Sunrise moments

I know a friend who starts his day watching sunrises.  He drinks his first coffee watching the sun slowly come up above the horizon and flood the world with warmth and light.  

The last few days, I have been doing the same, going out with Tim’s camera and using it to capture the moment the sky slowly lightened up.  It was a time of stillness, but the squirrel started to scamper along the branches, the birds began to chirp, the geese flew overhead, and the clouds went from dark grey to soft warm pinks and golds.  They varied from one morning to the next, and they happen so slowly and gradually that it seemed like nothing had changed until there it was, the sun, and the day had begun.

Sometimes we feel caught in a perpetual nighttime of the soul, or a dull greyness of the pre-dawn cold morning.  When do we get to wake up, go outside and really know that the light has dawned, a new day has arrived, and new hopes and possibilities are just around the corner?

When the two Marys and Salome went out to the tomb, they had everything planned out.  They had traditions to follow, they had expectations of what they would do and what they would bring, they had a list. They had no idea what their day was going to bring.  

They needed the traditions that gave them clear direction on what to do.  They were dealing with the trauma of having seen their beloved leader tortured and executed.  Maybe they came as a group because one of them would train the others on what to do.  Maybe they came as a group because they needed each other’s support.  Whatever the reason, they didn’t get what they expected.  They didn’t have a decomposing body or the ripe stench of the tomb.  They didn’t have to wash the corpse of their leader and smear myrrh over him as they wept at the marks of torture.  Instead, they were bewildered and confused by what they found, terrified even, by this unexpected turn of events.  They had no idea of what the empty tomb meant.  They had no wise theologians or biblical scholars to explain what happened.  So, they ran.  

We might wish we could run from what we are experiencing now.  We are in the midst of terrible times, where we don’t know where to turn for trustworthy and safe news.  Where we long for the ‘good old days.’ Where all we can imagine is going back to the way life was over a year ago.  Where we wish the gloom of this not-quite sunrise, this not-quite easter would become a full, glorious turning back the clock and getting back to normal.

We’re tired of keeping on.  We’re tired of waiting for good news, we’re tired of isolation.  And we’re wondering when this will all end.  We are in a difficult place.

One of my favorite stories of ordinary people in difficult places is from the Lord of the Rings By J R R Tolkien.  Sam Gamgee, a gardener and cook, is half-way up a mountain with his friend Frodo, and it feels like they will never see the sun again.  Into that time of despair, he tells Frodo: 

It’s like in the great stories Mr. Frodo.

The ones that really mattered.

Full of darkness and danger they were,

and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end.

Because how could the end be happy?

How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened.

But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow.

Even darkness must pass.

A new day will come.

And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer.

Those were the stories that stayed with you.

Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t.

Because they were holding on to something. 

That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.

What are we holding onto?  What good will we find if we go to our Galilee? Will we watch the sunrise and see things in a new light?  Will we find our trauma and grief transformed into an energy and enthusiasm that would not stop for any reason, the way it did for Mary and Peter and the rest?

We know the rest of their great story.  We know that many of Jesus’ followers had an experience beyond words, beyond understanding, that pulled them from despair and grief into action and joy.  They found themselves living in new hope, in new ways of being.  They could not go back to the old ways, the old traditions.  They went forward with courage and resilience and love into an unimaginable future.

Even in the midst of Mordor, Sam knew that the sun would rise.  In the midst of the first Easter, faced with the empty tomb, the women knew that something had changed beyond description or understanding, that the sun would rise over Lake Galilee.  In the midst of our own challenging times, we know that things will be different one day.  We know that God has been with us when we least expected it, in the call of a friend, in an unexpected postcard or phone call, in the geese flying overhead, in the sunrises that flood our lives with new vision and new hope.  Our lives will be changed, just like the women at the tomb, and they will be changed in ways we least expect it.  Let us stay ready and open for God to flood our lives with the light of new faith, and new lives of unexpected beauty and joy.  Let us remember that God can plant sunrises of hope and faith in our lives.  In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us, we are not alone.  Halleluiah!

(sunrise photos M. Rosborough, March 2021 from the church steps)