Year C, Easter Luke 24:1-12
When I was in the hospital, I hated
the night. Visitors had to leave at 8pm
and could not return until 8am. At 8pm I
would start to panic because I knew I had 12 hours ahead of me. And it’s the hospital, so it’s not like you
can sleep at night. Because I had an
infectious disease, I couldn’t leave the room or open the door. It felt like I was in a tomb. Even when I came home, I dreaded the
night. Never in my life have I been so
desperate for the morning. As I look
back on it, I am reminded of Psalm 130. "I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the
morning, more than those who watch for the morning." I would like to tell you that the Psalm came
to me in the darkness of the night when I most needed it, but it didn’t. Sometimes
you have to wait. Some nights last more
than 12 hours.
I
have preached on this text from Luke several times. Every time I read it, something different
strikes me. This year, it was the time
of day that caught my attention. “On the
first day of the week, at early dawn, the women who had come with Jesus from
Galilee came to the tomb…” Early
dawn. There are 4 Gospels that tell the story of the resurrection and they are
all a little different in the way they tell the story. One of the things they have in common is that
the women come either right before dawn or at dawn.
There
could be a ritualistic reason they came early in the morning. Typically bodies were anointed before burial.
However, because Jesus’ death and burial was unusual for a variety of reasons,
the women had not been able to anoint him when they normally would have---right
after death. That must have been
upsetting to them. The act of anointing was
a way these women could mourn someone who was dear to them. It was their last opportunity to minister to
him. So it’s possible they were simply
eager to move forward with this important ritual that they had been denied.
Because of
COVID, most of us have had experiences of not being able to mourn people as we
were once able. It could have been being
denied a timely funeral or even not being able to gather friends and family to
share stories. Some who died of COVID or
were in nursing homes or hospitals with strict policies had to say goodbye
through a computer or phone screen. I said
final prayers for someone through and open window while huddled with the family
under an umbrella. The traumas of the past two years have been compounded by
our inability to mourn and process. Thus I think many of us can understand why it
was so important for these followers of Jesus to anoint him as soon as they
could.
Yet I also could
not help but wonder what their nights must have been like after Jesus was
crucified. It has been two nights and
two days. Jesus rose on the third
day. The women who came to anoint him
were the very same women who had been with him while he shared his parables,
when he performed miracles, when he raised Lazarus from the dead. They were the same women who had been with
him when he was crucified. After witnessing the crucifixion of not just a dear
friend, but a man you believed was God in the flesh…how well do you think you
would sleep? Trauma can do some crazy
things to your sleep.
The psalm I
opened with mentions someone watching for the morning. I bet these women did more than watch. I would
think they were desperate for the morning---desperate for a time that they
could be with their friends who had shared this experience, friends they could
weep openly with. Desperate for some sense of closure.
They arrived at
early dawn, which means they started their journey when it was still dark. Can you see it? These heart-broken women trudging through the
darkness to a tomb. They must have been
carrying more than just broken hearts and spices. Because a broken heart will not propel you
forward. There must have been an ember
of hope buried inside them—a memory dancing on the edges of their
consciousness. He said he would rise
again. It didn’t make sense when he said
it, but what if?? It was desperation,
but it was also hope that drove them into the night. Desperation and hope are
often tangled together.
I have traditional
book commentaries that I consult when I am preparing a sermon and a few online
commentaries. When things get desperate (as
they did this week), I occasionally just google random thoughts and words. When I did that this week, I kept seeing
websites and articles with titles like, “Evidence for the resurrection.” Those were not links I pursued. We don’t believe
in the resurrection because of evidence.
There is no body of evidence that can prove that the resurrection
happened. Despite that lack of evidence,
we are still telling this story thousands of years after the event. That in and of itself is amazing. A religion that started with a man born in a
backwater town, who collected a small band of followers and then died a gruesome
death currently has 2.4 billion followers.
And that doesn’t include all of those Christians who have lived over the
last 2000 years. How could any movement
survive that long without proof?
When the women
went and told the other disciples that Jesus had risen, they had not yet see
the risen Lord. They had just seen the
empty tomb and been told that he was risen by two men in white. They had no real evidence. But they
remembered who he was in life. They
remembered the hope he had given them, the hope they still carried even after
he was crucified—when there was absolutely no good reason to hope. Who holds on to hope after someone has been
brutally murdered? Christians. We
do. And that my friends, is what gets us
through the darkest of nights and the haziest of dawns. It’s not the light that
we currently see, it’s a light that we are promised. A light that seems heart
wrenchingly dim at times, a light we can best see when we have experienced
total darkness.
Photo by Daniel Joshua on Unsplash
Just like those
desperately hopeful women, we too have to start in the night if we want to make
it to the dawn. Every single person in
this church has suffered in some way over the past several years, some more
than others. I would do anything to be
able to take some of that pain away. I
can’t. I can’t give you proof of the
resurrection. But I can promise you this—that
ember of hope that propelled those women through the darkness to an empty tomb
burns in each one of us. If it were not
so, you would not be here. Something
brought you here. It might seem to be a family obligation, or a
tradition---some perfectly ordinary reason.
But God’s works miracles in the ordinary.
Today we receive
communion at the altar for the first time in 25 months. Communion is about a lot of things and one of
those things is remembering Jesus’ words.
It’s a weekly reminder that despite the lack of proof, we still gather
with hopeful expectation. We still
believe that we have a God who works miracles out of the ordinary—a God who
promises that no darkness last forever.
The morning always comes.
