Last fall two young men, who live in a rural area of Western Massachusetts, were intently watching a football game.  One of them, the owner of the house, had a golden retriever that at some point during the game indicated he needed to go outside. So the young man opened the door and let the dog out.  When he finally remembered to let the dog back in, his furry friend came bounding in and dropped a very muddy and very dead rabbit at his feet.  The man exclaimed in great alarm: “That’s my neighbor’s rabbit. This is really awful. What am I going to do?”  He then embarked on a massive cover-up by shampooing the rabbit and taking a blow dryer to its fur.  He waited until the neighbor had left her house to do a few errands and then went over and put the rabbit back in its hutch.  A couple of hours later, the neighbor returned and upon hearing shrieks the two guys ran outside expressing their concern.  The neighbor was crying out: “My rabbit, my rabbit. I can’t believe this has happened.”  The young men offered their condolences about the death of the rabbit. Finally, she shrieked at them: “You don’t understand.  My rabbit died three days ago and I buried him in the back yard. I want to know how he got back into the hutch!”  

 Easter is about surprises, the unexpected, the miraculous, that for which we are totally unprepared… In order to feel the full impact of the Easter story, we have to enter into the emotional space that the disciples occupied at that time.  Jesus had been crucified and along with the death of Jesus was the death of all that they held dear.  When Jesus died, the disciples dreams also died.  Mary, ever faithful Mary Magdalene, showed up early in the morning expecting Jesus’ body to still be there but what she found was an empty tomb. 

There is a lot of unexpected action in this story, running, crying, shouting, Mary weeping outside of the tomb.  But it is Mary’s encounter with Jesus that is the most startling because she has no idea that it is Jesus standing right in front of her.  She assumes that he is the gardener because she has no frame of reference; the idea of Jesus being raised from the dead is not even on her radar screen of possibilities. 

Now I have to ask those of you who received the awareness test e-mail this week, how many of you saw the bear the first time you took the test?  It is an amazing test of how we truly miss what we are not looking for. For those of you who did not take this test, it told us to count the number of passes being made by the basketball team dressed in white.  There was also a team dressed in black. But right in the middle of basketballs flying around, a bear walks across the screen but nobody sees it because they are so focused on the team in white. No one in my immediate or extended family saw the bear, nobody on the staff saw the bear. When Mary Magdalene looked into the garden surrounding the tomb, she certainly wasn’t looking for a Jesus who would be alive, and so though he was standing right in front of her, she simply did not recognize him; she was looking for his body.  Those of us who took the awareness test did not see the bear because we weren’t looking for it.

Faith in the risen Christ is a gift.  Some people who are raised in the church are so soaked in the Christian faith that they cannot imagine any other way.  They don’t have to seek faith because it has always been a part of their lives. In my interactions with parishioners, I will often hear them say: “I don’t know how I could have survived my mother’s death or my son’s accident if I did not have faith.”  They look at me longingly and say: “I don’t know how people do anything without God in their lives.” Others of us are not so blessed.  We have had to be hit over the head by God before being able to see how precious this gift is. Like Mary Magdalene, we have had experiences of not recognizing Jesus even though he was right in front of us. 

Faith in the risen Christ is about freedom within our hearts to be prepared for the unexpected; it’s about a heightened awareness of the activity of the divine in the world around us and God working through us.  We can live our lives like this awareness test in which we see only that on which we are focused, so often the darkness of our lives and the world around us, or we can open ourselves to the joy of this life that comes through faith. 

There are so many times when we do not see what is right in front of us. Out of fear of the unknown, we have a tendency to shut God out of our lives.  When we truly embark on the journey of faith, we do not know where it will take us.  All kinds of things can change for us when we have faith.  Some of you may have read the book and seen the movie Into the Wild.  In my humble opinion, both the book and the movie are essential for anyone who is interested in the quest for meaning in life, particularly for young people.  In his search for meaning in the wilds of Alaska, the main character makes a fatal mistake that he could never have known about, but in his short 23 years of life he lived life to the fullest. Chris McCandless had a heart for the unexpected; his story is incredibly inspirational. His final note before dying read: “I have had a happy life and thank the Lord.  Goodbye and may God bless all!” When we are open to the unexpected, we too have a life of meaning and hope.

Jesus’ resurrection surely was good news for his followers but it was absolutely unexpected.  Jesus’ followers then had to understand what this meant for them.  What was this all about?  We too have to be on the watch for the unexpected.  The gift of faith comes in so many forms.  Sometimes Jesus is completely unrecognizable; sometimes he is so obvious that we’d have to be complete cynics not to see him.  Being ready for the unexpected enables us to live resurrection, to be truly alive.  The power of the resurrection is not only in what happens after death but what happens in our lives before death.  A focus on life after death is meaningless if we have not experienced life before death. Through the experience of Jesus’ resurrection, we are no longer prisoners of fear or death.  We know the end of the story; we know that God triumphs.  With eyes wide open, we are ready for and indeed delight in the unexpected, for dead rabbits that show up back in the hutch, for bears that glide across a computer screen and for the things of life that are actually important and life giving.   Be ready for the unexpected for you never know when you might encounter the risen Lord. Open your eyes and see. He is right before us, now and forever!