UnLearn

Luke 24:1-12

Did you know what to expect when you came to church this morning?

Do you know what to say when someone exclaims, “Alleluia! Christ is risen!”

And how many of you came expecting the lilies, the fanfare, joy and happiness and good news?

Well, I’m sorry, but I have a little bad news for all of you who have found what you expected at church this morning, all of you who know the response to “Christ is risen!”

I’m sorry, but you’ve missed Easter.

Missed it, if you’ve been comfortable and happy this morning,

instead of plagued with confusion, uncertainty, and gut-deep doubt.

Mary and Joanna and Mary and the others had no hope of happiness that long ago dawn in Jerusalem.  They were putting themselves at risk to do their duty by the dead, to anoint the body of their friend, and say goodbye. They came that morning expecting struggle, dimness, and the scents of rock and decay, and are met, instead, by emptiness,

a trickle of fresh air in an open and abandoned grave,

and then,

suddenly,

terrifying, exalted men,

standing beside them where there’d been no one a moment ago,

who say to them,

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

Only the “dead” part makes sense to them at first, even when the dazzling men explain, “He is not here; but has risen.” They have to coax the women into coherent memory: Remember in Galilee? Remember how he told you this would happen? That he’d be betrayed, and killed, and rise again? Remember?

And they do remember, finally, that Jesus did say something like that.

And they go away in their disbelief – suspended in the tension between doubt and wonder – to tell their friends, Jesus’ friends, who quite frankly think the women are nuts.

Because it’s one thing to remember what he said, and another thing entirely to understand it, to change everything you know about death and life, to know resurrection.

Reading the Easter story this week, I kept being reminded of a scene from an old movie.

A young man, part of a small and hard-pressed Alliance confronting an oppressive Empire, goes off to a wilderness seeking training to make him a great warrior.  
He finds himself stuck in a mucky swamp, where nothing is as he expected, not the training, not his own heart, and certainly not the Jedi master.

And when the spaceship that brought him here, his only hope for rejoining his friends, suddenly sinks into the swampy waters, he is ready to give up.

“We’ll never get it out now,” says Luke Skywalker

“So certain are you. Always with you it cannot be done.” says Yoda,

“Hear you nothing that I say?”

“Master, moving stones around is one thing. This is totally different….”

“NO! No different. Only different in your mind.

You must unlearn what you have learned.”

Luke – watching the emptiness where his connection to home used to be - is caught in the same helpless dismay that confronts the women at the tomb, the confusion and doubt as they hear that Jesus is risen, see he is not here.

Then Yoda speaks the truth that changes the Easter story, as well as Luke’s:
You must unlearn.

One commentator on the Easter story remarks that when we don’t believe something, can’t believe, it’s generally because we believe something else more strongly. 

We all hold habits of belief, formed from experience, and story, and sometimes what’s easier said than done. We know – not just believe, but know – that the dead stay dead. We know - below the level of conscious belief or thought - when something is too big, beyond our limits or our strength.

But Easter confronts us with our old beliefs and gives us the chance to change.

To change beliefs like: the dead stay dead; this broken relationship can’t be healed; those people are our enemies. The chance to change beliefs in our own limits, our fundamental worthlessness. Beliefs that shape the realities of life.

The disciples hear the women’s tale, and can’t believe it.  They know too well - below the level of conscious faith or thought - that the dead stay dead. But Peter puts his doubt into action, and runs to the tomb - surprised, still, to find the place empty, inhabited only by abandoned linen.

Peter plunges into Easter before he understands, dives into the confrontation between an unexpected new truth and the truth he knows, that he’s always believed.

It doesn’t change him in an instant – he leaves the tomb still suspended in disorientation and wonder – but Easter shows him the old belief in sharp outlines, gives him a lever to make the change.

We need that lever because that kind of change isn’t easy.

In that old movie, young Luke tries and fails to raise his spaceship with the Force, and gives up. 

He can’t unlearn the habits of his heart so quickly; the belief that an entire spaceship is too big to lift is stronger than the new idea – true as it may be – that he has access to power he has not yet imagined.  As Yoda coaches him to open his heart to that, Luke insists, “You want the impossible,” and sulks away.

It seems – to him – an idle tale.

Like most of the disciples in that Easter story, Luke isn’t ready to see the shape of his old belief, to see enough for it to change.

So Yoda pushes him toward the moment Peter experiences at the tomb.

Yoda closes his eyes, and the spaceship slowly begins to rise, floats out of the water, and touches down gently on solid ground at the feet of the stunned and uncertain Luke.

“I don’t…. I don’t believe it.” he says, finally face to face with his old belief and the new reality – suspended in the tension – finally open to change, but not changed yet.

“I don’t believe it,” he declares.

“That,” says Yoda, “is why you fail.

Disbelief is necessary.  It is, in itself, the Easter moment: suspending us between the power of the old belief, and the shocking suspicion of hope and change, not real yet, but deeply true.

Disbelief is necessary to open our eyes and hearts, but to fully experience resurrection we are called to go forward from there, to actually change the beliefs that have held us; beliefs that maintain the limits we put or perceive on ourselves, on one another, even on God.

You and I are called to find new life by entering into the disbelief – into the wonder and doubt that confronts us with our old certainties and gives us a chance to transform them – and to move forward beyond that place.

By taking a chance on love and friendship, in spite of old certainties that insist that that ends in loneliness and pain.

By championing the underdog – in politics, the workplace, social change – even when we know the powerful always win.

By giving up the way we’ve always done it, in spite of the fact that we know it works, and trying something that shouldn’t work, just for the chance to learn from failure – or receive a miracle after all.

That’s how Easter happens.

Easter happens when you are faced with a task you can't do; news you can’t believe; when it’s perfectly true that you CAN’T, but the possibility that in fact you CAN is somehow standing right in front of you, right beside you.

While we celebrate with predictable, secure, exuberant delight today, we tell the story of doubt and dismay at the empty tomb, over and over every year, to nurture us for those times of doubt and dismay in our own lives. To remind us that our beliefs, our limits, are not permanent, and that the chaotic experience of shattering them is the gateway to abundant life, and that joy like this lies beyond.

So it’s okay if you missed the doubt today, and came here knowing how to respond with joy to the shout that “Christ is risen!”

Because Easter will come to you again, someday, suspending you in uncertainty and disbelief, giving you the chance to see old certainties and shatter them, and outlive your limits.

Today is practice for the new and abundant life that will call you forward through the chaos of transformation.

And God will celebrate with you then, as we celebrate with God, today.

For Christ is risen,

Christ is risen indeed!
Alleluia!