sermons

For a Time Such As This

Life Can Be a Joyful Surprise

Steve Watson

Apr 05, 2026

One of the joys of my life the past couple years has been reconnecting with an older couple who were important to me as a teenager. 

Jean was my high school class advisor, and I was in student government, so we spent a lot of time together, and Ken was my sophomore year English teacher and made a big impression on me at the time. 

We had lost touch for decades, but recently, through the power of nostalgia and social media, we’ve been communicating again and the past couple of years, Grace and I have shared meals and conversation with them. 

The other week, I was telling one of my brothers that I was back in touch with them, and the first thing he said about Ken was: that man has known so much sadness. 

And he’s not wrong. 

Before Ken was my English teacher when I was 15, he had been divorced for years and one of his two children had just died of an illness she contracted while studying abroad. 

And then in the middle of the year I had him as a teacher, Ken’s second child was killed in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

So my brother was right, Ken is a man who has known so much sadness. Life can be a killer sometimes.

But it can be so much more than that too.

My brother’s words – that man has known so much sadness – jarred me at first. Because I thought – that’s not how I think of Ken at all.

Even in high school, he was the first teacher I felt took a real personal interest in me. I’d write the daily and weekly journals we were required to do to get us writing more words with more ease, and he’d write little notes back to me. Not correcting what I’d said or how I’d said it, but just responding to whatever I had taken the time to express. As if it mattered.

Ken got remarried the year after his two children died, to that really kind and wise class advisor of ours. And during my senior year in high school, there was an evening when I was one of the people invited to their home for these dinner parties Ken would plan.

And I remembered a moment when I was sitting alone with Ken in the living room of the house he had moved into in my hometown after his remarriage. And he looked around a moment, at the house, the furniture, the pictures of his wife and step children on the walls, looking around really I guess at the new life he was living, the new memories he making, and he said:

Sometimes, Steven, I can’t believe all this has happened to me, that I’ve come into this life I have now. How did it all happen? It’s so good. 

I was really moved by that. I didn’t come from a world where grown-ups talked with teenagers that way – openly, authentically, and honestly about the deep things of life. And I guess I’m not sure I had known someone that was embracing a second chapter in life so fully either.

Just a couple of years earlier, near the end of that awful year of death, Ken gave a speech at a ceremony during my older brother’s graduation week. And I remember him gripping the podium as his hands shook and saying:

Here I stand bereft of children, but not of hope. 

And the line shook me – with its tragedy, its honesty, and also with its courage. And two years later, as we sat together, I guess the message I was hearing was: maybe hope is real. Maybe hope doesn’t disappoint you.

Maybe life can be a killer sometimes. But it can also be a joyful surprise.

And that’s pretty much the good news of Easter, isn’t it? That even though one way or another, life breaks us all, there is also so much more to life than that.

• Hope can be born out of loss.
• Resurrection can follow crucifixion.
• Second chapters can be glorious.
• Life can also be a joyful surprise.

Our Bibles have four versions of the life of Jesus in them. They’re all called good news, and spoiler alert, on the big picture, they all end the same, with Jesus risen from the dead, to the shock and joy of his friends and followers. 

But in the details of how they tell it, they’re pretty different. Like me and my brother, they have different memories of the stories from a generation ago. 

And in many ways the weirdest and most intriguing of the four is the earliest of them all and the shortest of them too, the final chapter of the good news of Jesus according to Mark. 

Let’s read it and see what it’s got to say.  

Mark 16 (Common English Bible)

16 When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they could go and anoint Jesus’ dead body.

2 Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they came to the tomb.

3 They were saying to each other, “Who’s going to roll the stone away from the entrance for us?”

4 When they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away. (And it was a very large stone!)

5 Going into the tomb, they saw a young man in a white robe seated on the right side; and they were startled.

6 But he said to them, “Don’t be alarmed! You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised. He isn’t here. Look, here’s the place where they laid him.

7 Go, tell his disciples, especially Peter, that he is going ahead of you into Galilee. You will see him there, just as he told you.”

8 Overcome with terror and dread, they fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

It’s a weird ending, isn’t it? 

We’ve got three of Jesus’ closest students and friends, three women who had stayed by his side while other disciples betrayed him, denied him, hid in fear. They go to the grave for a simple, faithful ritual of love and remembrance. To tend to the body and the memory of their beloved teacher who’d known so much sadness. Whose life had come to a violent, tragic, untimely end. 

• And a stranger is there – grave robber?
• An angel?
• A random occasional student of Jesus whose face looked familiar, but whose name they couldn’t recall? 

He says:

Don’t be alarmed. 

But everything about this situation is alarming. They’re in a tomb. There’s this random dude there dressed in white, just waiting for them. Alarming, if you ask me. And all of the words he starts to say are alarming too. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. 

A missing body you have just buried is alarming.

Crucifixion – the preferred execution by torture of the mighty and oppressive state that terrorized the Jewish people – that is alarming.

Everything about Jesus’ final days – so full of heartache and tragedy – had been alarming. Like having two young adult kids, and losing them both through different tragedies in the same year. Life can be a killer sometimes. 

But the young man dressed in white says: you have made a reasonable but very important mistake. 

You thought the story was over. But it’s not.

Jesus isn’t here anymore. He is risen. And he has gone ahead of you, back home to Galilee, where you’re all from. 

Go see him there, just like he told you. 

It’s not that far. Just a few days walk. But really, he’s there. You might want to get going, though. You’ll want to see him. Don’t miss it. This is really good. 

And they’re like:

I don’t know. This is not what we expected. 

And they take off out of there, saying nothing to anyone, because they are so afraid. They need a minute to take this in. So afraid.

There were two big movies this past year that have incredibly interesting, important things to say about Christian religion. 

One was the Ryan Coogler film Sinners, which exposes white supremacist Christianity ais the sham, religiously coded violence that it is. And more of our modern Christian history is white supremacist than a lot of us want to admit. An important story, but a story for another day.

And the other film is Wake Up, Dead Man! – the third film in the Knives Out series. And this movie was written for a weekend like this. The dead man on the surface is a priest, who mysteriously dies – or so it seems! – during a Good Friday service and on this Holy Easter weekend, they’re all trying to figure out who done it. 

The deeper messages of the film are about much more. Because the real dead man in the film isn’t any one person in particular, it’s the church itself. Which has died a slow and sad death and needs to wake up, be resurrected to new life, if it’s going to be any kind of redemptive presence for good in the world. 

The setting of the film is a small church that like most churches, has seen better attendance and better days in its past. It’s got a culture-warring, angry priest who leads the dying congregation, with a new minister in town who hopes to see something new and good happen there.

And the new minister is talking with one of the younger congregants when he arrives and is meeting everyone. And the guy he’s talking to is talking about the failure of his career as a media influencer and politician and the failure of the church too, and the minister, Jud, says:

Maybe we need to get back to fundamentals, you know, basic building blocks on how to genuinely inspire people. 

And the guy’s like:

The basics, like show them something they hate and then make them afraid it’s going to take away something they love? 

And Jud’s like:

Well, no. 

And it’s one of the many funny, not funny moments in the film.

Because for 1700 years, since a Roman Emperor went to war in the name of the cross, Christianity has had this great temptation. Would the faith of the crucified and risen Jesus center love, forgiveness, grace for all people, and the hope of impossibly good next chapters no matter what the wounds and sins of our past? 

Or would it be a power play, a co-opting of the victory of God for the victory of us and our people, that we can stir up fear of who or what we hate to rally power for us and our friends?

And in our own generation, friends, and in the generation before, the American church has so often taken this latter path. 

A fundamentalist, dying faith looks around the world that is changing so fast. Missing the past, scared over the future, it stakes our enemies, stirs up fear, amasses embattled energy to keep itself alive.

It’s the playbook of religious fundamentalism and nationalism all around the world in our generation, a playbook that’s shaping our century’s world. 

And it’s sad for a host of reasons.

But on Easter, one of the ways it’s sad, is that this faith of fear and nationalism and embattled violence is a perversion of the good news of Jesus.

It’s a way of building crosses instead of bearing them. 

And it’s the steady death of the goodness and vitality of the Way of Jesus in the contemporary church. 

I love the gospel of Mark for so many reasons, but one is because it is the gospel of fear.

It’s written in the context of the brutal oppression of the Roman Empire – the folks who crucified Jesus, the government who taxed the heck out of the fishing region of Galilee, the powers that would one day imprison and kill many of Jesus’ disciples. And because life is hard, the disciples of Jesus are again and again paralyzed in fear. That’s honest.

And so it’s fitting that this gospel of fear ends with the first witnesses to the resurrection overcome with terror and dread, saying nothing to anyone because they are so afraid.

That’s the last word of the gospel here: afraid.

Mark is the gospel of fear, and I love that because it’s real. The world can be a scary place. Life is a killer sometimes. And so the last word here is fear.

But like many words we think are last words, it’s not in fact the last word at all. It’s the end of a chapter, not the end of the story. It’s not a period, it’s a semicolon. A pregnant pause in which we wonder: what might come next?

I also love it because Mark is the gospel of faith in the midst of our fear.

• Over and over again, people are afraid in front of Jesus, and he dares them to imagine: what would faith look like?
• What would you do if love was real?
• What would you do if you could dare to hope again?
• What would you do if you had faith?

And here that’s the message of the mysterious young man in white. 

Jesus

“was crucified,”

he says. True that, but that is the past. As for today,

“He has been raised.”

What would you do, friends, if Jesus was alive? If life could conquer death? If second chapters could be radically different than our past but maybe gloriously better too. 

After all, the young man says,

Jesus isn’t here.

The grave you came to visit?  He isn’t here.

The big city where you thought Jesus would triumph and all your dreams would come true? He isn’t here.

The hopes you had to weaponize his message and clobber your enemies? He isn’t here. 

The nostalgia and regret and disappointment of your past? He isn’t here.

No, instead these three women, these first witnesses to the resurrection are told: he has gone ahead of you to Galilee, where he is alive. Go and see him there. 

You will see him back home, in the places your mother gave you birth. Go and see him there. 

You will see him where God is doing a new thing. Go and see him there. 

You will see him in every Jesus-like flickering vision, where little things grow big and beautiful, where children matter, where grace can hold your failures, where lost coins and lost people and lost causes are worth finding. Where you can dare to set down the baggage you’ve held so tightly so you can open your arms to a new treasure, where love sees, and love persists, and love wins. Go and see him there. 

Life can be full of joyful surprises. Can you go and see him there? 

And Mark ends with this big wide open note for its next chapter: will they tell their friends? Will they go? 

And down through the centuries the question echoes and resounds:

• How about us? 
• Can we look for joy and hope again?
• Can you believe that through life is indeed a killer, it can also be chock full of joyful surprises?

Don’t laugh, elders in the room, but I’ve been feeling kind of old since I turned fifty a couple of years ago. And I’ve had more than one moment, in more than one arena of my life, when I’ve wondered if my best days were behind me.

But something happened the last time we were with Ken and Jean. 

When I was 17, I was the lead in my high school musical, and Ken was in it too – three of our teachers played the grown up parts in the show that year. And I’ve heard Ken talk about acting the shows they put on at the senior independent living center where they live, so I asked him last month:

Ken, have you always acted since you were young?

And she said:

oh, absolutely not, I was always way too shy to do that.

And he told me that the show we were in together, West Side Story, was his first show ever, because his brand new step-son told him to do it, and how could he say not to that?

And I went home that night, and thought wait a second, Ken’s in his late 80s, and I started doing some math, and I realized that Ken’s first show he ever acted in – the one where I was a lead as a teenager – when he did that thing, and did it so well, and seemed so old to me at the time, he was basically the exact age I am now. And he remarried around the age I am now to.

And I thought: my God, I could try something for the first time this year, and maybe I’d love it, and I could keep doing it for thirty more years and it could become a big and joyful part of my story. That’s what happened with Ken and acting, and with Ken and Jean. 

And that gave me so much hope.

I’m not too old after all. There’s more life, more adventure, more joyful surprises yet to come for me too! 

And friends, that’s true for all of us.

The resurrection really lifts the lid off of what hope can look like. 

Because it extends the horizon of hope beyond the day of our death, extends the reach of God’s redemptive possibilities even beyond the grave. 

So are you too old, or too hurt, or too shy, too tired, too sick, too scared for your next big adventure? 

I mean maybe, faith doesn’t call us to disassociate from reality. Life can be a killer, and no Easter faith just wipes that all away. 

But neither you nor me nor Ken Jones in his late 80s is too old, or too sad, or too shy, or too anything else for joyful surprises, because I like to think that even the day after the day I die might just be a joyful surprise, let alone what’s possible on all the days before that. 

Life can be a killer. It’s true. 

But Jesus isn’t in your or my nostalgia, our regrets, our last chapter, our fails or our missed opportunity from years ago. Don’t look for him there. He’s moved on, and we can too.

Jesus has gone on ahead to Galilee. Gone on ahead to the next adventure. Gone on ahead to the next joyful surprise. Be as scared as you need to be, but go there. Go there.

• Keep walking in the direction faith calls you to. 
• Keep walking in the direction hope calls you to. 
• Keep walking in the direction that love calls you to. 

And if you don’t know where that is, ask the spirit of the risen Christ?

Where are you alive?

Where is your next possibility for life?

How can I join you there?

And go. God’s waiting for you here now and in the next chapter, friends. Go get it!