The Messenger In The Darkness

AN EASTER MESSAGE

LUKE 24:1-12

I would like to be the messenger in the tomb.  Be available to someone when they enter the darkness, bewildered, disoriented, searching, their world all torn apart.  This is the case of the women with the spices who come to anoint Jesus.  Like many people who are in darkness and even shock, they do the irrational.  Why bring spices to anoint a body that is buried behind a stone too big to move?  But at least they are searching for something to do.

I want to be the person who has known the darkness and found hope, who has found a “yes” to all those who say “no” to life.  I think of all the people who were killed by church bombs in Sri Lanka in the last few hours.  The survivors are bewildered and shocked, in darkness.  The bombers said “no” to the victims. Persons can say “no” by shooting children in schools, Can the survivors say “yes” to going on with some quality of life?  Who will bring them hope?  

I think of all the addicted people, living in a darkness, searching for a way out.  Suicide seems like an option.  Then they come into the recovery rooms of 12 step programs.  Someone is there for the newcomer, someone who has known the darkness, and searched for light and life and found it from others who were there for them when they came all perplexed.  

Not everyone will respond to hope offered.  Many an addict leaves and dies miserable in their darkness.  The messenger of hope is not responsible for the results, but only for being there with the message for another. The disciples of Jesus thought the message to be nonsense.  Many today will say the same thing.  Nonsense to a God becoming human and dying selflessly on a cross and then rising from the dead. 

When someone loses a parent, a spouse, a child, a lifelong friend to death,  they can feel a certain darkness.  Their old life is gone, like a broken dish.  It can never be recovered.  But hope says that there can be a future, different from the past, but a future with light in it.  Someone who has gone through a similar loss and learned to live on in hope and service, can be the messenger.  My darkness, followed by a “yes” is new life.  I am risen.