While It Was Still Dark

Easter Sunday: Isaiah 65:17-25; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

1 Corinthians 15:19-26; John 20:1-18

The Rev. Cameron Partridge

Risen Lord, greet us in the dark, call us by name, send us forth as witnesses to resurrection. Amen.

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb. (John 20:1).

Good Morning, St. Aidan’s friends.

This morning resurrection meet us in the dark. It is light now, but imagine – or if you were up, remember– how it looked three, four, five hours ago. Pitch black, no trace of light at the horizon. This was the hour in which Mary Magdalene made her way to the tomb of her beloved Jesus (John 20:1). Arrested for crossing the powers of imperial Rome by his teaching, his healing, his centering of the marginalized, his announcement of God’s just reign, Jesus had been publicly executed three days earlier. Mary Magdalene, Jesus’ mother Mary and her sister, and an unnamed disciple known simply as the one Jesus loved, had stood by bearing witness as he died, becoming family to one another (19:25-27). Then after he had died, a secret follower of Jesus named Joseph of Arimathea received permission to take his body down from the cross. Joined by Nicodemus, identified as one who had also sought out Jesus quietly, “by night,” they had wrapped Jesus’ body in linen with a mixture of myrrh and aloes and placed him in a tomb in nearby garden (19:38-42). And so now, Mary Magdalene had come back to that tomb, feeling her way forward in the dark.[1]

But rather than finding the huge stone sealing it shut, the tomb lay open, the body nowhere to be found. In deep grief, one comfort she might have expected to hold onto – that amid crushing loss, at least it was possible to visit and honor the body of her loved one, to know where it lay – that too had been taken. Finding Peter and the Beloved Disciple, she had cried out, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him” (20:2). They – Roman authorities? We – were there others she had asked? This news had kicked off a strange race, the two men running to the tomb and realizing in odd succession the truth of his rising. If they conveyed any of this to Mary, the text does not tell us. She remained in the dark, weeping outside the tomb.[2] Yet because she remained, she became the first witness of the risen Christ.[3]

This encounter does not come right away, nor does it blare with triumphal tones. Instead it emerges quietly with several literal twists, turns, and repetitions, painstakingly conveyed to us in John’s account. Mary first bends to look into the tomb and again encounters the absence of Jesus’ body. That absence is marked by two angels who are pointedly placed where Jesus’ body had been. They ask her why she is weeping. They don’t tell her why she shouldn’t. She repeats what she had said to the disciples, but with subtle differences. “They have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid him.” My Lord this time, her loved one. I do not know his whereabouts. She then turns, only to see Jesus standing there, apparently unrecognizable, repeating the ridiculous question: Why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for? Rather than reiterating the same line, she seems to assume he had heard what she had said to the figures in the tomb. What she definitely assumes, we are told, is that Jesus was the caretaker of the garden housing this tomb, “the gardener.” Respectfully, she states “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Please, let me just take care of the one I loved. But rather than explain the misunderstanding, this glorious gardener simply calls her name. Like the first humans in the first garden, naming the animals the Creator brought before them, Jesus the new Creation speaks Mary into life again.[4] At this, Mary turns again. This would seem to be a redundant turn, as she was already facing him. Yet, as scholars of this text have pointed out, this moment marks a deeper turning, a kind of metanoia, an opening of heart to resurrection reality.[5] A transformation of perception that changes Mary forever.[6] The text does not use the word “believe” in this moment as had been the case for the Beloved Disciple earlier, yet this is clearly what has happened to Mary. Believing in John’s gospel, as biblical scholar Sandra Schneiders explains, is “an active spiritual state of personal adherence to Jesus, the revealer, and readiness for whatever he will do.’’[7]

In this readiness, this adherence, Mary declares, “Rabouni!” Teacher! Jesus responds by engaging, by redirecting, by turning her adherence: “Do not hold onto me,” he replies, but go. Go to my kindred who are not here (20:16-17). Interwoven with this instruction is confusing language of ascension – I have not yet ascended, I am ascending. Temporality seems scrambled.[8]  And yet, as scholars have suggested, this is likely no scribal error along the way. The risen Christ transforms space and time. “He is not here,” as Sandra Schneiders argues, because “the ‘where’ of Jesus in John[‘s gospel] is not primarily a spatial or geographical location. It denotes indwelling, the communion between Jesus and God and between Jesus and his disciples.”[9] This is why Jesus’ response to Mary’s query about the location of his body was relational. In John’s gospel, Jesus teaches, I am the vine, you are the branches. I am the door. I am the resurrection.[10] Not, “I am the risen one” – though he certainly is that – but I am the irrepressible fact of resurrection life, a life that cannot be quenched by any tyranny, a life that swallows up death forever.[11] Abide in me, Jesus says, just as I abide in God the Parent. And so go, tell our kindred, our family woven anew. Bear witness to resurrection reality. And then live it. Live it as resistance in the face of empire, live it amid your very real fear, live it in strength and love, in conviction of its transformative power.

I was struck that this weekend my colleagues in the Diocese of Massachusetts, and the wider community there and beyond, have been marking the 250th anniversary of the ride of Paul Revere and the start of the Revolutionary War. Revere’s ride launched from the Old North Church, Christ Church Boston, an Episcopal congregation whose current vicar I am delighted to have been ordained with twenty years ago. This weekend they have held a service to read, mark and inwardly digest that resistance to oppression was at the heart of that revolution.[12] At a time when tyranny is on the rise in this country, as it has been at various points since the revolution, a time when the teaching of history in all its complexity is under threat, remembering the threads of oppression and resistance, repression and transformation, is more important than ever. Growing up in the Bay Area, I did not have a particularly strong sense of connection to the events of the Revolutionary War. But living in Massachusetts for twenty plus years changed that, and in a rather unusual, personal way. Beginning in the spring of 2002, I began gender transition. And while I have always considered transition an ongoing process of becoming without a definitive beginning or end, there was a particular day along the way that I’ve long remembered, the start of hormone replacement therapy. Having been to a clinic earlier on that day for an injection, I joined up with some friends in the evening and shared this momentous news. Congratulations, they said, and on Patriot’s Day, no less! What? Patriot’s day, I asked? You know, they responded, the shot heard round the world… Indeed. I didn’t make much of it, but some months later we happened to visit Minuteman Park in Concord, site of the Old North Bridge. As we approached the bridge, a plaque mounted on an obelisk stopped me in my tracks: “Here on the 19th of April 1775 was made the first forcible resistance to British aggression,” it began. “In gratitude to God and in the love of freedom,” it concluded. April 19th was a day of resistance. Somehow along the way, I had completely lost track. But now, in a continuing spirit of resistance and loving liberation, that coincidental anniversary struck me as unexpectedly right. Two years later, when I was ordained to the diaconate, Kateri and I took a friend who was visiting from California there. We took a photo of me in front of that plaque. This morning churches across this country are ringing their bells with Old North Church, remembering the call to resist tyranny in all its forms.[13] When ring ours in a few moments, I invite you to hear it in the spirit of resurrection liberation.

Friends, resurrection power meets us in the darkness, in the hours before dawn. It meets us in confusion, in fear, in grief.  He calls us to stand in our truth and be who we are, whoever we may be, knowing that simple acts of life can be modes of resistance. We know this all too well as trans people are being told in so many cruel ways that we are not who we are, that we do not belong; as migrants in this country are being pushed away, in several cases disappeared without due process. Here in these garden shadows, the risen Christ greets us. His presence jolts us to turn, to open our hearts into resurrection alertness. He urges us not to cling to our old certainties and tells us to go, to be family to one another, to connect as kindred. To be the community of liberation, to bear witness to a resurrection reality that inspires courage and life in the face of repression. To believe in the power of resurrection that cannot be contained. Not by death. Not by loss. Not by betrayal and corruption. Not by empire. Not by fear. Though these realities press down upon us, resurrection life flows.

Risen Lord, greet us in the dark, call us by name, send us forth as witnesses to resurrection. Amen.

[1] Shelly Rambo, Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 2010), 83-85. Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel (New York, NY:L Crossroad, 1999, 2003), 216.

[2] Rambo, 84

[3] Schneiders,

[4] Schneiders, 217

[5] Schneiders, 214, 218. Though not metanoia in the sense of repentance -- Schneiders critiques and pushes back against historical readings of Mary Magdalene that have tended to position her as a repentant sinner.

[6] Rambo, 87

[7] Schneiders, 209

[8] Gail O’Day, The New Interpreters Bible, vol. 9: Luke-John (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995), 842-3, cited in Rambo, n. 17, p. 89

[9] Schneiders, 213.

[10] John 15:1; 10:9; 11:25

[11] Schneiders, 212

[12] https://www.oldnorth.com/lanternservice/

[13] https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2025/04/15/let-freedom-ring-houses-of-worship-across-the-country-will-ring-their-bells-for-freedom-on-april-18th/ With thanks to the Rev. Gary Ost for alerting me to this call, and asking if we might do this on Easter Morning.