Luke 24:1-12
Like all Easter stories, at first this one won’t sound like an Easter story. There are no obvious trumpets. No lilies. No loud sounding Alleliuas. But like all Easter stories, there is usually death before there is resurrection. And resurrection comes in this one, too.
It had to have been the very worst day of their lives. The earthquake struck in Haiti that afternoon and these young people from one of our Lutheran seminaries were right in the middle of it. If you were here a few months back you may have heard me speak of the terrible loss of a gifted young man who was soon to graduate from seminary and become a pastor of the church. Ben and his wife and his cousin were in Haiti doing missionary work for the month of January. They were all together on the second floor of a boys’ home when the earth shook beneath them and the building came down around them. Renee, Ben’s wife, and Jonathon, his cousin, were able to escape. Ben, however, was buried in the rubble. The two survivors reported later that they went back to search for Ben, going to the place where they had crawled out from under the massive stones. As they stood in that spot and called his name, they heard him singing from beneath the rubble that had entombed him. Renee told him then that the two of them were safe, that he was much loved, and to just keep singing. Only soon he stopped --- and all the world heard that Ben’s final witness in this life was his voice singing a song of faith.
It had to have been the worst night of their lives. They had to have been in shock, terrified, grief stricken. Not unlike the disciples who fled from the cross on the dark Friday that Jesus died. Much like those women who hung back to see where Jesus was buried. Like them, all Renee and Jonathon knew to do was to seek safety. But unlike those first witnesses to Jesus’ death, with no home to go to, as sunlight started to fade, instead they found an open field: where they hoped to escape harm as the aftershocks continued. It was from the crowd of arriving people also filling that field that a woman approached them where they were huddled together. Their grief, their terror, was shared by everyone in that space that night, but no doubt, they stood out, for the color of their skin paled in comparison to most of the other survivors. The story goes that this elderly Haitian woman picked them out of the crowd, came up to them, wrapped a large shirt around them and cradled them in her arms. And then she sang to them all through that terrifying night. She sang to them all night long.
It had to have been the worst night of their lives. You and I, we’ve had those nights as well. Perhaps like with those first disciples; with those women who made their way to the cemetery that first Easter, maybe today our faces also are streaked with the tears of grief. Like them, maybe we also travel to this Easter day uncertain of what we will find. Perhaps we even find ourselves afraid: terrified of a thousand things or one thing so big we can hardly find words for it. We may have just come from the cemetery, having buried a best friend, a beloved spouse, a precious child. We may have walked in here this morning having long forgotten the song that brings Easter alive again, drowned out as it has been by the clanging sounds of cynicism, sadness, anger, or despair that seek to overtake our lives in the world. And yet, today, we come. For with all the world we are yearning to hear another song. Indeed, we can simply go no longer without the sounds of timpani and brass calling us to a song of life again. We can wait no more to hear the sound of one lone woman singing through the night.
And so like an old woman with nothing else to give in an open field with buildings falling all around, we, too, wrap our arms around one another and raise our voices in song and we listen to hear the voices of others joining ours. And, oh, how those voices in our ears lift our hearts and raise us up in confidence that night will pass. Filling us with the promise that in spite of all the evidence of destruction piling up around us, still death has not won! No indeed, cynicism and anger, grief and despair, suffering and death do not, will not have the last word.
We join our voices with those the world over who may have no earthly reason to sing, but still they sing, for their hope is fixed on something else. It is that witness, that shout, that song alone that turns our worst nights into mornings full of hope again. And that’s what makes this a story of Easter. For Jesus lives. We know this is so for he lives even now in our voices singing this song of hope. For Alleluia! Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen, indeed! Alleluia!
Amen.
