Joyful Perplexion

Text: Luke 24:1-12
Other texts: Isaiah 65:17-25

We know a lot. We know how the sun works, about how materials are different from one another, about the chemistry of cooking, about how proteins are encoded in a cell. We know how old the universe is and how many stars are in it.

And we know next to nothing. For every fact there are countless mysteries. For every rule of thumb, there are countless hidden details.

Our broad knowledge and broader ignorance combine in a peculiar recipe to yield a confident certainty. We are like the map-makers in the 15th century, just before the New World was discovered by Europeans. We know a lot about some things, and we are confident that the things we do not know are more of the same. Not all the territories are mapped, but at least we know, we think, where the unmapped territories are. We know the boundaries of knowledge. We are confident that with time and work what is unknown will be known. We do not know all there is to know, but we do know what kinds of things that there are to know.

When Mary, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James came to the tomb where Jesus had been laid, they were perplexed. They were, the word means, at a loss, like map-makers who found unknown realms. Not just surprised at what they saw, but without resources to understand it. Thrown for a loop.

When they came back from the tomb and tried to explain it to the other disciples, no one believed them. They, the others, thought the women to be telling an idle tale, it says, as if it were a made-up story. But the meaning in the passage is even harsher. The disciples thought the women were delirious. And Peter was flabbergasted.

They were not alone. When Jesus then appeared to his followers, no one recognized him. His return to their lives was not like the return of a long-lost friend or like a soldier returning from war to greet his or her family. No one was waiting to embrace him and welcome him home. If we were to come back tonight to hear the readings specified for Easter evening, we’d hear about how two disciples meet Jesus on the road to Emmaus but do not know who he is. And in the Gospel of John, which is an alternative reading for this morning, we’d hear about how Mary mistakes Jesus for a gardener. Either Jesus was very different, or they were very unable to grasp that it was him.

We live in a realm of expectations. We believe the past to be a good predictor of the future. That is not surprising, for we are pattern-detecting creatures. We survive because we are good at anticipating what will happen. Furthermore, we create structures and systems—like traditions and ritual—that help us do that better. The Passion story that we heard last week (Sunday and again on Friday) is the story of those structures coming up against something incomprehensible. No one can understand why Jesus does not make claims for himself, or defend himself, or declare who he really is. And he tells them that his kingdom is not from this world.

When Mary and Joanna and Mary come to the tomb, the angel asks them why they come looking for the living among the dead. It is a trick question. They are looking among the dead because they had seen Jesus die. Unlike the other disciples, who had scattered, these women had been eye witnesses to his death. They had come looking for Jesus among the dead because Jesus had been dead. They expected that once people are crucified, they must be prepared for burial and buried. It is right to do that. It is how things go. It was surprising that Jesus is not there. It is not surprising that the three women and the other disciples are incredulous.

We cannot, as they could not, explain this event by thinking that Jesus did not die. He did. That’s what our faith teaches us. He was not faking it. Not taking refuge from death behind his divinity. Jesus died and was buried, as we say in the creed. Jesus was as dead as any creature on this earth can be. Jesus was human. Humans die. Jesus rose from the dead. That tells us something about humans.

But it also tells us something about the universe. We celebrate in the resurrection of Jesus a revelation of an unexpected cosmos. Jesus reveals that there is something that is beyond the boundaries of what was knowable. The map-makers had to add a new land. The resurrection of Jesus reveals to each of us uncharted territory. We make discoveries. For some, in it we discover a kind of timelessness, for others the feeble power of death, for others a never-subsiding force of life. The list is long. Because for each of you, perhaps, something different is revealed. Jesus rises from death. Christians are adamant about the meaning of that. Only they do not all agree about what the meaning is. Just that it does mean something important.

We celebrate because we realize that the boundaries about which we were so certain are no boundaries at all. It is relieving to find that we know so little. We find that our convictions of what is possible are misplaced. We have no idea what is possible.

Isaiah features so strongly during Holy Week and Easter because the prophet delights so much in creation and is so confident about its renewal. I am about to create a new Jerusalem as a joy, God says. No more will people weep, no more will they cry in distress, no more will children die young or old men and women succumb before their time. These are unbelievable hopes. But they are not unrealistic.

The business of the church is to pray continually that the world be renewed, that there be a new earth, as Isaiah says. And furthermore—and maybe more important—to proclaim that such prayer is not futile. Even better, that it is likely to be fruitful.

We celebrate because we see that we do not have to continue in the same patterns that seem to have ruled our lives and the life of the world. If insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results, then by that definition the world seems to be insane. But Jesus has revealed that it does not have to be that way.

The disciples are perplexed. But it does not so much take faith or courage or piety to believe that God has revealed something new. It takes imagination and humility. In the face of our expectations, God has in the resurrection of Jesus shown a willingness to surprise us.

As we are moved into the future, it is freeing, comforting, and exhilarating to learn that there are no boundaries to what is can happen.