Tombs and Cocoons: Trusting the Darkness
Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren
Pastor Katie Shaw Thompson – September 24, 2023
Tombs and Cocoons: Trusting the Darkness – John 20: 1-2
Folks like me who have grown up with the Easter story already know how today’s chapter of the gospel of John ends. We know that even though Jesus is crucified on Friday he rises on Sunday. But Mary hadn’t lived that part of the story yet when she arrived at the tomb early on the first day of the week while it was still dark. She had been present at Golgotha. She had seen the horrors of her dear teacher being brutally executed by officers of the Roman empire.
The gospel of John doesn’t exactly say why she came to the tomb but I imagine that it was a place where the outer reality of her grief matched the inner reality of her grief. There have been times in my life where I wanted to numb the pain but there have been times in my life where I needed to go to be with the pain and know how real it is–where I needed someone to say yeah that hurts and that hurt is going to change you but you are not alone.
In 2016, Heather Harper suffered the loss of a dear loved one. She told an interviewer later that “the weeks that followed were the hardest weeks of her life.” When Harper eventually forced herself to leave the house, one of the first places she went was church. She found that folks there struggled to know how to respond to her profound grief.
One Sunday, Harper was so overwhelmed that she stepped out of the sanctuary to be alone. Not long after, an older woman she didn't know very well joined her. They didn't speak or even look at each other. Then the woman said in a loud, clear voice, “My [dearest love] died 35 years ago and not a day has gone by that I haven't thought of [them.] Don't ever let anyone tell you that you are grieving for too long.'"
"Her words were what I needed to hear in that moment of my life," said Harper. "I needed to know that I would never be the same again. And that it was normal to be that way. And that I wasn't broken, that there was nothing wrong with grief, no matter how long it lasted. And most of all, she let me know that I wasn't alone.”
Life is full of opportunities to experience deep grief. Life will inevitably serve up to us some share of challenge or pain. That grief is real, and it is perfectly faithful to let yourself feel it. You don’t have to know what happens next or have any answers to simply come to that place of grief just as Mary came to the tomb.
I don’t know who here needs to hear this besides me, but as a reminder, when Mary came to the tomb she pretty much fell to pieces. She was no picture of stoicism. She was pretty much a wreck. She saw that the stone had been rolled away and ran. She ran and got Peter and the “other disciple whom Jesus loved.” I don’t know what to hear in her words if not panic when she says, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.’” Then they all looked in and saw the linen wrappings lying there.
She saw the angels. And still, still she grieved. She kept on grieving, even when someone she didn’t recognize cluelessly asked her why she was weeping. I think it’s pretty fair to say Mary went to pieces.
I try not to go to pieces. I’m way too proud. But sometimes I do anyway. And when I do, I often find, I probably would have been a lot farther ahead if I hadn’t tried so hard and so long to hold all the pieces together when they were meant to fall apart.
That’s one of the things I love about caterpillars. They curl up in their cocoons and their chrysalises, and when they come out they’re beautiful moths and butterflies. But in between some wild stuff happens. Scientists tell us that during that unseen metamorphosis these creatures go to pieces. Actually, it’s probably more accurate to say they turn into goo. It is only in the goo stage that what scientists have labeled the creature’s imaginal cells take over and lead all the growth that comes next.
If Mary can do it and caterpillars can do it, maybe we don’t have to be so afraid to go to pieces, too. Maybe that’s the very place where whatever comes next begins.
It seems to me that’s how it works in nature. There are cycles of death and resurrection. It seems to me that’s a big part of the Christian story, too. There’s always a transformation, always an emergence, in the works.
That’s what Mary encountered after all–after she went to pieces. She encountered the impossible. She encountered the risen Christ.
Transformation, resurrection, emergence, these things don’t always happen like I’d like. They don’t always happen when I want them to happen or how I want them to happen either. But they happen pretty often.
Love–the big love–the love we call agape or even God, that Love actually outlives death. That Love remains. That Love changes us if we let it.
We’ve been through some hard things these past few years. In some ways it’s hard to believe what’s happened has actually happened. In some ways it’s hard to comprehend how exactly things are different now. And yet, they’re not exactly the same. They’re not the same at church. They’re not the same at lots of workplaces or schools across the country. They’re probably not exactly the same even in your home.
Whatever you’ve been through or whatever you’re going through now, come to the darkness with trust.
The way I see it, Mary Magdalene is the first ever preacher of the good news of Christ rising on that Sunday morning. The way I see it she had to grieve and grieve and cry her eyes out until she could see him, the risen Christ, standing right before her.
I can’t see the future, but I do know that grief takes time. I do know that recovering our health can take time. I do know that adjusting to any real change can take time.
Like Mary Magdalene, we so often come to the tomb places of life while it is yet dark and our way ahead is hard to see. None of us remembers what it was like to be born. None of us remembers that waiting--at least not from the inside.
Maybe if we did, we would be better prepared for such times of uncertainty. Maybe if we did, we would remember that we do have practice waiting in the dark, while a change we cannot yet understand is being worked all around us.
To quote the Sikh, activist, and mother Valerie Kaur, “What if this [uncertain time] is not the darkness of the tomb but the darkness of the womb?”
Yes, the shadow of death has passed over us all in the form of a global pandemic but what if something has also been born? What if our job now is only to wait as patiently as we can, attending to our challenges and our grief with as much kindness as we can? What if our job is not to over plan or over worry or to rush ourselves past our very real feelings but rather to come to the darkness with trust that it is okay to go to pieces as we wait for the new life that is emerging even now.
May it be so. Amen.
