Easter Sunday, 2022
In the Texas hill country is the original water park. Nestled along a creek under the low branches of live oak trees, the original park used natural creek water in its pools and slides. It was strange – the weathered shady green hue of everything, and fresher air instead of Hawaiian punch colors and chlorine sparkle, There the lazy rivers, those easy-going water and inner tube paths, wander around the park. Unlike most which have one big loop, these branch and rejoin and go into different play pools. Lounging in my intertube, I took a new branch, which then went downhill a bit, like a toddler slide, and then more. And then I found myself in the creek! The ride goes into (and back out of) the creek! What!? If there was a sign to let me know, I didn’t read it. If I had been there with a friend who knew the park, I don’t think I would have believed them. It is like a go-kart track merging with a real road! Absurd! I had no choice, no way to turn around, and I was really in the wild nature of the creek. There were fish and even a river tortoise, or turtle, whatever. I was confused and flustered at the moment, but looking back, I find that the memory is amazing.
In the gospel of Luke the word find or found occurs 49 times. Love is only 14 times. The shepherds found Jesus. The woman searched her house for the lost coin until she finds it. Jesus sends people for the donkey and those who had been sent found it exactly as he had said. A father finds two sons. Today the women go to the tomb and found the stone rolled away. The greek word for find and found finds its descendent, and more accurate emotion, in the English word EUREKA. Finding Jesus, or in this case not finding his dead body and finding therefore infinite possibility, EUREKA! Remember a few weeks ago when we shared the parable most commonly known as the prodigal son: the sacred storyteller was in a crucial pattern: lost, found, throw a party. Dead things don’t stay dead when found by Jesus. They get more than found: Eureka! It is sudden, exciting, world turning over discovery. Eureka is resurrection, is Easter.
The women seek the lifeless body of Jesus – they bring the spices needed to care for the dead. What they find is the news of the resurrected Lord. These women, these certain disciples, like the others, didn’t really understand what they would find. Jesus had told them, but they had to find the other side of the tomb to really understand. There is also no reason to make such a thing up. It was not a medical miracle, not about near-death experience. It is defeating death’s power over what we do and who we trust. Easter is and was a sudden, a splashdown in living water when we expected chlorinated stale and stench.
The women leave the tomb today proclaiming they have been found by the lifegiving, liberating, love of God. Christ’s victory over death and decay is as real as the creek I found myself in. The love of God being stronger than any nonsense we could concoct or inflict is as real as the presence of the risen Christ we meet in bread, wine, water, oil. Eureka! We enter this story from the middle of our lostness Looking watching seeking a better world, the reign of God, some peace when we lay our heads down. Jesus, God himself, finds us and shows us in his risen body that all the confusion and cruelty does not drown the wild love of God.
The very eureka of this resurrection Is to feel and breathe deeply of the original wildness of the Creator of all that is. If you have found yourself here looking to resurrect hope and faith and connection, I am glad you are here. If you come with a million questions and way less answers, I am glad you are here. If you have found yourself here today because you are just tagging along, I am glad you are here too.
It is Easter. Alleluia. Christ is alive. Let us not make a parable of the event, since it are the parables that were the signs we missed. Jesus lives, Finding us with the same knuckles that bent to break the bread loving us with the same valved heart that strained under the weight of the cross. The earthen stone is rolled away, the decay is reversed, the strength regathered. It wasn’t exhaustion or nonsense the women experienced it was messengers of divine truth in garments of real thread and eternal brilliance: surprising us all, forever with the very wild power of God. On this day may the Risen Christ startle you, may the love of God find you, like splashing suddenly into a creek of living water. Christ is risen. Alleluia. Eureka!