Easter Sunday: While It Was Still Night
Table Talk
Setting the Table
You are welcome here. Find a quiet place to center down for a time of reflection and prayer. Take a deep breath. Check in with yourself. Allow yourself this moment to sit away from the stresses that surround you, and simply be present.
Consider a flower that you have recently seen in your yard. Remember how just weeks ago it wasn’t there. Now take a moment to consider the new life and growth that is happening within the dirt to make that possible even though you can’t see it.
Let this blessing
gather itself around you.
You will not remember
the words—
they do not matter.
All you need to remember
is how it sounded
when you stood
in the place of death
and heard the living
call your name.
—Jan Richardson
John 20:1, 11-18
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb...Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. She turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher).
Food for Thought
While it was still night, the disciples slept with an exhaustion of sorrow.
While it was still night, the earth trembled in despair.
While it was still night, the hope of the world lay closed inside the tomb.
As I write, I am aware of the night that surrounds me, and not just the midnight that rests outside my windows. I also feel the night of this Holy Week journey that holds within it betrayal and grief, death and despair. And I am deeply aware of the night that seems to have engulfed us in this year. The night of a global pandemic, of incredible loss and isolation, of depression and loneliness, of hate and division, of anger and racism, of the violence growing around us.
This year it has felt especially difficult to look to the morning of Easter when all around us is still night.
I confessed this to a friend, and he shared with me a beautiful tradition that slave communities practiced upon the birth of a new child. In some communities, when a baby was born, they would greet the new child with the question “Are you the one?” Are you the one who will liberate us from this slavery? Are you the one who will break these chains? Are you the one who will bear God’s freedom and love to your people? In the life and face of this beautiful babe, they opened themselves to the possibility of God’s radical, redemptive, and resurrecting love. While still living through the night of slavery, these communities witnessed to the possibility of what a faithful God was raising up around and within them.
While it was still night Mary gathered herself from within her grief and journeyed to the tomb. We do not know what moved her to go, what called her to stand in this place of death - we only know that she went, and from the mouth of an empty tomb she heard the living call her name, “Mary.”
While it was still night, divine grief broke open the world with holy possibility. While it was still night, the world trembled, and the radical, transformative love of God gave life where once was death - hope in the midst of despair. While it was still night, Mary witnessed the resurrecting spirit blowing around and within her.
It was the same resurrecting spirit that preached justice from the mouths of the prophets, that compelled fishermen to drop their nets, and that brought to the table the sick, the hungry, the dying, the cast out. It is the same life-giving spirit that lifts up the lowly and humbles the proud, that offers radical welcome and belonging, that creates and sustains life, that moves us into our better and truer selves.
Even in the midst of the chaos – even when the world is falling apart around us – even when life is swallowing you whole – even when we think humanity is beyond redemption, this Easter story reminds us that resurrection does not just come in the joy of the morning. It is a transformation of the soul, of the world that begins in the moments when we cannot yet see it - while it is still night.
On this Easter morning, let us ask ourselves how we can stand in these places of hopelessness and how we can hear the resurrecting spirit asking each one of us “are you the one?” Are you the one who can usher in the dawn, bringing healing to those moments and places where it is still night?
This has been a hard season and it is easy to get overwhelmed by it all. Find two pieces of paper or post-it notes. On one, write “Are you the one?” Put this note somewhere to remind you that you can bring healing and life to the world around you. On the other note, write “While it is still night.” Put this note somewhere that can remind you that God is with you even in the moments that feel most difficult.
Blessing
God of death and God of life -
Be with us as we move through our most difficult moments.
Help us to not lose our hope outside the closed tomb of our grief,
but to open ourselves to the places where your resurrecting spirit is
blowing within and around us. Amen.
A little Table Talk for your table...
Share together the ways it has been difficult for you to lean into Easter this year.
Share where you are finding hope in this Easter season.
Share with a friend areas within yourself where you feel transformation is necessary. What can you do to lean into the work God is calling you to do?
Try taking it to the Kids Table...
The weather is getting warm enough to plant things and watch them grow! This is a fun way for kids to get dirty and watch some magic happen. Find some time this week to plant something or walk through your yard and notice the new life happening around you. Talk together about the growth that happens in the ground, where you can’t see it, that leads to the flowers you have planted or have taken notice of in your yard. How are we like that?