A Sermon by Pastor Tom Lacey . . .

Oh, happy day

Matthew 28:1-10, Preached at Congregational Church of Boca Raton, March 23, 2008

St. Peter was showing an old Minneapolis man around heaven. A couple minutes into the tour he saw an old friend of his, but it was a disturbing sight. Attached to his friend’s leg by a large chain was the most hideous blob of sticky, mutated protoplasm he had ever seen. "What is that?" he asked St. Peter, scarcely able to control his horror. "Well,” said St. Peter, "your friend was far from perfect in his life on earth and this is his punishment." A little further on the man saw another friend with an even more hideous blob attached to his leg. "I guess John did quite a few bad things in his life too, eh?" "I'm afraid so," St. Peter responded. Going on the man suddenly recognized Newt, who also had a chain attached to his leg. But at the other end of the chain was Dolly Parton! "My goodness!" exclaimed the tourist. "Newt Fuller must have been very good while he was on earth to get Dolly Parton as his reward!" "Oh, no, no," said St. Peter, "you don't understand. Dolly Parton was very, very bad!" Surprises are fun, like the end of a joke. Or at the end of life. God has a wonderful sense of surprise,

Our text is about the greatest surprise of them all: Christ’s resurrection. Our God is a God of great surprises because God's ways are different from our ways. God can surprise us coming and going: I mean if the cross was a heart-breaker, then the resurrection is a mind-breaker. We don’t see either one coming, and yet for over 2,000 years they are the most important acts to have ever occurred in human history. In fact, rarely do we draw a bead on God, and that is what makes trying to understand the ways of the Lord so difficult. Even when we think we have things figured out, it can still be hard to get a grip on God’s ways. Look, even talking about heaven can be confusing. “How’s your wife?” the man asked his friend whom he hadn’t talked to in years. “She’s in heaven,” replied the friend. “Oh, I’m sorry.” Then he realized that was not the thing to say, so he added, “I mean, I’m glad,” which was even worse. He finally came out with, “Well, I’m surprised.” Not the best thing either. When you’re not expecting it, that’s when God opens the door to the rest of your life. When you don’t see it coming, that’s when the Lord hands you the life challenge, the spiritual challenge that will at first be a whole new set of difficulties but will prove in time to be the miracle you didn’t know you needed. While it’s true God plays a mean game of hide-and-seek, once the Lord shows up, your life will never be the same. Don’t be afraid of what God has in store for you. Bring faith to the table and the Lord will magnify your hopes and multiply your blessings. Work hard and do well, and it will be no surprise what will come of things. As scripture says, “We are the children of God.” Romans 8:16

What we want to see this morning is that God’s surprises are good things, and often much better than the ones we give each other.

A man was stepping out of the shower one evening when his wife called up to him and told him the fuses for the lower floor must have blown because it was all dark down here. Without bothering to grab a towel or robe, he headed down the stairs. Just as he reached the bottom stair, the lights came on and a dozen friends and colleagues jumped out and shouted, "Surprise!" His wife had planned a secret party for his 40th birthday.

To Jesus’ disciples the great surprise was that he had been killed. Jesus’ men never see this coming. No Messiah could be killed, and certainly not like that. In fact, scripture said, “Cursed is anyone who is hanged on a tree.” It’s impossible to hold that scripture in one hand and the thought that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth, that bleeding, dead man naked and nailed to a Roman cross, is the Messiah in the other. This was not a good surprise. This was the end, not a beginning. We see the end of the road as the end of the road. We see a man and only a man. We do not see the God who has brought this person to life, loved and sustained her all her days, and plans for his retirement beyond retirement, if you know what I mean. But just because we do not see something, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

C. S. Lewis was one of the best known religious writers of our day. One of his books, which tells of his experience coming to his Christian faith, is titled Surprised By Joy. One day a woman named Joy Davidman came into his life. He eventually married her. One day Joy saw a picture hanging on Lewis' wall. It was a landscape of a beautiful valley. Joy asked where it was. Lewis said he had never thought to ask that. He thought it might have just been a product of the artist's imagination. It never occurred to him that it might be a picture of a real place. Joy investigated and found that the picture was a painting of a real valley that was not far from the university. She insisted that they go to see it. They did, and they experienced the great beauty of the reality represented by the picture. In a similar way, many people still have some ideas about what God is supposed to be like and about what life is supposed to be like, according to Christian religion. Unfortunately these ideas have come to seem like pictures hanging on a wall, or as words written in a book, the products of someone's imagination. But the God that our religious ideas represent is a reality, is real and alive. So surprise yourself by believing again. Listen to the good news and not the naysayers. Trying to live this life on one’s own makes about as much sense as wishing to be an orphan. Let the Lord be the Lord of your life. Find the God who is truly God, whose strength meets your weakness, whose light shines through your darkness, whose grace restores your hearts, and whose forgiveness cleanses your souls.

Did you see the other surprise in this morning’s resurrection passage? Did you take note of the second rather large miracle that happens? Don’t tell me you missed it. Mary Magdalene, a woman and a former prostitute, we believe, is the first woman among the two or more other women named to see and speak to the risen Jesus. In all four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, it is women who see and speak to Jesus first, or in Luke’s gospel, the angel tells the women about Jesus’ resurrection. And it is Mary Magdalene who is the first one on the list each and every time. The authors of the most important story ever written and will ever be written all unanimously agree that women, with a probable prostitute the most important one, were the first ones to encounter the good news of Christ’s resurrection. Women are the first witnesses to the most important event in all of human history.

Do you know what is also amazing? What’s also amazing is how we have handled this tiny bit of truth over the last two thousand years. Let’s put this in its proper perspective. It has been loudly trumpeted over the millennia that Eve was the first to be deceived by the snake and the first one to eat the fruit, which has meant throughout history that Eve was "worser" than poor Adam—and haven’t women paid the price for being the first one to sin?

When the question of women becoming priests or female preachers is raised in certain Christian churches the reason they are told that they cannot become such a thing is because Jesus didn’t pick any women to be his disciples. The thinking goes something like this, “It’s right here in black and white, and if it is in here, then it must mean something.” These biblical stories have had a huge, huge impact on how we have accepted the reduced role of women and the elevated status of men. In fact, it is impossible to exaggerate the influence these stories have had throughout our history, influences that negatively impacted women, their ability to contribute to society and church, and society’s acceptance of their talents and efforts. And yet, and yet this story, the story of Christ’s resurrection, the most amazing story of all, tells the completely opposite line: God picks women. God chooses women to be the first witnesses to God’s amazing resurrection power and glory in Jesus of Nazareth. But it is like it hasn’t even mattered. There is this unspoken, “So” as the response to this story, a response that is entirely missing with the first two pro-male stories. We never hear, “God chose women to see the Risen Lord first, before any men, so they should the first in line. Or, hey, Christ made women the first evangelists. They have to become preachers and priests.” Amazing, if not surprising, isn’t it.

The truth is Jesus couldn’t pick women to be his disciples because it would have been unseemly at the time, and nobody would have even known what a female disciple would have looked like. It was beyond us back then. And think about it: God could have waited to show Jesus off until a man stopped by the tomb, although who knows how long that would have taken—just imagine Jesus sitting inside the tomb, twiddling his thumbs, maybe playing solitaire to pass the time until one of his male disciples crept up. But God wisely, divinely chose instead to reveal this glorious act first to women. The Risen Christ and the angel tell the women to go and tell the men, who are hiding for their lives, that “Christ is Risen.” And so it is women who are the first to say these words, to preach the good news. This fact in itself should have made women more than acceptable to be preachers of the gospel and priests of the Church from that moment until the end of history. This is the way it appears God meant it to be, which of course would be a big surprise to us, wouldn’t it?! Sometimes God’s surprises are more than we can fathom.

Now look, this isn’t some kind of cloaked endorsement of Hillary Rodham Clinton for President. I just want you to hear the truth this morning. I also have three daughters, along with two sons, and anything my daughters can do, my sons can do also. Yes, I did say it that way on purpose. So here’s the thing: If you’re feeling inadequate, incapable, or ashamed, you have to look to God. Stop listening to any and all, even to yourself if you must, who tell you that you don’t have it in you, or you’re not going to amount to a hill of beans, or it’s not in the cards. It’s simply not true. God’s ways are different because God sees truly. God knows you’re worthy, worthy even to be the one to whom Christ wakes up on Easter morning, and if he finds you outside his tomb door, says, “Rejoice.” This goes for women as much as men, for boys as much as girls, for the young as much as the old, for the poor as much as the wealthy, to those whose skin color is one shade and not another, and to those who love one way and not another, to the good and the bad, which means to all of us.

So let God surprise you, and let yourself be surprised. Find out what it’s really like to believe in the God who has one surprise after another up her, er, I mean his sleeve.

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