In the 19th century, it was established that life had begun in the oceans, some scientists reasoned that the earliest forms of life might still be there, hidden in the deep, dark recesses of the open sea, where human beings cannot descend. They were certain that in that world of darkness lay the first forms of life. In 1872, Sir Charles Thomson left England aboard a ship called the Challenger to sail through all the oceans of the world to test this theory. For four years they sailed the oceans, sixty-nine thousand miles, dragging the ocean bottom.
They found rare forms of life, many of which were grotesque, but they didn't find anything new. Time and time again they would play out four miles of rope, and then pull the rope back in. They found the same animals every time. So you could say they didn't find what they were looking for. What they found were life forms that had descended from creatures that lived in the shallow part of the ocean.
They concluded, therefore, that life was created at the surface, and then descended into the depths, perhaps for reasons of survival, and then adjusted to a life of darkness at those depths. To live at those depths, fish evolved into grotesque kind of animals with huge mouths, way out of proportion to the rest of their bodies, in order to catch any food that might float down to the bottom. These creatures had huge projecting eyes, in order to catch a glimpse of any light that might be down there.
That's what life is like at these depths, it’s distorted for the sake of survival. In the end they reasoned that life began in the upper oceans, near the surface. And there is one reason for this, and the reason is light. Without light there would be no creation. And God said, "Let there be light."
In John’s Gospel he begins a new creation story – like Genesis, John says that light is the agency of creation. He proclaims it in these beautiful words. He says that Jesus is the "Word" that was associated with God in the beginning, and Jesus has come to us. "In him was life, and the life was the light of the world. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." Before the Creation there was darkness, like the depths of the ocean. Then there was light. And then there was life.
So John says that the light that we saw in Jesus was the light that created the world. It means that wherever Jesus went, there was the possibility for a new creation. Wherever God’s love goes, there comes a new creation. Our text for this Easter Sunday is John's story of, a new creation, the Resurrection. The Resurrection is also a confirmation that when the light descended to the very depths of human existence, into the darkness of death itself, the darkness could not overcome the light.
There are two great themes in this morning story that come from the Old Testament. The first is the covenant. The second is creation.
At Mt. Sinai, God gave the Israelites a way to keep freedom free, by making a covenant with them. The symbol of that covenant was the Ten Commandments, carried around in a large container, like a coffin, known as the Ark of the Covenant. Eventually, a Temple was built in Jerusalem to house the Ark, and the Israelites always knew they could go there to be reconciled with God and renew their covenant. But the Temple was destroyed in 583 BC and the Ark was lost and the people deported into exile. While in exile in Babylon, the people wondered how did we end up here?
They wondered if God would visit them with a new exodus, and perhaps a new covenant. But they also went further back and identified a second theme in their history.
That theme was creation. The liberator God was also the creator God who had made not just Israel but all the nations and indeed the whole universe. Easter faith lies in the intersection of these themes of creation and covenant.
What happens when Mary goes to the tomb on Easter morning? What does she see? Two things. First, she looks into the tomb and she sees "two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet." That’s a pretty direct indicator that she’s looking at a new ark of the covenant – because the original Ark of the Covenant, in the Temple, had had two angels, one at the head and the other at the feet.
So what we’ve got here is a clear statement that Mary is looking at a new covenant. Second, she enters into conversation with a person she takes to be the gardener. Think for a moment. Where does the creation story focus? On a man Adam, and a woman, Eve in a garden. God is the gardener who creates the Garden of Eden, a symbol of the whole of creation.
And in case we don’t get it, John reminds us this was the first day of the week, in a heavy nudge toward the creation story.
So when Mary meets the risen Jesus, we’re immediately supposed to think, "This is a new creation!" The empty tomb is a new covenant and the risen Lord is a new creation. Think of the new covenant in terms of nothing, not even yourself, can separate you from God’s love.
In a fabulous moment of irony Jesus says to Mary, "Who are you looking for?" The risen Jesus, embodying a new creation and a new covenant, asks Mary, "Who are you looking for?" Feel the irony. Jesus is who Mary is looking for. Jesus is what Israel is looking for.
And here is this tantalizing moment where we, the readers, know all these things... but Mary can’t see them. Doesn’t that make us feel so knowledgeable, so wise, and much more perceptive than Mary? Yes, until suddenly the question is turned on us. "Who are you looking for?"
I’m going to guess that we come to this garden with two hopes in our hearts. One hope is to make good what we already have, to restore our fragile relationships, to find a path of truth telling, and forgiveness and reconciliation, with family members, friends, neighbors, colleagues, strangers and enemies.
That’s our first hope – to make a new covenant with God and our neighbor that makes it possible for us to heal the mistakes of our past and turn strangers and enemies into friends and companions.
The second hope is to discover – a whole new world, a new life, beyond the fear of death, beyond the limitation of our mortal bodies, beyond the fragility of our decaying world. That’s our further hope – to find a new creation that makes it possible to live with God forever.
Aren’t these our two most profound longings – for a healed past and a wondrous future? Aren’t we yearning for a new covenant and a new creation?
Well, I’ve got good news for you. Mary turned round, and saw Jesus. And in Jesus, she realized she was looking at a new covenant and a new creation. She was looking at a healed past and life with God forever.
We are in the garden today. His resurrection means a new covenant and a new creation. The good news is – both are yours.
But lets go back to that light image for a moment. The risen one is also the crucified one. Because Jesus was dead, because he was there, it means that we don't have to stay there. That's also the good news today.
You may have to go there, but you don't have to stay there.
Jesus' Resurrection means that in any area in your life in which you find yourself trapped, down into the depths of life where life get misshapen because of no or little light. Wherever there is hatred or old prejudice old animosities passed through cold looks around the dinner table, you may have to go there but you don't have to stay there.
Years ago there appeared a story in the newspaper in Galveston, Texas. It was about a woman and her parakeet, whose name was Chippie. It seems that the woman was cleaning Clippies’ bird cage with a canister vacuum cleaner, the kind with a long metal tube, to clean his cage, she took the attachments off.
She was cleaning the bottom of the bird cage when the phone rang. She reached over to get the phone, and as she did, she heard the unmistakable sound of Chippie being sucked up into the vacuum. Immediately she put down the phone and rushed over to the vacuum, pulled out the vacuum bag and ripped it opened.
She found Chippie sitting there stunned, but still alive. The bird was now covered with soot and dirt; she grabbed him and ran into the bathroom, held him under the faucet and washed him to get all the soot and dirt off. When she finished she saw the hair dryer sitting on the sink. She turned it on, held Chippie up in front of the blast of hot air to dry him off.
So when the newspaper in Galveston sent a reporter out to talk to the woman about this incident. He asked, "How's Chippie doing now?" The woman said, "Well Chippie doesn't sing much anymore. He just sort of sits and stares."
That happens to a lot of people too. Life treats them rough, and they don't feel like singing anymore. They just kind of sit and stare. You can pick them out. They have the unmistakable look of the survivor, or the victim, that vacant stare, the empty face. There are some people who never get over the tragedies that hit them. They go through the rest of their life with that stare.
You can pick them out. It serves as kind of an announcement to everybody else: life has been rough on me, life hasn't been fair, and my life from this point on is over. Søren Kierkegaard, the great Danish philosopher and theologian, described them as "people who live their lives as if they were typographical errors refusing to be erased." They don't sing anymore, they just sort of sit and stare.
Our Faith this morning has something important to say to all of us. The most important thing that it says is that the Cross and the Resurrection were one event. This means, you may not have chosen your suffering, but you don’t have to stay there. You may have to go there. But Jesus has visited your suffering so that you don’t have to stay there.
God wants us to get out of whatever depths of despair we might find ourselves. And the way the Christian Faith says that is to say that the Cross and the Resurrection are one event. You cannot endure a cross without expecting a resurrection.
At Easter God sent light into the deepest depths of human experience, into death itself. You may have to go there. But God’s light is there. You don’t have to stay there.