WHILST IT WAS STILL DARK…

A Sermon for Holy Week 2005 By Marcus Ramshaw

It is a strange beginning to the Easter stories. I always thought Christ’s Resurrection to eternal life took place with a blinding flash of light, or, failing, that with a brilliant new dawn bursting on the horizon. The account in the Gospel of St. John, is, however, quite different. In it we are told that Mary came to the tomb whilst it was still dark – before dawn, before the sunrise. It is still the night – at a guess it most be two or three o’clock in the morning, everyone is deep in sleep.

The Resurrection of Christ takes place in a Garden. I don’t know if you have listened awake at night to the noises that come from the countryside around you. It is not a quiet place at night, the most heartening sound you hear is the singing of birds as the world prepares to wake up. The Dawn Chorus is a late arrival in this cycle, the birds have started singing long before. I guess we might call this song that of the nightingale.. The point is the birds start singing in the dark.

Rowan Williams once described the Resurrection as God’s greatest secret. I think I know what he means by that. It happens in the most silent hour, when everyone is asleep and when no-one expects it has happened. The most dramatic act of God in the material world takes place with hardly anyone ever noticing.

When you think about it this is truly astonishing – that God would, as Christians believe, reveal His hand when nobody is watching. That he would bring life from death in the middle of the night.

There are clear overtones in the Scriptures from Genesis and from the opening of St. John’s Gospel. In the Book of Genesis we read how, in the very beginning, the word was a void and the spirit of God hovered over the waters, how God separated the light from the darkness and created the world in which we live. In John Ch:1 v.5 we read how

‘The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.’

This represents the greatest hope that the Christian faith has to offer, that even in the bleakest of moments God will still surprise you. On a simplistic level this might just seem to day, believe in yourself, be determined, things will still work out, but on a spiritual level it says so much more. Its not the American Dream. It is about a change in the deepest parts of who you really are….

Whilst it was still dark……Jesus said ‘Mary’.

I always thought this was a tender expression by Christ, I am not sure who the Mary is that he is addressing. It has often been viewed as Mary Magdalene but I think that is wrong. I think it is much more likely to be his mother,, the Blessed Virgin Mary, who must have spent the past three nights heart-broken over the death of her son. – and of course, a dying man will invariably cry out for his mother. Whatever interpretation on this is to be placed, if you read the passage carefully it is ambigious.

So what should we make of this story in the context of our own lives? On the most obvious level it is clearly about finding hope in the midst of despair, turning tragedy into triumph. Surely though, there is more to it then that…..

Whilst it was still dark…..Jesus said ‘Do not cling to me.’

This is a curious twist in the story……the Risen Christ is an elusive being, we cannot get hold of him. He remains a surprise. In a literal sense this is a way in which Christ helps Mary and the Apostles assuage their grief and move on with their lives, but, more importantly, it is an encounter with this world in which we presently live and a world in which we long for. Heaven and Earth have literally met.

The Resurrection is the cornerstone of Christianity, St. Augustine remarked that: ‘We are an Easter People, and Alleluia, is Our Song’. The part of this particular Gospel story is that it happens ‘whilst it was still dark’, - a coded reference for either the most unexpected moment, the bleakest moment when we feel entirely helpless, the most unlikeliest moment or the moment when God appears to have abandoned us.

Whilst it was still dark………….God came to be with you.