Sunday Morning Worship

June 11, 2006

“Spiritual Serendipity”

John 20:11-18

A generation ago, the word “serendipity” wasn’t really known. Persons who wanted to impress used it, but now we see it used quite often. It pops up in newspaper columns and magazine articles. There are Serendipity greeting cards and wall coverings. In New York, there’s a Serendipity Restaurant; in Philadelphia, a Serendipity Club; and in South Carolina, Serendipity Farms. There was a group called the Serendipity Singers and a series of Bible study and small group materials called Serendipity. A popular business magazine described an unusual stock fund that had done considerably better than the Dow Jones average. It contained twelve stocks randomly picked and was called—you guessed it—the Serendipity Fund.

But what does the word mean? One investment counselor passes along some interesting comparisons. He says serendipity is like “putting your hand into the pocket of an old pair of pants and coming up with a fifty-dollar bill.” Or serendipity is like “looking for a needle in a haystack and finding instead the farmer’s daughter!” Surprise! Delight! That’s “serendipity”!

Some of you may be aware that Horace Walpole, who translated into English the legend of the Three Princes of Serendip, coined the word. Serendip was the ancient name of Sri Lanka or Ceylon, the island country that floats off the east coast of India. The story tells of three princes that never found the fame and fortune they were looking for but, writes Walpole, “As their majesties traveled, they were always making discoveries, by chance, of things they were not in quest of.” Thus, the word and its meaning: “Serendipity—the faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries.”

All of us experience the unexpected. We take wrong turns. We trip over things. We bump into people we haven’t seen in years. Good things happen. Bad things happen. Unexpectedly. Hardly a day goes by without something surprising us. But serendipity suggests more than just being surprised. It’s what we make of these unexpected happenings and how we view them.

Several decades ago, a man by the name of Alexander Fleming was doing routine lab work in a London hospital when he noticed that a mold, which had built up on a bacteria culture, was dissolving it. Someone else might have thrown the mess out, but Fleming was fascinated by it. He discovered that from the mold there issued a substance that could stop an army of germs in their tracks. He discovered penicillin and opened the field of antibiotics that has saved millions of lives. It wasn’t what initially happened that was the key. It had probably happened often in other labs. But it was how Fleming viewed it and what he made of it that made it a happy, unexpected discovery.

Christopher Columbus is credited with having discovered America, but he never knew what he’d found and considered himself a failure. As someone put it: “Columbus didn’t know where he was going. When he got there, he didn’t know where he was. And when he got back home, he didn’t know where he’d been.” Serendipity has to do with insight, understanding, and the ability to discover good things in the most unlikely places.

All of which brings us to the focus of this morning’s message. Some of you may have been surprised by our reading from the Bible. I mean, maybe you wondered why the preacher would read part of the Resurrection story. After all, this is June and not late March or mid-April. Easter’s over or it’s still to come! Well, it seems to me that Easter is not just another festive day or season in the Christian year, but a responsive lifestyle. You’ve heard it before—we’re an Easter people, and the real secret of a thankful and hopeful heart is the ability to see God continually at work in our lives, to see in all that happens the good that God is constantly doing. That takes spiritual serendipity—the faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries of God!

A beautiful example of this is contained in this morning’s reading and that’s why I chose it. The crucifixion of Jesus left the disciples shattered and scattered. But on the first day of the week, Mary went to the tomb. She went to mourn and to honor her Lord. She arrived to find the stone rolled away and his body gone. Another jolt and more pain and disappointment. But as Mary stood there crying, she heard a voice say: “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?” And this is what follows in the Gospel according to John:

Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).

Thinking him to be the gardener, Mary discovered him to be the risen Lord. What a happy and unexpected discovery! The gift of spiritual serendipity led to joyous thanksgiving and hope!

What I’m saying is that, if we’re to be truly thankful and hopeful in life, we need this gift of spiritual serendipity. If we’re to have life’s burdens lifted from our shoulders, we need this gift of spiritual serendipity. We need to be able to discover God standing in the shadows of life because to follow Christ is not necessarily to always have a rainbow wrapped around our shoulders. Things can go wrong, we can blunder with our mistakes and our best efforts may lead us nowhere.

If it hasn’t happened to you, it will. One day you’ll mourn in grief or groan in pain; one day your world (or some important part of it) will shatter like the first window you broke in childhood. It’ll happen because you and I are human, and it’s part of life and what we go through. Maybe you’re going through it now; maybe you’ve already been there. But whenever it happens, the hurt is sometimes deep and the wounds may be severe.

At such a time, it’s easy to give up too soon and believe the worst, especially when problems stare at us, crises overwhelm us and, in spite of our best efforts, nothing seems to make sense. Frustrated and discouraged, with a sense of helplessness, we may want to throw in the towel and give up.

I like the story about a homeless man, shivering from the cold, who crept into the warmth of a “greasy spoon” cafe. The grumpy man behind the counter, wearing a filthy apron, snapped, “OK, Mac, what’ll it be?”

“Two fried eggs and a few kind words,” the man said sadly.

Soon the waiter was back, slapped the eggs down on the counter and started off. “Wait a minute,” said the customer. “You forgot the kind words.”

“Oh, yeah,” replied the waiter over his shoulder. “Don’t eat dem eggs!”

The point is, life is full of detours and disappointments. I don’t know of anyone whose life has gone just as exactly as he or she planned. We may have clear sailing for a while, but suddenly we find ourselves detoured down a rough road to God knows where. Not accepted in the group we wanted. Poor health that drains our financial resources. Hurt or betrayed by a person we love. Forced to surrender the dream of a lifetime. Most of you’ve been down that road. And so have I.

In my first year after graduation from high school, I did a lot of dumb things. One of them was to pledge a fraternity at the university I was attending. Focusing, not on the opportunities for an education, but instead on the social life offered by the fraternity each weekend, I soon found myself “flunking” most of my first semester courses. In those days, the military draft was still in effect and so a young man was either attending school or he could expect a personal invitation from Uncle Sam—the kind designed to help a person grow up. I’ll never forget the day I received that invitation, the day I gave up all sense of my personal identity. For eighteen and a half years, I had been known as “Jim Wood” but on my first day as a “boot recruit” in the U. S. Navy, I became known as 466-52-56. (I never did recover from the haircut they gave me.) It was a devastating and humbling experience.

That same year, though, I experienced one of the best days of my life, if not the best. You see, there were a couple of high school girls in my church that caught my eye. Both were juniors and very attractive, but if one appealed to me more than the other it was only because she liked basketball. I would see her at each game, always surrounded by several girlfriends. Because they relied on her for rides, she turned down my only invitation to attend a basketball game by ourselves—my version of a “date.”

Although this rejection was discouraging, I started to take more notice of the other one, the quiet one, really the more attractive one, the one with dark hair and brown eyes, the one who didn’t care much for sports of any kind, but who seemed genuinely interested in me! Finally, I got up the courage to ask her for a date and she surprised me by saying, “Yes.” We’ve been “dating” ever since, for more than forty-nine years!

Now, dumb luck on my part? Probably, at least that’s what my mother-in-law always said. But coincidence? Chance? I don’t think so. I like what one person has written: “Chance is the pseudonym God uses when God doesn’t want to sign his name.” So often in life when one door closes, another opens leading us in a direction we had not planned, but looking back we can see the wisdom and the rightness of it—an unexpected discovery of God occurred.

“Well,” some of you may say, “surely this is true of only some of our experiences. But what good comes from an unexpected illness or sorrow?” I suggest that with spiritual serendipity even in those experiences we can make unexpected discoveries of God. Nobody chooses to become ill or wants the pain and problems sickness brings. But there are lessons learned through illness that can be learned in no other way—lessons in patience and prayer, lessons in friendship and love, a new appreciation of health and those involved in the healing professions. There are lessons to be learned through sorrow, too. We fear the day when we must let go of someone we love, still even in those dark hours we sometimes make unexpected discoveries—the love of family and friends, a deeper appreciation of our church and the strength and comfort of a loving, caring God.

I like the story about the little girl who asked, “Mommy, what was God doing last night during the storm?” Then she answered her own question by saying, “Oh, I know. God was making the morning!” Well, do you know anyone else who makes the mornings? Who else gives hope? Do you know anything else equal to the light, truth and hope that Jesus gives? Much in life for us may be “No,” but under every “No” is a “Yes” in the form of a promise that’s never been broken. That’s what Jesus wanted for his disciples and reminded them: “You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy . . . I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you . . . In the world you have tribulations; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:20-22, 33).

Jesus continues to come to us with resurrection power. He urges us to find how God is at work in our midst—patiently and sometimes abruptly, gently and powerfully—with judgment and grace to fulfill God’s purposes of love, to bring us fully alive, to reverse evil and to secure His kingdom. Our Lord draws near even now, as he did to Mary Magdalene on that first Easter morning, and he calls our name. As we are given the courage to respond with faith, we realize that although the world may try to destroy God’s love, the world cannot keep it buried forever. Mary Magdalene had experienced the miracle of God’s transforming love and made an unexpected discovery of God. Christ’s resurrection offered her the infinite possibilities of that love, and this certainty is also ours.

I began this message by defining the word “serendipity.” But I save for last what I think is the best example. It comes from a grade school student in Des Moines, Iowa, where in school they had, believe it or not, a Serendipity Day. The youngster laid a cocoon on the teacher’s desk saying, “This is what I think serendipity means. You see, the caterpillar thinks it’s dying but we know that it’s really just being born.” That’s serendipity! That’s an unexpected discovery of God! May it be so in your life—perhaps even in this very day. Let us pray:

How manifold are your gifts, loving God, and how seldom do we praise or even thank you for them. Teach us to see with new eyes the wonders through which we move, and breathe, and have our being. Make children of us, for whom the world is vibrant with color and texture. Take away our weariness, our habit of not being present in the now, and our dullness to what is beautiful and holy. Make us sensitive to those around us, and to where you are moving in their lives. Show us how to celebrate the Resurrection. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.