We started getting advertisements for Lent and Easter items last December as we were busy experiencing Advent and Easter. Some of the products even warned churches to take note of the early dating of Easter. It's March 23rd – if that seems early to be celebrating Easter, that's because it is. To have experienced such an early date of Easter you have to be 90 … for 1918 is the last time Easter was this early. It could be celebrated one day earlier. The last time that happened was 1818. The early date has thrown us, caused the celebration to sneak up us … catching us by surprise. It is a good reminder of the reality of this celebration – that we are no more ready for the wonder and surprise of the resurrection than were the earliest disciples. The only difference is we have over 2,000 years of church history behind us, making it tough to experience the first Easter in the same way – because we already know how the story turns out. Our experience has too many layers, too many years to be able to say we know how the disciples felt that long ago Easter morning.

But this early date gives us a tiny clue of just how "off" the disciples must have felt that day … just how unprepared they were to face their new reality. We join the women approaching the tomb. They did so out of a sense of duty and care. They knew their job – to anoint a body and give Jesus a decent burial. It was time to finish this part of their lives and move on. The women approach the tomb without expectation and without hope. To get another sense of what it was like, think of a time in your own life when you faced a situation where you had no hope – a time of great loss. Go to that place where you could not, and perhaps still cannot see a way through. Then you will begin to know the awfulness of the dawning of that first Easter morning. You will stand on that side of the resurrection with the disciples.

I bring you to that place of hopelessness and despair not to put a damper on your Easter parade, but to give you a sense of what it is to really experience resurrection. I invite you to approach the tomb this Easter day from that place. We have woven through our Lenten worship stories of transformation and disorientation. Today we reach the place of greatest disorientation and of greatest transformation. First imagine the disorientation of the women when they arrived at the tomb. Nothing was as expected – an angel, the stone being moved, things in disarray. They came to the tomb expecting to finish things up, take care of necessary business. They came to the tomb to grieve.

Instead they find a coming together of life and joy and hope in ways they could never have conceived. That is resurrection. It is what we come together today to find and experience. In the movie Dragonfly, a doctor grieves the death of his wife who was killed in Venezuela while on a medical mission. He goes through the memorial service for her, grieves and tries to put his life back together. However he finds his life interrupted by what he feels are signs from her and finally figures he is being led to go to Venezuela. He hopes to find that she did not die in the bus accident after all, but is still alive and struggling in the jungle – hence the "signs." And so he goes back to Venezuela with that hope. In case you never saw the movie, I won't ruin the ending … and will only say this: The doctor finds in his journey to Venezuela something far greater than he could have imagined or conceived of. For me that is what it is to experience the resurrection. It is the coming together of new life in ways we never could have fathomed. Marcus Borg speaks of the resurrections that are woven through our lives, of things that we thought dead and gone that come back to life in new and unexpected ways.

In my Easter newsletter I wrote about the story of Jeremy, a boy born with a twisted body, slow mind and a terminal illness. When asked by his teacher to bring in a sign of new life and resurrection in a plastic egg it was Jeremy who was able to grasp the mystery of the resurrection. The children in this class all brought in wonderful signs of new life – a flower, a butterfly, and so on. Jeremy's egg was empty and Jeremy wanted to tell everyone why. When his teacher spluttered, but Jeremy your egg is empty, he replied: "Yes, but Jesus' tomb was empty too." And there is the power of resurrection for us. That the emptiness of the tomb is enough … enough to combat the destruction and violence of the world … enough to confront the terrible absurdities we inflict upon one another … enough to confront the emptiness of our lives … enough to confront the meaninglessness of our society.

In the mystery of Easter we proclaim to a waiting world that the empty tomb is enough. That in the empty tomb somehow darkness will be turned to light. That in the end cruelty and pain and death do not triumph, but somehow God's love and goodness prevail … transforming the now that seems beyond redemption. And we come to declare to all that we have thrown our lot into that mystery, trusting as we see the small blazes of the resurrection that someday we will see the full picture – God's glorious tapestry revealed for us.

Standing on this side of the empty tomb, on this side of the resurrection, we know the "big" picture of how God fought back for life and love and joy in them midst of terror and destructions. May that frame our lives, see us through times of grief and confusion, and send us out into the world to participate in God's conspiracy of resurrection. Go out into the world to proclaim the Good News … the tomb is empty … for Jesus is risen, as he said. Christ is risen … he is risen indeed.