This is a night for drama.
A night for letting yourself get swept into the dark and the light, the symbols and the stories.
A night to let go of making sense, and to plunge into the deep end of mystery and miracles; of awe, and wonder, and promises.
A night to enjoy the reality of things that look unreasonable in the light of day.
Because there’s nothing reasonable, nothing that stands up to the practical light of day, about earth-drowning floods, dried with a rainbow.
Or dry land suddenly disrupting the whole ecosystem of a sea to rescue a rag-tag tribe of refugees.
Or stone hearts; or vast and lonely valleys of scattered bones reassembling at a word.
But tonight, we live in those stories. We inhabit the world of absurd miracles and preposterous promises. We immerse ourselves tonight, in the darkness, and in the light, in the power of story to tell truths that are utterly impractical – and absolutely essential.
Like resurrection.
Of all the unreasonable things – new life here, physically, after death?
Any of us might want our loved ones back, but I suspect few of us are prepared for them to be abruptly missing from the grave and demanding we rush to Galilee to meet them.
Upending the process of grief, demanding that we take the unimaginable as fact, the impossible as just what we do next.
Mark doesn’t try to smooth the rough edges of resurrection. He just sits in the bizarreness, the impossible, with us as he tells the story of Jesus, raised from the dead.
Because the truth tonight (always) is that God is unreasonable.
And that that is, in fact, the good news.
The way it should be.
Because hope and joy and wonder and possibility should not be confined to the reasonable. The deepest loves and deepest needs of our hearts should not be practical, sensible, restrained.
The world we mostly live in, day by day, tends to demand skepticism, pragmatism, and caution. It’s much easier to get through our days when we limit the possibilities for risk and disappointment, and many of us have learned to be expert at managing expectations, living in the reasonable.
But sensible, practical expectations make no room for heaven, make no room in our hearts and souls for impossible glory, for eternity to take up residence inside us.
And yet, that’s what’s happening tonight.
That’s what the stories and the candles and the lights and the bells insist on.
That’s what baptism is.
Heaven, eternity, taking up residence in us.
Us taking up residence in resurrection.
Living in the holy unreasonable, the sacred impractical heart of God.
So tonight, dive deep in wonder, miracle, mystery and promise.
Embrace the you that’s been rescued tonight from flood and from enemies and oppression, that’s been transformed from the inside out with a non-surgical heart transplant, that’s been reassembled from scattered bones and been made whole.
The you that stands with Mary and Mary and Salome on the threshold of a tomb where death has been obliterated, and life impossible demands you leap into it.
The you that wades through the waters of baptism to find in your ordinary self the extraordinary fullness of Christ’s own eternal life and love.
Because only when we let the unreasonable be real for us – embrace and trust the divine wonder that isn’t provable, or practical – can that wonder transform what is practical and provable, and everyday.
Only when we’re immersed in resurrection do we catch the glimpses of eternity on the edges of our own errands, the flickers of glory in a passing conversation, the deep, strong glow of divinity in an act of ordinary friendship.
This is a night for embracing the unreasonable with all our heart and soul.
Because this is the night that God, wild and fiery and tempestuous and free and utterly amazing, fiercely and unreasonably embraces us and all the wonder that we can hold.
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