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Easter Day It is a simple story, really, this one we tell each Easter Sunday morning. A story told a million million times in a million million different places. And in one sense, it is like every one of these stories. Ever since the dawn of civilization, human beings have buried their dead with reverence and awe. It has helped them endure their grief and sense of loss. It has made the overwhelming agony bearable. It was no different for these women of our Gospel who came silently to the tomb of their crucified rabboni. Hours earlier they had stood in a garbage pit as Roman centurions brutally executed Jesus on a cross. They had seen him bleed and suffer. They had heard his gasps for breath. They had smelled the stench of death. They had touched his cold flesh as he was carried off to the tomb. And like any one of us who done the very same at the bedside of a loved one who is dying from disease or trauma, they felt the terrible finality of it all. Hope was gone. Faith lost. They were numb with despair and sadness. There was only one last thing, and that was to do shiva, and prepare the spices with which to embalm his body, so that he could rest in peace, so that they could gone on without him. In the morning darkness they came, the two Marys, Joanna, and the others. Behind them they had left the men, who were paralyzed with fear and doubt. Only the women came, and only then, to pay their last respects. It would take an hour or two, to wash and anoint his body. And then, it would be over. They came, you see, seeking the dead among the dead. They came to the tomb expecting the expectable. Life, no matter how happy or sad, no matter how fortunate or cursed, ended this way, predictably and absolutely. It was death they came to commemorate that morning, the kind of death that each of us who comes into the world inevitably dies. Death had killed their dreams. It had blinded their hopes. It had buried their best selves beneath the crushing weight of their grief. Friends, who of us here this morning has not suffered as they suffered? Who of us here has not gone through the same dark night of the soul, never hoping to see the light of day again? So they came. In silence. In sadness. Completely certain they would find the dead among the dead. What they had never considered, what they had never expected happened next. The tomb was empty. Their Lord was alive. He had risen. He was no longer among the dead. He was among the living. Living in resurrected hopes and dreams, living in restored lives, living in every heart with courage to believe. They ran from the tomb that morning, never to return. For Jesus was alive. In the Upper Room. On the road to Emmaus. In the garden. Wherever and whenever they looked with faith to their Risen Lord, he was there. As they broke bread and shared the common cup. As they gathered as one body. As they became the Church, whose hope, 2000 years later, is alive in us today. For Christ is alive. He is not among the dead. He is risen. Alive in us. And in us and for us, death is not final. “We have been raised with Christ,” our Epistle proclaims, “ And when Christ who is our life is revealed, then we also will be revealed with him in glory.” It is a simple story, really, this one we tell at Easter. A story that changes absolutely nothing about our lives and purposes when we leave here today, or one that changes absolutely everything. Dare to believe it, friends. The Lord is risen. He is risen indeed. Let us pray: “Come now Spirit of our God and make us one body in Christ. ~Janet Morley~
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