Christ is risen! Halleluiah!  These are the victorious words we shout and sing with gusto on this greatest of all feast days.  Halleluiah is the “h” word I mentioned in my homily last Sunday, when we were focused on another “h” word – Hosanna.  As you will recall from last week, “Hosanna” means “God save us.”  It is a cry for help.  That’s how we started off Holy Week – praying to God to save us, knowing that he, alone, can save us.  But this morning we can shout out “Hallelujah!” which means “Praise God!”  We can, indeed, praise God because he has saved us through his son.  But, in order to fully appreciate the significance of this event, especially in light of our current crisis as we continue to struggle with the deadly effects of the coronavirus pandemic, we need to go way back in time to the people who first experienced the Resurrection.  We need to put ourselves inside their skin and see with their eyes.

 

All throughout his public ministry, Jesus had so impacted the lives of a group of people that they had become radically changed. These disciples of Jesus had walked and talked with him.  They were present when he healed the sick, fed the hungry, even raised the dead.  They had listened to him teach them about a God of mercy beyond their furthest imagining.  And, they had heard him speak of new life forever but they didn’t understand that, yet.  For these early followers of Jesus, life had taken on a whole new meaning.  In him, they believed they had found the Messiah the prophets had promised.  They believed that things could finally be different: their earthly kingdom would be restored to its former glory.

 

Easter is initially the story, though, of how these same faith-filled people then became devastated to the point that their hope turned to despair, and their dream of a glorious future became a nightmare.  Jesus was crucified. He was executed in the most humiliating and perhaps the most gruesome way that anyone could die at that time in human history.  The story of those formerly hope-filled people now became a very dark one.  Rather than a story of faithful followers, it became instead a story of betrayal and abandonment.  One of Jesus’ closest companions – Judas – betrayed him, and the rest of his apostles – except John – abandoned him.

 

And then came the Gospel account we read today — an account that begins with words that continue to reflect that gloom: “On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark.”  In the Gospel of John, darkness implies a lack of faith.  It tells us that at that time, Mary had no faith, no hope.  

She was in a place of numbness.  She had come simply to dress the body for a proper burial; everything had happened so quickly and haphazardly a few days earlier.

 

And then she finds the tomb is empty!  She’s startled. She’s bewildered. She doesn’t know what to do. And so she runs. She runs to get Simon Peter and the other disciple Jesus loved.  And together they run — right into that very same empty tomb.

 

The Easter story now begins to unfold in an entirely new direction. The darkness gives way to the bright light brought on by a sense of victory. Little by little, the earliest followers of Jesus begin to realize that what truly happened is something never heard of before in all of human history: God has raised Jesus from the dead! He is alive! He is, indeed, risen!  And, unlike Lazarus who was raised from the dead but would die again, Jesus was raised to a new, everlasting life.  There would be in him no more death, no more suffering and pain.  While we are wise to protect ourselves and our loved ones from a premature death due to the coronavirus, we are foolish to forget that we – all of us – will die.  As St. Paul admonishes us so starkly, we have all sinned and the wages of sin is death.  But, Jesus has died for our sins and overcome the sting of death. “O death, where is your victory; O death, where is your sting,” Paul goes on to proclaim so joyously!

 

And the wondrous ending to the Easter story is what all four of the Gospels and St. Paul tell us repeatedly: Jesus is not only alive, but he is still here, still present, still among us. Only now he is with us in a whole new way. That’s what’s really the good news for each of us: We are not alone.  Like his first followers, we may feel as if we are in a place of darkness, doubt and fear as we cower behind closed doors and face masks.  But, the Spirit Jesus promised us is alive in us, in our everyday lives.  And so, we can live in hope – in hope of the Resurrection.

 

“They have taken the Lord from the tomb and we don’t know where they have put him,” Mary of Magdala sadly exclaims in today’s Gospel.  The ecstasy of this day is that we now know exactly “where they have put him”: at the Father’s right hand in glory.  And so, we don’t fear death because it is not the end for us but only a step into the glorious life our risen Lord offers all who put their faith in him.

 

That’s why now we can truly sing together with full joy:

 

Jesus Christ is risen! Alleluia!