Punching a Hole in Our Darkness
Eric Lemonholm
April 24, 2011
Easter Sunday A
Acts 10:34–43; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; Matthew 28:1-10
Punching a Hole in Our Darkness
On Good Friday, we remembered Jesus’ death on a cross.
Sometimes, you may be in a Good Friday place in your life – a place of grief and loss, a place of suffering, a God-forsaken place.
If you live and love, you will experience grief. If we have deeply loved, we will deeply grieve. The only way to live without grief is not to love, and that is not living.
We live in a Good Friday world.[ii]
A world of torture, violence, terror, and injustice.
A world of tears, a world of betrayal and death.
The Good Friday nature of the world was summed up by Jesus’ words from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Jesus truly felt forsaken by God that day upon the cross.
We dare not minimize Jesus’ sense of having been abandoned by his divine Father when he on the cross.
There are times in our lives when we can relate to Jesus and his suffering.
The people in Libya and Syria certainly can.
There are also times in our lives when we can relate to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, coming to the tomb at dawn on that first Easter morning.
2And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it.
The stone that blocked the entrance to the place of death has been rolled away.
Now that stone is just an angel’s perch.
The tomb is no barrier for the Spirit of Life!
The only men on the scene – the soldiers guarding the tomb – faint with fear, but not the two Mary’s.
The angel speaks to the women,
“Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified.6He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.7Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ This is my message for you.”
No human being was there at the moment Jesus was raised from the dead.
The Resurrection, the raising of Jesus from the dead, is a miracle of miracles, the ‘eighth day of creation,’[iii] that no human being witnessed.
As a boy, the author of Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson, was intrigued by the work of the old lamplighter who went about with a ladder and a torch, setting the street lights ablaze for the night.One evening in Edinburgh, Scotland, as young Robert stood watching with childish fascination, his parents heard him exclaim, “Look, look! There’s a man out there punching holes in the darkness!”[iv]
That’s what the Resurrection is like: God punching a hole in the darkness of the world and letting the light of Christ shine in.
You see, on Good Friday, God the Father also suffered. God suffered the loss of God’s one and only Son.
Both God the Father and God the Son suffered on that Good Friday, through the Holy Spirit of love that joins them.
Good Friday was a day of darkness and grief for God too.
The Passion of Christ is also God’s Passion.
But God did not let the cross, death, and the tomb have the final say.
God raised Jesus from the dead.
No human being saw the Resurrection itself.
But many of Jesus’ friends saw the light shining in the darkness, the Risen Jesus after his resurrection, and the two Mary’s were the first.
That’s the good news right there.
God is the loving parent of Jesus, and ours too.
God did not let God’s Son remain in the tomb.
God raised Jesus from the dead.
The eighth day of creation.
God is reordering creation with a new creation, the Resurrection of Jesus.
- Rolling away the stone that blocks the path to life.
- Punching a hole in the darkness of the world.
- Overcoming the power of death and the devil.
God has raised Jesus once and for all.
Jesus will never again be subject to death.
And when he ascends, goes to be with God, Jesus Christ will be close to each of us, through the power of the Holy Spirit.
So the two Mary’s go to tell the Good News of great joy, that Jesus Christ is risen!
And then, suddenly, there he is!
Jesus meets them on the way as they are running to share the Good News.
They heard the call to share the Good News, they answered that call, and then Jesus appears.
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary are the first persons to see the risen Jesus.
They are also the first evangelists who share the good news of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.
For a second time, the Mary’s hear the most common command in the Bible, this time from Jesus’ lips: “Do not be afraid.”
Do not be afraid.
The stone has been rolled away.
By rolling the stone away from the entrance to the empty tomb, God has punched a hole in the darkness of the world, to let the light of salvation shine in.
Jesus is the first fruits, the first to be raised to eternal life.
But he is not the last.
In one of his lighter moments, Benjamin Franklin penned his own epitaph. He didn’t profess to be a Christian, but it seems he must have been influenced by the Christian teaching of the resurrection of the body. Here’s what he wrote:The Body of B. Franklin, PrinterLike the Cover of an old Book, Its contents torn out,And stript of its Lettering and Gilding,Lies here, Food for Worms,But the Work shall not be wholly lost:For it will, as he believ’d,Appear once moreIn a new & more perfect Edition,Corrected and amended by the Author.[v]
That is the hope that we express when we confess in the Apostle’s Creed, ‘I believe in the Resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.’
The message of Easter is not just a story from the pages of history.[vi]
The Resurrection of Jesus is not just something that happened almost 2000 years ago, an event that is further in the past each Easter, diminishing in importance as it moves further into the past with each passing day.
No. The Resurrection of Jesus is the beginning of the new creation, the life and light of God breaking into the world, the beginning of the end for death and evil, for suffering and grief.
The eighth day of Creation.
God punches a hole in our darkness, and shines the light and life of Christ into our lives.
The Resurrection of Jesus was not just good news for Jesus’ friends 2000 years ago.
The Risen Jesus has everything to do with us today.
Jesus Christ is our Lord and our Salvation.
Jesus brings healing and new life to our tired old souls.
Jesus brings the Kingdom of God to us and to all creation.
All creation groans as in labor pains for the coming of God’s kingdom (Romans 8:22), through Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
That is what God raising Jesus from the dead means for us and for all today.
That is the exceedingly good news.
Amen.
Follow me on Twitter 
