Dean’s Sermon, Easter, 2008

Episcopal Cathedral Church of Saint John
Wilmington, Delaware

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb.

It was still dark when Mary Magdalene ventured forth to the burial area nearby the place where Jesus had been crucified. John does not tell us why she was going to the tomb, and why she did so in the dark. And while at first read, it seems she went alone, we can’t be sure. For when she reports that the sealing stone had been removed from the entrance to the tomb, she says, not I, but we don’t know where they have laid him.

For what ever reason she went out in the dark, and no matter whether she went alone or with others, the darkness of the early morning was a fitting match for the darkness of the soul that Mary was experiencing. The march up to the crucifixion had been emotionally draining, from the exaltation of the entry into Jerusalem to the devastation of Pilate’s death sentence pronouncement on Jesus. And the crucifixion itself, with the finality of removing Jesus’ corpse from the cross and having it prepared and placed in a tomb, had left no doubt that the way she had followed with Jesus had now come to an end. She had lost a friend, a teacher, and the meaning for her life.

It was a dark and chaotic time for Mary and the unsealed tomb only added to that chaos, only affirmed the darkness. And yet we know, that it is often in such circumstances that God’s presence, God’s activity is manifested, that God brings light from the darkness. That out of chaos, comes life. The story of creation itself testifies to this: The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep… God said let there be light… And in that light, God spoke forth creation. And Mary experienced this that morning.

After Peter and John leave the tomb having confirmed that it was indeed empty, she was left alone in emotional and psychological pain. But darkness had its last grasp upon her soul. In the midst of that condition, the light dawned for Mary, not the light of day, but the light of revelation, the light of a new reality, indeed, the light that ushers in a new creation. The tomb was empty, not so much because it lacked a corpse, but because it lacked power. It could not contain life, because life belonged to God.

The power that had caused the death of Jesus could not diminish Jesus because the life of Jesus was greater than the sting of death, and the power of God greater than the powers of the world. The kingdom of this world, Rome, had pitted itself against the kingdom of God, and it was dawning on Mary that it had lost. This is exactly what Jesus had taught his disciples to pray for, to pray for God’s kingdom: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your Name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. On Good Friday, the kingdom of this world had won a tactical victory; on Easter morning the strategic victory of God is revealed. The tomb is empty because it cannot contain the kingdom of God.

This Easter experience affirms the prologue of John that we read at Christmas:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.

Mary’s experience of the living Jesus, her experience of God’s strategic victory, opens her senses to the good news that the enfleshed Word of God, the Word of creation, had not been stilled. Mary delivers her testimony of the victory of God’s Word to the disciples. Her dark moment of the soul, now banished by the light by which she can now say, I have seen the Lord.

This was a transforming moment for Mary, just as it is for Christian people in all times and places who experience the resurrection. Such experience moves one out of self contemplation to an acute awareness of others; from centering on ones own ambition and need, to concern for the fulfillment of others and their well being; from the idolatry of self, to acknowledgement of the holiness of God.

But, the empty tomb is a sacrament of more than that. It is the certification that the kingdom of God has been established as the norm for all kingdoms: justice for the weak; fair use of the bounty of the earth for all, by all; nurture of the whole of creation as it is Gods first and humankinds to benefit from second; and a deep and abiding respect for the sanctity of life.

Faithfully,
The Very Reverend William B. Lane

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