Easter Sunday: An expansive life

Luke 24:1-12

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Blessed Easter to you! I hope you have consumed enough guilt free chocolate this morning to get you through to next Halloween, and if you need more sweets, I’m sure you can find some around here after the service today.  

Today is the last stop of our Lenten journey where we have been exploring how God’s expansive grace fills us to the brim. Knowing how much God loves us, we are free to grow.  The question is: Will we step into that expansive grace?

It has been a Holy Week to remember. A couple of days ago on Good Friday, the power unexpectedly went out after the first reading. Clearly, someone out there thought we hadn’t been on our toes enough the last couple of years and decided to keep it exciting. We tried a few things—fuse box? Nope. Flipped some switches? Nope. Then someone poked their head outside to look around and, turns out the power was out on the whole block was out. So be it. There was nothing to do but sit in it here in this sanctuary and continue, telling the story. 

When the lights first went out, it surprised us but after our eyes adjusted, it wasn’t that big of a deal.  Outside, the sun was setting and there was still enough light coming in the windows to help us get our bearings, but as the night fell outside, and the colors faded from the windows, it became harder and harder to see in here.  We fumbled with a flashlight for the readers, we struggled to speak loudly without a microphone.  As the sun set and we slowly extinguished candle after candle on the altar, the sanctuary sank into darkness.  

I can’t think of many times when I’ve sat with fifty people in a dark room. Willingly.  For an hour. As I sat there in my pew listening to the stories, I wondered, what we would do if the power didn’t come back on for the Easter Vigil.  The Saturday Easter Vigil service begins in the dark, but then the point of the service is that the light dawns.  Given that we weren’t actually planning on staying at church until dawn, that was going to be hard to simulate with no electricity. 

In the farming town where my mom is from, folks get up before the sun has risen and head to church. Then, during the service, the sun rises.  In Latin America, some churches hold an all night traditional Easter Vigil to wait for the sun to rise.  Here in Chicago, many churches celebrate the resurrection that night of the Easter Vigil and, interestingly, when that vigil finishes, it is still dark outside. 

Something about this is fitting today, because, for all the glorious music and bright flowers, and banners waving, for all the bounce houses and beautiful easter clothes, the truth is that, like those women who stood in front of the tomb that early, shadowy easter morning, we are all grappling with truth that the new life begins with death. 

This morning, the old, old story from the gospel of Luke tells us that Mary Magdalene, Joana, Mary the mother of James, and the other women go to the tomb before dawn.  But they don’t find Jesus. They don’t find his body, dead or alive. All they discover that shadowy morning is a dark and empty tomb.  It’s not what they expected.  As if the whole thing weren’t unsettling enough, two men in dazzling clothes suddenly show up next to them and ask them “why are you looking for the living among the dead? Lest I roll my eyes at the angels, it makes me want to cut into the story in defense of the women and remind the angel: "I’ll tell you why they are looking among the dead.  Because their beloved Jesus has been tortured and interrogated and killed and they had witnessed it from the foot of the cross.  They are looking among the dead because they took great care to make sure his body was buried after he died. They are looking among the dead because they didn’t sleep well last night and they’re tired and worried and upset. Their hearts are still wandering through the shadows."

Monseñor Oscar Romero,  the El Salvadorian bishop who was martyred in the 80s, once said “Hay muchas cosas que solo se pueden ver a traves de los ojos que han llorado.” “There are many things that can only be seen through eyes that have cried.” The profound grace of the Easter story is that God meets us in the shadows and in the dark nights of the soul and offers us new life.

Our reading today began with a small little word: But… But, on the first day of the week, they (still) went to where Jesus body had been laid. But…the story says again, when they should have found Jesus’ body, they discovered the empty tomb. But…when they were terrified and hid their faces, their angels asked them, why are you still locked into this mindset of death? Remember, the angels said, how Jesus told you he would rise again? 

And there, with the light dawning in the garden, Their hope was nudged. Was it still dark when they ran to tell the apostles the good news?

But…scripture says, the men didn’t believe them, they though the women’s good news was an “idle tale.” But…Peter ran to the tomb to see for himself.

With each “but,” God pokes holes in the darkness and pinpricks of light start shining in. In the other gospels, there are moments where people come face to face with Jesus there at the tomb and they instantly believe. In this story from the gospel of Luke, that’s not the case.  It takes people time to wrap their heads around it. It takes time for the news to sink in, but slowly it does. 

In our bible, there is an old story about Pharaoh who tells the Hebrew midwives, Puah and Shiprah, to kill all the Hebrew baby boys. On the surface of things, These two midwives pretend to follow Pharaoh’s instructions—but behind the curtain, they show up in the dark, in the labor room and help bring those baby boys into the world.  One of those babies is Moses. And his mother, afraid he will be killed or taken from her, shows up later, in the dark with her baby and makes him a basket and floats him down the river where the Egyptian princess finds him.

Again and again, there are stories of people in our scriptures who show up in the dark and set something new in motion.  People who create space for something new.  Midwives who show up to the birth, parents who weave a basket, women who show up at the tomb and create space for something new in the dark.  Can we, likewise, create this space for new life?

All over the place, people stumble in the dark: Couples hit bottom in their marriages,  folks hit bottom with their addiction, people who are worn down by injustice. Can we show up in the dark and set something new in motion? 

Hope over hope against cancer and depression and the constant fast pace of life. Hope that leads us to look for joy after divorce or look for a new job that gives us life. The spark in the people who show up to the protest, who say, I am going to set something new in motion, this cloud of darkness cannot stand.  Those threads of resurrection that ran through our forebears’ lives and the ancestors’ of our faith’s lives run through our lives too.  We all have a resurrection story to tell.

And just as the women and the apostles began to tell the story, more people began to share the news of Jesus’ resurrection, so we too tell one another the story. We bear witness to the truth of God’s presence and aliveness around us.  We stare down the shadows together because Jesus our hope of the world is alive. 
We welcome this expansive new life that God offers us. For death is real, but death is not the end.

Why are you looking for the living among the dead? Do we have the courage to see through the tears and welcome this expansive life that God offers us?

As luck would have it, the electricity did come back on last Friday night.  Suddenly. But that isn’t always the case and the light doesn’t always flood back into our lives suddenly. Sometimes, the circumstances in our lives lead us to linger in the dark. And if that is you today, take heart.  “New life,” Barbara brown Taylor writes, “starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.”

The profound grace of the Easter story is that God reaches for us in the shadows and in the dark nights of the soul and offers us new life.

It’s no accident that Easter is tied to Spring, that season of new life. It’s no accident that Easter is celebrated around the same time of Passover, that great journey to liberation. Or that today is Sunday, the first day of the week. The trumpets sound today, and the choir sings out, not because it is the end of something, not because the journey is done but because, there in the shadow, the journey has just begun. Our joy today announces the dawn, for Christ is risen, he is risen indeed, Alleluia!