everybody knows that its heart break in the end. Until now. Until this moment between the darkness and the light. Until this place between the not yet and the kingdom come. Now the women see and hear and remember and untangle the knots of what they once knew so that they can declare what now only they know - that Jesus Christ is risen, that he is out ahead, that an unexpected life awaits.
So they carry the news. These women are the first evangelists, the first preachers, ordained by the holy messengers at the tomb to tell the good news to the apostles themselves. How ironic that the church has for so long and in so many places not authorized the women to preach the gospel. How ironic, indeed, when the apostles themselves do not believe what the women report, for “these words seemed to them an idle tale.” Of course it seems an idle tale. Everybody knows that this unexpected life is impossible news. Everybody knows that the women are dreaming. Except for Peter. Peter is not sure. Peter is captured by an inexplicable hope that things are not the way that everybody knows they are. Peter gets up. He runs to the grave and stoops and looks and sees nothing but the linen cloths. Then Peter goes home, amazed.
And, in case it hasn’t dawned on you just yet, the unexpected life of Jesus Christ is a very real - even terrifying - invitation from God to open your eyes and to awake from sleep and to be reborn. The unexpected life of Jesus Christ is an invitation to live the unexpected life that has been waiting for you all these years - the kind of life that everybody knows is surely not possible. But now you know otherwise. And this unexpected life is not a distant pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die promise of a disembodied existence free of this earthly plane. No. This unexpected life in Christ - this eternal life, this saved and redeemed and reconciled life - is as near at hand as the water in this font and as the bread and wine on this table. The unexpected life that Jesus Christ offers is as real as the unexpected love of God - when you admit to yourself that you need it and allow yourself to receive it. When you are ready and willing to want it and accept it the unexpected love of God will wash away your sin and root your unexpected life in mercy. Then the unexpected life that Jesus Christ offers the world will be as tangible as the unexpected love of God embodied in your forgiven hands, your humbled words and your re-born heart.
This is the living witness of the church from the first Easter day of God’s new creation until that last day when the angel chorus sings: “Everybody knows that Christ is risen. Everybody knows that Christ is risen, indeed. Hallelujah.”
- Edwin Searcy
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