What does Easter mean to you? Is it an annual spring festival, a celebration of life, wrapped in the story of Jesus’ resurrection? Is it a feast of flowers and beautiful dresses – churches perfumed with the smell of lilies, homes permeated by the scent of cooked lamb, the excitement of neighborhood Easter Egg hunts filling neighborhood streets? I think Easter is a little bit of all these things that I just mentioned, but to any serious Christian, it is also more. Well, what is the “more”??? To find out, we have to take the route of the New Testament, look at Easter with the eyes of the two women who went to the tomb on that early Sunday morning and see for ourselves. To them, Easter was, above all, discovery: the unexpected, shocking, and transformative discovery of God!
Now, I don’t know how helpful it would be to suggest to all of you that we “go out and discover” God, as much as I like the idea. We can search for God, sure, we can pray to God, we can meditate and go on mission trips, practice the teachings of Christ, receive the sacraments… Blessings and insights will come our way, I’m sure of it. But the truly transformative moments in life, the experiences that shock us into a new way of living, they still come to us unexpectedly almost every single time.
No, I don’t think it would be very helpful for us to imitate Mary and Mary Magdalene. If we walked up to our cemetery early on Sunday morning, it’s more likely that we’d find things there that need fixing than an angel telling us about the risen Lord. In fact, don’t go up to the cemetery before dawn, there might be a hole or two in the ground…
The annoying thing about discoveries of any kind – scientific, spiritual, archeological – is this: you can’t plan them. You can’t schedule a discovery or a revelation. It is, by definition, something that will take you by surprise. While it happens most likely to people who are searching with an open mind, even that is not a guarantee.
Sometimes people just stumble upon great discoveries… In 1974, a group of Chinese farmers chanced upon the discovery of a lifetime. A seven-man team was digging a well near the city of Xian when one of their shovels struck the head of a buried statue. The men thought they had discovered a bronze bust or an ancient Buddha sculpture, but when archeologists conducted further excavations, they found it was one of some 8,000 life-sized terra cotta soldiers, horses and chariots constructed to guard the 3rd century B.C. Emperor Qin Shi Huang in the afterlife. The men had found the tomb of the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty! Today, the tomb and its highly-detailed soldiers—each has its own unique face—are regarded as some of the most important archeological treasures in all of China.
Many more discoveries are owed to the fact that people were out looking for something – but something entirely different! So, was Mary and Mary Magdalene’s discovery of the risen Christ just like – dumb luck? Being in the right place at the right time? Could that be possible? Some of us get nervous when the words “chance” and “luck” are mentioned in the same breath as faith. We tend to ban such words in church. Isn’t everything pre-ordained, part of a divine plan?
Yes, I don’t think seriously that the discovery made by Mary and Mary Magdalene was a result of chance. But from a human perspective, from down below, where angels and their messages are not always readily accessible to us, it certainly was an unexpected discovery. I like to think that more people than you and I might expect are led to discover God, are prepared for an Easter moment, are brought into the presence of angels. We don’t always notice it, because angels come in all forms and shapes.
In 1945, shortly after the first nuclear bombs had been dropped, a young American soldier drove his Army Jeep through the Japanese countryside, a routine excursion. Entering a small village, he thought he heard a baby crying. The soldier stopped and looked in the direction of the noise and saw a Japanese baby on a door step. The next thing he noticed was the door opening and a white woman picking up the baby and bringing it inside. The young soldier wondered what was going on and decided to check it out. He came across an orphanage run by French nuns. From time to time locals left a baby on their door step to be taken in. The young soldier had just witnessed such a scene. As he spoke to the leader of the operation, Sister Margaret, they became friendly.
So, he started securing food from the army kitchen and secretly brought it to the nuns to feed the children. The courage and simple service of these sisters impressed him and, although not a Christian, his heart was touched by their example. When he left the country to go back to Philadelphia, he promised sister Margaret to always attend Christmas Eve Services, which he did. Many years later he was baptized in a church that you may know: it’s called St. Peter’s Lutheran in North Wales. In fact, he was washed in the same Baptismal Font that Pastor Shin is using this morning to baptize a member of his community. This young solider had, in a way, discovered God in Japan. A “chance” encounter with human angels had planted the seed. And that encounter quietly continued to influence his life.
So, there is no strategy about discovering God, but God will reveal himself to us at various points in various ways and all we can strive for is to be ready for those moments, hopefully not ignore them and embrace the message God is sending us. All Easter stories agree that these encounters occur in unexpected places and in least expected moments. None of the Easter stories take place in a synagogue or a designated holy site, but as people were going about their lives. The message is clear: God is coming to us, visiting us in our routines, the Holy One touching us where we are. And so, please remember this: you are all part of the Discovery of God. You are all part of the on-going Easter experience. Just pray that you will be ready and receptive when the Holy One knocks on your door to bless and transform your life. Jesus is risen and God is among us!
Amen.