Category Archives: Easter

Surprise

The Easter Bunny gets a bad rap. He (she?) symbolizes all that’s commercial, crass and probably pagan about Easter.

But there is one part of the commercial story that does resonate with me – finding the Easter eggs. Forget the Christian overlay over the original heathen tradition. I like the surprise part of it. Nothing’s more fun that seeing toddlers ravage through your azaleas hunting for eggs and — despite their best efforts — actually finding one! The Bun has a great job.

But surprise is the element most neglected in the re-telling of the Resurrection.

Remember, even the faithful women who went to Jesus’ tomb following the Sabbath were amazed that the Messiah wasn’t inside.

And despite hearing this message of Resurrection from Dan to Beer Sheeba over the past three and a half years, the disciples were utterly stunned to discover Jesus had, in fact, risen.

In fact, just about no one figured that the Christ would actually do what the Scriptures had prophesied He would do.

And yet, there He was.

And each time He appeared to the 11 disciples, walking through walls and disappearing along dusty roads, they were flabbergasted.

The Resurrection is all about surprise.

It’s the greatest surprise in the history of the universe. It’s the Deep Magic of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe where what the Bad Guys think is happening is only half the story. The other half is bigger, grander, wilder and … well … more surprising than anyone ever dreamed possible.

But the Christ, who was abused and crucified, dead and buried, does, in fact, absolutely, completely, unreservedly RISE AGAIN.

And thus save us all.

Early in Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago, that epic tale of love and loss in the Russian Revolution, he inexplicably inserts a hymn. He writes that ancient Rome is “a flea market of borrowed gods and conquered peoples,” an unholy mess of slaves, sinners, conquerors, peasants, mad emperors and, most frighteningly of all, “fish fed on the flesh of learned slaves.” It is the largest city in the history of the world. And everybody is desperately unhappy.

Then, unexpectedly, into this ghetto of despair, Jesus comes, “emphatically human, deliberately provincial.”

And the world is never the same again.

Surprise!

He is risen!