A Word from Wendy – Wonder
The women, deep in wonder and full of joy, lost no time in leaving the tomb. They ran to tell the disciples. – Matthew 28:8, MSG
In early March, Tom and I made a quick trip to Florida to celebrate my mom’s 90th birthday. We had several surprises planned for her. Birthday cards began showing up at the end of February – 74 at the last count. My niece made an unexpected quick trip from Connecticut. And on the evening of her birthday, she arrived at the restaurant to find her closest friends waiting to celebrate with her.
She was stopped in her tracks, kept shaking her head, saying “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it!” It was joy for me to see her deep in wonder and full of joy.
Wonder – it catches us off guard, evades expectations, thwarts assumptions. It can‘t be packaged, can’t be manufactured. “It requires some sense of being there and some sense of engagement,” Eugene Peterson says.
Because of the timing of moms’ birthday and the associated trip, this was a “working vacation” for me. I packed more pounds of books than I did clothes, needing to do some study and planning for our Eastertide worship series “Encounters with the Risen Christ: Living the Resurrection.” Besides my favorite commentaries, I packed Eugene Peterson’s “Living the Resurrection: The Risen Christ in Everyday Life” and chose that as my first read to set a larger context for the study to come.
By the highlights I found as I began to read, I realized that this was a re-read. But that did not lessen the impact of the spiritual two-by-four that was waiting for me.
Having reviewed each of the Gospel stories of Jesus’ resurrection, Peterson notes that despite their differences, there is one element in common – a sense of wonder, astonishment, surprise from those who had come to do the ordinary work of preparing the body for burial. How was it that Mary Magdalene and the other women who were “on their way to work” recognized resurrection and cultivated wonder in their busy everyday? They had spent the previous day keeping Sabbath.
While we don’t know exactly what the disciples did during the 24 hours of Sabbath after Jesus was in the tomb, it seems unlikely that the habits of lifetime as devout Jews would have been discarded. So when they set out for work on the morning after the Sabbath, they were once again formed in a way that they could be free to see and respond to who God is and what God is doing. They were available to experience wonder, “that astonished willingness to stop what we’re doing, to stand still open-eyed, open-handed, ready to take in what is ‘more and other.’”
For all that I have studied Sabbath, I have yet to master the habit of practicing it. But as I worked my way though a vacation and study (again) the journey of the Disciple’s Path through the practice of spiritual disciplines, I give thanks for God’s grace and begin practicing … again.
As we travel the road to Easter Sunday and beyond, may you experience the wonder of Christ’s resurrection and the joy of encountering the risen Christ.
Grace and peace,
Pastor Wendy