The Bungee Cord.

No matter who tells us the Easter story….be it Matthew, Mark, Luke or John…they all make one thing very clear; no one expected to see what happened on that day. Sure, Jesus had told them several times before that he would be turned over to those who hated him, that he would die at their hands, and on the third day he would rise from the dead. But his words must have had an empty ring to them. The din of the cross … the nails, the suffering, the cries…must have been blaring in their ears. The silence that followed a spear thrusted through his side must have been haunting them. The deathly quiet of the grave in which he was laid must have been yelling at them. The roll of the stone to close the grave must have been echoing in their ears.

So, when the women went to the grave, they did not expect to see what they saw. Matthew tells us that the women were struck with fear as the earth quaked and the stone was rolled away, and they were taken back by the sight of lightning white angel who spoke to them who knew that those women were encountering something they didn’t expect. “I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified, “he said, “6 He is not here, for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he[a] lay.”

And then they ran into the thing that they least expected to see, Jesus, standing there alive right in front of them, and I am sure with a smile on his face he said, “Surprise!” The reading that we just heard translates the word that Jesus greeted those two women as, “Greetings!”, but the word that is found in the original language of the Bible, Greek, is “chairete”, which literally means “rejoice”. Jesus did not just say, “Howdy”, or “Hi”….no, when those women ran into him, he saw their fears and doubts, and he said to them a word of victory, “Rejoice”…. “Surprise!”

Surprises are some of the best things in life when they are good surprises. They have a way of etching themselves in our memories, and they shape our lives. I remember some years ago on my 60th birthday that I was sitting in my house watching TV when suddenly my dog started barking, and when I went to the door, I heard the word, “Surprise!” It was my three sons who had come from their homes far away from me to give me a birthday present that I wasn’t expecting….them! I remember that day as if it was yesterday, and it shapes my life even to this day.

Imagine how that greeting from Jesus, “Surprise!”, must have implanted itself in those two women’s lives. How it must have overwhelmed all the other noise that had been filling their ears…how it must have been like a bomb exploding in their hearts with an urgency to tell others about it…how it must have brought strength to their legs as they ran to tell the disciples….how it must have crushed the darkness with brilliant light…how it changed the way they lived each day…and how it turned the day that they died upside down. “Surprise!”

And the power of that surprise has made it to you and me today. We who have stood by grave sites and watched death gobble up one person after another. We who have heard with our own ears and seen with our own eyes, “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” We who have looked at the empty recliner in the living room, the empty seat at the kitchen table, the closet full of clothes that will never be worn again, and the smile that is only in pictures. To us, on this day, we hear the word that was spoken to those two women spoken to us, as we run into Jesus in this place, “Surprise!”

“Surprise!” Death is swallowed up in victory. “Surprise!” We are not just dust in the wind, but we are dust in whom the Spirit has breathed life, now and forever. “Surprise!” Loneliness and grief have been washed down the drain in a tidal flood of love and mercy. “Surprise!”

And today, those two women would have you know, that long after your days in this life are over, and your body has long rested in the grave or mingled with the dirt, you will hear a knocking and a recreating hand will reach down and pull you up into new life, and there will be Jesus, and he will say to you words that will transform you for eternity, “Surprise!” Amen.