Resurrection Witness

An Easter Vigil sermon preached with the people of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Oakland, California.

Thank you Mary and Alan for your witness. And witness is what it was. This service is all about telling and listening to the stories of God and God’s people through space and time. I love that because it reminds us that we are all called to witness.

Matthew’s Gospel introduces us to the very first resurrection witnesses. The very first to celebrate Easter. The very first to preach the story, their story. And, now, our story. They come to the tomb; no small thing and a courageous act, as the site sits under the watch of guards of an empire that just put Jesus to death. 

And as they approach, the ground shakes as an angel descends. And tells them the best news that has ever been or ever will be: Jesus has been raised from the dead—and that they must head out, to see Jesus and witness to the world. And they do so, Matthew notes, with quote “fear and great joy.”

This liturgical page-turning we do at this Vigil service is magical, as we move from Lent and Holy Week into Easter. It makes me breathe a sigh of something like relief; fills my heart with new-found joy.

But of course, we will leave this place and find the world very much as it was this morning, in the pain and suffering and grief of Good Friday.

We will still be witness to things that fill us with sadness, and anger and, yes, fear. But … it’s Easter. Are we doing it wrong if we feel this way?

No, I think we’re doing Easter the same way Mary and Mary did it the very first time around: with “fear and great joy.” These women passed by the imperial surveillance agents posted to the site of the Resurrection on their way to proclaim the Gospel for the first time. And that gritty truth was part of their witness, too. This is what it is to be Resurrection witnesses.

To tell our story. To hear others’ stories. To trust that it is in those stories that we, like Mary and Mary, encounter the Risen Christ. Not instead of the pain and grief and fear. But right in the midst of them.

Because Resurrection does not wait for the world to become gentle. It breaks in while the agents of empire are still posted at the tomb. While the grief is still fresh. While the fear is still real. And that is the miracle of this night.

Not that fear disappears, but that joy rises anyway. And so we go, as Mary and Mary did. We may go with some fear. And we may go with great joy. We go as witnesses Resurrection witnesses.