Like many of you, most mornings I’m awake before the dawn.  Most mornings I get up in the darkness.    And while I’m making my coffee, brushing my teeth, sitting in a quiet house reading or praying, or trying bang out as many emails as I can before the kids wake up, the sun is actually shining.  It is waiting for me and the rest of my east-coast-of-the-western-hemisphere longitude on this globe to wake up to the fact.  The bright sun is waiting for our spot on the plant to spin towards the reminder of the fact that it exists.

Watching from my office window at early dawn, the line on the eastern horizon begins to change from pitch black to indigo, to dark blue, to lighter shades and lighter shades, and then, in that moment when the tip of the sun breaks the horizon, and new light enters the day.  Sunrise.

In the dark the sun the sun is already shining.  It is mine to wait till I can see it, to wait for the dawn.  And the sun rises.  Every morning.  From the dark, every morning the sun brings new light, and demonstrates that its been shining all along.

Mary Magdalene, Mary from the village called Magdala on the Sea of Galilee, loved Jesus very much.  He had done much for her when he cast our demons from her and offered her freedom.  He had changed her life.  He had given her new life.  And she would stay with him a disciple to the the end.  Accompanying him on his journey towards death in Jerusalem, standing at the foot of his cross, seeing his dead body in the tomb on that Good Friday, she stayed with him.  And, after faithfully observing the Sabbath on Saturday, then on Sunday morning, she went back to the tomb, to grieve the death of the one she loved, to care for him in his death with spices and ointments to honor his body.  On that Sunday morning, she came to care for the dead.

She went while it was still dark.

But sometime when it was dark, something happened.  Jesus Christ rose from the dead!  That’s not what she was expecting!  She had come to with the spices and ointments  to anoint a dead man in his burial but the body was gone!   The stone over the mouth of the tomb was rolled back, and the tomb was empty!

It would have been to her an awful development.  Was the shame of the crucifixion not enough for my beloved one?  Must now even his body be put to further shame by being taken?  Who would have taken him?  More importantly, where is he now?

She ran to the other disciples to tell them what had happened.  Peter and John immediately returned with her to the tomb.   It was indeed empty.    The men left.   They were confused and disillusioned enough by his crucifixion.   The empty tomb to them at this point would have simply been insult to injury.   They didn’t yet understand that Jesus was to rise from the dead.    They went home.

This is a temptation for all of us…when we are confused when Jesus’ promises that don’t seem to be fulfilled, to leave, to go somewhere else, in the confusion and disappointment to not wait.

When the men went home,  Mary Magdalene stayed, weeping, with all the emotions of the moment.  “They have taken away my Lord and I don’t know where they have laid him”.  She came to the tomb while it was still dark, she stayed close to the tomb in her own grief and confusion.

When she couldn’t understand what had confronted her in the darkness, she stayed close to the empty tomb.

And then he came to her, and by sight she thought he was a gardener.  The Apostle John tells us, “in a garden, on the first day of the week, at early dawn, Jesus seems to be gardener.”   This is John’s way of telling us what the Apostle Paul would make explicit, that Jesus is the New Adam, again in a garden, again at the beginning, again at creation, again to take care of all that God had made.”    Bishop NT Wright “Easter was the pilot project. What God did for Jesus that explosive morning is what He intends to do for the whole creation.”  Easter puts back on course a world that has gone so catastrophically off course.

Mary thought the risen Lord was a gardener.  He was not yet familiar to her.  What was not familiar to Mary by sight became familiar when she heard him call her name.  “Mary.”  ‘Oh….you’re him!   That’s who you are!  That’s where you are!  You’re him!   Rabboni!   My Master!”   And she went to the disciples and this time her message was at the same time different and yet profoundly the same.

The first time she ran from the garden, she told the disciples “I have found an empty tomb!”  The second time she ran to tell them, she said, “I have seen the Lord!”

It is the same message.  “I have found an empty tomb!  I have seen the Lord!”

“Allelulia!   Christ is risen!   The Lord is risen indeed!  Alleluia!”

It is no longer dark.  Resurrection has happened.

Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 gives us the content of the Gospel:   God became a man in Jesus Christ; he was crucified and died, and on the third day he rose again.   And then Paul spends the next 50 or so verses unpacking on the great implications of this truth—just like Jesus was raised from the dead, and came back in reformed and real flesh, so shall we.

Among the many and great messages of Jesus’ resurrection, is the message of our own.

Death will not have the last word in our life or in this world, because through Jesus the finality of death has died.

“Death is swallowed up in victory!   O death, where is your victory?  O death, where is your sting?”

The Easter hope in part is that we too can be and through Christ will be raised to new bodily life.

And this message has meaning when you’re standing over the open casket of someone you love.   Several years ago we buried Tara’s grandfather, Grandad.   When we saw Grandad’s body at the viewing, our three year old daughter Iona, said, “Let’s just kiss him and wake him up, like in Sleeping Beauty”.    Her impulse was wrong and right at the same time.   We cannot kiss him and just wake him.    However, she was right in that Grandad was asleep waiting to be awakened.   After Jesus was raised from the dead, “Asleep” is the preferred New Testament term for death.   Because of Christ, we do not say to his disciples at their death, “Good bye”.  Rather, we say “Good night…see you at early dawn”    Those who die having believed in Jesus wait to be awakened as it were by his kiss, and we will be raised to a new life, with bodies made new and yet still familiar.   Christ’s victory over death means we no longer need to fear death.  In fact, it becomes merely a glad doorway to God.

From the movie “Into Great Silence”—an old blind monk reflects at the end, “Why be afraid of death? It is the fate of all humans. The closer one brings oneself to God, the happier one is. The faster one hurries to meet him. One should have no fear of death. On the contrary! For us, it is a great joy to find a Father once again.”

This is the Easter hope.   This is the hope of the Resurrection.  This is our Resurrection hope for later!

But in this Resurrection story that we soak in this morning, there is Resurrection hope for now.

Resurrection happens in the dark, before we even know it has occurred.   The sun is shining before dawn, we are simply waiting for our turn to see it.  Resurrection comes to us when we least expect it.    When we come to recognize it, it is because it has already happened.

Consider the tulip.    It blooms one year, and dies.   The bulb is taken out, dried out, and buried elsewhere in the ground.   When spring comes again, it blooms again.  At what moment did that resurrection begin?   Who can know?  It happened unseen in the dark.

“While it was still dark” was when Mary Magdalene went the tomb, and there she found it empty.   In other words, it was in the dark that Jesus was raised from the dead.

Dear friends, all of us have places in our life where it is very dark, things in our life that where it seems all hope is gone.   All of us after we’ve lived for just a little while, have endured deaths of various sorts—the death of loved ones, the death of dreams, the death of relationships, the death of hopes and anticipations, the death of certain desires, the death of securities, or that most challenging death, the death of self.

But fear not and lose not hope!    CS Lewis puts the simple observations so well… “Nothing that has not died will be resurrected”.

Where is it still dark for you this Easter morning?    Where does death still haunt you, in spite of resurrection of Jesus?   Do not lose hope!

Resurrection happens, because the Resurrection happened.

What word does Easter morning have for us when we encounter darkness and death in whatever form?   It is the example of Mary Magdalene.

In the dark, stay close to the empty tomb.

Next to the empty tomb, weep and be confused, but do not leave it.

For it is there that Jesus comes and speaks our name, and helps us see that what happens in the dark is resurrection.

The sun eventually rises and bathes everything light, just like it did this morning, just like it did that Easter morning 2000  years ago, at early dawn, in a garden.

“Allelulia!   Christ is risen!   The Lord is risen indeed!  Alleluia!”