Promoting Resurrection Wonder

John 20:19-23

It is always a great pleasure to welcome classes from St Matthew’s school to visit the church and I now have a new way of asking them to enter into the building. I meet them on the doorstep and ask them to come in silently and with their heads bowed. I ask them to sit in the rear pews of the church and then with their heads still down, to turn to face the back of the church and only then get them slowly to raise their heads, and so their first emotion as they enter this place is to gasp with wonder. For their eyes are drawn to our west window and to the hundreds of angels shining down upon them and surrounding the birth scene of Jesus Christ.

The great thing about children is their capacity for wonder and amazement. When Jesus said you could not enter the kingdom of heaven unless you became like a child again, I reckon one of the things he had in mind, was the capacity to be struck by wonder at a moment’s notice.

The four Gospel writers come at the resurrection from different angles, through the stories they tell they give unique insights into what it must first have been like to discover Jesus as risen. There is one element they hold in common and that is the capacity of wonder, astonishment and surprise. No matter that the Hebrew scriptures hinted at resurrection in some form, no matter that Jesus continually alluded to it, when it happened, everyone was taken aback. If we’re looking for a characteristic for the church in our day or a strand to bolster up our own discipleship, we could do worse than consider promoting the sense of wonder at the startling events of Easter Day.

The sense of wonder came to the first disciples, not in a sudden outbreak of glory which threatened to overwhelm them, for that would have been escapism from the truth I tried to describe this morning, that He is to be found in our midst, amongst all the ordinary things we do.

If you read the Gospel accounts of Easter you will find – that wonder accumulates in a number of interlocking ways.

The belief that Jesus was risen gathers momentum through a number of hints and guesses. Messages of what has happened are conveyed by word of mouth, from one meeting place to another. “You mean the tomb is empty…..the stone rolled away…..angels in the sepulchre….didn’t he say……didn’t he tell us ..that something like this was going to happen…and now…..here he is..we see for ourselves and we’re struck with wonder.

Sometimes you just have to accept that faith is a mystery, we enter it, we give ourselves to it, we let the truth of it unravel over a lifetime.

Nobody was prepared for what had now taken place. The Pharisees were looking completely the wrong way even though at one level they were preparing the ground for something like this. They saw Jesus as a threat rather than a promise. The disciples who were the most intuitive discuss amongst themselves how they might move the stone to anoint his dead body whilst others have simply gone back to work. The way Jesus strikes leaves everyone as complete beginners.

Think of the painstaking ways we plan for things. Our timetables and our programmes and our forward planning. The truth is you can do nothing to get ready for Jesus – only get ourselves back to being children again, ready be amazed. It may be that in our haphazard lives of loose threads and dead ends, he can come and surprise us beyond measure.

Then Jesus makes himself known at the margins rather than in the centre. If only he had endeared himself to the temple rulers, he could surely have convinced them in the end, won them over. But it is Mary Magdalene who meets him first and she knows him when he calls her name. He came to disconsolate travellers on the way to Emmaus and to disciples who had so lost their confidence in the future, they locked themselves away for fear of the jews.

Sometimes when we look for God in the obvious place we are let down and disappointed.  When we come upon him, even a shadow of him, even an echo, in an unlikely place or a marginalised person, we wonder.

The resurrection happened surprisingly quietly. Just like Christmas actually. The miracle of God’s dealing with the human race takes place in a corner, in the early morning and the conversation such as it is, is hushed. Nothing is done to catch the attention of outsiders. Roman guards are knocked to the ground, it is true, but that’s not enough to publicise this great day.

Political parties love their advertising hoardings and consumer products their thirty seconds of glory on TV adverts. Posters advertise that the circus is coming to town and had you heard that we’re hosting the Olympics in 2012. The faith we have may be quiet and fairly private and we do not easily advertise our piety to others. These Gospel stories show us that the resurrection does not need amplification and temporary staging, but it does need hearts that are open. “Stand back and be amazed” – yes, maybe that’s more than a silly cliché.

Finally, and most difficult for us, the most common response to hearing about the resurrection was “fear”. Six times it comes, twice, its described as “terror”. This strikes me as the sort of fear which  comes when we are completely taken off our guard, we cannot fully account for what is happening and we know there is more to this than meets the eye.  Hardest of all in our anxiety ridden days, we don’t know what’s going on, we are not completely in control. I thought I was the sum total of all that mattered, here on Easter Day, I know I’m not.

This can be enough to turn us away actually or it can bring out the response – something’s afoot and I don’t want to miss it, because I think I see that my own liberation might be the end result.

There is much wonder to be had when we stand before a marvellous painting, we listen to music, we walk in the countryside, and its wonderful when that feeling catches up with us and overtakes us. What I think I’m saying is that there is a way of looking at life, inspired by these resurrection stories which might make us more open to wonder across the board of life experiences, and help to deepen the impact of the risen Christ in us.

RH 4.4.10