by Fred Moleck
The Easter Surprise
Tom (N. T.) Wright is the Bishop of Durham in the Church of England. He is world-class in Scripture exegesis and scholarship. The journal Christianity Today named him as one of the top five theologians in the world today. His name is becoming increasingly familiar in Roman Catholic audiences.The following passage is from his reflection on the resurrection of Jesus as recorded in Luke’s gospel. I offer it to you as a “surprise” meditation for your pretriduum and post-Easter quiet times.
The opening mood of Easter morning, then, is one of surprise, astonishment, fear and confusion. Yes, Jesus did say something like this would occur; he told us so all right. But we still don’t know what’s going on, what it all means, what will happen next. There is no sense here—as, alas, one sometimes finds in churches around Easter time—that throughout the story of the passion Jesus himself was regarding the coming events as an unpleasant task which would soon be over, and that we can follow the story through for ourselves in the same way. Easter is always a surprise, whether we meet it in celebrating the feast itself, or in the sudden surges of God’s grace overturning tragedy in our own lives or in the world.
No doubt our own resurrection will be as much of a surprise, in its own way, as that of Jesus. From the beginning, the gospel is good news not least because it dares to tell us things we didn’t expect, weren’t inclined to believe, and couldn’t understand. Did we expect the gospel would be something obvious, something we could have dreamed up ourselves? (Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone [Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001], 291)
You can reach Fred Moleck via email at fmoleck@comcast.net