In their joy they were disbelieving, and still wondering . . . (Luke 24: 41)

A New York cop named Charley is having coffee in a little diner. Finished, he reaches into his pocket to pay and to leave his usual tip, but finds that he has just enough money to pay for the coffee. There's not enough to tip the waitress. Embarrassed, he offers the waitress a choice. He promises to return the next day with double the usual tip. Or, taking a lottery ticket out of his billfold and holding it up, he promises to split the winnings, if any, of the lottery ticket he just purchased for that evening's drawing.

Now, Yvonne didn't need to hear that. She has had a bad enough day without losing a tip. In fact, her life is the pits. She hates her job as a waitress. Her runaway husband has run up her MasterCard balance so high that just that afternoon she had been in court to declare personal bankruptcy. Could things get worse? Still, she is good natured about it. She smiles helplessly at her bad luck, forfeits Charley's promise of tomorrow's pocket change, and jokingly takes Charlie up on his offer of half the lottery ticket's potential winnings.

Well, as Gomer Pyle would say, Surprise, Surprise! Mazel tov. The ticket beats the incredible odds, and wins $4 million. Charley comes to the diner the next morning to give Yvonne the good news. Her tip for serving a cup of coffee is not a mere two bits, but two million dollars. Well, you can imagine Yvonne's reaction to this good news. At first, utter disbelief covers Yvonne's face. "NO. NO. WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME? IS THIS SOME SORT OF CRUEL JOKE? NO. IT COULDN'T HAPPEN."

Then, as Charley insists he is not joking, a tiny flicker of hope registers deep inside Yvonne. She dared just for a moment to believe Charley's good news was true. "Yes? Yes?" she asks with her eyes widening. "CAN IT REALLY BE TRUE?"

But disbelief wedges its way back into Yvonne's mind. She had, after all, only yesterday accepted her fate. Bankruptcy. "˜No! No!' she says, shaking herself back to reality. Her emotions are a slowly congealing mix of belief and disbelief. But facts are facts. Charley's gift was really, genuinely hers. So, ultimately, we spectators know that her joy will demolish her doubts.

Yvonne's glimmer of belief grew stronger as Charley's smile and excitement gradually thawed her skepticism. Charley's smile was saying, "It could happen. It has happened. It has happened TO YOU."

"Yes?" Yvonne asked again.

"Yes!" Charley exclaimed.

"YES!" Doubts cast away, her question now turns into cheerful exclamation. "YES!!!" As the largeness of Charley's gift grips her, she suddenly finds herself dancing, swirling through the tables of customers, contemplating her new life, a life forever changed by Charley's free gift. The little New York diner is the scene of unexpected, overwhelming, hard-to-believe joy. (1)

Now let me take you to another scene of unexpected, overwhelming, hard-to-believe joy. This story comes, not from New York via Hollywood, but from the New Testament. It comes from the Book of Luke and it's our lectionary text on this Third Sunday of Easter. The scene is not entirely unlike that little New York diner. There is fish on the grill, and sadness and confusion in the air. The disciples of the slain Jesus have come together for a little refreshment. They have accepted their fate. Their leader was dead. Their hopes that Jesus would redeem Israel were bankrupted. Fini. Had their Jesus not said as much while hanging on the cross? "It is finished." Like Yvonne, they had accepted their miserable fate.

Dared they think their rabbi could defeat death? What are the chances of that happening? One in 10,000,000 would be wonderful odds. Defeat death? No one ever had. The chances were more like one in ten billion, one in ten zillion, one in a whole eternity.

Yet there he was. Jesus in the midst. Or, was it an illusion? Was Jesus not really in the midst, but instead only in the mist? Listen to Luke's description of the disciples' reaction. "Startled and terrified, they thought they were seeing a ghost." Could it be Jesus in the midst? No, the news is too startling. Can't have happened.

Jesus tries to assure his friends that what they are seeing is real. The impossible has happened. "Why are you frightened, why do you have doubts in your hearts?" Jesus is saying, "It Could Happen. Not only could it happen, but it HAS happened, and it has happened to you."

How were the disciples to receive such glorious news? Like Yvonne, they sway back and forth between exhilaration and the horrible possibility that someone is playing a cruel joke on them. "In their joy," says Luke, "they were disbelieving, and still wondering."

There is a reason I've chosen this text for the Third Sunday of Easter. Centuries ago, as the traditions of the church were being fashioned, this Sunday became known, in the Latin, as Jubilantae--Jubilant Sunday. (2) This Sunday is Easter's Encore, a time for the church to celebrate all over again the joyous news of Easter. This is Easter re-visited, Easter--part deux.

It's as if, in the tradition of the church, this wobbling between disbelief and joy is re-enacted. The Second Sunday of Easter, last week, is known as Low Sunday, because the wonder of Easter morning was just so staggering, so hard to believe. Last Sunday churches around the world read the story of Doubting Thomas, and we were reminded of the difficulty in believing such impossible news, of our wavering between faith and futility, of how hard it is to accept that the irrational, the impossible, has come true. "In joy the disciples disbelieved." We can imagine them thinking, "How can this be? Such a glorious thing is impossible. It could not happen."

But the Third Sunday of Easter, today, is a time when the good news is just now sinking in, and we begin in jubilation on this Jubilantae Sunday to dance among the world's tables like Yvonne, realizing that our lives are forever changed because, not only COULD it happen, but it happened to me. The Good News, on this Third Sunday of Easter, is just beginning to sink in. The Good News that the agony and death of Jesus, the darkness of his tomb, the glory of his resurrection--all happened for me. As that message sinks in, our joy and celebration cannot be quelled.

If I were to ask in what life situations we might expect to be gripped with enthusiasm and joy so unexpected that we "disbelieve for joy," would church be one of your answers? I suppose most would say the church is the last place to be found disbelieving for joy. Maybe your picture of that sort of excitement is waiting for the Publishers Clearing House Prize Patrol to cruise through your neighborhood and knock on your door with an oversized check, cameras rolling to catch your wide-eyed enthusiasm as you stumble to the door in your bathrobe. At such a moment we might for a brief moment "disbelieve for joy."

But in church? No, the happenings of church are too ordinary, too everyday, too common. And that's the church's fault. "The church has allowed itself to become stodgy instead of scintillating, cerebral instead of celebratory, respectable instead of rambunctious. We have trudged the well-worn path of predictability . . ." (3) I'm not suggesting the church should put cheerleaders on staff to teach us to do the wave. Still, the church is alive, and we must show ourselves alive, conveying a truth so grand that the world can only wonder at the largess of God's gift.

God's Gift--To You. It Could Happen To You. I take that title, not only because it is the title of the movie which inspired the opening illustration of this sermon, but especially because of those last two words of the title, words which narrow the focus of Easter's impact. Those last two words add a vital dimension to Easter.

This passage is preceded in Luke 24 with the wonderful story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. This touching story was told, remembered and cherished by the Christian community because they understood it as a great help in appropriating Easter to themselves. The question standing out in this story is not a theological treatise on "How did God raise Jesus from the dead," or "Why did God raise Jesus from the dead." The question emerging from the Emmaus story is much more personal-- "How does Easter get into us?" Easter in us. The divine presence, among us. In this story, the resurrection becomes as personal and intimate as a family sharing a meal in the dining room.

In our lives, as well as in the rhythm of our liturgical year, we must learn to move from the pre-Easter Jesus to the post-Easter Jesus. How do we move from a finite human being of the ancient near east, a healer, wisdom teacher, spiritual leader, prophet, movement catalyst--to a divine reality who is one with God?

The followers of Jesus continued to experience him after his death, but in a radically new way. They no longer experienced him as a figure of flesh and blood, but as a spiritual reality. They no longer experienced him as limited by time and space, but as one who could be experienced anywhere, anytime. This experience has continued through the centuries, ranging from dramatic encounters to a quieter sense of a presence that is felt to be the living Christ. This Jesus is not a figure from the past, but of the present. It Could Happen. It Could Happen TO YOU.

Jesus is alive. And occasionally someone desperately sensing their need, the bankruptcy of their hope, hears with wonder as if for the very first time that glorious message of God's gift of eternal life through Jesus' death and resurrection. They can't believe God would be so giving. They "disbelieve for joy."

In the movie I've been referring to this morning, when Yvonne finally accepted Charley's message, she said, "Why? You don't have to give me this gift. Why are you doing this?"

Charley's reply is classic. "Because a promise is a promise."

When we accept God's great gift, we might ask a question similar to Yvonne's. "God, why are you doing this? I am so unworthy of such a gift."

I like to think God's answer is something like, "Because I have promised, and a promise is a promise. Long ago, in the garden, your parents fell into disobedience. Death came upon humankind. But even then I promised to send a Savior, the seed of the woman to crush the head of the serpent. It has now come to pass. It has happened. Death is defeated. Death has been swallowed up in victory! It Could Happen, and it did happen, TO YOU. The victory is yours if you will accept this free gift."

1. From It Could Happen To You, starting Nicolas Cage and Briget Fonda, Tristar Entertainment, an Andrew Bergman film, 1996.

2. From the sermon, "˜Count Your Wows!' by Leonard Sweet in HOMILETICS, Volume 9, Number 2.

3. Ibid.

Siegfried S. Johnson is pastor of the First United Methodist Church, Fordyce, Arkansas.