“EASTER
DAWN”
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A sermon preached Readings:
Isaiah 25:6-9, John 20:1-18 |
“Early in the
morning, when it was still dark…” (John
20:1).
There’s an old song from
the early 60s
which has always stuck in my mind for some reason –
I suspect because its popularity coincided with
one of the sadly rather frequent low points in my teenage love life.
Maybe you remember it – it
was called “The end of
the world”:
Why
does the sun go on shining
Why does the sea rush to shore
Don't they know it's the end of the world
Cause you don't love me anymore….
More recently, in the
funeral scene from “Four Weddings and a Funeral”
Matthew (played by John Hannah)
delivers the oration at his lover’s funeral
and to sum up his devastation and loss,
he reads WH Auden’s “Stop all the
clocks” – with the final lines
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Cries
of anguish – Why does the sun bother to shine?
Lets dismantle it, we don’t need it any more,
for day and night is the same dark place for me now.
My
life has lost hope, light and meaning.
So
perhaps felt Mary Magdalene as she comes in the small hours
“before it was light” to Joseph’s tomb.
She
stumbles through the night hours, both physically and spiritually.
She
too caring little at that point whether the sun shone -
for her life was now totally overshadowed – Jesus was dead –
her hopes dashed – her future empty.
Nothing
left but that hollowness in the pit of her stomach,
and a darkness in her soul to match the dark night shadows surrounding her.
I
remember a few years ago attending an Easter dawn communion
a bit like the one on Hay Tor this morning.
Unfortunately those of us organizing the service had got the time wrong –
and so what was meant to be a dawn communion
beginning in the first half light of the dawn
actually began in absolute pitch darkness so impenetrable
that it was only with the greatest of difficulty
that you could make out where the other people were,
let alone who they were.
Perhaps
Mary would have felt at home there on that cold and bleak hilltop –
“early in the morning when it was still dark”
the outer darkness echoing her inner gloom and emptiness.
BUT
then as the familiar story unfolds,
she meets someone also out at this hour –
The
shadowy figure in the gloom –
is it the gardener perhaps? - says Mary –
and in a flash, the truth (and note the phrase),
the truth dawns on her –
and
as the first rays of warm sunlight creep over the rock of the empty tomb,
her whole life is transformed by the first glimmer of realization
that there is hope and love and life, and that after all they triumph.
So
of course it was for us at that all too early morning communion -
imperceptibly and without drama –
we suddenly realized that now we could see,
for dawn had crept upon us as we sang
and a new day was replacing our darkness.
As
for Mary, so for us the light dawned.
Of
course that first Easter Day started with Mary –
but it ended as evening approached, with two disciples walking towards Emmaus,
heading into the sunset as they travelled West from Jerusalem -
They, like Mary are filled with inner gloom –
but like her, they too find the light of Christ,
as he brings the light of his presence into their sunset walk.
So
100 years later, perhaps reflecting on that story,
one of the early Christian Saints, St Clement, would write
“Christ has turned all our sunsets into dawns.”
It is said that in Tuscany archaeologists have an
easy way
of telling whether tombs date from the Christian or pre-Christian era.
They face in opposite directions.
Before Christ, tombs faced towards the West – to the
setting sun –
for death meant the closing of life’s day and the passing into eternal night.
But after Christ, the tombs all faced East –
for the dead looked to the dawn of new life in Christ.
Someone
was once talking to the great Indian writer Rabindranath
Tagore
about someone who had died.
They described the death as like putting out a lamp.
He replied –
“Death is putting out the lamp, because the dawn has
come”.
Perhaps here I
can add a personal word of thanks
to everyone here who has been so supportive of our
family in recent days
as we have begun to come to terms with the death of my mother.
More than one of you have commented on the appropriateness of the season –
it has been a sad time for us as a family –
and yet as we go up the motorway tomorrow for the funeral on Tuesday,
we shall mourn the putting out of the lamp,
but we will nonetheless like my mother’s namesake Mary in the garden,
rejoice in the dawn of new life in Christ.
We
all know something of the dark sorrow of Mary Magdalene:
Ø For some of you, as for our
family, that darkness is the death of a loved one
Ø Others will think of other
sorrows and dark places
-
perhaps for it is not a person but love which has died.
Or maybe for whatever reason
sorrow or fear or despair or brokenness prevail –
I don’t know if
you know Toni Morrison's prize winning novel, Beloved.
It tells the
story of Sethe, a slave from Kenntucky.
She has been treated like dirt by the slave owners, beaten and raped.
She gives birth to a daughter, unnamed but beloved,
but she kills her baby rather than allow her to suffer as her mother has
done.
It is a harrowing tale.
At the end of the book, one of the other characters,
looking back over their heart breaking journey, says to Sethe:
"me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody.
We need some kind of tomorrow."
So Mary
Magdalene weeps by the tomb and reviews the ruin of her past experiences –
she has had more yesterdays than anybody -
what she needs is the dawn of a new day.
And of
course what she discovers is that in her darkest hour just before the dawn
Christ is indeed there sharing her darkness and death and despair,
already standing there in the shadows of the garden
before her tearful eyes can make him out
just waiting when all seems quite hopeless,
gently to lay his hand on her shoulder and
softly speaking her name
and whispering the word of love and hope on Easter morn.
And
so for Mary are the Scriptures fulfilled:
Ø
“Weeping may linger for the
night, but joy comes in the morning.”
Ø "I
will give you a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of
mourning...
I will raise you on eagles wings,
bear you on the breath of dawn, make you to shine like the sun..."
Ø
The steadfast love of the Lord never
ceases,
his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning.
The modern
American preacher William Sloane Coffin
had a son called Alex who was been killed in a car crash –
his car swerved off a bridge into Boston harbour.
On the Sunday after the
funeral,
his father gave a memorable sermon which began
like this:
[“The Times Greatest
Sermons of the Last 2000 Years” ed Thornton &
Washburn]
“As almost all of you know, a week ago last Monday night,
driving in a terrible storm, my son Alexander,
who enjoyed beating his old man in every game and in every race,
beat his father to the grave”
and he went on to talk about his heart breaking and being healed.
I
want to quote now the final words of that sermon -
They are surely words
·
for every broken and grieving heart –
·
for every graveside,
·
for every Mary Magdalene,
·
for everyone who has had too much yesterday and looks for a tomorrow,
·
for every child of darkness searching for the light –
This is how Alex’s father finished his sermon–
and I offer them to you as my final words on this Easter Morn:
“And finally I know that when Alex beat me to the
grave,
the finish line was not Boston harbour in the middle of the night.
If a week ago last Monday a lamp went out,
it was because, for him at least, the Dawn had come.
So I shall – so let us all –
seek consolation in that love which never dies,
and find peace in the dazzling grace that always is.”