Expect the unexpected

A homily for the Second Sunday of Easter, April 7, 2024

Acts 4:32-35, 1 Jn 5:1-6, Jn 20:19-31

The night our daughter was born, Andrea and I attended my 10-year reunion at Christian Brothers Academy. As we sat nibbling on dessert, a tall, powerfully built man I did not recognize ambled over to our table and introduced himself in a basso-profundo voice. 

He was a CBA classmate I remembered as being short, a little pudgy, with a squeaky voice. 

“Yeah,” he said with a wide grin, “I’ve been getting that reaction all night. I shot up in college and bulked up at Quantico during FBI training.”

I did not expect that.

I saw him again at another class reunion. This time, though still tall, he was rail-thin. He’d left the Bureau and started running marathons.

I did not expect that, either.

We all have people in our lives who are frozen in time, frozen in our memories. The way they were the last time we spent time with them. Relatives, friends, classmates, former co-workers. Often, time, distance and just plain life have kept them out of our sight. We think of them frequently but just can’t seem to reconnect.

Maybe we hear about them through a friend of a friend of a friend. It’s the old game of telephone, and maybe we get only part of the update. 

So when we do see them again, we expect the unathletic 17-year-old schoolkid, not the linebacker-like 27-year-old FBI agent.

And some of the people frozen in our memories have left us, have left this life, and how we remember them varies.  Do we remember that dinner when we told jokes and avoided politics? That trip to the beach or the Yankees game? Do we remember the last time we told each other we loved them?

Is our last memory of them how they looked in the coffin?

Didymus expected something like that. He remembered Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, INRI, battered and bleeding and humiliated and executed. Lifeless, because crucifixion and entombment work that way. Undoubtedly, this was his last memory of the man he’d followed all over the Holy Land for three years. 

Undoubtedly, Thomas was convinced that when Jesus said, “It is finished,” and breathed his last on Golgotha, all the good the Nazarene had wrought died with him.

Then — behind locked doors — Jesus appears to Thomas in his glorified body, wishes him peace and calm, and offers the doubter the opportunity to poke him where the nails and the lance already had.

The Twin did not expect that.

As evidenced by his doubting statement to his brother and sister disciples, Thomas did not believe he’d see Christ at all. He laid down specific requirements for his acknowledging that Emmanuel walked the Earth still, or again.

And Jesus fulfilled those requirements.

Thomas did not expect that, either.

Do we expect to see Jesus? Where? In whom?

Do we have specific requirements for recognizing Christ among us?

Do we, can we expect the unexpected?

Because God guarantees we’ll all experience “Candid Camera”/”Punk’d” moments almost every day of our lives. We’ll all experience challenges. We’ll all experience opportunities to be kind, to be generous, to make a difference, to change someone’s life for the better.

To be Christ to one another. To recognize Christ in the people we meet.

This will take courage, to be sure, the kind of courage Jesus inspires anytime he tells us, “Be not afraid. I go before you always.” Because opening ourselves to an infinite number of possibilities can be scary. “Exactly what do you want from me today, Lord?” At the very least, it can be a bit annoying, especially when our well-laid plans for the day go haywire when someone needs us.

This will take flexibility and insight, the kind of opened eyes Jesus gave to the man who washed off the mud in the pool of Siloam. We have to see and understand situations we’ve never recognized before. We have to see and understand situations we do not expect. 

This will demand charity, because somewhere someone — Christ — is worse off than we are, and our time, talent and treasure can uplift them.

Seeing Christ in unexpected places and situations will challenge our faith. But we who have not seen The Son in the flesh are promised blessings from God if we believe.

I did not expect that, but I embrace it.