Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
March 23, 2008

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Mary Magdalene was in the dark as she came to Jesus’ tomb that first Easter morning so long ago. We know that because John clearly tells us that she came “while it was still dark.” John 20:1 NRSV Maybe he means that it was physically dark, although it strikes me as unlikely that a woman alone would venture out in the dark in the land plagued by bandits and with only a primitive torch to light her way. Maybe it was really at dawn, as Matthew, for example, says. Either way, Mary was in the dark. Whether she was physically in the dark or not, she was certainly emotionally in the dark. Jesus, the one she had come to call Lord, whom she had followed from their home in Galilee to Jerusalem, that fascinating and fearful seat of Roman and Jewish power, the one to whom she had given her life, was dead. The Romans had crucified him, perhaps with the complicity and certainly with the approval of the Jewish temple authorities. She was crushed. How could it be? Jesus had been such a good man. He healed people. He taught them that God loved them. How could they kill him? But kill him they did. Mary was grieving hard and deep, and those of who have been in that place where demons dwell know how dark it is.

Mary was in the dark spiritually, too. Jesus had been a true prophet, a man of God unlike any she had ever met. He had seemed to her the very voice of God. In him she felt a spiritual connection to God, a spiritual grounding in God, that she had never known before. He had given her life meaning and purpose, things it had sorely lacked before. He gave her hope, and even joy. In him she had known the truth of God in a whole new way; but he’d been executed as a common criminal, a threat to public safety. The leaders of her own Jewish faith had called him a blasphemer and a fraud. She must have been wrong about him. There was no other possible conclusion.

Mary was in the dark; and I am convinced that the main reason she was in the dark and that the main thing John wants us to understand when he says that Mary came to the tomb “while it was still dark” is that Mary was in the dark because she did not yet know about the Resurrection of Jesus. She was in grief, emotional pain, and spiritual doubt because she did not yet know that he had risen. Mary was in the dark because she did not yet stand in the light of the Resurrection. The light of the Resurrection had not yet illuminated her world, but it was about to.

Mary was amazed to find that Jesus’ tomb was empty, and she reached the only conclusion she could. Someone had stolen his body. So she ran and told her fellow Disciples, Peter and the others. Peter and another Disciple came and checked it out with her, and sure enough. The tomb as empty. The men shrugged their shoulders and went home, but not Mary. Her grief was too strong; and as she stood there weeping, it happened. The men hadn’t seen him, but there was an angel sitting in that empty tomb where Jesus should have been. The angel said to Mary he is not here, he has risen. That was amazing enough, but then there he was himself. In person. Risen from the grave. It wasn’t possible, but it surely was true. He spoke her name. He sent her to the other Disciples, those dim and unperceiving men who had been there but who hadn’t seen him. It was him all right. He had risen indeed.

Unfortunately John doesn’t stay with Mary in his story of the Resurrection, but it’s easy enough to imagine what it all meant to her. Mary was no longer in the dark. The light of the Resurrection had illuminated her darkness and dispersed it. She no longer grieved, for he was alive. Her emotional pain was healed. She was no longer in spiritual darkness either. He had truly been a man of God, for God would not raise someone who had not been. He had spoken the truth, for God would not raise a blasphemer and a fraud. The connection with God she had felt with him was real. The truth of God she had heard from him was real. In the light of the Resurrection Mary too lived again. In the light of the Resurrection, Mary could see. The darkness was gone, and Mary walked in the light of Christ’s Resurrection.

And here’s the important thing. This story isn’t about something that happened once to someone else a long time ago in a place far away. It’s about us. It’s the same with us as it was with Mary. There is so much darkness in the world. I don’t mean that nighttime comes at the end of each day. In so many ways the world walks in darkness, unable to see the way things really are. We walk in the darkness of our addiction to violence, believing that it can save us and that it can create peace and justice. We walk in the dark ness of our commitment to earthly success. We think success lies in accumulating wealth and that our riches can protect us from all evil. We walk in the darkness of hatred and prejudice. In our darkness we cannot see the God-given dignity and worth of every single person. We call some evil simply because they are somehow different from us—they look different, they love differently, they believe differently. We walk in the darkness of sin, believing that God can’t really forgive our sin because we cannot forgive the sin of others and because, most especially, we cannot forgive our own sin. We walk in the darkness of alienation from God, believing that God is absent from the world and from our lives. In all these ways, and in so many, many more, we walk in darkness every bit as dark as the darkness in which our sister Mary Magdalene walked on the first Easter morning so long ago.

Yet on this Easter morning so long after that first one we can know as Mary did, if we will only open our eyes, that we don’t have to walk in darkness any more. Like Mary we can walk in the light of the Resurrection. In the light of Christ’s glorious Resurrection we can see, if we’ll just look. We can see so many things, things that if we would truly see them would transform our lives and transform our world. Just what do we see in the light of the Resurrection that we can’t see in the pre-Resurrection darkness?

We see first of all that Jesus really is the one. The Resurrection is God’s sign and seal that Jesus is indeed the one in whom we see God revealed in the fullest way that we humans can comprehend. Without the Resurrection it would be very easy to call Jesus a failure, a fraud even, and to dismiss him. In the light of the Resurrection we see that we can’t dismiss him, because God is telling us, as Scripture says elsewhere, this is my beloved Son. Listen to him.

Then, when we see in the light of the Resurrection that Jesus really is the one, we see that Jesus’ way is God’s way. We see that Jesus’ way of peace, of creative, assertive, nonviolent resistance to evil is God’s way and must be our way. In the light of the Resurrection we see that the truly successful life is life in the Spirit not the life of earthly wealth, prestige, and power. In the light of the Resurrection we see that God’s way is never the way of hatred and prejudice. We see that every human being is our sister or our brother because we are all, every one of us, children of God. In the light of the Resurrection we see that our sin is forgiven, always, everywhere, unconditionally, simply because it is God’s will to forgive it. And we see that we can therefore forgive each other, and even ourselves.

Most of all, in the light of the Resurrection, we see that our stubborn belief that we live in alienation from God is a delusion of our own making. In the light of the Resurrection we see God everywhere, in everything, and in everyone. We see the world permeated with the light of God’s presence. And we see that that it is our own obstinate refusal to remove the scales of cynicism and unbelief from our eyes that keeps us from seeing the divine light in everything there is, and even in ourselves.

There are no records of Mary Magdalene’s life after her encounter with the risen Christ, but I like to believe that for the rest of her life she walked in the light of the Resurrection, made new and whole, able to see the world the way God sees the world and knowing that God would never forsake her or anyone else. That’s my prayer for us this Easter morning too. May the light of the Resurrection illumine our path and show us the world as it really is, as God sees it, as the realm of grace, a place of peace, a place permeated by the Holy Spirit.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Our darkness is overcome. Let us now live in the light of the Resurrection. Amen.