Easter in the Dark

This first part of this post is copied and clipped from Dean Snyder's Good Friday sermon at Foundry UMC in Washington DC

“The biblical scholar Walter Brueggeman tells us that if there is any truth at all to the biblical account of the crucifixion and death and resurrection of Jesus, it must mean this: that in the darkest of times, there is something afoot in the darkness that the prince of darkness himself knows nothing about.
The invisible God is there in the darkness. This is why God is invisible because he plants himself in the places without a particle of light or hope.”

I post that here today along with the words of John’s Easter Gospel:
“while it was still dark.’
....Mary went to the tomb.

“While it was still dark.”
The stone was already rolled away.

Resurrection had already happened in the dark.
Easter happens in the dark.

Tomorrow morning with children and youth due at the church by 7, I will be getting up for Easter in the dark. The Risen Christ will already be there.

That is such a simple kind of darkness, marked by sunlight and a clock. I can see my way to that kind of Easter. The children have rehearsed. The choir has prepared. The cross is draped in white. I was there to see the flowers being set up. I have my notes for the sermon. I know the signs of resurrection are already there when I arrive in the dark.

But I will try to consider the greater darkness.
Violent darkness. Five years now in Iraq. Or is it now Kenya, Tibet, Gaza, Afghanistan, Kosovo?
....political, emotional, social, economic, spiritual....
and wait and trust, searching with eyes not good at seeing in the dark;
still looking for resurrection signs.