While it was still dark

Hope.  A promise to cling to even while it is still dark.

On that first day, the women went to the tomb while it was still dark.  Their motivation was likely no more than to do the right thing, in the midst of their grief, for one they loved.  Hope was the furthest thing from their minds.  Even as they found the tomb empty, hope remained illusive.  Their initial conclusion was much more believable than resurrection.  The body is gone.  Someone had desecrated the grave and stolen the body.  Is nothing holy and sacred?

I like John's witness to the resurrection in part because he recognizes that hope is not the immediate, first reaction to the empty tomb.  Rather, the first response was that insult had been added to injury.  "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him!"  Was it not enough that he had been killed?

For Mary, hope finally comes as Jesus calls her by name.

Our focus this morning will be on Jesus' resurrection.  But perhaps we should also spend time with Mary and contemplate her own experience as resurrection.  Were resurrection only about Jesus, then our faith would be reduced to the question of whether on that day, an anomaly occurred.  An isolated departure from the norm.  Hard to believe, perhaps, but also irrelevant to our own lives.

But its not simply about Jesus.

Jesus' calls Mary by name, and with her, calls all of us into a resurrection world.

Its not that death vanished.  It remains.  The mortality rate among Christians remains the same, last I checked, 100%.  And yet in the midst of that reality, life triumphs.

Paul writes "If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."  Agreed.

And yet if resurrection is not a very present reality in this life, we are also to be pitied.  It is not that one day death will lose it dominion, its that it has already lost.  We live our lives, in the context of death, as a resurrection people.  The reality of death is not denied.  Its simply rendered impotent.

"Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?"

One day my thoughts will likely focus on life after death.  But today, early on this Easter morn, my meditation is on life in the context of death.  In faith, we choose life.  We could allow  ourselves to be defined by death, but we do not.  "Remember, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return" is not the final word spoken over us.  Into that dust, God breathed life.  And continues to do so.

The title of this blog is "Confessions of a Bipolar Pastor".  There is a danger of allowing this disease to become definitive.  In allowing our very identity to be caught up in that which would destroy us, we are submitting our lives, ultimately, to the reign of death.  "Mary!"  Or in my case "David!"

God calls us by name, and invites us to live as a resurrected people, defined not by the forces of death which are the context in which we live, but rather defined by his love which is the basis for life itself.

Since I entered into treatment, first for my alcoholism and depression, and subsequently, for the diagnosis of bipolar disorder, there has been an awareness of and focus on all that has been lost.  Resignation ruled the day.  I resigned my call.  But more significantly, I found myself resigned to live as a victim of this disease.

This, I believe, was also the state of mind, early on that morning while it was still dark, as Mary walked toward the tomb.  It was all about resignation to the reality of death, a death they had witnessed, and a death which changed everything.  And then grace happens.

And resignation gives way to resurrection. What this will mean for me, as one who walks as yet by faith, not knowing what the future holds, is yet to be determined.  And yet, this morning, while it is still dark, I cling to hope and the promise that life, not death, will have the final word.