While It Was Still Dark

While It Was Still Dark

Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene

John 20:1–18

“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark…”

the Easter story begins with darkness.

Not daylight.
Not certainty.
Not triumph.

Darkness.

The darkness of grief. The darkness of shattered hopes. The darkness that settles over every human heart after violence, betrayal, loss of life, security, or our system of government.

Before there is resurrection, there is a garden still wrapped in shadow. “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” “Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.”— Abraham Joshua Heschel

Standing in the darkness is Mary Magdalene. She comes carrying spices, not expectations. She has not arrived looking for miracles. She comes simply to perform one final act of love.

She stays.

Meister Eckhart reflected that Mary “stood because she loved.” That may be one of the most profound descriptions of discipleship ever written. She stands because she loves. Before there is proclamation, there is presence. Before there is faith, there is fidelity. Before there is resurrection, there is accompaniment.

That is where Easter begins.

Mary Magdalene is not simply the first witness of the resurrection. She is the first disciple formed by Holy Wisdom Easter morning. She witnesses that resurrection is recognized not through power or certainty, but through faithful presence, relationship, and love. She becomes the first apostle of what I have come to call Divine Accompaniment.

This understanding is deeply personal for me. One of the quiet gifts of my own ministry is that I was ordained to the diaconate on the Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene. At the time I assumed it was little more than a matter of scheduling. Looking back over more than two decades, I have come to believe it was providence.

Mary has accompanied my vocation, I have learned that the Church is healthiest when it listens before it speaks, accompanies before it judges, and discovers Jesus already present among those whom society has pushed to the margins.

Long before my ordination, I was centered both philosophically and theologically through the lens of feminism. My philosophical formation grounded me to ask critical questions about truth, power, and human dignity. My theological formation taught me to ask where God is at work within those same questions, and how the Gospel calls us to respond. Two sides of the same coin.

My spiritual journey initiated me to voices in poetics, philosophy, liberation theology, that challenged the assumptions I had inherited about power, authority, and the nature of God as father.

I understood that theology is never an abstract exercise; it is always about whose voices are heard, whose experiences matter, and whether our understanding of the creator expands or contracts our humanity.

I found in feminist and womanist theologians, not solely arguments about women in the Church, but a richer vision of the Gospel itself.

 

“My theological imagination has been profoundly shaped by feminist theology’s recovery of women’s voices in Scripture and tradition, and by womanist theology’s insistence that liberation must always attend to the intertwined realities of race, gender, community, and justice.”

I learned that the central question was never exclusively about the inclusion of women. The deeper question concerns the nature of Creations reign of heaven. Is the Church fundamentally organized around domination or around relationship? Around hierarchy or around the discipleship of equals revealed in Jesus. Is it more important to believe or to belong?  For me, belonging precedes believing.

Walking beside immigrants seeking dignity, learning from Indigenous elders, listening to Palestinian Christians who continue to hope amid genocidal occupation—these experiences teach us the lesson Mary learned in the garden. Wisdom speaks from the margins if we remain still long enough to hear her voice.

John tells us that Mary remains outside the tomb weeping. Then Jesus speaks a single word. “Mary.”

Everything changes.

Resurrection begins not with explanation but with relationship.

Notice what Jesus does not do. He does not hand Mary a creed to memorize. He does not offer a lecture on eternal life, heaven or hell, the rapture, atonement, or even end times. He does not establish an institution. He simply calls her by name.

In that moment grief becomes recognition. Fear becomes vocation. Love becomes witness.

Her authority does not arise from office or status. It arises from encounter. She has seen the risen Christ, and because she has seen, she is sent.

“Go to my brothers and say to them…”

The first Easter proclamation is entrusted to a woman.

For centuries the Church has honored Mary Magdalene as the Apostle to the Apostles. That title is not a modern invention. It is the Church’s ancient recognition that the first voice commissioned to proclaim resurrection was Mary’s.

An early Christian text known as the Gospel of Mary preserves this same memory. As the disciples hide in fear, Mary becomes the one who restores hope. Peter questions whether Jesus could really have entrusted such wisdom to a woman. Levi responds, “If the Savior made her worthy, who are you to reject her?”

Whether we read that text as historical memory or a gospel reflection, it preserves an enduring truth. The question has never been whether God speaks through unexpected voices. Scripture answered that long ago. The question is whether we have learned to listen.

Those are the practices of Holy Wisdom.

Prophetic accompaniment is the ministry of remaining faithfully present with those on the margins, discerning the movement of Holy Wisdom among them, speaking that truth to the Church, and inviting the whole Body of Christ into God’s work of justice, reconciliation, and hope.

The ministry of a deacon is, at its heart, a ministry of prophetic accompaniment. We stand at thresholds, walk beside those whose voices are often ignored, and carry the prayers of the world into the Church and the compassion of the Church back into the world. The deacon invites the beloved community to hear the voices that are often only spoken from the margins.

 

 

From the beginning of Scripture, God does not save from a distance. God accompanies. God speaks from a burning bush or a whirlwind, God walks in the garden, journeys with Abraham, travels with Israel, delights beside creation, becomes flesh in Christ, and calls Mary by name. God’s essential language is presence.

Resistance alone is not enough. We are invited to practice resurrection. “The vocation of the baptized person is a simple thing: it is to live from day to day, whatever the day brings, in reconciliation with all people and all creation, recognizing that death has no more power, this is the truth of resurrection.”

Mary practiced love by remaining at the cross and at the tomb. She witnessed resurrection by proclaiming, “I have seen the Lord.” She resisted the powers of death not through violence but through hope. Love itself became resistance.

We are living in a “while it was still dark” moment. We remember that Easter begins while it is still dark. Resurrection invites us wherever we listen enough to hear our name spoken.

When we break bread together it is not nostalgia for Jesus. It is our willing participation in the living Christ, who calls us from our darkness, transforms us in the present, and sends us toward the future God is bringing into being.

 

Jesus calls us by name.

May we have ears to hear.

May we, as Mary, continue to have courage to walk in love.

Amen.

10am Service