April 20: Easter Sunday
It was dark on the first day of the week. The sun had yet to rise, and she went to the tomb. Eyes still puffy with tears. Heart broken in grief. Mary comes to the place where they had laid him, and he’s gone. He’s not there. Fear, panic runs through her body. She must go tell the others. “Come and see,” she beckons. “He’s not there.”
Peter and John run to the tomb, and it’s just as she had told them. The stone is rolled away. The tomb is empty. Though Jesus had taught them, though he warned them that this would happen, Peter and John turn around defeated, and go back home. Mary alone stays and weeps.
“Why are you weeping?” a voice calls to her, “Who are you looking for?”
Unable to recognize him in the dim light of dawn, she just tells the man, “I’m looking for him, I’m looking for him,” not even able to say his name.
And he replies with just a single word, and with that word, the stone of death is truly, finally rolled away. Mary! Mary!
Alleluia, The Lord is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Death has been defeated. The gates of hell have been opened. The light of our Lord was not overcome. God’s faithfulness has won out. The stone has been rolled away. And we know this, truly, finally as he says our name.
Howard Thurman was a Christian mystic, poet, and writer in the mid-20th century. His writings inspired many, including Martin Luther King Jr. He wrote of hope, the hope we find once more this morning. In one of his books, he tells a story about when he was a small boy, when Halley’s comet flew overhead.
For a long time, he didn’t see the giant light in the sky because his mom didn’t let him stay up after sundown. His friends had seen it and had told him amazing things about it, but he had yet to see it for himself. Then one night, his mom woke him up, told him to dress quickly and come with her out into the backyard to see the famous comet. What he saw completely blew his mind.
“My mother stood with me,” he recalls, “her hand resting on my shoulder, while I, in utter, speechless awe, beheld the great spectacle with its fan of light spreading across the heavens. And finally, after what seemed like forever, I found my speech. With bated breath I said, ‘What will happen to us if that comet falls out of the sky?’ My mother’s silence was so long that I looked from the comet to her face, and it looked as if she was in prayer.
‘Nothing will happen to us, Howard;’ she answered me. ‘God will take care of us.’”
“Many things have I seen since that night,” Thurman writes. “Time without number I have learned that life is hard, as hard as crucible steel; but as the years have unfolded, the majestic power of my mother’s glowing words has come back again and again, beating out its rhythmic chant in my own spirit.”1
Nothing will happen to us. God will take care of us. This morning, if your faith is weak, or if it is strong. This morning, if you are walking in joyful light, or in disorienting darkness, our risen lord finds you, comes to your side, looks at you with eyes of love and whispers your name once more.
That is the hope of Easter, because this resurrection thing we celebrate this morning did not happen just that one time 2000 years ago.
1 Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited, 46-47.
As Fredrick Buechner writes, “In this dark world where you and I see (like Mary) so little because of our unrecognizing eyes, Jesus sees each one of us. And because he sees us, not even in the darkness of death are we lost to him or lost to each other. Whether we recognize him or not, or believe in him or not, or even know his name, again and again he comes to us” in tender care.2
In the dim light of dawn Mary heard his voice say her name, and she knew. In the darkness of night, young Howard Thurman began to understand what his mother knew.
2 From Buechner’s Easter sermon, Secrets in the Dark.
…That Easter isn’t just for this morning. That Easter doesn’t come just in the bright lights, the blossoming flowers, and in the celebrations. Easter is our story for all seasons. Through the waters of baptism, and the nourishment of Jesus’ body and blood, the refrain of our God’s love beats out a rhythm of hope in us that not even the darkest of nights can silence. When our eyes are swollen with tears. When the shadows of death surround us. When we can’t see the next way to go, he calls out our name. And we are known, and we are held, and we can hope again.
This morning, we proclaim that even when life is hard, as hard as crucible steel, and even if the comets fall from the sky, God will take care of us. May the God of all hope, the God who brought our Lord Jesus Christ back from death, be near you this day. May you hear his tender voice of love as he says your name. And may your song this day, and always be alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Amen.
The Rev. Daniel J. Reeves