The Power of Love

The Great Vigil of Easter (Year A, RCL)
March 22, 2008

The Reverend Paul R. Abernathy, Rector

Easter is a story about power. The greatest power in the world. This world or the next. The power, to quote the Apostle Paul, “to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things.”^[1] The power, to quote the song, “to dream the impossible dream, to fight the unbeatable foe, to bear the unbearable sorrow, to run where the brave dare not go.”^[2] The power to raise the dead. The power of love.

When I read the Easter story,^[3] I see evidence of this power in perhaps an unlikely place. Not in God, who, in our text, neither appears nor is mentioned. Not in the angelic messenger whose “appearance was like lightening and clothing white as snow.” Not even in the risen Jesus who appears and speaks words of comfort. No. Rather, “after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary^[4] went to the tomb.” There, in these women, I behold the power of love!

These women, loving Jesus to the end, had remained with him throughout his final hours. Not running away like the other disciples – the men – these women had watched Jesus die on the cross. Agonizing moment after agonizing moment, hoping against hope, fighting against that unbeatable foe, death, and bearing with their savagely broken hearts the burden of unbearable sorrow. Here is the power of love that bears and endures all things.

Then, at dawn, these women, loving Jesus beyond the end, walked back to the tomb. But the entrance was sealed with a stone too large for them to move. And Roman soldiers were on guard, who, knowing that the very appearance of these women at the tomb would be in violation of their own cultural norms, might question them, even threaten them. Yet, this is the power of love that, believing and hoping all things, ventures where the brave dare not go.

This is love! A love that never leaves. A love that ever lives. A love that never dies…

A love that raises the dead. For it was in their witness to love that these women were the first to receive the Easter message: “He is not here! He has been raised!” It was in their witness to love, a love that believes the impossible, that they were the first to behold the risen Jesus.

These women, I believe, even before the dawn of that first day of the week, already possessed the power, verily, the truth to which Easter points, indeed, promises. The power of love that believes all things, that risks everything.

For these women, as women, were the wrong sex. These women, as women, in going to the tomb, were in the wrong place. These women, as women, were not to have been the recipients, much less the bearers of any important message. These women, as women, violated every social custom and cultural norm to be where they were, to see what they saw, to hear what they heard, to do what they did.

Yet, because they loved, verily, because they were love – not an emotive kindness, but an active benevolence that bears, believes, hopes, endures – they couldn’t have done anything else. And in so doing, verily, in so being, they received the confirmation of their heart’s greatest desiring: “He is not here! He has been raised!”

May we, raised this night in the light and likeness of love, know that Easter is true. May others hear and know through us, “Alleluia! Christ is risen! We are risen, indeed! Alleluia!”

[1] 1 Corinthians 13.7

[2] “The Impossible Dream” from “The Man from La Mancha” (1972).

[3] The gospel passage appointed for the evening’s service is Matthew 28.1-10.

[4] That is, the mother of James and Joseph. (See Matthew 27.56.)