We had a big Easter egg hunt with the Sunday school yesterday. I’d forgotten how exciting Easter egg hunts are! If you haven’t watched a little child hunt for eggs in a while you really should be reminded of the thrill, the suspense, the emotion and the victory involved. They come out of the gate running! Because they know that there is something very good waiting for them.
And then when they find an egg, watch out. They see it, they zero in and they go for it, grab it with both hands and hold it for a second, admiring it, that egg is their very own, just for them! Victory!
And maybe you can even go back far enough to remember that feeling yourself from your childlike point of view. When I do, I remember that my family used to go camping in the desert over Easter. We’d get there Friday or Saturday. And even in the springtime there, maybe especially in the springtime, the desert was dead and dark and dry. Prickly cactus and the skeletons of sage brush turning into tumbleweed vast and deserted.
The night before Easter we would cook out as a family, huddled together in what seemed like the most vast empty space anywhere. Just us, just quiet, very reflective in the darkness. And then at bedtime we children laid down a little afraid because the noises were new, because this wasn’t our home because the wind blew hard and coyotes hollowed at night. But finally we would drift off to sleep. And then, in the morning. The world had transformed. While we were sleeping the desert had burst into bloom!
As our sleepy eyes opened all of a sudden the world held something incredible, eggs, beautiful colored ones, to this day I’ve never seen eggs as perfectly colored. And they were just for us, all the way out in our desert. We’d take off running through the desert searching. I remember the first one I found, one year. I spotted it in the sage and went running down the dusty desert path, stumbled down to my knees, picked it up and held it close, it was the most beautiful thing I’d seen...and it was mine! There was great wonder and joy in that experience for me.
Something kind of similar happened to the women in our gospel lesson today. The lesson is all about the women who go to tomb on the third day. They went on the third day because that was the first day that they could. Up to that point they had been caught up in the very specific ritual of a specific religious celebration, passover. A festival still celebrated that is just finishing now for our brothers and sisters of the Jewish faith. We mostly notice passover because grocery stores carry special things for passover celebrations and we hear little things in the news about it.
But we should notice it because, the whole Easter story begins with Passover. Passover recalls a time when the people of God were in need of unimaginable deliverance. And so they were told by God what to do. They were told to stand up with their loved ones, to eat a meal of celebration but to hurry because something new was happening. They did, they ate fast and got what they needed together and then they went to bed. They went to bed in fear and trembling because they were in a strange land and they were slaves constantly kept from the life they needed to live and they never knew what dangers and sadness life would hold.
But it was the passover of their Lord that night and while they were sleeping something magical and mysterious happened. In just the same way as Easter baskets appear prepared with good things, eggs end up hidden in lawns or presents end up under the tree at Christmas time, something new and completely unexpected was prepared for the children of Israel when they awoke. Complete freedom, complete deliverance. And so they got up and they ran. They ran swiftly into the new land that they were promised, seeking new life like it was something that might disappear if they didn’t grab onto it immediately.
These past nights as shadows fell we sat near Mary and Peter, those closest to Jesus who had lost him forever. Just like a funeral vigil for a dear loved one of our own, we were reminded to eat, to do the things we needed to do and we were reminded to sleep, we finally drifted off to sleep, with a sense of heaviness, of sadness and dread. But it was the passover with our Lord Jesus Christ from darkness into light, from bondage to freedom, from life to death. And so when Mary and the other women awoke this morning, in the same way that sparkling eggs appear gleaming all through a dry dusty garden something magical had happened, not magical but Holy.
New life had appeared in the dry dust of the tomb. And this meant complete freedom for them and all those they loved, freedom from the oppression of the occupying military force, freedom from the oppression of the pains of life and the fear of death. It meant that thing which they most treasured and had lost, had been returned, never to be lost again.
And so they ran. They ran swiftly, looking all around in excitement but sure of their goal, when all of a sudden they spotted something even more amazing. Jesus was right there in the road, standing in front of them.
And when they first saw Him, they ran up to him and dove down on the ground and held onto him knowing that he was the greatest gift they would ever receive and determined to never let go. And for a moment time froze and they just basked together in the goodness of God.
But Jesus didn’t leave them laying on the ground worshiping because the whole point of the resurrection was that they, and we serve a living, moving, walking proclaiming and personal God. And so he reached down gently. And lifted the women up to their feet. And told them that the news they now had personally, the news that they had only begun to understand at the edge of the dark tomb, that new life had appeared in the dry dust of that tomb. That this meant complete freedom for them, freedom from the oppression, freedom from pain of brokenness and the fear of death was really theirs, and that thing which they most treasured, a God who stayed with them always, had been returned, never to be lost again.
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