Easter: Light for Our Darkness

Just about two years ago, a group of people from all around the world looked up into the heavens to try to do something thought to be impossible. Eight groups of scientists trained their telescopes on to a single spot in the night sky over the course of five days in order to see something they knew was there but which no one had ever seen: a black hole. Not only did they see it, they captured an image of it, the first ever picture of a black hole. As I’m sure you saw, that image was released to the public a few weeks back and it made headlines around the world.





That story got me thinking again about black holes. I have always been fascinated by them, and I know I’m not the only one. When I was in high school, I briefly considered the notion of becoming an astrophysicist just so I could learn more about them, but I quickly released I wasn’t nearly good enough in math. Black holes are captivating – to me and to many other people – because the idea of them is so alien to our experience: a cosmic space with such intense gravitational pull that nothing, not even light, can escape from inside it. They are inherently devastating – to experience it is to be overwhelmed by it. Black holes are unyielding, inexorable.

Perhaps one of the reasons people like me find black holes so mysterious is because they remind us of that other reality that can also be described as devastating, overwhelming, unyielding, inexorable – namely, the reality of Death. There is, I think, a deep and existential dread within each of us (sometimes more apparent to us, sometimes less) about the reality of our own mortality: that at the end of each of our lives – no matter how abundant and joyous, no matter how meaningful and well-lived – we will die. Death is like a spiritual and moral black hole, impossible to resist, drawing every one of our lives slowly and inevitably unto itself. No one can escape its grasp.

No one, that is, save One, the Risen One. Today, we join our voices to the voices of more than two billion Christians on the face of the earth, and untold myriads more in heaven, to proclaim anew the Good News, the greatest of announcements there ever was: Χριστός ἀνέστη, “Christ is Risen!” Today, we exclaim with loud and full faith that Jesus Christ, he who lived once and died now has been raised, and he lives again forever and ever. In him, the hold of Death has been broken; the grip of our spiritual black hole has been undone. A Light has come forth from the darkness of the grave and his Light will shine forevermore.

This is the Easter message. This is the ever new, everlasting message of the Church – the only message that in the end ultimately matters. As we heard in the Gospel, the tomb of Jesus has been found empty! The One who had been there – the One who by all human reason and experience should be there still – is there no longer, for he is Risen. Χριστός ἀνέστη, Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη! “Christ is Risen, He is truly Risen.”

James Tissot, Mary Magdalene and the Holy Women at the Tomb (1894)

But that is not all. Because, while it could be enough perhaps to know that Death’s grasp has been undone at least for some one, this Risen One is Jesus Christ, who is God and Man, and so his death and rising means something for all of us as well. As we heard Saint Paul explain to the Colossians [vigil: Romans], what is true now for Jesus can be true for us: by baptism, we share in his death, and if we live by that grace, conforming our lives to his, then we will truly rise with him. 

We need not have merely a hazy dream, some vague hope for an afterlife. In Jesus, we can see that God has definitively done something new. The God who created the heavens and the earth, who created us in his image and likeness, who formed a covenant with Abraham, who by Moses led Israel through the waters of the Red Sea out of the slavery of Egypt, who through Isaiah promised to slake the thirst of those in mourning and exile – that God, in Jesus, has joined himself to us, has shared the very depths of our existential experience, even to the point of death, and now through him has given us new life, a life beyond the power of the grave.

Friends, just because the Light has come does not mean that the darkness is gone entirely. You might have heard about a number of bombings that occurred this morning in Sri Lanka, especially it seems in churches. Christians just like us – our brothers and sisters, gathered in joy for Easter services – have now been violently reminded of the reality of death. But as Saint Paul tells us, not even such reminders can stamp out our Easter joy, for in Jesus death no longer has power over us. We are gathered here this morning to proclaim just that idea; we believe it and know it to be true. But there are many who do not. There are many who do not know the Light that has come, the Light that dispels the darkness. There are many who cannot find reason to believe or who cling to only hazy dreams and vague hopes of some life beyond the grave but who have not yet found by faith in Christ the assurance of what they hope for. We who are present here must go and tell them what we have found. It is our calling now to carry his Light into every darkness, to proclaim that there is no reality – not even the most devastating, overwhelming, unyielding, inexorable thing known to human experience – that is beyond the love of Christ and the Light that he brings. We must tell others – by our voices, by our acts, by our lives – that the impossible has been done: that we have come to know a Risen Life, a Life not just after death but beyond death’s power.

The Tomb has been found empty. Christ is Risen, He is truly Risen, and we along with him!