Sunrise… Easter Sunday

EASTER SUNDAY

Sunrise

“Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene…”John 19:25

“…At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.” John 19:41-42

“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb…” John 20:1a

It was still dark.

Sometimes darkness is so thick, you can touch it. Drown in it. And when it takes you, when you give it ground, the shadows wrap around your mind, your heart, your soul, setting up camp in all the empty spaces; spaces where light once dwelt. And you scrape your skin to feel anything, but your senses are captive to the numbing dark.

Mary of Magdella. She had let the darkness in. Somehow, sometime, it had flooded her, overpowered her. She’d become lost in an always rising fog, lost in the ever present, ever thickening dark, scraping, screaming, living half alive in the realm of the dead. Seven demons had bound her, chained her in darkness (Luke 8:2-3). And she had stumbled lost.

Shackled.

In the dark.

Alone.

And there in the dark He’d found her.

Light found her.

Wholeness found her.

Hope found her.

And she’d found herself again, her five senses: the cool earth beneath her feet, the warm sunlight on her skin, the fragrant inhale of a breath drawn in, all the sounds and sensations of a life fully alive once more. Free. Unbound. Alive.

And she’d followed Him who set her free. Along this road. This long road He had been on since before time began. This road that had led Him right to her, right to where she’d been stuck. There. In the dark. Alone.

She’d followed Him everywhere. But she could not understand His path even as she followed Him. And now. It felt like the end of the road. This path seemed to suddenly disappear beneath her feet, like a rug pulled from underneath all hope. This road that dead-ended with the haunting spectre of all His love torn wide open, His grace dripping down, all her hope draining away into the encroaching darkness once more.

“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark…” John 20:1a

It was still dark.

And she was in it. Once more. Alone. Her heart all hollowed out by grief, her world emptied out of the one person who’d brought her back to life.

Grief. It drains a soul, seeping life, and in the gaping void anything can come. The last few days had she feared the rising darkness would bind her once more? Take her back?

It’s strange how loss can leave you so emptied out on the inside and so disconnected from the outside. The outside world right there, just above your skin. Like all that’s left is a brittle shell. Echoing. Distant. The senses, they all collapse into this stormy sea of despair and the waves crash and roar and drown out all sound, drench out all touch, saturate all presence but the ever present dark. The presence of the hole. The gaping wound in reality where He once dwelt. Where she once dwelt. With Him.

Numb. Hollow. lost. Alone. She stumbles, wanders, drags in the dark. Her feet taking her to the only place her heart knows to go. Feels to flee.

To Him.

To the garden. Tomb.

“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb…” John 20:1a

It all began in a garden. This life stitched into time. The beginning of all our human consciousness began in a garden with God. We didn’t begin with a loud bang. We didn’t begin with a “Let there be- and it was so”. We didn’t begin with words at all. We began with mud.

And breath.

And the surrounding chorus of abundant garden life singing us awake. It was all a gift. Then. It was all His love. Then. And how humankind was loved and chosen and blessed into being.

But the breath that He gave in that garden long ago causing us to wake, bringing us to life, became the life that took His breath away. From Him. And yet He gave it anyway. Our breath. Our life.

His life.

Eve’s choice to let the darkness in became Mary’s lived reality. The lived experience of all humankind. Life devoid of breath. Life in the dark. Distant. From Him.

Now she is here stumbling numb, looking for God, God who had been nailed to a cross, paying the debt that began in that first garden long ago. Paying her debt. Paying our debt. Paying the debt of every human being that ever breathed the breath of God.

And now His garden is a tomb. Holding the beaten body of God.

What was Mary hoping to find there in this third garden of God?

Hope?

“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.” John 20:1

She comes to the tomb where God had lain to find only an emptiness, ringing hollow. The stone was gone, the tomb echoed empty, as vacuous as the hollowness of her. Without Him.

She looks into the cave, the hole like the void that emptied out humanity’s wholeness, the gaping wound in all our hearts where God once dwelt before time began. We’re all dead-centre empty tombs without His living presence, His breath of life first given. God, YHWH was always meant to dwell in human hearts. His throne is there. Our home is there. But in the first garden we ripped out His throne and allied ourselves to the dark.

And this is the mysterious love of God: He respected our humanity, our Imago Dei, our human volition so much that He let us do it. And then He picked up the trail of broken pieces that we left strewn behind as we left.

His garden.

Empty of us.

As we left ourselves.

Empty of Him.

And He, in grace that loved us anyway, worked with us in our brokenness, broken relationships, broken promises, broken people, broken world. Like a kintsugi potter mending with gold, God clothed Adam and Eve, marked Cain with grace, partnered with Noah to salvage, called Abraham to join Him on the road, planted a people to bless the whole world and promised Himself to them, to us.

God promised to bless this whole breathless world with His renewing Breath once more. He promised He Himself would come. He whispered it down through time, love letters borne on water, messages in bottles, in circumstances, stories, psalms, prophecies and poetry, everything laced with this one simple message: Your God will come for you. He will come to save you from the darkness, to scoop you up in arms of grace and restore your human heart once more. He will come.

And He did.

Come.

Knowing the cost.

And they did. We did.

Make Him pay.

And now here they laid Him.

Dead.

In the dark.

In a cave.

In the heart of the earth¹.

The Garden where God dwelt with human beings became for Him a garden tomb.

And yet He came anyway.

Recklessly.

From before time began².

And now Mary comes. Lost. Lost in so much lonely darkness like every human soul that ever lived ever since that first day in that first garden where the tear began. All of us lonely longing for the connection that nothing else can replace no matter how we try. And we do try. But our lies always emaciate and our script lines never satiate. And we clang empty in the core of us. Absent of ourselves.

As empty as His tomb.

His grave no more.

“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.” So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”” John 20:1-2

Mary assumes, not that He is risen, but that He was stolen. His body taken. She assumes human treachery over Holy intervention because before Him this had been her lived reality. And now after Him? She saw Him die, His life run down and puddle in the earth, His wounds ripped wide open to the scorn of humankind. She saw His heart break apart as her heart broke with His. These memories lingering drown her and drench her in disorientating grief. The images flash and roll in her mind like a thundering storm. Remembering the day Creation turned on its Creator. Reliving humankind’s inhumanity to God. What have we done? What has humankind done?

She was there when He took His last painful breath.

He died.

And all her hope died with Him.

Human darkness is all that’s left. All the never ending darkness just keeps spreading. Reaching. Taking.

They have taken Him. They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!

It was still dark. It’s so hard to see in the dark…

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