Easter Sunday 2020; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson
Human life moves between two darknesses. We begin life out of the darkness that surrounds us before we are born, and we end life with the darkness of death. Life is what happens in between these two dark times. All along the way, though, there are other dark times. Given all the darkness that surrounds our lives, we might have a hard time living in the light, if it were not for the promises of God. Brilliantly bright promises like those we celebrate today– hope, forgiveness, and new life.
But, even Easter is not all brightness and joy. In fact Mary came to the tomb while it was still dark, the gloomy memories of the last few days shrouding her mind. Her grief would have weighed down on her like a blanket of dark. She was not going there to do a happy or pleasant thing. She was going to put sweet smelling spices and oils on the corpse of her well-loved and well-known friend. It was one final caring action she could do for his crucified body.
During the terrible days she had just experienced the one they had placed all their hopes on had been betrayed and denied by close friends, he had been falsely accused, tortured, mocked, and killed in a slow and painful way. All but a few women had deserted him. She must have felt alone and completely drained. She might have thought that nothing else could possibly happen to disappoint her. Then arriving, in the dark, she found the tomb empty. Even his dead body was taken away from her. She told Simon Peter and another disciple. After they looked for him without success they left her alone again, without any answers, alone with her grief and doubts and loss.
It was there, alone and without hope, as the light of day broke that Jesus, appeared to Mary and called her by name. There in the place of death, life and hope shattered the darkness and gave Mary a reason to believe again, a reason to celebrate and share her news. As a people living between life and death we too are called to believe and celebrate even when suffering or death are just a moment behind or ahead. It is the dark story of Jesus suffering and death followed by the surprising bright dawn of Easter that makes it possible for us to celebrate life even in the face of death.
A pastor I know of told a story about how she learned through ministering to one of her parishoners that it is the very darkness of Jesus’ suffering and death that gives the resurrection such bright power. This pastor enjoyed a wonderful friendship with a family in her parish. The parents in this family was about 50 and the wife and mother in the family had become a close friend of the pastor. Their house was always full of good music and laughter. Then their only child was killed in a car accident. The pastor came to visit and found the parents avoiding each other and not talking. After a few minutes the woman asked her pastor to leave saying she wanted to be alone. People from a local grief group came to offer their support. The woman kept saying she wanted to be alone. The music fell silent in that house and the woman retreated to the dark quiet of the basement and paced the floor.
Again the pastor came to visit. She went into the basement with her and paced with her. She sensed the anguish the woman felt, the sadness and anger and emptiness. She silently paced with her and the woman began to share her pain. She spoke of her despair and loneliness. She tried to explain that she just had to be alone. The pastor decided not to pray with her at that time. She went out and prayed in her car as she left that grieving household.
Some time later it came to her what to do. She found a rough cross. She typed selected words from Psalm 22, including the words Jesus quoted as he hung on the cross. “My God, my God why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night but find no rest. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; my mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death.” Then she added the words: You are not alone. Jesus is in union with all believers.
The pastor took the paper and the cross to the grieving woman with a request that she read it over and over again. Then she left her alone as she had been asked to.
Time went by. The pastor continued to pray for her but left her alone. Eventually the woman called and asked the pastor to come over. They sat in the bright light at the kitchen table this time, not in the basement. The woman looked different. She quietly but steadily described her pacing and reading. She set up the cross in the basement and let it be with her. Then one day, as she paced and read the words typed on the paper she sensed that someone else was groaning within her, at first groaning the words of the psalm and then crying the words, “I’m gonna live.”
As they shared Holy Communion at that kitchen table the woman told her pastor that it was through living with the dark pain of the cross that could see the hope of new life in Christ and could believe again. Darkness and sadness and loss all by themselves are life-taking forces. But illumined by the presence of the crucified and risen Lord they become bearable, even more than that those dark times can be opportunities to see the depth of God’s love and the promise of new life.
The resurrection with all its brilliance follows the agonizing hell of Great and Holy Saturday and turns a terrible Friday into Good Friday. It is almost too bright to consider; it is like looking straight into the sun at high noon. It shines with a light that breaks into all the dark spaces of our lives because it originates out of the darkness of death and sorrow and anguish.
We live our lives between two darknesses and with dark times scattered all through our lives. Easter does not remove the dark times. Easter shines into them and speaks a word of light and hope. “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”