Inspired by John 20: 11-18
“Mary stood weeping outside the tomb.”
And in her grief, she runs not away but leans in, straining her eyes to understand the purpose of this present darkness. Her courage is rewarded, and, in the darkness, the light is exposed. Two angels now glowing where once it would have been only the smell of rot and sight of decay. Here there is no body. The evidence of death has been consumed by the light, transformed from a promise once foretold into a promise now true.
“Not so fast!” resurrection declares, to the hearts irreparably broken. To the despair dictating a story of doom., “Remember,” says the light, “the darkness is only the richness from which the story begins.”
Of course, beginnings sound fanciful and marketable and social media shareable.
New beginnings sound like, “Congratulations!” and “I’m so happy for you!” and “Finally! You’ve worked so hard for this!”
New beginnings look like college admissions and employment promotions and wedding invitations and signatures on deeds to new homes.
Although, in our scripture this morning, new beginnings look like, “inconsolable weeping” and sound like, “don’t touch me!” And, yet this new beginning is the most fanciful and marketable and social media shareable new beginning of all.
Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. And in this darkness, the light whispers to despair, “Not so fast.”
Not so fast to doomsday narrations of climate change.
Not so fast to concrete beliefs that people will never change.
Not so fast to all the disappointments collected between where we are now and where we have imagined ourselves to be.
Not.
So.
Fast.
Resurrection embodies the darkness and shouts through the light. It has no end, nor does it ever begin because resurrection is an evolution as mysterious and dependable and shocking as the sun which continues to rise before our eyes.
Resurrection blooms on our behalf whether we will it or witness it or wait impatiently for it to do what we believe it should do. Resurrection is both tangible and untouchable, both unrecognizable and unforgettable; a present reality in our daily lives that sticks to us like glitter and gets all over everything just like… glitter.
Resurrection is incurable. We are infected and contagious on the days that we weep and, on the days, when we dance with joy. We laugh, scream, sleep, text, scroll, eat and the pace of resurrection moves steadily with the ancient rhythm of, “Not. So. Fast.”
The story we have told ourselves. The one that has been told to us. The one that is logical and sensical and predictable. The one reciting the worst-case scenario so confidently and so relentlessly that it could easily become the only story we know. The story that tells the lie that sounds like and feels like and looks like, “The End.”
Easter shines light on this story.
Easter is a day-long fact-checker for the fake news we tell ourselves about who we are and what is happening and how the story will end. Easter sounds like, “do not hold on to that story!” and looks like Mary, weeping outside the tomb, bracing herself for the scene she anticipates marking the moment when the light that began her story now ends.
But this is the unbelievable, illogical, nonsensical story of Easter; that resurrection is a continuum of endless beginnings. That we are each placed in a moment of a story that is never finished being told and that in between all the lines and all the chapters and all the volumes rises the truth that what we witness on Easter is an expansion of the incarnation that includes each and every one of us. We, gathered here to celebrate the victory of one individual life over death, are the collective resurrection. We are the continuation of the incarnation, the earthly embodiment of the siblings of Jesus and the conduits of the light of Christ.
And our only part in this story is to remember. Remember that we are the light that shines in the darkness. That in this story there is no light to search for and no darkness to escape from. Saturated in incarnation we rise with the heartbeat of resurrection so that when our brains try to choose their own adventure and tell us it’s the end, it is our heart that whispers, “Not. So. Fast.”
May it be this story that inspires the memory of who we are so that we might know exactly who God wants us to be when someone is weeping outside the ending of their own story.
An anchor as they lean into the darkness.
An extension of love on loan
until they see that the light that shines in the darkness
is the light that shines in them,
the same light that shines in you and in me.