Sermon for the Great Vigil of Easter, April 8, 2023
Romans 6:3-11+Psalm 114+Matthew 28:1-10
I was never one of those kids who was afraid of the dark. Maybe it’s because I had five older siblings who I believed could contain any monsters that lurked under the bed. Or maybe I secretly hoped they would look tastier than I did because they were bigger. Whatever the reason, give me the long, dark nights of winter over daylight savings time summer any day of the week.
Of course, I recognize that I am in a minority here. Many people suffer debilitating effects from winter’s darkness. Many others just love the heat of the sun over the chill of a winter’s day. And fear of the unknown, of not being able to see what is in front of us, is almost primal.
And yet, resurrection did not happen in a blast of light. It happened in the darkness of a tomb.
In her 2014 book entitled Learning to Walk in the Dark, priest and author Barbara Brown Taylor writes
I always wondered why it took "three days" for significant things to happen in the Bible--Jonah spent three days in the belly of the whale, Jesus spent three days in the tomb, Paul spent three days blind in Damascus--and now I know. From earliest times, people learned that was how long they had to wait in the dark before the sliver of the new moon appeared in the sky. For three days every month they practiced resurrection.[1]
Good things happen in the dark. Babies are knit together in the womb. Shy first kisses, too. Deep sleep.
Fireworks are pretty lame in the daytime. Stars and planets disappear in the light of day.
Resurrection waits until it is quiet and dark.
The ancient vigil of Easter originally happened before dawn. I was once part of a church that started the Vigil at 5:00 a.m. so that by the time of the first Easter proclamation, the sun was peering over the horizon. And the omelet truck was waiting in the parking lot for the choir, clergy, and congregation who wouldn’t have it any other way.
The women who arrived at the tomb did so before first light. They waited just long enough for Sabbath to end, and went in haste to the tomb, to the place where they had watched from the shadows as Joseph of Arimathea laid Jesus’s broken body in the tomb. And then the darkness came, then day, and then darkness again, and here they are, just before it is light again.
Our eyes can play tricks on us in the darkness. Is that a shadow or just a piece of cloth? Is that a hole in the ground or just a patch of dirt amidst the grass. What were they expecting to find in that morning gloom? Surely not an earthquake or an angel, or an empty tomb.
Barbara Brown Taylor also wrote in Learning to Walk in the Dark
I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.
These two women, two Marys, had walked through the valley of the shadow of death and had emerged into the blinding light of resurrection, running with fear and great joy to proclaim this Good News. The resurrection would have meant nothing, would have been nothing, without the tomb, without death, without the darkness.
The Good News of Easter is that there is no darkness so deep, no sorrow so piercing, no death so devastating, that God cannot bring from it resurrection.
English poet Jay Hulme has a poem in his collection called Backwater Sermons told from the perspective of Joseph, the husband of Mary:
He knew his son
would outshine him
from the beginning,
so taught this child the
only thing he could:
The skill of taking
blades and wood,
and turning death
into something
else entirely.[2]
Or as a familiar prayer says, “Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace” (BCP 101).
He took that wood and made of it something else entirely.
So, don’t be afraid of the dark. Just because the darkest hour is just before dawn doesn’t mean that dawn isn’t coming. That darkness is a promise.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/25337533-learning-to-walk-in-the-dark
[2] The poet shared this poem on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JayHulmePoet/status/1642463480467845120/photo/1