While It Was Still Dark: Easter Hope

John 20:1-18
Easter Sunday 2010

If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a hundred times. Alexander Pope wrote it in a poem in 1733, and it has been repeated endlessly ever since: “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” “Hope springs eternal.” Of the three great virtues of the Christian life—faith, hope, and love—hope is the one that draws us toward the future.

The prophet Jeremiah captured the essential biblical connection between hope and the future in a letter he wrote to the people of Jerusalem who had been carried away into exile by the Babylonians in 597 B.C.E. Jeremiah wrote, “I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). “A future and a hope.” It’s a figure of speech called “hendiadys.” Two words are linked by “and” to express a complex idea. “A future and a hope.” Without hope, there is no future; without a future, there is no hope.

But hope is a slippery virtue. It may spring eternal, as Pope wrote, but what happens when your spring has given way to winter? What happens when your spring has run dry? What happens when the spring has gone out of your step? What of hope then, when your future is cloudy or uncertain, at best, or decidedly in your past? What of hope then?

I’d like to suggest to you this morning that the week of the Christian calendar through which we have just passed—Holy Week, it is called—is an exercise in the practice of the Christian virtue of hope. It begins with a Sunday of outrageous expectation that we call “Palm Sunday.” Hopes were high as Jesus entered Jerusalem to shouts of “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Luke 19:38). But on Thursday evening—Maundy Thursday, we call it—those hopes were dealt a crushing blow when one of his own betrayed him, and he was arrested, tried and convicted. On Friday, the Friday we observe as Good Friday, those hopes were dashed completely when he died on a cross as a common criminal. In the aftermath of Friday’s horror, no one could have blamed the followers of Jesus if they had quoted Ezekiel 37:11: “Our hope is lost; we are clean cut off.” “Our hope is lost.”

So tell me this. What did you do yesterday? How did you spend your Saturday in Holy Week? It was a gorgeous Saturday, wasn’t it? It was everything a spring Saturday in the South is supposed to be. Yesterday was “Holy Saturday” in the liturgical tradition. How did you spend it? I spent Holy Saturday on a pilgrimage . . . to Walmart. Walmart. Bev and I were searching for Skittles and Butterfingers and chocolate eggs and bunny ears and a stuffed yellow duck for this year’s Easter baskets. [Careful! That’s a potential “spoiler”!] I’m ashamed to say it, but in our house the Easter bunny is like Santa Claus in training pants. I don’t know how it happened, but it did. So our Holy Saturday is typically taken up in a mad dash up and down candy aisles. Meanwhile, while I’m distracted by Skittles and Butterfingers and chocolate eggs and bunny ears and a stuffed yellow duck, in the great liturgical tradition of the church in the annual Holy Week exercise of the practice of the Christian virtue of hope, Holy Saturday commemorates “the harrowing of hell.” The harrowing of hell. Come to think of it, maybe my Holy Saturday wasn’t that far removed from the liturgical one.

In the great liturgical tradition of the Christian faith, “Christ’s victory over death was accomplished not only on the cross and by his resurrection, but also on Holy Saturday. Indeed, Holy Saturday may be the most significant of the three days of Easter,” writes Vigen Guroian, an Orthodox theologian and professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia. “On Friday, Christ is lifted up on the cross,” he writes. “On Saturday, Christ descends into Hades, knocks down its gates and liberates its captives. . . . On Easter Sunday, Christ rises again into the living world with his resurrected body. The victory over death that commenced on Friday is completed” (The Christian Century, March 23, 2010, p. 27). “Indeed, Holy Saturday may be the most significant of the three days of Easter.”

Just in case you don’t buy that, listen to the story told recently by John M. Buchanan, pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, and editor and publisher of The Christian Century. Buchanan wrote,

A year ago a minister I know had to lead her suburban Chicago congregation through an unspeakable tragedy: a member of the congregation shot and killed his wife and her son and then killed himself. The minister had to comfort her congregation and hold it together. She spoke at a memorial service for the mother and son. What is there to say in that situation? She told the congregation crowded into the sanctuary that there was a phrase in the Apostles’ Creed that had always bothered her: the phrase stating that Jesus “descended into hell.” She told how the pastor of the church in which she grew up so disliked that line he went through the hymnals with a large black Magic Marker and crossed it out. “I grew up saying the creed without that line,” the minister said. “Now, this week,” she said, “I understand it. We have descended into hell together and Christ has gone before us, into every corner of it. The good news is that when life takes us there, when we have to go there, [Christ] goes with us” (The Christian Century, March 23, 2010, p. 3).

Do you see why “Holy Saturday” just might be “the most significant of the three days of Easter,” and especially so in the exercise of the Christian virtue of hope? When life takes us into hell, living or otherwise, Christ has already gone before us into every corner of it; and when we have to go there, Christ goes with us.

The essence of Christian hope is not in the avoidance of pain or suffering or grief or death or even hell. The essence of Christian hope is that Christ goes with us to see us through. Don’t miss the fact that the Easter story in this morning’s gospel lesson begins “while it was still dark.” Hope begins in darkness. Hope is born in darkness. Hope springs in darkness. Hope begins in the confusion and chaos of Mary Magdalene’s fear and loss. It was bad enough that Jesus had “suffered and was buried,” but now there is no body. Mary runs to the disciples to tell them, and then she returns to the empty tomb—not to believe or to celebrate but to weep. And in her weeping and in her grief and in her sorrow, she becomes aware of a presence with her, the presence of the very One she mourned and sought.

Right there is the key to unlocking hope. It is not that Mary ran away from the darkness and the emptiness and never came back. There is no hope in running away. It is not that Mary left to fill her life with other teachers and other aspirations and distractions from her pain and grief and loss. There is no hope in running away. Hope can only be found in the place where you have lost it—in the place of emptiness and grief and pain. The great Spanish reformer and mystic John of the Cross would tell us that the reason we so often can’t find hope is precisely because we run away from that place as quickly as we can. But Mary returned; and even after the others left, she stayed there in the empty place. She stayed there long enough to discover the presence of the One who had harrowed hell there with her.

When you find yourself in a living hell, don’t run. Wait! “Wait for the Lord” (Isaiah 40:31). If you will wait long enough, you will discover the presence of the risen Christ there with you bringing hope, birthing hope, springing hope while it is still dark because Christ knocks down hell’s gates and liberates its captives. In his latest book titled The Naked Now: Learning to See As the Mystics See, Richard Rohr insists on what he calls “the sacrament of the present moment”—that’s the “naked now.” All of “our experiences, whether good, bad, or ugly,” Rohr says, have the power to transform us through our encounter with “Real Presence” in that moment (p. 12). Rohr suggests that the reason we do not experience “Real Presence,” the presence of the risen and living Christ in our lives, is that more often than not, we are not present in the moment. We run from the moment; we avoid the moment; we self-medicate in the moment. It is not that Christ is not present in the moment. It is that we are not present, and therefore we do not encounter the Real Presence that is there, even in a living hell. But Mary did. She stayed there in the “naked now” long enough to be present and to experience Presence. Don’t run. Wait. “Wait for the Lord.”

In the meantime, while you are waiting, hope can be hard work. Hope can be hard work, and especially so when your spring has given way to winter, when your spring has run dry, when the spring has gone out of your step, when your future is cloudy or uncertain or decidedly in your past. Whatever your age or station, your Facebook status or marital relation, whatever the condition of your body, mind, heart, or soul, here is what you must do. It’s called “kedging.” K-e-d-g-i-n-g. Kedging. The boaters among us are familiar with it. Kedging is what you do when your boat runs aground.

The book of Hebrews calls hope a “sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” (Hebrews 6:19). That’s another hendiadys, by the way, two words joined by “and” to express a complex idea: a “sure and steadfast” anchor. Here’s how you use your anchor in kedging. You carry your anchor as far from your boat as its chain or rope will reach, drop it, and return to your boat. And then you pull your boat to your anchor by the chain or the rope. And then you do it again. You carry your anchor as far from your boat as its rope or chain will reach, drop it, and return to your boat to pull your boat to your anchor. And then you do it again and again, as many times as it takes until your boat floats free once again. That’s kedging, and it’s what you do when your boat runs aground. When you’ve run aground, you don’t abandon ship; you don’t run away. You stay right there and kedge.

The first pastoral crisis to which I was called as a young pastor was late at night to the home of a grieving mother whose son had just been killed in a one-car automobile accident. She was lying in her bed in her darkened bedroom, unconsoled and unconsolable. “What am I going to do?” she wailed over and over again to no one in particular and to everyone within earshot. “What am I going to do?” It had been going on for an hour or more until someone whispered to her daughter Jewel, “Call the preacher.” Like that was likely to help! When I arrived, I sat down in a chair beside her bed and held her hand while she continued to wail at the ceiling for another twenty or thirty minutes, until suddenly she turned her head and wailed it directly at me for the first time: “What am I going to do?” I leaned toward her. “Do you see this clock, Mary?” I asked her as I tapped the alarm clock glowing with red numbers on her nightstand. She nodded slightly, sniffling. “What time does it say?” I asked. “12:15,” she answered through a sob. “Right. So what you’re going to do now is watch this clock until it says 12:30. And when you’ve made it to 12:30, what you are going to do is watch it until you have made it to 1:00. Got it?” She nodded again. “What do I do then?” she asked. “You watch this clock until you make it to 2:00.” “What if I fall asleep?” she asked. “Then when you wake up, look at the clock and start over again. Make it for fifteen minutes, and then for thirty minutes, and then for an hour. And if at any time you feel like you can’t make it, go back and start all over again with fifteen minutes. Can you do that?” I asked. “I’ll try,” she said. And I held her hand while she sobbed and watched the clock and drifted off to sleep. It’s called kedging: hauling yourself through hell by the sure and steadfast anchor of your soul.

When life takes you there, when you have to go there, you will finally understand why, indeed, Holy Saturday may be the most significant of the three days of Easter. Because Christ harrows hell—knocks down its gates and liberates its captives, because Christ is risen and present in the place of our loss and grief and pain and weeping wherever and whenever that may be, Easter hope does indeed spring eternal. May this be the day of your resurrection to Easter hope! “Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” Amen.


This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.