April 4, 1999
James R. Gorman
There seems to be an unwritten rule in Churches that there should be no running. If kids start to run, parents and grandparents make sure that they know the rules. "No running," I hear in a sing-song voice. I've stopped my kids from running in this space more than once. Even though this 60 foot long aisle seems to invite kids to run in it. There is just something about this sacred space that seems to be violated if someone runs in it.
I confess to having run in the church even though at my age I do less and less running of any kind. I only run when I see someone at those doors trying to get in. Then I run to open the door. I hate to see people wait on my account. But even then I feel self-conscious about running in church.
I noted that not many people ran to get to church this morning or any morning. We drive to church; we walk from our cars or walk from our homes, but rarely run. Those who forgot to set their clocks ahead this morning may have walked a little faster this morning than other mornings, but they still did not run.
I found an odd detail in this resurrection story recorded in the Gospel of John. There is a lot of running. Mary Magdalene ran from the empty tomb to tell the disciples the horrible news. Not only has our Lord been crucified as a criminal, but now his body has been stolen and missing. So she ran back to where the disciples were.
And when she tells the first two disciples she meets, Peter and "the other disciple" (presumably, John), the two of them take off running. In fact, just like two men, they turn their run into a race. The Gospel says that "at first they were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first." What were they running toward? And why did it turn into a competition? I don't think either of them knew why they were running. Was it toward some painful news? Was it so that they could find and catch the ones who committed this final insult so that they could punish them and make up for their own cowardice at the cross?
Or maybe they ran because they remembered Jesus telling them that everything would all be alright. That despite all the suffering, all the pain, all the abandonment, all the embarrassment, something dramatic would happen just as Jesus had said.
A typical fact of male competitions is that we don't always know why it is we are competing. It just seems to be in the male DNA composition that we can't run without attempting to win.
I remember as a kid walking with my friend out on his farm and we heard his mother call us to dinner. And we started running toward his house. At first we were running together (just as in the Gospel story), but then one of us (I really don't remember which) started to pull ahead and a simple run toward dinner became a race to be won. "Last one there's a dirty rotten egg." Or some such thing.
But in this race, there was more at stake that a run to dinner. It is a run toward Easter. And Easter is never a settled or completely understood thing. It is always a perplexing thing.
I worry when someone has got Easter figured out. As if they knew why these two disciples were running. I worry about those who tell this story as if Peter and John knew why and toward what they were running. Maybe they were running for their lives. But if that were the case, wouldn't they run in the opposite direction--away from the tomb? Away from Jerusalem altogether? Perhaps they were running for the resurrections of their own bodies. Perhaps for the resurrection of relationships that have gone sour. Perhaps running for the resurrection of a loved one. Perhaps they were running with every fiber of their being toward a resurrection that turns anger into love.
And these resurrections are worth running toward with all our hearts and souls.
Resurrections of whatever sort are odd and mysterious things. They always take us by surprise. No one can possibly be prepared for a resurrection. For resurrections only come when we have given up on the future. When we are lost, abandoned, alone. And the only thing that we as disciples must be willing to do is to run toward the unexpected even while not being too sure of why we're running.
The best stories of resurrections are the ones that remind us of the unexpected. Like a good joke, the punch line is always unexpected. It involves a twist or turn that sometimes shocks, sometimes surprises, but always delights. There is a certain joke form that is most delightful. It is called the shaggy dog story.
The Gospel of John is like a shaggy dog story. Chapters 12 to 18 are stories about sitting down and talking. Actually sitting down and listening to Jesus talk. In your red letter editions of the New Testament, almost all the letter of these chapters are red. Jesus is engaged in a long monologue about resurrection and a long prayer for his disciples. The story John tells is slow and painful. Then the story goes into the death of Jesus. That part of the story drags, for it is unpleasant reading, and it takes forever.
But then comes the punch line of this shaggy dog story. The empty tomb. And all of a sudden, everybody's running all over the place, no one really too sure what they are running toward or running from.
"Humor," James Thurber once wrote, "is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." In this way the resurrection of the body and indeed all our resurrections, whether physical or spiritual, are humorous. And we love to look back on them in our tranquility and wonder how it was that we were able to get through it all. "Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility."
So we start running in our own personal chaos. I have heard the life of faith compared with stepping off of the edge of a cliff. Faith says that you will either step off onto solid ground or you will be taught how to fly. In any case, whatever happens will be a profound surprise.
I don't think you can plan for profound religious experiences. Someone once said that if you really want to make God laugh, show God your plans. I don't think that an encounter with the empty tombs of your lives can be scheduled like a vacation at the beach. Like our many deaths, so also our resurrections almost always take us by surprise. So I say, just run toward the resurrection, even if you don't really know why it is you are running. I say run toward it and think of nothing else.
Run toward it with the abandon of a child running toward an ice cream truck. Run with that kind of innocence and run as if your life depended on it.
Because it does. In profound ways, it really does.