Surprised by Gratitude
Give to JKPC
Access
Bulletin
1. Surprise
19th Century French novelist Theophile Gautier once wrote, “One of the great misfortunes of modern life is the want of any sudden surprise, and the absence of all adventures. Everything is so well arranged.”
Isn’t that the nature of surprise, when our well-arranged, tightly managed life, unravels, awakens, is caught unprepared?
A few years back Jess and I took a Continuing Ed. Course at Menucha Presbyterian Camp and Conference on the Columbia River Oregon. We spent the week learning about transitions in life and ministry and admiring the gentle bends in the Columbia River. After the week we headed west to Portland and then to Astoria. I remember being Buoy Brewery in Astoria, Oregon, at the mouth of the Columbia River. There was something about being at the mouth of the mighty river. Seals barking beneath the raised restaurant, water churning in front of us, boats and barges trying to navigate the complicated currents, nothing really seemed arranged or tame. It looked like chaos out there, but it was beautiful. Jess was trying to unpack the week, and I couldn’t stop staring at the water.
The Sufi poet Hafiz once wrote, “The voice of the river that has emptied into the Ocean now laughs and sings just like God.”
Our boys for Christmas got Jess and I two nights at one of those tiny cabins. There was an opening in one about 20 miles south of Youngstown at Beaver Creek State Park. While driving in the rain on a country road with the dog in the back seat of my truck, the sun came out. We looked left and there was this stunning rainbow across the sky. Did a crazy u-turn that sent the dog flying into the passenger side back seat door. Pulled into a drive and tried to capture it, but rainbows aren’t really meant to be captured. Just stared at in awe and gratefulness.
Brother David Steindl-Rast grew up in Austria during World War II
“Surprise is no more than a beginning of that fullness we call gratefulness. But a beginning it is. Do we find it difficult to imagine that gratefulness could ever become our basic attitude toward life? In moments of surprise we catch at least a glimpse of the joy to which gratefulness opens the door.”
Once we wake up in this way, we usually want to stay awake, but waking up is a process. Some of wake up right away and are wide awake for the rest of the day. These people can be annoying. They are beginning conversations before we’re even thinking. Others wake up stage-by-stage, one cup of coffee at a time, that’s if you can even find the cup you just poured. What counts is that we don’t go back to bed again.
We certainly know of those times when we are not awake, not alert, and we are taking everything for granted. Moving through life in a daze. Familiar with compassion fatigue, imaginative gridlock, and mental fog. Until we are surprised by life, rainbows, churning waters…
When this happens, we’re thrown off kilter by a world we can’t control and rarely understand. That surprise opens the door for gratitude. And gratitude leads us in an offering of thanks. One who says “Thank you” to another gives of self, shares gratitude, and affirms, we belong together. A bond is formed in this exchange that releases us from self-sufficiency and contrived alienation.
“An inch of surprise can lead to miles of gratefulness.” Brother David Steindl-Rast
2. The Empty Tomb
There is a whole lot going on this day that begins with darkness. Even before coffee, you have walking in the dark and Mary taking care of unfinished business. And then things start happening, astonishment at the empty tomb, telling of such discovery, others running to see first-hand, more astonishment, returning, questioning, fixing, naming, holding, releasing, more telling, astonishment.
Soon there will be appearing, breathing, sending, changing the world with resurrection life.
Something takes hold of these early followers. With the news from Mary they race to the tomb. Passion has seized them and they are off. They are stirred by what they have heard, and so they run with curiosity and longing. Maybe Peter is hoping for a second chance. But the other disciple arrives first, bends down to look in, but does not go in. Peter then arrives and heads right into the tomb and finds the linen wrappings, like the wrappings that had been taken off of Lazarus. But Lazarus needed someone to unbind him from the grave clothes. He needed the community to take care of this. Jesus just left his behind altogether.
The other disciple then enters as well and saw and believed. Jesus is gloriously free from the grave. The discarded graveclothes and folded head wrapping signify that he has not been taken, but also that he has conquered death.
Something quite new surges up in the young disciple who enters the empty tomb, a wild delight at God’s creative power. He’ll never forget that moment. A different sensation. A bit like falling in love; a bit like sunrise; a rainbow on the horizon, churning waters. A bit like faith. Oh, he’d had faith before. He had believed that Jesus was the Messiah, that God had sent him into our world. But this was different. “He saw, and believed.” Believed that the new creation had begun. Believed that the world had turned the corner out of its long winter and into spring at last. Believed that God had said Yes to Jesus, to all that he had been and done. The authorities could not suppress love, could not silence justice, could not halt the reign of God’s kingdom coming. Those opposed to his reign will not consign him to a tomb. They will not constrain him with grave wrappings. They will not prevent his rising. For he is in control.
3. What Now?
“True art, beautiful music, surprises us – opens our arms and weakens our prejudices so that the ever-present seeds of healing and renewal can take root in our soul and sinew and cause gratefulness.” Daniel Ladinsky on Hafiz.
So we open our eyes and notice the people, the faces, and the colors around us. We look at the sky and it’s changing nature. We look at our world, the brutal and the brilliant, the violent and the peaceful, we really look and refuse to go numb and avoid our shared reality our common humanity.
From this place of gratitude, blessings flow from us. We are not hoarding or concealing. We are opening and learning and eager to discover.
Sometimes surprise can terrifying and we invest a lot of time and energy protecting ourselves from it. How easy it is to settle into a rather lazy, reactionary pattern of managing life, avoiding crucial conversations, taking everything for granted.
So we start where we are, not where we’d want to be. This is where we begin. When was the last time you were jolted awake, surprised by joy, overwhelmed with gratitude? What is it that makes you feel good? Physical exercise? Harmony at home? A chance to help others? Whatever it may be, surprise lies at its root. If we begin by fully tasting joy where at this time we can, wider and wider areas of our feelings will become youthful again and respond. Gratefulness makes us young. By growing more grateful, we grow younger every day.
We will experience resurrection surprise differently. Mary was bewildered, grief-stricken, Peter inquisitive, entering the tomb first, impulsive, searching. The Beloved Disciple pauses, then enters to see and believe, even though he cannot yet understand. They are at different stages of faith, but all will be commissioned for service and testimony, each being entrusted with responsibility and initiative. Their running was uncertain, but it was taking them out of their daze and into the risen life with Jesus.
When we are taking life for granted and all of a sudden we are caught by the wonder of a baby, the gift of nature walking toward us, the grace of hands meeting ours, gestures of sheer compassion and care.
When we see resurrection in our own lives, it is as if we are Mary in the garden, staring Jesus in the face but not recognizing him. Today we are invited to notice the resurrected Christ with us and the effects of resurrection in our own lives. For every opportunity to wake up to the gift of life itself and every moment to share hope and give grace we give thanks.
John 20:1-18
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.