Pastor James Harnish of Hyde Park United Methodist Church in Tampa, Florida tells the story of a little boy who was not exactly happy about going to church on Easter Sunday morning. His new shoes were too tight, his tie pinched his neck and the weather was just too beautiful to be cooped up inside ... As he sulked in the back seat of the car, his parents heard him mutter: “I don’t know why we have to go to church on Easter, anyway; they keep telling the same old story and it always comes out the same in the end!”

his childlike observation makes us chuckle, but if we look a bit deeper at Easter we realize that there isn’t just one old story; neither do these different stories have an end. The resurrection accounts found in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, in the book of Acts and the letters of the Apostle Paul, all vary on a variety of details like whether Jesus was buried or entombed, who and how many people visited Jesus’ gravesite, whether the risen Jesus made an actual physical appearance or not, whether such appearances happened on that first Easter morning and to whom, and how many messengers announced to visiting mourners that Jesus was no longer there. We can get caught up in trying to reconcile all the literal contradictions of detail in an effort to create a single Easter story, or we can allow ourselves to bask in the multiple truths that the various nuances of our biblical tradition so richly offer.

Those of you who have flown on transatlantic flights may have had a similar experience to this one. I was returning home from a trip to the Holy Land in February 1998. Our bus ride from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv left in the dark, right after an early dinner and our plane took off around midnight. Our direct flight into Chicago was about thirteen hours in the air. Because Israel’s time zone is eight hours earlier than central standard time here in the U.S., we were in the dark for about 20 hours straight and it seems even longer when you’re crunched in coach seats on a bus and plane!

Flying from east to west across the ocean and peering through the little airplane portals feels like you’re traveling into never ending blackness. But then, as the plane turned to a north-south orientation to begin our descent to O’Hare, the windows on the right side of the plane glimmered with a thin hint of dawn while the windows on the left side of the plane remained pitch black. As we landed and deplaned the skies gradually, imperceptibly, but inevitably brightened and by the time we got through customs and settled onto our connecting flight to Minneapolis/St. Paul, our world was flooded with light.

Perhaps this travel experience helps illumine the unique Easter perspective from Luke 24:1-12. We read in this gospel that a handful of women approached Jesus’ tomb at early dawn on that first Easter Sunday. Literally and figuratively they walked in darkness. Looking back over their last three days; looking back over their last three years through the lens of Jesus’ death they saw only dashed hopes, broken hearts and an empty future. On the one hand, everything was shrouded in black, but on the other hand, ever so gradually, almost imperceptibly, but nonetheless inevitably, their day began to brighten. We read that the women approached the tomb…and found it empty…and became puzzled and terrified by seemingly further loss…and were told by two radiantly dressed strangers not to “look for the living among the dead”…and started to remember some of Jesus’ prior teachings about how he would be with them always…and went back to talk with other disciples about what this all meant…and others with questions went to the tomb to see for themselves…and then they were amazed at what had happened! As the story progresses you can almost see the slow and gentle illumination of the disciples’ faith!

The light of Easter doesn’t always come instantaneously with the flick of a switch. All too often Easter is more of a dawning, a gradual awareness as we peer through shades of gray, that God’s light still shines just as the Christ Candle burned behind the black veil on our Holy Table during the start of our service this morning. Like those first disciples, for we modern disciples, resurrection experiences don’t dawn on everyone the same way, at the same time, in the same place, as a once and for all event. John Robinson is said to have reminded the Pilgrims as they set out for a new world: “For God hath yet more light and truth to break forth from the Word.” The wonderful promise that comes with thinking of Easter as a dawning, not a switch is that the moments of light we currently enjoy; the thrills that bring us joy; are not the end of the story, but in fact only a glimmer of the brilliance yet to come!

This rough hewn cross amidst our Easter garden this morning has had quite a journey over the last several months. It stood as a centerpiece for our Good Friday prayer vigil. It was carried in and had nails pounded into it and candles hung from it during our Maundy Thursday service. It stood in our narthex during the forty days of Lent and had prayers pinned to it by our congregation for use in Sunday worship. This cross was assembled with two pieces of wood taken from the split rail fence that was built as a stage prop for our church’s production of The Laramie Project in January. The play was a documentary compilation of interviews with residents of Laramie, Wyoming regarding Matthew Shepard a gay student at the University of Wyoming who was brutally beaten, tied to a fence and left to die one hate filled night in October 1998.

And so this cross, formerly another instrument of execution in the form of a wooden fence, played a significant visual role throughout the play. In the closing scene of The Laramie Project the narrator reflects, “We all said we would meet again – one last time at the fence.” And the character Doc O’Connor ends the play with a description of what the view from that fence looks like at night. From that fence on a hill overlooking the town of Laramie, one sees the beauty of colorful lights bouncing off low lying clouds. Doc closes compassionately, “…Matt was right there in that spot, and I can just picture in his eyes, I can just picture what he was seeing. The last thing he saw on this earth was the sparkling lights.” All of us meet in some way or another at the fence, or at the cross. Yet Easter assures that no matter what the darkness that envelops us, no matter what the pain that afflicts us, no matter what the fear that imprisons us, no matter what the death that threatens us, the dawning light of Easter slowly, but surely sets us free!