Nobody expects the Resurrection

And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy.
—Matthew 28:8

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
—Monty Python

I've been very depressed off and on over the past few weeks. Important opportunities related to preparing for my academic career seemed to have been shut in my face—in one case entirely unexpectedly, just as I was about to walk in through the door—and the setbacks left me feeling like a failure. I'm approaching 40, I have a household to provide for, I've never had a full-time career, I desperately need to start one—and yet I haven't advanced any farther, for all practical intents and purposes, than where I was twelve years ago. I thought: What a disappointment I must be to my department and my university, after everything they've invested in me over the past five years, when now I have nothing to show for it.

And then today, entirely unexpectedly, out of the blue, such a relief that I'm afraid to believe it's really happening for fear of jinxing it, one of the doors that I'd assumed was shut for good looks like it may be open after all. Suddenly I feel like I'm back on track; the future looks so much more hopeful than it did as recently as this morning. Thank God.

And because it's the Easter season, and I spent some time today prepping for an Easter-themed Taize prayer service this Friday, the thought came to my mind: So I get an Easter Alleluia after all. My setback has been transformed into possibility.

It's luck that this door has (fingers crossed) unexpectedly opened. Some Christians might want to call it "grace," but I don't like that use of that term, because it implies a more assertive providence than I see at work in a world where things like the Holocaust happen. So let's just call it luck. My Easter faith—which I confess has been harder to sustain this past month than at times when things are going well—is that if this particular stroke of luck hadn't occurred, God would have helped me turn failure into possibility in some other way. Months or years from now, I would be writing about a different Easter moment, a different set of possibilities God had opened up out of those depressing setbacks in April 2009—assuming that in the interim I hadn't been killed by terrorists or gaybashers or swine flu or a random auto accident, in which case any effort to make meaning out of my life would have had to escalate to an entirely different level. I'm trying to keep my faith realistic, here.

But the point I wanted to make tonight is this: As I was thinking about today's windfall in the context of my faith that the resurrection is God's power at work in our lives to open up new life and new horizons, the thought came to me that resurrections are unexpected. In the Gospels, Jesus' resurrection takes the disciples by surprise. Jesus has told them it's coming; we as readers know it's coming; but they don't get it, so they don't see it coming. The unexpected nature of what happens—the unexpected crossing over from despair to hope—is part of the Easter experience. God opens up possibilities you didn't see coming. Hope hits you when you weren't expecting it, in ways you weren't expecting. You round the corner, unsuspecting, and find the stone rolled away from the tomb. You find doors standing open that you didn't think could be opened.

That's all. I feel a bit drained, emotionally. I don't know what else to say. Alleluia, I guess. And of course, some big thank you's—to God, and to the human agents who brought this new possibility about, and to the people who were helping me find some other way to move forward before the new possibility unexpectedly opened instead.