I’ve been to Holy Saturday worship. Something has happened in the darkness. In the darkness of the tomb, something wonderful, something hardly believable, something earth-shattering, has happened. Jesus is no longer there; he has been raised and is on his way to Galilee.
While so much of our focus is on the light, let us not forget where Easter begins.
Barbara Brown Taylor writes in Learning to Walk in the Dark, “As many years as I have been listening to Easter sermons, I have never heard anyone talk about that part. Resurrection is always announced with Easter lilies, the sound of trumpets, bright streaming light. But it did not happen that way. If it happened in a cave, it happened in complete silence, in absolute darkness, with the smell of damp stone and dug earth in the air.... new life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.”
As Christians, we are prone to talking about dark versus light— more specifically, to see the light as a conqueror of the dark. But to pit the two against each other is to miss the ways God is present and working in both.
We tend to think of darkness only as periods of despair, hopelessness, or confusion—times when God feels far away or at best unknowable. In darkness, we hit our shins on the coffee table; in the darkness, we don’t know what might jump out to get us.
But there is also goodness in darkness. It is the condition necessary for restorative slumber. In the dark and quiet, we can rest and replenish. In the dark and quiet of the earth, bulbs wait quietly for warmer temperatures. In the dark and quiet, seeds germinate before pushing green shoots up above the soil, ready for the sun.
This was tonight the first service of Easter for us and we met, before the lilies, the brunches, and the flowered crosses of the morning, we began quietly, in near darkness.
God works marvellous wonders amidst darkness. As the familiar words of Psalm 139 remind us, “Darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike. For you yourself created my inmost parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”
God creates in the darkness—in the soil, in the womb, in the cave.
Though periods of grief, hopelessness, and confusion might seem like the moments God is the farthest away, if we observe closely, we can see signs that God is quietly present, sowing seeds, working wonders, and inviting us into growth and new life.
Alleluia! The Lord is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia!
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