All throughout the six weeks of Lent, the whir of a motor and a rhythmic clunking sound could be heard in the back room of our home. It was the sound of a rock tumbler working on the glass we had broken on Ash Wednesday. In the brokenness of the glass we acknowledged the pain of our own brokenness and the brokenness of the world. The result of that tumbling is before us this morning in the bowl on our baptismal font. All through Lent we have been focusing on a journey that takes us from brokenness to healing … we have looked at the stories that hurt us, as well as those stories which sustain us, we have looked at the places where we need restoration, and the places where we have hurt others. During this past week we have journeyed through the events that led to the crucifixion of Jesus. And now, it comes to this:

Early in the morning, on the first day of the week, women came to the tomb of Jesus to finish the rituals required for burial. They were worried about the practical details of their duties … mostly how would they move the large stone that had been rolled up against the tomb to prevent wild stories from being spread. When they arrived at the tomb, the stone problem was quickly forgotten as they encountered something out of the realm of their imaginations … an encounter that caused them to flee in terror and amazement, rendering them for the moment silent. How well we know that kind of silencing … of waking from a terror filled dream unable to speak, of returning home after a funeral – the silence that overwhelms; the kind of silence of trying to figure out the what next. It is that kind of silence these women knew … they had not yet found their resurrection voices.

It is that encounter we come to celebrate on this day of days … how terror and death turning into joy and singing … how an ending became an incredible new beginning. Many of us walked through Holy Week, experiencing the pain of a last meal, experienced the sound of nails driven into the cross, remembered the stories of betrayal, grief and doubt. We come ready to hear the good news this morning having walked through this experience. Others of us come to re-connect … to find once again a sense of God's love that saves us. We celebrate this ancient mystery begun some 2,000 years ago and seek to find what it means for our present reality … to find ways to live the resurrection story even in the midst of the world's brokenness. We look around this morning and find that people are missing from their assigned pews – the pain of loss has touched us. We look at the world and find no shortage of terror and violence. Like the women on that first Easter morning, we don't always have our resurrection voices tuned and ready to sing. Nonetheless, we have gathered … for we know that somehow, someway this is the story of our salvation … and in it and through it we will find healing enough, until finally we are made whole in the power of God who on this day long ago defeated the powers of death and evil.

The bowl of sea glass that sits before us this morning is beautiful. Something broken, something that is often thrown away as trash, something potentially sharp and dangerous has been molded into something beautiful … in this case, not by the action of sand and waves, but by the rock tumbler. It is beautiful, and sea glass is sought after by collectors and jewelry makers. But … the sea glass is not finished teaching us yet. In the beauty of what is before there is yet one more lesson … and that is a reminder that we stand continually in need of God's saving love. Dry, the glass is cloudy … put it in water and the cloudiness clears until the glass dries again. The world has a way of clouding us … of obscuring the truth … of hurting us. We, in return, have a way of clouding others, of wounding them … of being oblivious to their needs. In his letter to the Corinthian church, Paul writes: "We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!" Or in the more familiar version: "For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known."

On our own, we can not see clearly who and what we are … who we are becoming. On our own, we can only go so far in healing ourselves and reaching out to the world. The lesson of the sea glass to us on this Easter morning is that we can only see clearly, and be seen clearly when we are constantly washed in the baptismal waters of God's love. It's not a one time contact deal … it is a way of life, walking with the risen Christ, being with others who are on this same journey, reaching out to the world to be the presence of God's saving love through Jesus Christ. And so my hope and prayer for us this Easter morning is that as we remember and re-affirm our baptism we will find ways to stand constantly washed in the waters of God's love, so that who God created us to be will shine forth clearly.