Alleluia, Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, Alleluia! This is the moment above all moments in the Christian year. John builds up the suspense. It’s early. It’s the first day of the week. It’s still dark. Is it going to be just another Monday morning? I’ve been in Jerusalem on a Sunday morning. For them it’s like Monday, the day after the Sabbath, and the weekly routine starts up again with a rush. As soon as there is enough light to walk by, the wagons will be queuing up to get into the old city, bartering will begin. Just another day. NOT!

NOT! But in the story, we don’t know that yet. A woman has turned up at the tomb. A woman. Well I ask you. Well, actually, I wouldn’t ask you like that, because you’d give me a flea in my ear, but then, at that time, in those days, women couldn’t even act as legal witnesses, they were thought so unreliable. And as for this woman; well, well again. Can’t somebody move her on, send her for counselling, just let the tomb be. It’s bad enough already without all this emotion.

O good, she’s gone to get the men, and here come Peter and John. That’s better. Ho hum. Maybe not.

But at least now we can start to follow the story through John’s own eyes, as we’ve been trying to all week. One of the interesting features of the resurrection narratives is that they vary quite a lot between the evangelists. But that makes sense when you realise that it was still dark, and no-one was really expecting to do anything more than attend to the body and the grave, but also there is a constant theme that the resurrection is something that they and we don’t really see until we believe. That seems to be the way God works all along. His presence and actions in the word are real enough, but rarely if ever do they force themselves on us. The great church father Irenaeus, the one who called the world a vale of soul-making, also said that the world was experienced as if God was not a given: that God always showed himself in a way that could either be seen as God, or not seen as God, and the choice was ours by faith.

That is the choice of faith the people of France have been confronted by this week in the face of the fire at Nôtre Dame. Is it a symbol of the gutting out of faith from the modern western world? A sign of despair? Or is the survival of so much with the cross still shining out in the nave a symbol that no matter how desperate the destruction, God’s resurrection power will in the end prevail, a sign of hope in fact and a renewed opportunity to be a people of faith?

That was the choice of faith that now lay before Peter and John, and it is fascinating to see them interacting with both it and each other. First John, the younger one, outruns Peter and looks in first. He sees the discarded grave-clothes, but perhaps out of respect stops at that point, and it is Peter who first goes in. Peter was not short of courage – but it is John who has the discernment, and when he follows Peter inside, it is he who not only sees but first believes, and at last starts to see how the prophecies which Jesus had been showing them are coming true, before there very eyes, and that after three days Jesus has indeed been raised from the dead.

So what is John, what are they going to do with this new revelation? Call a great public meeting? Rush to the Temple to start telling everyone? In fact they go home for breakfast, and although the penny has begun to drop, it will still be some time before as a group they really believe. And it will be Mary, the woman, who returns to them to tell them more, who makes the difference.

Which takes us to the second part of today’s Gospel. But first perhaps we should pause to ask ourselves what we think wemight have made of the empty tomb, if we had been there that first Easter morning? Our hopes would have been shattered – remember how despondent the disciples were on the Emmaus Road; our fears would have been magnified – remember how the disciples huddled together behind locked doors; and our understanding would surely just have blown a fuse at the sight of the deserted tomb, as it did for the disciples then, always remembering that they could not have read back into it the whole resurrection story that we now do. Have the authorities taken the body? Why? Surely there as noting to steal. Had Nicodemus had second thoughts? But he wouldn’t have moved anything on the Sabbath. What on earth is going on?

And if we would have thought all that then, it is an open question just how much of it we would also think now if the cold winds of tragedy started to blow, and erode the solidity of our faith. Each of us must speak for ourselves, but my sense is that it is not uncommon for even mature Christians to find themselves in a difficult and dark place when times get tough, hard though it is to acknowledge.

Mary Magdalene can be our unexpected guide. She is obviously overcome with emotion. But rather than writing her off as a silly, feely woman, let’s look more carefully at what happens next. First, she is brave and bold enough to look into tomb as John had done. The opening that had been sealed by the stone would be less than head height, she has to stoop to do it, and this is her first step in reaching out beyond those overwhelming emotions, doing something practical, even awkward, but seeking out the facts of the matter.

Secondly, she sees, and she  to her emotional state: “Woman, why are you weeping?”; and she is prepared to name her feelings, her bewilderment and loss, and make them available to be met.

And thirdly, Somehow, she senses the presence of another person behind her. She turns, and is asked again, “Why are you weeping?” though this time with the added question, “Who are you looking for?” Jesus is giving nothing away at this stage, and Mary takes him to be a gardener. As we have seen before, it is characteristic of encounters with the Risen Lord that it will be by the eyes of faith not just sight that he is recognised. Mary right now just wants to find the body of her Lord, and persists with her questioning, a questioning, a searching that anyone who has known bereavement will know too.

But the resolution to the searching is not a finding in the terms that Mary had imagined. She is not to be so much the finder as the one who is found. As Our Lord says her name, she finally recognises his presence. “I have called you by name, you are mine,” was God’s word to Israel in Isaiah. Now the new and good Shepherd of the people has come, and he knows the sheep by name, and calls them and carries them into the kingdom. We are back to the Vine where we began, to the promise in Jesus not just of the old order of things made do and mended, but of a whole new creation, starting that resurrection day to spread its power back through the darknesses of the past and forward into a still unfolding future, until that other day will come when all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. This is the third stage Mary shows us, that if we turn away from our self-pity, and are honest about ourselves to our Lord, he will meet us very personally in our place of need and bring us redemption.

So today, this Easter Day, as we sing our praises and most especially as we make our Communion, we too can reach out, even physically, from the curved-in-ness on ourselves that isolates us from God and receive the living presence of our Lord, which literally reaches deep within us as his body and our body and ours become incorporate together, never to be set apart.

There is one more lesson that Mary shows us: she does not stay frozen at Jesus’s feet, clinging to his feet. She hears his command to go and share the Good News. More of that tonight, but now, this Easter morning, let a smile fill your face and Alleluia be on your lips, and dare to speak out the good news we have been given to proclaim: Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, Alleluia!