It Begins in the Dark [Easter Sunday]

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

John 20:1-18

It begins in the dark

Easter always begins in the same place: in the dark. When Mary arrived at the tomb of Jesus on that first Easter morning, the world was still shrouded in night. The sun was not yet shining; the birds were not yet chirping. There were no signs of life – only the darkness. And even if the sun had been shining, there was still the dark cloud that hung over Mary's heart. Her friend Jesus was dead, crucified on a Roman cross, and she journeyed to his grave that day, not for an Easter story, but to visit his final resting place. It was the first Easter, and she was in the dark.

I'm not sure how long the walk to his grave was, but it certainly wasn't long enough to erase the memory of Good Friday. There was no forgetting that. Mary stood near his cross as her friend died. It was real. It was devastating. It was death. She heard his last words. She watched as his broken body went limp. She saw the thrust of the spear and the stream of blood and water pour from his side. She watched him die, and it just killed her. It felt like everything in the world went dark.

As if everything was coming undone. Like back to the beginning, before Creation: back when chaos reigned and the darkness covered the deep. And there were no signs of life – only the darkness.

Into that darkness, God spoke life. But that was a long time ago. And as the years go by, those old stories become, well, just stories.

So Mary went to the tomb to be with the dead. She was not looking for life. She did not make the journey with hope; her hope died on that cross. She went to the grave because she saw that death won and, in her grief, she came to visit the corpse in that dark tomb. When she found the tomb open, she was not filled with expectation or joy; she was not filled with hope; she was not thinking resurrection; she was devastated. For her the empty tomb just meant her weekend had gone from bad to worse. She didn't show up that morning wearing an Easter bonnet; she was wearing her sackcloth.

But, it turns out, Mary was dressed for the wrong occasion. She came in the darkness to mourn her dead. But God had other ideas. That garden was no longer a cemetery; there was new life growing in the garden. She came in the darkness looking for a grave but little did she know: Into that darkness, God once again spoke life.

Easter always begins in the same place: in the dark. It has to begin in the dark. It has to begin in the shadow of the cross. Because Easter is much more than the happy ending tacked onto an old story. Easter is the word God shouts into the darkness. Easter is God's eternal: Let there be light.

N.T. Wright says it well: “With Easter, God’s new creation is launched upon a surprised world, pointing ahead to the renewal, the redemption, the rebirth of the entire creation.”¹ When God raised Jesus from the dead, it was not some isolated event that happened once upon a time. It was a new beginning, a new reality, a new hope.

The resurrection does not erase Jesus' death; it does not ignore the horrors of the cross. The resurrection does not deny the pain or the violence of this world. No. Easter always happens in the dark because Easter is God's answer to the darkness, God's answer to the evil in this world, God's answer to the tyranny of death.

This year, we celebrate Easter in the shadow of yet another terrorist attack, of yet another incident of mass murder. We celebrate this Easter in the shadow of hatred and violence. We celebrate this Easter in the shadow of prejudice and apathy.

But still we celebrate. We celebrate because Jesus, who was crucified, is alive and active in this world. We celebrate because hatred and violence do not win. We celebrate because death does not win. Our good news is that the Easter message is not just an old story. It is the reality of our lives – and hatred and violence and death can do nothing to change that. Rowan Williams writes, “To believe in the risen Jesus is to trust that the generative power of God is active in the human world; that it can be experienced as transformation and re-creation and empowerment in the present; and that its availability and relevance extends to every human situation.”²

Easter is not just some old story. Easter is our story. It is happening in us and through us and all around us. Wright says, [E]very deed done in Christ and by the Spirit, every work of true creativity – doing justice, making peace, healing families, resisting temptation, seeking and winning true freedom – is an earthly event in a long history of things that implement Jesus' own resurrection and anticipate the final new creation and act as signposts of hope.” ³

We are Easter people. Easter is our story. We are members of God's new creation – made new by our participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus through the waters of baptism. Decedents of our sister Mary, we are now the witnesses of the resurrection in this world. Every time we receive the Body and Blood of Jesus, every time we love this world into a better place, every time we defiantly shout our Alleluias in the face of death: we witness to the power of resurrection in this world – and people need to hear our witness.

You see, Easter always begins in the same place: in the dark. But that is not where it ends. God shouts into the deepest darkness: Let there be light. It begins at the grave. But that is not where it ends. Even at the grave we sing our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia! It begins with death. But that it not where it ends. Death is not the end. It wasn't on that Good Friday, on that cross. And it is not today. In this Easter world, death does not get the last word. God has the last word: and the last word is always love – that same love that raised Jesus from the dead, that called all of creation into being, that scattered the darkness on that first Easter morning, still has the power to overcome the darkness in our world. So go out and tell the Easter story: that love is stronger than hatred, that love is stronger than pain, that love is stronger than even death. Every single time. 

 

1 NT Wright, Surprised by Hope, 294.

2Resurrection, 44.

3Surprised by Hope, 294-295.