Easter Sunrise

Mark 16:1-8
When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.


I used to get a lot of teasing in my last appointment for being tardy: not really from the people in my congregation but from my colleagues in neighboring United Methodist churches. As pastors in the same area, we met together every week to pray, offer each other support and accountability, and to plan ways we could be in ministry together. One of the things we did annually was plan a community-wide Easter sunrise service. Our meetings were Tuesday mornings at 8:30, every week of the year; the Easter sunrise service was one out of 365 and a quarter days. I rarely arrived at our meeting at 8:30 am on Tuesdays, but for 4 years in a row I arrived at the Easter sunrise service no less than a half hour BEFORE it was to start. And to top it off, I was the one who set the starting time for that service because I insisted that the crowd gathered actually see the sun rise during the time we were together. That meant that the service began before 7 am a couple of years. And when I suggested that we meet for worship at 6:30 in the morning, not only did they all tell me I was ridiculous, but they all doubted that I would be able to make it on time, much less early, to such an un-Godly hour. But I was always there and ready to go.

There is something that I dearly love about the early morning Easter service. I like having this one morning of the year when I get up way before anyone should, get ready in the very dark with not even a glimmer of morning sun, and get out on the road and be the only car traveling in either direction. We’ve barely finished with the night when we gather for sunrise worship on Easter Sunday. It’s out of our natural order of things to be up and out so early on a Sunday. The rest of the world doesn’t even get why we get up and out to church on ANY Sunday, and this must seem all the crazier. Normal people work and play in the regular hours of the day—you know, 8-5. When it is the weekend, we have brunch at 10 and stay up late watching TV and movies or spending time with friend or family. We rest so that when our work begins again on Monday morning, we’ll have enough energy to face another week.

Maybe that’s another thing I love about Easter sunrise and it’s upset of the natural order of things to which we’ve grown accustomed: it asks us to consider a new way of looking at work and accomplishment. I go back and forth between being very productive in the night hours and being too sleepy to do anything but fall asleep. But we find that God is hard at work, doing God’s best work in the wee hours of this most holy morning. While we slept, God raised Jesus from the grave and set the order of heaven and earth right again by returning Jesus to his rightful place as the eternal Word of God.

Even though I’m not a morning person, things just seem to be right and at peace on Easter morning, early, when it’s not quite light yet, but the night is over; when sane people are in their beds still sleeping; when coffee makers are just starting to make the morning coffee that will be ready when everyone is finally awake; when the Easter bunny is still delivering last minute baskets. There is a very natural order of things when the faithful, usually only a few, gather to greet the risen Lord, expecting to find things way out of worldly order and the tomb where his dead human body was laid empty.

I think this is the true order of things. It turns everything else upside down. The hardest work is not done 8-5 but while the rest of the world sleeps. Women were the ones given the news and charged to go out and tell it. Nothing is as we might expect it to be, yet everything is finally right.

So many terrible things happen in the cover of night: theft, rape, murder, war. And we continue to sleep through the most devastating hurts of the world. But thanks be to God on this holiest of days that while we slept, while someone somewhere stole human dignity and life, God was working harder than any evil we can point to in the world and turning things upside down. It’s no wonder they fled the tomb terrified. The world suddenly didn’t make sense anymore; and yet, nothing was ever more right.

Christ is risen; he is risen, indeed.

Amen!