Before we move on from Easter (which we shouldn’t given that Easter is a 50-day season running from Easter Sunday to Pentecost), here is one more reflection from Fleming Rutledge’s Means of Grace.

Have you buried someone? If you haven’t, you will. You will come to know the cold clasp of death. You will know it in the literal sense, when someone who means the world to you is gone, when you yourself must stare it in the face. You will come to know it in a hundred ways, as the death of a friendship, the death of a career, the loss of youth, the loss of health, the death of happiness, the death of dreams. It will seem to you like the tomb of hope. This, in part, is what John’s Gospel means by night. The Gospel of John, chapter 20, verse 1: “On the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early while it was still dark.

While it was still dark. In the middle of the night. This is the night of the end of human hope. Why does Mary come? Why do any of us go to cemeteries? Regardless of the burial customs, the symbolism is the same. The reign of Death is stark, merciless, irrevocable…

We are not told why Mary went to the tomb in the middle of the night, but one thing is for sure:  she was not expecting the resurrection. So when she came to the tomb in the dark and saw that the stone had been removed, she ran to Peter and the others with the news that Jesus’s body had been stolen. What other explanation could there be for any empty tomb? And so the men run to see for themselves.

Remember this:  the evangelist wants us to know that the resurrection was truly inconceivable. The two disciples did not know what had happened until they got there. It was the sight of the cloths that revealed to them what was otherwise unthinkable. No grave robber would stop to unwrap the winding sheet. Jesus’s body had simply passed through them.

The resurrection happened at night. No one was there when it happened. When the women and the disciples arrived, he was gone. He arose from the kingdom of Death and carried away its spoils. The rising son revealed the victory already accomplished. And so the risen, living, reigning Christ says to us today as he said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)

Let our answer be hers: “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God” - and in believing, receive the gift of eternal life and life in his name (John 20:30-31)

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!  Alleluia!