I awoke this rainy, contemplative Easter morn to find my son's grinning face about two inches from mine. He had a look of expectancy and excitement most often reserved for Christmas morning. Even my morning breath didn't trouble the smile in his eyes. "When can we go down stairs," he asked? I grunted and pulled him into bed beside me, hoping snuggling would send him back to dreamland - not a chance! I dozed every few minutes, only to be awakened again by his question, "Dad, when can we go downstairs?" As my wife and I slowly emerged into the world of the living, chasing the fog out from between our ears, longing for a hot cup of java, we told him to go see if his sister was awake.
By 7:20 we were all headed down the steps. I went first to turn on the coffee pot and to get the camera out and ready for that "perfect shot." I wanted to capture the looks on their faces when they found the stash left by the Easter Bunny (or, in the words of my wise-before-her-years 7 year old daughter, the "balding bunny that looks a lot like dad!"). After pictures were taken, chocolate bunny's ears eaten, toys unpacked, paper grass strewn all over the kitchen, and my wife had gone up for a shower, I was left alone at the table pondering the significance of this day. In many ways there is no difference between today and any other lazy Sunday morning. And that's the beauty of it! That's the amazing thing about God. This morning, this Easter morning, God has burst forth into our world once again, interrupting the normal, offering a difference from the status quo, and offering to make a difference in our lives. It is ours to choose to accept the difference that Christ offers or to turn our backs on his gift to return to the normal, mundane existence this so-called life offers. God is not going to force us to make a change we do not freely choose to make.
Unlike my children who arose this Easter morning expecting something new, the women who headed to the tomb early that first Easter morning didn't give up or give in (unlike the male followers of Jesus). They held on to their love for Jesus, risking everything to do one last bit of service for their master, cleaning his battered body and annointing it for a proper burial. They went to the tomb expecting death, not a surprise. They went out of love and duty. They expected to have to negotiate with the soldiers there guarding the tomb to roll the stone away so they could cover Jesus' bruised and scarred body with spices and oils, chasing away the stench of death that was sure to come in the hot climate of Jerusalem. What they found, however, offered to change everything for all of history.
On that normal Sunday morning they discovered an interruption. The day was the same as any other - the sun was up, the streets were beginning to bustle with people, the path to the tomb was still rocky, the morning fog was just lifting, the loads of spices the women were carrying were still heavy, the brambles along the way still snagged clothing and scratched skin. The difference was found when the women reached their destination. Collapsing to their knees in amazement, grief and unbelief they found the stone gone, the guards gone and the body of their beloved master gone. Their grief was compounded. The fog of confusion filled their minds, numbing their senses. Tears of pain filled their eyes, blinding them even to each other. Questions of "what," "Why?" and "how?" were all that they could vocalize. Their sobs filled the air. Into this scene two angels appear and then a gardener. More confusion. Nothing seems right. The women, assuming the gardener was there to start his day, to till the soil, pull some weeds, tend the olive trees and nurture the spring flowers, asked him what had happened. They assumed that either he knew something or had himself done something with Jesus' body.
"Mary" - the word breaks through the confusion. In an instant the fog is blown away. Clarity comes. Hope shatters grief. Life is made new. Everything has changed. In an instant, reality is seen. The rules determining "the way the world works" no longer exist. Jesus has made things new. God has again intervened into life. Once again, the curse of sin lifted, God is walking in the garden with his last creation, the one who by her choice brought sin into existence and a curse on all of humanity. Eden was reborn that morning - a day like any other, yet so different.
This morning I was greeted by the daily dig from bruderhof.com. The final paragraphs are a propro:
"Again and again Christ arises anew. In what we know of the risen Christ, God wants to renew all things. His will is for the earth as much as it is for the heavens. Otherwise we would never know his reality. We could never conceive of anything becoming different. We would think that his resurrected life was some spiritual thing that we human beings could not understand. That’s not what it is. No. The power of his resurrection is something that is within our reach.
The amazing thing I noticed this morning is that each day we are like those women who travel down the path to the tomb. Each morning as we struggle to wake up, it is like we are emerging from the fog to discover emptiness in the tomb of existence we call "life". However, the reality we think we see is only an illusion. Each morning, Jesus presents us with an interruption - the opportunity to begin again, to see life anew from God's perspective, and to be surprised by grace. We then have a choice; do we walk in light of this new life or do we return to the point-of-view of the night - that there is no hope, that our savior is gone, that they only thing that matters is protecting our skin and learning from our gullibility in having faith in something more? Which do we choose? I return to Joshua - "I choose life" in Christ today and everyday. Each day I choose to allow Jesus to make me a new creation - to remake me, a bit more at a time, into his image. I choose to live a life of anticipation, knowing all the while that along the way I will be surprised by Jesus' presence in ways and in places I never imagined. I choose to become he who God is creating me to be! Join the adventure along with me! Choose the interruption!New possibilities can dawn on us, and the more we sense these new possibilities, either in our bodies or in our souls, the more we can ask for, the more we can look for higher and greater things here on earth. Actually, there are no limits. And for this reason we can bring hope into everything, into our daily life, into everything at which we work and into anything that we touch. The power that comes from God is ready to be brought into our human situation, and in such a way as to transform it.
Therefore, we must not turn our attention to the darkness, the evils, and the imperfections of the earth, nor are we to try to figure out how this or that matter is going to turn out. All that has nothing to do with us. We are simply to ask Jesus to give us more and more of his resurrection, until it runs over, until the extraordinary powers from on high that are within our reach can get down to work on all that we do."
