It is important, when planning for Easter, to anticipate all eventualities. Suppose the crowd doesn’t fit in the sanctuary. The Fire Marshall forbids folding chairs, so just cram people closer together (in a nice Christian way). Suppose the electricity goes out. (This has happened, you know.) Send Chris Corzine up to the balcony to pump the organ by foot. Suppose the preacher gets sick. Have Mary Vance ready with his sermon manuscript. It’s wise to plan for all eventualities.

What we didn’t plan for this morning is the weather. Who would have thought to stockpile warm blankets and hot cocoa for Easter morning in North Florida? "The best laid plans of mice and men" cannot keep up with God’s surprises.

And that’s what Easter is – a surprise. You might not think so, given the ads in the paper for Easter apparel and the proliferation of bunnies, icons of Spring. Nobody could be blamed for mistaking Easter as a seasonal rite, predictable as tree pollen on cars and spaghetti straps on co-eds. The culture clearly regards Easter as a rite of Spring, but it’s not. Easter is an aberration. As one theologian put it, it’s not a "natural therefore" but a "miraculous nevertheless" (Karl Barth).

"I’ll go with you," someone says. They get in the car, drive across town, pull up to the grave and get out, wearing jeans and T-shirts. They kick the clods of dirt exposed when the funeral director took his carpet of artificial grass away. They check the name on the temporary grave marker. The stand a while in silence, or they might talk to the grave itself. "I miss you so much," they say. "I don’t know how I’ll cope without you."

Perhaps people do this to assure themselves they haven’t imagined the whole thing. Perhaps they do it to hold on as long as they can to that person who, despite their best efforts, is already fading in their memory. Whatever the reasons, that’s what people do, and that’s what Mary did. It’s predictable, and for most people it’s helpful. We find at the grave what expect to find and we grieve.

That’s natural, but it’s not Easter. Easter is Mary finding the tomb empty and running back to Simon Peter and the other disciple to report the theft of Jesus’ body. Easter is a footrace between the two disciples to check out the report. Easter is both men returning home, still in the dark about what has happened. Easter is two angels putting to Mary what has got to be, in the circumstances, the world’s stupidest question: "Woman, why are you weeping?"

Well, for starters, because three days ago my best friend was killed in the most horrendous way. Because his body is missing and the only reasonable explanation is that somebody has taken it away. Because the two men I asked to help me are useless and have run home with their tails between their legs. Because the only man who ever treated me as though I am somebody – like a real human being – is dead, and there’s nothing left of him – not even a body to grieve over. That’s why I’m weeping, you white-robed, boneheaded pair of angels!

Well, that’s not what Mary says, of course, but I wouldn’t have blamed her if she had said it. People will say the most outrageous things to other people who are grieving. Angels, it appears, are no exception. Mary’s only trying to do the best -- the most natural -- thing she can do in the circumstances. Stupid questions don’t help.

But Easter interrupts the natural. Easter turns our expectations upside down. These angels, I admit, could use some sensitivity training, but their question is not out of order in the new order that Easter establishes. This new order begins to dawn on Mary when she hears that selfsame question from someone standing behind her.

"Woman, why are you weeping."

"Mary," the stranger says. But it isn’t a stranger.

My wife Andra began her teaching career in a little school in Altavista, Virginia. I won’t tell you how many years ago that was, but I will say that she was not long removed for her home in Scotland where, unlike us Americans, people talk funny. By the time she started as a public school kindergarten teacher, Andra had pretty much learned the local lingo. For instance, she no longer said to four-year-olds, "Queue up and you’ll all get a shot," meaning, "Line up and you’ll all get a turn." American children tend to run away screaming when you say it the first way.

A couple of weeks into her first term as a teacher, Andra began to get calls from distraught parents. "Our children won’t respond to us," they said. "They say you have given them new names."

"My name’s not John. It’s John."

"Mary."

"Teacher." Nobody but her teacher says Mary’s name like that. She has seen the empty tomb. She has beheld the angel messengers, but Easter does not start for Mary until the risen Lord calls her by her name. In that instant Easter is not an abstraction. It is not a rite of Spring. It is the new order breaking in on the old. It is death defeated. It is the grave robbed of its sting. It is the old life passed away and the new life begun. It is for us, and for the world, a whole new set of expectations that relies not on us, but on the transforming power of God.

Mary came expecting one thing and encountered something else – something altogether unexpected. She came expecting to find death and she life. She found the risen Lord, speaking her name in the way no one else could say it.

I pray that for you, the same will be true this Easter morning. Whatever you came for, may you meet the risen Christ. Whatever you expected to hear, may you hear him speak your name, for he knows it right well. However far away from God’s love you may have felt in the past, may you feel it today.

Taste and see the new reality. Let go of the old and receive the new. The risen Christ is calling your name.