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Holy Saturday
O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of thy dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life; who now liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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Holy Saturday
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Scripture citation(s): Luke 24:1-12
A Sermon by
Fr. Austin
on
Luke 24:1-12
✛
The Wonder of Jesus
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The adjective “wonderful” can be thrown around casually, as we might say “that was a wonderful paper” or “a wonderful concert,” or “I had a wonderful time.” But in its proper sense the word “wonderful” applies to something that is full of wonder, something that is a marvel, or even a bit miraculous, something that draws out from us wonder. And when we wonder—not in the sense of being uncertain or a little confused, as when we might say we wonder if we remembered to lock the door when we left our apartment, or we wonder who will get the presidential nominations—but rather, when we wonder in the proper sense, when something has drawn out wonder from us, then we are full of awe, we sense we are in the presence of something remarkably excellent, highly unusual, perhaps indeed a marvel or a miracle.
Very early on that Sunday after he died, women went to the sepulchre, and they found the stone rolled away, and his body was not there. Two men in shining garments told them He is not here, but is risen. The women returned and told this to the eleven, and to all the rest, but they did not believe them. Still arose Peter, and ran unto the sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that which had come to pass. Peter, with the others, did not believe the women, and yet he went to see for himself. He saw an empty tomb, he saw the linen clothes laid by themselves. He thought—what? Was it personal, was it remorse over, two nights before, having denied knowing his Lord? Was it a remembrance, coming back from those earlier days, when he said Jesus could not die, and Jesus had told him those were the words of Satan? Was it a new thought, a thought that he could not even hold, because he had no idea what it might mean, that somehow Jesus had not stayed dead, that he had gone through death to something else? Remorse, or remembrance, or a new thought—whatever it was, the Gospel tells us that Peter departed, wondering.
Wondering often occurs when there is something in the present that causes us to think back and try to make sense of the past. But wondering is not pondering. Eliot, in “The Dry Salvages,” pictures wives of fishermen, awake at home, anxious worried women, Lying awake, calculating the future, Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel And piece together the past and the future. That is to ponder, to weigh, to try to understand what has happened, and it is a mode of being ever close to anxiety. Wondering is different, because it has to do with a re-consideration, a re-evaluation that is brought about by something remarkable having occurred, something marvelous that has happened. In the light of the present, to wonder is to rethink the past.
Peter is wondering. Jesus is not there. He has not seen him—yet. Women have claimed to have had a message about him. Peter wonders, surely, whether he is going to need to rethink everything that has happened.
+++
When Jesus first came to earth there was wonder. Shepherds keeping watch over their flock by night suddenly heard from angels about the birth of Jesus. They went to see, and then they went out and made known abroad what the angels had told them about this child, and everyone who heard it wondered at what the shepherds were saying [Lk 2:18]. The shepherds, telling the world about Jesus, caused the world to wonder. Will we need to change our assumptions about how things work? Will we need to reevaluate what things have meant?
When Jesus healed, the result was often wonder. So Matthew [15:31]: The multitude wondered, when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed to be whole, the lame to walk, and the blind to see: and they glorified the God of Israel. What they expected, the way they thought that the world worked, was that blind people stay blind, lame people don’t walk, and so forth. But Jesus heals these people, and then there is wonder: they have to change the way they think about things, and they praise God. [As an aside: Flannery O’Connor mocks the resistance to wonder in her novel Wise Blood. In that novel, Hazel Motes is an evangelist for the Church Without Christ. It is a church, he says, “where the blind don’t see and the lame don’t walk and what’s dead stays that way.” {ch. 6} No wonder!]
But you can have wonder and fail to respond correctly. When Jesus entered Jerusalem on the humble animal, and the people shouted hosanna and welcomed him, and he went into the temple, and in the temple the blind and the lame came to him and he healed them, Matthew says [21:15]: the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that Jesus did and they were sore displeased. They saw the wonder, but they failed to wonder.
The wonder of Jesus is the wonder of God. The disciples were in a boat one night, fighting against a strong wind; Jesus, far from them, up on a mountain where he was praying, saw their trouble and came to them, walking upon the sea, and he entered into their boat, and the wind ceased, and the disciples were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure, and wondered [Mk 6:51]. Walking on the water, causing the wind to cease, Jesus displays his lordship over the creation—the wind and the water of the primeval creation. The disciples wonder, which means they must reconsider who this Jesus is, and what it means to be with him, and what it means about the way things are.
Even Jesus’ words brought wonder. When he preached at the temple, everyone wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth [Lk 4:22].
And now this wonderful teacher, this man of gracious, wonderful teaching, this wonderful healer, this man who showed the wonders of God, this human being of whom the shepherds spoke wonderingly; this man of tears for the sadness of human life; this tender man who would not break a bruised reed; this man has given himself away, all the way to death.
But it is not ours to ponder the cruelty inflicted upon him, not ours to weep for him (he explicitly told us not to weep for him), not ours ponder the relative complicity of the various parties involved in his execution, not ours to ponder his words and deeds as if he were some long-ago sage, long-departed from this earth, not ours to weigh his wisdom over against that of Socrates, or that of Buddha, or that of Confucius, or that of any one else.
It is ours to wonder. Something new has happened, prefigured in his birth, anticipated in his healings and teachings, sensed by the multitudes whenever they were around him; now it has happened. A human being who was dead, now is not. This has never happened before. We need to wonder, we must wonder, we must rethink everything. A dead man is alive. We can speak of him in the present tense. We can even in some strange way speak to him. Everything we’ve thought must now be changed. Peter departs from the tomb, wondering in himself at that which has come to pass. Remorse is different now. Memory is different now. Everything is different now. He is alive. It is wonderful.
