“From Darkness to Recognition”

On Good Friday, I posted a link on the Christ Church Facebook page to a song called “For the songless hearts” by Jon Guerra, and we listened to a part of the song this morning before the service began.  The chorus of the song says

When He was laid in the tomb

He laid right next to you

No one could hear your hopeless sorrow

But there He could hear you

When He was sad and wept alone

Child, He wept for you

When you were dead in a song-less slumber

He sang and died for you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLgsAVN9_9U

The singer-songwriter wrote “There’s a lot of hubbub around Easter weekend in churches. And for good reason. But our hearts can't always cooperate with the prescribed mood of the Easter season: “Celebrate! Be happy! Sing!” Sometimes the last thing we are able to do is sing. Thankfully, Good Friday and Easter are not about mustering a mood.”

We are expected to rejoice on Easter Day – Alleluiah, we shout, Christ is Risen!  But we so often forget that the first Easter day began with darkness, with grief, with weeping. And Easter can be that way for us.

Even as Christians, our days are not always triumphant and shiny bright. We arrive in church – maybe this is you today – tired, unsure, carrying loads and burdens that nobody knows about. Maybe we do not feel like proclaiming Christ is Risen! But here’s the good news: Easter doesn’t begin with certainty; it begins with showing up in the dark.  God is already at work, even when all we can see is darkness.

 In the reading from John’s gospel we heard how Mary came to the tomb when it was still dark – both physically dark, before sunrise, and spiritually dark, as her heart was broken. She did not come to that garden for any other reason than to weep and to mourn. She had no expectations of resurrection, of angels, of joy. That first Easter day began with nothing but confusion, grief and incomplete faith. But already there, in the shadows, stood the gardener. Already there, already at work.

Then we have Simon Peter and the other disciple arriving – they too are grieving the death of their Master; they are, like Mary, hoping for some clarity about what Jesus’ life and messy death were all about. They enter the tomb and see – something. There is no real comprehension of what they have seen, but there was, in those neatly folded grave clothes, some glimmer of hope, for we have those words “he saw and believed”. He didn’t understand, but his aching soul grasped at the knowledge that there was something more going on here than he could fully understand.

And that is what faith is about. It is so often partial, it is intuitive, it is unclear…but we believe. We believe more than we understand – but that is enough to begin. We do not understand why there is grief, and war and suffering – but we still believe that God loves us and this world with a love that sent him to the cross. That is enough to begin.

Mary is left there, in the early morning sun, weeping, lost and in pain. But her Lord, her Master, is nearby. He is there. It is simply that she does not recognise him. For some of us it may seem impossible that Mary does not recognise the man she has followed for three years, the man she loves and serves. How can it be that she thinks he is an everyday, unremarkable gardener.

I have read commentators suggesting that Mary didn’t recognise Jesus because her vision was blurred with tears. Her sadness, her burdens, her difficulties all got in the way of her recognising that something miraculous had happened. And I can imagine that this is perfectly feasible.

After all, how often does this happen in our own lives? How often do we become so wrapped up in our problems, our feelings, our sorrows that we fail to see that Christ is there with us in the midst of it all.  Where are we looking straight at hope and not seeing it? Where is Christ present, but we assume he is something ordinary and unremarkable?

Resurrection doesn’t always look like we expect it to. We have preconceptions about what God’s presence with us will feel like. We think that being a follower of Christ will mean this, or this. But these things are so often hidden in plain sight, and we simply do not recognise them because we are expecting something else. But if our eyes are open, if we can shift our burdens away, we begin to notice and acknowledge the light of resurrection breaking through into our lives.

Then comes the moment when Mary understands: one word changes everything. Jesus says her name. For her, the resurrection became real when she heard Jesus say “Mary”. She was recognised, she was acknowledged, she was loved. And this is perhaps the moment when we too can understand: Resurrection becomes real when it becomes personal. Easter is not an idea; it is not a doctrine: it is a relationship. Easter is not just Christ is risen, but Christ knows your name. Christ loves you.

Mary did not find Jesus; he found her. He called her name and she knew him. Jesus calls our name and we recognise his voice amid the pain and the grief and the confusion.

And so, together with Mary, we can go from weeping to proclaiming resurrection, and with her we can become witnesses to the Risen Christ “I have seen the Lord!” For her, the step from grief to joy was in the space between two heartbeats. For us, it may take a little longer, but we are called on to move from our sorrow and confusion to being witnesses to the love which conquers death, and which brings us into relationship with God once more.

Earlier I mentioned a song, which echoes the assurance that, like Jesus was in the garden, unseen, unrecognised yet present in all his resurrected glory, he is there in our lives, even if we fail to see him in our preoccupations and worries. The song- writer says:  Good Friday and Easter are about remembering that there is One who meets us in our life and meets us in our death. He sings for us - and over us - when we can’t.

Jesus meets us in our life and in our death. Jesus meets us where we are.  If we are in the darkness of grief and confusion, Jesus is there. If we are believing but not understanding, doubting but hoping, Jesus is there. If we are looking and yet not seeing, Jesus is there. And he is there when we finally understand that his love is all that we need. From our places of darkness he gently leads us through the confusion and the searching, to a relationship where we understand that we are called, and loved, and recognised. And with that comes an understanding that the mourners have become messengers.

“Easter begins in the dark, but it does not end there—because the risen Christ still speaks our name, still meets us where we are, and still sends us out to say: I have seen the Lord.”