"While It Was Still Dark..."

Here are my the thoughts that I shared on Easter Sunday as we gathered around the table of the Lord and were sent into the world:

Gathered at the Table:
“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him’” (John 20:1-2).

“While it was still dark.” It’s a simple detail, not necessarily newsworthy. John has already told us it was early in the morning, but then he adds: “it was still dark.” Several days have past since Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, showing them the full extent and depths of his love. It was there, at that same table, that Jesus, the Light of the World dipped a piece of bread and handed it to Judas. Then Judas, roused by the Prince of Darkness, went out to stir up the chaotic powers of night that threaten the light. Since then, the darkness has continued to hang over the story like a shroud.

“While it was still dark.” It’s a detail that John didn’t have to include, but he makes sure to remind us of the looming darkness that still enveloped the world and the disciple’s own lives on the morning of that first day of the week when Mary went to the tomb. Her hopes had been dashed, her expectations confounded, her certainty questioned, her dreams shattered. Darkness had fallen on her life.

The darkness is disorienting. It is foreboding. The darkness of that morning doesn’t just describe the lack of the early dawn light, but opens a door for us into our own world and our own lives where the darkness that threatens God’s light, life, and love seems to be ever present. But this Easter morning as we come to this table, we confess to one another that the Word not only became flesh and lived among us, but the Word was raised from the dead! And we have seen his glory! The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it!!!

Sent into the World:
“For whom are you looking?” (John 20:15). It is a question that is not new to us. It has circled around John since the first chapter, when those two disciples came from John the Baptist to follow Jesus. Jesus asked them, “For what are you looking?” Not even sure themselves, they replied, “We want to see where you are staying.” Jesus simply replies, “Come and see.” With those three words the consummate teacher invites them on a journey of discovery. Throughout John’s gospel, we’ve been struggling to encounter Jesus, to know and understand the elusive Word made flesh. Like those first disciples, we have develop our own our preconceptions and our own expectations of this Jesus.

Mary wandered to the garden that morning with those expectations shattered, with her preconceptions of Jesus crucified. She came to the garden looking for a dead body in a tomb. But here, from the disorienting experience of Jesus crucifixion, Mary hears Jesus’ reorienting, life giving word, “Mary.” With that word her world changed.

Jesus then says to her, “Go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ Mary went out proclaiming to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord;’ and she told him that he had said these things to her” (John 20:17b-18).

After her reorienting, transforming encounter with the risen Word, Mary is then commissioned, sent by Jesus to be a preacher (20:17), to declare what she has experienced. She is empowered by Jesus to proclaim Gospel to the disciples.

Maybe this Easter season our preconceptions of Jesus needed to be crucified our expectations of Jesus shattered, so that we might come face to face with the Living Word. Just like Mary, we have encountered a risen Lord today. And just like Mary, God sends us. This morning we have encountered the resurrected Jesus again. We must reaffirm and recommit to our baptismal covenant, saying yes again to the resurrected Lord who sends us to proclaim the one whom we have found (20:15), or better, the one who has found us!

This morning, let this prayer send us out to bear witness to the resurrected one:
Love divine, in raising Christ to new life you opened the path of salvation to all peoples. Send us out, with the joy of Mary Magdalene, to proclaim that we have seen the Lord, so that all the world may celebrate with you the banquet of your peace. Amen.