Readings for Easter Sunday (Year C)
This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA on April 20, 2025.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
Happy Easter, everyone! Today we celebrate the mystery and miracle at the heart of our Christian faith, a mystery that fills us with hope and joy and awe and wonder.
Last night, at our first Holy Eucharist of Easter, we welcomed four new members into the Body of Christ through the sacrament of Holy Baptism. And we prayed that they be given the gift of joy and wonder in all God’s works.
And that’s my prayer for you (for us) today that we all may receive or reclaim that gift of joy and wonder in all God’s works, especially that wonder-filled gift of Christ himself whose resurrection calls forth within us hope in our own resurrection and in the life of the world to come.
There’s a quote attributed to Albert Einstein, who supposedly said, “There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” He obviously advocated for the latter way of living, as it orients us towards a posture of gratitude, awe and wonder.
And as I read Luke’s Gospel account of the empty tomb, I notice a phrase connected with awe and wonder that Luke, the author, uses several times throughout his corpus. Unfortunately, the phrase is lost in our translation. In the last sentence of today’s passage, we read, “Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened” (Luke 24:12). In the original Greek, there is no reference to Peter’s home, as in his house. The phrase translated to “then he went home” is apelthen pros eauton, which literally means “he returned to himself.”
And a similar Greek phrase shows up again in Luke’s sequel to the Gospel, the book of Acts, which we read throughout Eastertide. And once again, it is used to refer to Peter, moments after he was miraculously rescued by an angel from a hellish prison in Jerusalem. After the angel unbound his chains, led him safely past several squads of soldiers, and then through an iron gate, the angel left him suddenly and that’s when an awe-struck Peter, according to Luke, “came to himself” (Acts 12:11). En eautou genomenos.
The other time Luke uses a version of this phrase is in the beloved parable, that Jesus tells, about the Prodigal Son. After squandering all his inheritance, the lost son longs to fill his stomach with the pods with which he’s feeding pigs. And then, the text says, he “comes to himself.” eis eauton de elthon.
The lost son comes to himself as he begins to wonder about the possibility of returning home to his magnanimous father; and then we imagine him utterly awe-struck when his father’s generosity exceeds even his own wildest expectations. And he begins to realize how unfulfilling his wild living was compared to the wild wideness of his father’s mercy and love. Lost in wonder, he comes to himself as he realizes what C. S. Lewis described when he said, “If we consider the unblushing promises [of Easter], it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a [pigsty] because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”[1] Awe and wonder help us to imagine what is meant by God’s offer of a holiday at the sea. Awe and wonder help us to return to ourselves, our true selves.
And I can’t imagine anything else that could fill us with more awe and wonder than the empty tomb of Easter morning, which brings us back to today’s Gospel and the last sentence which I translate in the following way: “Petros arose and ran to the tomb. And when he peered in, he saw only the linen shrouds; and he was lost in wonder about what might have happened, and about what might still be. While lost in this wonder, Petros found his true self.”
May you be lost in wonder this Easter day and this Easter season so that you too may return to your true self. Amen.
…Throughout this Lenten season, we have been studying the Nicene Creed, which boldly proclaims the resurrection of Christ while reminding us to look forward to our own resurrection. The Creed does not provide details about how Jesus rose or how we will rise; and in its reticence, the Creed invites us to get lost in wonder about these mysteries. Today (on this Feast of Feasts), our choir will prayerfully sing the Nicene Creed on our behalf and I invite you to stand (as you are able) as an expression of your awe and wonder as the choir sings these ancient, wonder-filled words.
[1] C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 26.
Lost in Wonder
(Luke 24:1-12, translated by Daniel DeForest London)
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle” – Albert Einstein
“Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us.” – Gerard Manley Hopkins
“Sooner or later…man will have to return to himself” – C. G. Jung[1]
1
And on that day,
the first day after the Sabbath,
during those moments of deep darkness before the dawn,
that pregnant time of night preceding the first light,
in the liminal bath of orthros,
to the tomb they went
bearing that which they had prepared:
the aromata.
2
They found
the stone
rolled away
from the tomb,
3
and when they entered,
they did not find the soma of the Lord Yesu.
4
Lost in wonder…
they looked (!)
and two men stood before them
dressed in the radiance of the stars.
5
Terrified,
they prostrated themselves,
with their faces bowed to the ground.
Gazing upon Gaia,
they heard the stars ask
the same question asked by the Lamb
to the disciples of the Immerser:
Ti zeteite?
What do you desire?
…
What do you seek?
Life or death?
If life, then why are you in this house of nekros?
6
The fully alive one is not here,
but has risen.
Remember.
Remember what he told you in the Galilaya.
7
The one who is fully alive will be betrayed
into the hands of those who prefer death,
and then murdered at the stake.
But though he will be nailed down and put away,
the one full of life, on the third day, will rise.
8
And they remembered
his words,
9
and returned from the tomb to tell
the eleven and the others.
10
They were Magdalene Maria
and Yoanna
and the mother of Yacob
and more faithful women
who told the apostles.
11
And to the apostles,
their words seemed like utter nonsense;
and they did not believe.
12
But Petros arose and ran to the tomb.
And when he peered in,
he saw only the linen shrouds;
and he was lost in wonder
about what might have happened,
and about what might still be.
While lost in this wonder,
Petros found his true self…
…as he would again, years later,
in the angelic hands unbinding his chains,
and in the memory of the fabled lost-and-found son
who found himself
only when he let himself get lost in the wondering.
Notes
Verse 1: Orthros is the Greek word used for the time of day in Luke 24:1. It is also the name of the Matins prayer office prayed by Eastern Orthodox Christians in the early morning.
Verse 2: Aromata is Greek for aromatic spices.
Verse 3: soma is Greek for body. Yesu is a more phonetically faithfully translation of the Greek.
Verse 5: The Greek word for women is gynaikes and the Greek for earth or ground in this verse is gyn. I cannot help but notice a play on words here which I try to convey with the inclusion of Gaia, the Greek goddess who personifies the earth. Ti zeteite, which the angels ask the myrrh bearers, is the same question that Jesus asked the disciples of John the Baptist who were following him. They are the first words of Jesus in the Gospel of John (John 1:38). Nekros is Greek for death.
Verse 6: I translate “The Son of Man/anthropou” as “the one who is fully alive.” St. Irenaeus said, “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.” Galilaia is a more phonetically faithfully translation of the original Greek.
Verse 10: These names are more phonetically faithful to the Greek than the Anglicized versions.
Verse 12: “Lost in wonder” is the translation of the Greek word thaumazo, from which derives the word “thaumaturgy” (the working of miracles and wonders through magic or supernal means). The phrase apelthen pros eauton (“he returned to himself”) is the same phrase found in Luke 15:17 in the Parable of the Lost Son when the son decides to return home as well as in Acts 12:11 after Peter is rescued from a Jerusalem prison by an angel.
[1] Jung in interview with Miguel Serrano in Miguel Serrano, C. G. Jung and Hermann Hesse: A Record of Two Friendships (Einsielden: Daimon Verlag, 1997), 121.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 