While It Was Still Dark

A Sermon Based Upon John 20: 1-10,  NRSV

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Easter Sunday, April 1^st,  2018 

Welcome to Easter 2018.  Spring has sprung.  Life continues.  Warmth is renewing our part of the world.  Easter is a beautiful time of year. 

Traditionally, Easter has been the day to celebrate life’s promise and renewal.  While I can’t remember Easter bonnets, I do remember ‘Peter Cottontail hopping down the bunny trail’.  I also remember shopping with mom, putting on new clothes, dying colorful eggs for my Easter basket.  I also remember full churches, glorious, uplifting music, and family gatherings which including hiding and hunting all those Easter eggs.

Easter can be celebrated in many ways, but we never fully understand the promise of Easter until we find ourselves walking through some of the darkest moments of life.  In it is that desperate, disquieting place, we will come to grasp the impact of Easter’s greatest promise.

,…CAME TO THE TOMB (1).

John’s version of Easter is personal, opening with Mary Magdalene coming ‘to the tomb’ while it was still dark.    The darkness was more than physical, because Jesus had been falsely convicted and was cruelly crucified.  It was then, three days before, that for the first followers of Jesus, everything went dark.

Between Friday and Sunday, it was during the stillness and silence of the Sabbath that Jesus’ disciples were getting used to the dark.   Maybe you haven’t been in this kind of ‘dark’ before, but you might just imagine what it feels like when you lose power during an ice storm.  If the emotional weight of spiritual darkness is anything like this, we would want it to be quickly over.  We would want to move on, and fast. Is this what Mary wants as she approaches Jesus’ tomb all alone?

The ‘darkness’ of loss, grief, and heartbreak is difficult to bear.  Life without the one who matters most to us is difficult to imagine.  When my father died, I wondered who I could talk to, discuss problems, or gain advice from.  I had to get used to the ‘dark’ of not having his voice, his presence, or his companionship.  I had to get used to ‘never again’. 

My mom struggled more than me.  She was already frail, but Dad’s death, accompanied with the loss of her health and finally her home too, caused her to lose all desire to live another day.  In was Christmas and she couldn’t light a single candle of hope in her heart.  We tried to give her love, a place, and encouragement, but she seemed to lose all focus.  She died one year and one month later. 

Darkness can kill you, especially if you don’t face it with hope.   Was Mary coming ‘to the tomb’ to face her loss, or was she finding it hard to let go?   We really don’t know.  Maybe it was both.  We do know that when she found the stone moved, and the entrance to the tomb opened, she did muster the courage to look straight in.  In a way, this is the task all of us face, when we too must face and learn to walk toward the tomb in unwanted darkness.

But there’s something worse than physical loss in this ‘darkness’ that Mary was walking through.  Jesus’ death had been so cruel and unjust.  It was more than the loss of a friend, a religious leader, or even a great teacher.  Luke’s gospel reminds us that the disciples were disappointed over the loss of a dream.  On the Emmaus road two of Jesus’ disciples were overheard saying, “…We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel….” (24:21).   When they lost Jesus, they lost hope in the future.   They felt that Israel’s tomorrow was gone.  Instead of good overcoming evil, evil had overcome all the good that had been awakened in Jesus.   This was a foreboding darkness of soul, mind, and spirit.   It wasn’t just Jesus the man who had died, but hope for changing their world had died with him on the cross.

What do such depressing, dark feelings of grief, loss, and disappointment have to do with Easter?   This is something I tried to explain to my mother, as we were sitting around her dining table, writing thank you notes after my Dad’s funeral.   She stopped writing and blurted out: “I just don’t know what I’m going to do!”  I answered, “Oh, yes, Mom, we know what we will do.  We will do what we have always believed!  This is the time when what Dad believed, and what we have always believed, and still believe matters most.”

 

HE SAW THE LINEN WRAPPINGS… (6)

When it gets dark, you had better have your faith close to your heart.   When you can’t see, can’t think, or can’t feel your way forward, only what is deeply embedded within will guide you when you can’t see your way through.  The dark will throw you off your game.  The dark shake you to your core.  The dark is not a good time to figure everything out, but it is the time when you must tape into what will give you the resilience to keep walking, to keep going, and to keep on living, even when you can’t find your way.

Faith gives this kind of strength to us, but the question is what gives us this kind of faith?  What kind of faith will help us see beyond what we face?  Easter does not avoid the dark, but we are to take Mary and the other disciples by the hand, and walk straight through whatever happens, so that we too can discover the hope that Easter faith can give.

When Mary saw found the stone had been removed, she immediately thought the worst.  We do this too.   We often look at the dark side especially when all light is hidden.  Mary thought the body had been stolen, so she ran to tell Peter.  Peter and another disciple rush to the tomb.  Pausing at the entrance, they see the ‘linen wrappings lying there’ but don’t go in.  When they finally muster up the courage, they enter and not only see the ‘wrappings’, but they see the face ‘cloth’ lying in a ‘place by itself’ (20:7).  

With this discovery of the rolled up wrappings, John says something unique.  No other gospel writer says anything about a (face or head) ‘cloth’ rolled up, folded, lying by itself.   This detail has special meaning for John, since no other gospel mentions it.   John wants us to see the specific place in the dark, where hope began.  Seeing the wrappings lying on the floor, and the face cloth neatly ‘rolled up’ and ‘placed by itself’ bears testimony against any theft of the body.  Who would steal a dead body and leave these expensive wrappings?  What thief would take time to fold the grave clothes?   Of course, we are not yet to the full revealing of the resurrected Christ, but we are already headed toward hope.    These intentionally placed wrappings are the first pointers toward what is yet to come.  Big hope is already breaking loose in some very small ways.

When a doctor at Wake Forest Baptist Health was sharing with chaplains and pastors about his work with terminally ill patients, he told us surprisingly, that he spent a lot of time talking to about miracles.  “If you are really listening to the patients”, he told us, “you will need to be prepared to talk a lot about miracles.”   I was not expecting this from a physician, especially not from one who was also a teacher of physicians.   

That doctor reminded me that giving hope is always like unwrapping a miracle.  “Every sickness can’t be cured,” he said,  “but it can always be healed.”   Healing is always a miracle, and it is up to us to unwrap the miracle of hope.  Hope is God’s promise of love to us, no matter what comes to us, whether it is incurable disease, death or disappointment.  Hope is God’s promise that shines in every darkness.  But to find this way to all healing, we will always need to ‘unwrap’ the miracle of God’s promise.  Only God’s promise remains above and beyond the cure because is the healing that is always outside of what we know now. 

Whatever these folded, rolled up, neatly placed grave clothes meant for John’s readers, in John’s story they point to the first evidence of concrete hope.  These wrappings were positioned as if the body had vaporized straight through them.  They point to hope’s most calculated probability.   These wrappings point to love’s possibility and love’s promise.  Even while Jesus own disciples were still standing in the dark, they were already standing in the twilight of a brand new day.    

I do not intend mere theological double speak when I say, that only love promises us life, because love is life’s source.  These wrappings left in the tomb, point us to love’s greatest promise, which will always be life.  If love can’t promise life, then what is love for?  And if life doesn’t promise love, then what is life for?  

These wrappings were the very first marks of God’s loving promise, pointing to the life that always comes from God’s love.   Think of it this way.   While Lazarus, who was raised by Jesus, still had his wrappings on because he would need them again, these wrappings  where intentionally left by Jesus.  They were left, because they are God’s loving promise that in Jesus resurrection something drastically changed forever.  Even though Mary and Peter were still looking into the tomb, they were always seeing what love has now unwrapped and unleashed into the world. 

THEY DID NOT YET UNDERSTAND

Ironically, only the smallest gesture, the slightest expression, or the simplest word of hope can point you toward the Easter’s promise.  

Not long ago, I saw a heartbreaking news report of how a dying young mother left notes, and even recordings and videos of encouragement for her young child that she would never watch grow up in the world.   That child would never remember her mother alive, but the mother wanted her child to just how much her mother loved her, and she wanted her child to also know how valiantly her mother fought the good fight to live.  So, when she realized she was going to lose this battle, she was determined not to lose hope or love for her child.  She wanted her child to have this special gift of love and hope from her mother.  Different messages were supposed to be viewed each year on her daughter’s birthday and on other special occasions right up to the day of her marriage.  Can you imagine what it would be like to receive and unwrap such ‘love’ messages from her deceased mother whose love never died?   http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1385134/Brave-cancer-mother-leaves-video-messages-advice-guide-daughter-life-bullying-sexuality.html.

Easter is not a message from the dead, since Jesus appeared to his disciples.   Easter is, however, our living hope of life over death.   Easter is the promise of love we still receive from the Christ who lives, who reigns, and who is victorious over death.   The living, indwelling, resurrected Christ is the source of our hope of life.  There can be no full- proof, guaranteed, scientific knowledge for eternal life, because science has neither the capacity to trust, nor can it see beyond now.  Only with eyes of faith, can we humans find our way to navigate through the dark of death toward the hope that “no eye has seen nor ear has heard‘.  Easter is the trust of God’s loving promise of life; life that came to you once, and will come back again.    

E. Stanley Jones, the famed Missionary to India, told of visiting the Mosque of Saint Sophia in Istanbul.  This mosque, located in the former early capital of Christianity, was built over the ruins of one of the largest churches of the ancient world.  All the Christian symbols were destroyed and Arabic architecture and markings were put in their place.   One day, as Jones craned his neck, looking up into the building’s dome, he grabbed a companion by the sleeve and cried out, “Look!  He’s coming back!   Through the decaying plaster and paint that was centuries old, the image of the ascending Christ was becoming visible again. “You can’t wipe him out!” the missionary said, “He keeps coming back!”  (Setzer, Encounters..., p. 149). 

If you are walking in the dark this Easter, you need to see the Christ who keeps coming back.  You can see him, not by sight, but by faith in his promise like ‘the other disciple’ did when he went looked into the tomb and ‘believed’ (2:8).   Faith is the only way to see your way through the dark.   You don’t have to ‘understand’ because the disciples still didn’t either (20:9). It is not understanding that gives us faith or hope, but as Augustine said, it is faith that comes first; ‘faith that seeks understanding’.   

This kind of ‘faith’ is not mere belief, but faith means trust.  You don’t find your way through the dark by believing in something or having understanding of everything, but you find your way by trusting Him.   It is love that trusts and believes in the promise of resurrection.   

When a young apprentice artist took his painting of Jesus to his teacher, his teacher responded, “You don’t love him enough, or you would paint him better  (Barclay)!”  

Loving and trusting Christ is what Easter still means.  It does not mean believing in a day, having your own faith, or believing in some form of soul immorality.  No, Easter, means that Jesus has left the ‘cloth’ in its place, so that you will seek, love and trust him.  Only by trusting and loving him, can you ‘come to the tomb’ and find your way to the light of life, even ‘while it is still dark.’   Amen.