At the Dawning

Do you think anyone noticed? He debated in the temple area, and scored points on the religious leaders and they noticed. People with sick children, bent over, bleeding, paralyzed and possessed called out to him, and he healed them and they noticed. The man born blind noticed, and his parents noticed but they were silenced by fear of what would happen if they admitted the truth. Even went the facts cannot be contested, silence can confound truth.

Do you think anyone noticed the arrest, the trial, the execution? He was arrested at night in the place so many country people camped during their visit to the city for the Great Festival. But it was late, it was dark. Most of us don’t like to get involved with ugliness if we can help it. He was dragged through the dark to a damp cell; up all night, beaten, he was dragged in chains to the inner courts of the powerful. The mob – maybe 20 maybe a hundred – demanded his death and so he was dragged outside the walls of the city where ordinary people didn’t have to look at any ugly broken bodies. Do you think anyone, really noticed?

The women noticed. They kept watch from a distance. They paid attention at every step of the journey. Mary Magdalene kept vigil with the others. Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the Crucified One kept vigil. And the mother of the sons of Zebedee – James and John kept vigil. The Mothers did not desert. The mothers did not betray. The mothers did not turn away. They kept long, patient, loving vigil, somehow the mothers had the strength to faithfully do what the men of Jesus family could not do.

The mothers took note and saw where he was buried. The powerful ones who had orchestrated his murder were aware that the community around Jesus had not totally abandoned him. They asked for soldiers to guard the tomb, to keep watch lest something sneaky happen. A platoon was set to watch.

The mothers came back at the dawning of the day. Just as the first glimmers of light were warming the damp earth. They came back to continue their vigil by the grave. As they came to the place where he was laid the land was shaken. The rocks were shaken. The earth cracked and the huge stone began to roll. A like lightening – charged with energy and exploding light and crackling sulfur – a heavenly being came and sat on the stone, and it stopped, the mouth of the grave left gaping. The women of course noticed. They must have been very afraid but they didn’t run. The guards of course noticed. Their worst nightmare had just happened. How were they going to explain this to the commander? They were terrified and fainted dead away.

The Angelic being explains. It is just as he said. He is risen. Don’t you see? Go and tell. Full of joy and fear their hearts pumping, their legs moving, they hurried away. As they ran they had a companion, the Risen One was with them. The Risen One greeted them, and their hearts stopped, they came sat quietly at his nail pierced feet, they were stunned into awed silence, adoration, praise, worship beyond words. The Risen One himself commissions them: Greetings favored ones, go tell my brothers. They themselves will meet me in Galilee. Go and tell them, tell them all.

And so they did. They told their brothers, they told their sons. They told their sisters and neighbors. With boldness they remembered everything he taught them, and they passed on the Good News that God has touched this world in love, and that God’s power is unleashed in setting right the all the betrayers and all the persecutors and all their victims. God’s power is unleashed in this world – and we call that the Reign of God, the Kingdom of God that is now, and that shall be. This Good News proclaims a fresh start, a fresh start for individuals, for families, a good new beginning for whole communities and societies. In Jesus, God has taken action to restore the all that is profoundly broken, so desperately in need of change.

Change is hard, and we humans cling to the things we know even when we know that the way things are is hurting us, killing us. But if nothing changes, nothing changes. The Law and the Prophets have not been able to lead the people of Israel to faithful living. The teaching and the preaching have not been able to help people love God and love one another with their whole heart. Rulers, even the best of them, compromise their principles and fall into corruption. Economic systems, even the best of them, the ones that benefit most folks, are built on the labors of those who are barely able to survive. The human heart is prone to covet security and comfort and to lie to protect our coveting. As it was in the garden, so it is. The whole human system does what it does even when we long for a better life, a life with more integrity.

If nothing changes, nothing changes. So God initiates a change. God touches human history with God’s own presence. Do you think anyone noticed? When one part of the human system begins to change, the whole system notices, and feels it. The system may conspire to cover up the truth - they say the women went to the wrong tomb, they say the disciples stole the body – but something has profoundly changed. Women and men have had an experience that cannot be denied, cannot be covered up. They encountered The Risen One, living proof that God does not abandon those who pursue a life of integrity and love. Beginning from Jerusalem, and Galilee, the whole world hears that the earth has trembled, and something new has begun.

God is with us. Jesus is risen, just as he said. We too pause to adore and praise him and we too are commissioned by the Living Crucified One to arise from the dead, our hearts pounding, our feet running. Come let us live bravely, and boldly, new lives of outrageous generosity and rampant forgiveness. Jesus is risen, and is with us. Let us go and tell our brothers that the Reign of God has come near this place. AMEN

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Thanks to Liz and Werner Weber for hosting our 4 am Easter Vigil this day. Thanks to Jim Sims for his photo above, and for his songfilled and spiritfilled companionship of our worshiping community.