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Gospel: John 20: 1-9
On the first day of the week,
Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning,
while it was still dark,
and saw the stone removed from the tomb.
So she ran and went to Simon Peter
and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them,
“They have taken the Lord from the tomb,
and we don’t know where they put him.”
So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb.
They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter
and arrived at the tomb first;
he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in.
When Simon Peter arrived after him,
he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there,
and the cloth that had covered his head,
not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.
Then the other disciple also went in,
the one who had arrived at the tomb first,
and he saw and believed.
For they did not yet understand the Scripture
that he had to rise from the dead.
The Gospel of the Lord.
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In August 2021, two-hundred children gathered with their families at their local church in Haiti. All of the children were dressed in white, preparing for their baptism.
Twenty minutes before the ceremony was set to begin, the ground beneath them started shaking.
Suddenly the roof of that poorly constructed building – the house of God nonetheless – collapsed, crushing twenty-three people, including a two-year-old child in her mother’s arms.
Somehow the mother survived.
In a country filled with such violence and poverty, this ceremony was meant to be a rare moment of hope, which evaporated in a matter of seconds, as death came like a thief in the night.
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Hearing about this tragedy led to one of only two times I’ve ever yelled at God. It felt like another senseless Good Friday.
For these victims and their families, the horror of Good Friday was not something that happened to a humble carpenter turned miracle worker from Nazareth two-thousand years ago.
Trapped beneath the rubble, it happened to them.
Much like the Blessed Mother who gazed upon her son as he was dying on the Cross, these Christians suffered unimaginable loss.
Yet their grief leads us to the very heart of the Easter message: Yes, Christ IS Risen from the dead!
But consider the circumstances.
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The resurrection is the most important event in the history of our world, yet there was not a single eyewitness with the exception of God himself.
The Lord was raised from the dead under the cover of darkness, in the predawn hours of Easter morning, while his disciples were fast asleep, exhausted from their grief.
Mary Magdalene was the first person to see the empty tomb, because she was willing to venture into the darkness – not only the dim of early dawn, but also the darkness of her grief, which brought her back to that eerie garden turned cemetery on Easter morning.
It’s there – in that place – where Easter happens; where death is defeated; where angels appear to Mary, transforming her inconsolable sorrow into uncontrollable joy.
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This must’ve been by God’s own design.
The same God who created the earth out of a formless waste, who made something out of nothing in the beginning of time, brought life out of death that first Easter morning.
These two pillars of our faith – God’s creation of the world, and the resurrection of Christ from the dead – are mind-boggling mysteries that force us to question, to ponder, to risk the audacity of belief, hoping against hope.
Today we recognize that the physical space between the hill where Christ was crucified and the tomb where his body once lay is a mere stone’s throw apart, but the spiritual journey from Good Friday to Easter Sunday requires a giant leap of faith.
For Mary Magdalene, it was almost instantaneous. For Peter, it took a bit longer. For some, perhaps some of those Haitians trapped beneath the rubble, a lifetime.
Yet it’s a leap which every Christian is invited to make because Easter makes our faith real, relevant, and deeply personal.
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I’m sure we’ve all had some “Good Friday” experiences in our own lives – a share of grief, loss, doubt, or questions about God’s existence, especially in the face of unfair suffering.
But that’s where the Risen Lord seeks to appear to us – in the darkness, in the stillness, in the silence. You might say, in the predawn hours of Sunday morning.
And, when he appears, he doesn’t speak with a litany of answers to all of our questions. He whispers a single word in our heart of hearts. It’s the same word he first spoke to his disciples after his resurrection:
“Peace.”
In Hebrew, “shalom.”
Shalom means harmony, wholeness, stillness. It implies that something – or someone – has been broken then pieced back together. It’s the type of healing which only God can do.
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“They have taken the Lord from the tomb,” an ecstatic Mary Magdalene proclaims to us today.
Yes, Christ is truly Risen! Alleluia!
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Image credits: (1) JW.org (2) Pulitzer Center (3) Vecteezy