Easter Sunday. April 17th: "The Happiest Place on Earth"
The First United Presbyterian Church of Loveland
“The Happiest Place on Earth”
Rev. Amy Morgan
April 17, 2022
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.
2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb,
3 but when they went in, they did not find the body.
4 While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them.
5 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.
6 Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee,
7 that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again."
8 Then they remembered his words, 9 and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest.
10 Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles.
11 But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.
12 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.
We knew there was a long road ahead of us. My parents and siblings and I were on an epic family road trip, and had just visited some family friends in Ventura, California. We were headed to my grandparents’ house, 400 miles away in Sacramento. I knew where we had been, and I knew where we were going, but I had no idea what would happen in between.
I noticed something odd as I watched the road signs we passed on the freeway. “Hey,” I said to my dad, who was behind the wheel, “we’re going the wrong way. We’ve already passed these signs.”
“We have to backtrack a bit to get on the right freeway,” my mom cleverly improvised.
Deciding that this would be a boring trip indeed if we had to retrace our path, and being a kid prone to carsickness, I popped a Dramamine and promptly fell asleep.
I woke up when our van stopped. At first, I assumed it must be time to fill up the gas tank and take a bathroom break. When I didn’t see any gas pumps out the window, I then worried that the van had broken down - again. But when I stepped out of the van and groggily stretched and yawned, I discovered we were in the middle of a vast parking lot. I had no idea where we were. I was utterly perplexed.
My sister and brother, however, were wide awake, and they quickly figured out exactly where we were. “Disneyland!” they screamed.
My parents explained that our great-grandparents had gifted us with tickets to Disneyland, and they had kept it a surprise.
My befuddled brain tried to put the pieces together. But in my medicated stupor, it took a minute to realize we had been magically transported from a long and boring road trip to the happiest place on earth.
The women who set out to anoint the body of Jesus knew they had a long road ahead of them. They had to trek outside the city, early in the morning, to the burial place of Jesus. But it wasn’t the number of miles that made the trip so long. It was the grief they carried with them, which weighed them down more than the load of spices they had prepared. They knew where they had been: at the foot of the cross, witnessing the death of their beloved teacher, friend, Messiah. They knew where they were going: to a tomb to complete the burial ritual that had been interrupted by the mandated Sabbath rest. But they had no idea what would happen in between.
They noticed something odd when they found the stone rolled away from the entrance to the tomb. When they went in and found the body was gone, Luke’s gospel tells us that they were perplexed.
This word, “perplexed,” in Greek, indicates a state of complete unknowing, to be at a loss for any idea what is happening or what will come next. The women have lost their orientation, their sense of a concrete destination or reality.
In their groggy early-morning haze, perhaps it occurred to them that something mundane had occurred, the body had been temporarily relocated for routine tomb maintenance. Perhaps they were frightened something awful had happened, that the body had been stolen.
But the angels who suddenly show up know exactly what is happening. Jesus is alive, he is not dead, and not to be found among the dead. “He is not here, but has risen!” they shout.
The angels explain that this surprise had been planned for some time, and Jesus hadn’t done a great job of hiding it. There were plenty of signs, and words telling them outright where they were going.
But honestly, if my mom had replied to my question about where we were going by saying we were heading to Disneyland, I probably wouldn’t have believed her. It’s funny how willing we are to believing preposterously bad news, but so unwilling to accept profoundly wonderful possibilities.
If the women had run to the apostles with the news that the authorities were coming to arrest them, or that Jesus’s body had been stolen from the tomb by his enemies, or that God was about to smite them for their denial of Jesus – I wonder if they would have believed them. This was the kind of news they were waiting for, huddled together behind locked doors, waiting for the other shoe to fall after Jesus’s death. They expected more terrible things to happen. They knew where they had been: in the temple courtyard, denying they knew anyone named Jesus, hiding out and fearing for their lives as he suffered and died, observing the Sabbath as his body lay in a tomb. They knew where they were going: sneaking back to Galilee incognito, or heading for a cross themselves. And they were unwilling to recognize how little they knew about what would happen next. They were unable to be surprised and perplexed, only skeptical and unbelieving.
We are conditioned to believe that the road ahead is long, arduous, and maybe even boring. History will inevitably repeat itself. Wars and rumors of wars will never cease. Humanity will be inhumane. Pandemics will surge and wane. Suffering and death are constants. The powerful will always oppress the weak. We will live, we will pay our taxes, maybe after filing an extension, and we will die. That’s life. We know where we’ve been and where we’re going.
But here is the great good news is: we have no idea what will happen in-between.
There is so much we don’t know, and most of the time we find that frightening. We focus in on the catastrophic possibilities, on the grim realities, because we think that gives us some kind of leg up on the absolute uncertainty of life. We think we know where we’re going, and it’s possible we could end up somewhere mundane, or frightening. But it’s also entirely possible we could end up in the happiest place on earth. We live as if the first two possibilities are the only ones worth considering and preparing for, even when there is ample evidence to the contrary. But the resurrection of Jesus convicts us. It reminds us that God is in the business of wonderful surprises.
God surprised Abraham and Sarah in their old age with a son. God surprised Joseph with reunion and reconciliation with his brothers. God surprised the Israelites with liberation from slavery in Egypt. As the refrain of a John Bell Christmas hymn says, when Christ is born, “God surprises earth with heaven.”
The ministry of Jesus is one glorious surprise after another. Water is turned to wine, people who are blind can see and who are paralyzed can pick up their mat and walk. Abundant food appears from meager supplies, storms are calmed, Jesus is transfigured and walks on water. The surprises are practically endless.
That is, until they end in disaster. The crucifixion, you see, is no surprise at all. Jesus has been talking about it to his disciples, preparing them for it to happen. And it is the predictable end of any 1st-century messiah who might trouble the fragile peace of Rome.
And all of a sudden, the disciples stop believing in surprises. Even after all they’ve seen and experienced with Jesus. Even after all the stories they know about God.
Trauma does that to us. It shuts down our ability to trust in the possibility that the future will be better than the past, or the present. It disables our ability to believe that an unknown future has just as good a chance of being miraculously wonderful as it does of being terribly awful.
We’ve all been through a lot of trauma in the last few years. And we’ve all heard this Easter tale many times. It isn’t new and surprising anymore. And that makes it hard to believe. In the face of pandemics and wars, illness and suffering and death, the Easter story can sound like an idle tale.
The cynicism triggered by trauma has taught us to only see the long road ahead of us. Long road of the pandemic. Long road of the war. Long road of political dysfunction. Long road of social isolation and conflict. Long road of illness. Long road of aging. Long road of caregiving. Long road of parenting. The long road of grief and loss.
We think we know where these things end. We think that if we just prepare for the worst, expect the worst, then we won’t be surprised when terrible things happen.
But that means we also can’t be surprised when wonderful things happen. Because we won’t believe them.
Friends, we have no idea what will happen in between our birth and our death, or between this moment and the next. But we have been told that the tomb is empty. We have been told that “God surprised earth with heaven,” and that, as Peter later testifies, “it was impossible for death to keep its hold” on Jesus.
As we begin to emerge from the trauma of this time, stretching and waking up to new realities, may we set aside all the things we think we know, and open ourselves up to the possibility of resurrection, of life out of death, of an empty tomb. May we experience the wonder of being magically transported from the long, and perhaps boring, expectations we have about the road ahead of us to the happiest place on earth. And this time, I’m not talking about Disneyland.
So long as we know that the tomb is empty, that death has been defeated, that Christ is risen indeed, wherever we are can be the happiest place on earth.
To God be all glory forever and ever. Amen.
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