Do you read the comic strip “Stone Soup?” It appears in the Columbus Dispatch, and it depicts two adult sisters who live next door to each other. The younger sister, Joan, is married and has small children, while the older sister, Val, is a widow with two daughters, thirteen year-old Holly, and ten year-old Alix. For as long as I’ve been following the strip, Holly has been a slacker and totally uninterested in schoolwork, while Alix has been an eager beaver especially interested in science. Yesterday’s strip depicts Val and Joan chatting, as they often do, across the back fence. Val announces, “Holly got all A’s on her Midterms.” Joan replies, “You mean Alix?” “No, Holly.” “Wow!” “Turns out she’s really smart,” says Val. Joan then asks, “Now what?” You can almost hear Val sigh as she says, “I have to go sit down …. Paradigm shift is exhausting.”
Paradigm shift is exhausting. Paradigm shift is also terrifying and amazing. Three of the women who had walked with Jesus and bankrolled his ministry stood at distance and watched him die on the cross. They watched while his body was taken down from the cross, wrapped in a linen winding-sheet, and laid in a cave-like tomb. They saw the large stone rolled against the opening of the tomb. They had been prevented by the coming of the Sabbath from finishing the burial rites that their beloved friend deserved as a faithful Jew, so now they have returned to the tomb, wondering if the three of them can together roll away the stone and actually reach Jesus’ body. Through the misty dawn light, they see that the entrance to the tomb is open again. Wait! Are they in the right place? Gingerly they walk in only to find a young man – an angel perhaps – with an unbelievable message: “You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here.” What? No wonder they were alarmed, terrified, and amazed! Some things can’t be described. What words could the women use to explain what they had just heard? Something had happened that was completely outside the realm of ordinary understanding. Everything in their world had completely shifted!
Were the women so terrified and amazed that, in the midst of their paradigm shift, they missed the command and the promise in the angel’s pronouncement? “Go tell his disciples and even Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” Whatever had happened between Friday afternoon and Sunday morning, Jesus was no longer in that tomb and was now out ahead of them again. Jesus was once again beckoning the women and his other dispirited followers back onto the road, on to something completely new – just as he had repeatedly promised them! Were they ready to follow him?
They must have been. Mark’s gospel ends just where we just heard it, with the women’s terror and amazement. Pious monks and scribes found that ending so unsatisfying that they added two different new endings to the gospel. But, in a sense, we don’t need to hear any more to the story, because the story isn’t finished yet. In fact, we are part of it. We can be sure that the terrified and amazed women did deliver the angel’s message. In the other gospels, we can read about the risen Jesus’ various appearances to his friends. In the book of Acts, we can hear Paul relate his encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus. In the two thousand years since that fateful day, millions of other people have experienced the risen Christ. The terrified and amazed women were not the only ones whose paradigms shifted.
And what of ourselves? Paradigm shift is exhausting, terrifying, amazing, and mystifying! What actually happened in the time between that horrifying afternoon and that misty dawn? “He has been raised; he is not here.” But what actually happened? Even after two thousand years, we can’t explain it. Even those of us who come here joyfully celebrating this bright Sunday can’t say for sure what “he is risen” actually means. Are we Biblical literalists? Are we talking about a resuscitated corpse? Did his disciples steal Jesus’ body and circulate a tall tale? Or did those early Christians borrow from other ancient myths and circulate a story about a re-born hero?
You would not be here if that’s how you see the events we celebrate today. Truthfully, the possibility that Jesus was raised will always remain a mystery. Rationalists, skeptics, and literalists will never understand it. The resurrection defies the laws of science as we currently understand them. Perhaps we too need a paradigm shift. Do you remember C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? In that wonderful story, Aslan, the great Lion, is killed by the white witch. After he returns to life and defeats the witch, he explains to the four children about Deep Magic. Perhaps we need to consider that our world contains a deeper naturalism than we think. Perhaps it is possible that Jesus’ rising reflects a deeper energy that grounds our world, an energy that is truly amazing, and that reveals more than we can understand, ask or imagine. Perhaps we need to open ourselves to wonder and amazement and accept the possibility of a paradigm shift in our understanding of life.
What happened in that dark cave will always remain a mystery. But, as Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori reminded us in her Easter message, “The only place we will not find him is in the tomb.” Like the terrified and amazed women, we also need to hear the angel’s promise. “Go tell his disciples and even Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” If we too are Jesus’ followers, then our story isn’t finished either, and Jesus is always going ahead of us beckoning us to follow him to Galilee. “We will find him already there before us, bringing new and verdant life.”
In our personal lives, Jesus is always leading us towards change and growth if we will let him. As we journey through life, we may stumble and fall, we may take the wrong turn, and we may do things we regret. As we look back, we might even slap our foreheads and say, “I was an idiot! How could I have done that?” Yet, as Franciscan Richard Rohr reminds us, “The steps to maturity are, by their very nature, immature.” And Jesus is always going on ahead of us, leading us to new and better life. It is by God’s grace that we can acknowledge our own failures and brokenness. But is also by God’s grace that we come to understand the depth of God’s love for us – revealed in the cross and resurrection! And it is by grace, that we acknowledge that we are not finished as human beings until we draw our last breath, that Jesus is always bidding us to seek new paradigms, new understandings of who he is and who we are, new ways of living as his followers.
Jesus is also always leading us towards change and growth in our life as a church. This parish has a wonderful history. It is amazing to think that faithful Christians have been worshiping in this building since 1858. We love our sacred space, our liturgy, and our traditions. Yet even we as a parish we know that Jesus has gone on ahead of us, and that we too are called to growth and change. In his message to the assembled clergy at our service of reaffirmation of ordination vows, Bp. Breidenthal reminded us that we are part of changes shaking Christianity worldwide. In this new world, the entire Episcopal Church is now on the move with Jesus, and all of us are called to be part of something new. What will our paradigm shift involve? Will we become a looser, more flexible institution? Will this parish cease to exist, and will followers of Jesus in Gallipolis gather themselves differently? We have no answers to any of these questions. All we have is the promise in the angel’s word to the women: “He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”
Yes, paradigm shifts are exhausting. The angel’s words to us are terrifying and amazing. Yet, thanks be to God, Jesus is not in the tomb but out in front of us, always beckoning us towards life and growth. We are not called to be passive victims or bystanders. We are not called to lament change and mourn for the old certainties of the past. We are called to be “resurrection partners,” we are called to celebrate with God, and to rejoice in birth, rebirth, and renewal. We may not know what Galilee will look like now, but we can nevertheless practice Resurrection as we joyfully and confidently follow along behind Jesus.
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