Outside the Tomb

Only This World By Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and John 20:1-18

By Rev. Nicole M. Lamarche

April 5, 2026

Welcome again on this beautiful day! Welcome with whatever you are feeling or holding or bringing into this room, welcome to you who are joining online! Thank you for the privilege of your presence and your time on this Easter Sunday. We are in some ways very traditional here at CUCC, in that we have women preach the resurrection, just as it was in the first century… 

It is my practice to begin with a prayer. As you are moved, I invite you to take some deeper breaths with me, praying that we each hear whatever we need to today. God of many names and many expressions, Ground of our being, the Good in us and among us, open our hearts and minds, help us to be patient and kind, help us to hear whatever we need to today, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

This story begins not with joy, but with sorrow, not with clarity, but with confusion, not in the light, but in the hours before…it begins…early on the first day, while it was still dark, back to the tomb in stark terror… it starts, in the bleak, the first day of the week…early in the morning, before anything is visible, , out of necessity for what she agreed to, before anyone else is present- Mary Magdalene scurries to the tomb in search of Jesus. 

And it is immediately evident that things are not as she was expecting them to be. 

Unraveled wrappings…

Unwound plans

Undone dreams…

Every. thing. stopped…

And yet she does not stop, she does not become paralyzed with overwhelm, she does not curl up and turn inward, cowering in fear over whether this same fate will find her too, no, instead into the unknown, she runs to get the others, tears streaming, she keeps going, knowing, that it’s time for her to let go of what she thought she knew….

That is gone, the old world, done, finished. 

Now all of them are running, stunned by this unfolding, caught in a footrace, seeking a glimpse, a trace of him, aiming to get to the tomb once more… to see what Mary said she had found…which was…really….nothing… 

He is gone. All is quiet. The unknown has arrived with a thud. The presence of this absence is loud, all the crowds, are gone, now the world is silent… Jesus’ non-cooperation, non-compliance, hopeful living as an act of defiance, has brought them here…outside this tomb.

And now it’s just her, Mary Magdalene, the one who stayed, remaining there in the dark, crying. Trying seemingly on her own… to understand, what should she do when the unknown comes?

Where is this kin-dom?

And what is she supposed to do next? 

Who will save her now?

Where is the light of hope? 

Now I have been doing a lot of reading about the declined of the Roman Empire. In that time, the Roman Empire had a tight grip on most everyone in its orbit. Compliance was expected, exacted, woven into the culture, even although asserted in different proportions. Those at the top would apologize for sympathy toward commoners. According to Ramsay Macmullen who wrote Corruption and the Decline of Rome, it was a time of protection from patronage, judges who brought their own ideas of justice and, “enjoying great latitude in arriving at (his) decisions” “feeling accountable not so much to a system or a discipline as to the general values of the social strata” of which they were a part. 

In that time of the Roman Empire, right and wrong yielded to the more important reality of rank. An historical account of the Roman elite recorded one to have written, “Better to preserve the distinction between classes and ranks for when they are jumbled up in a confused mass, nothing is more unfair than that egality.” Further, “In the presence of a judge, before the testimony of a witness, the person would be asked what is your place in society?”

According to the Empire, there were those worthy and those who were literally not considered. In the language of the time, “The people who counted (were the) possessores,” and then there was everyone else.

Which is why Jesus had said to anyone who would listen, to all who have ears to hear, you cannot be owned, no matter what they say, you do not belong to the Empire, you are God’s beloved- there is no longer slave or free, rich or poor, royalty or peasant, there is only us in our being human together. Jesus told them that justice belongs to everyone, and that there is no distinction between us, reminding them that a hierarchy of human worth is man’s reality, not God’s. And why he was insisting that Caesar’s will was not the same as God’s, challenging any notion that the Empire would have the last word. 

Jesus was showing that if we humans are to be about love, truly, deeply, eternally, our allegiances should never belong to any empire or any emperor. As Jim Palmer writes, Jesus’ point was to “challenge power instead of sanctifying it, insisting no throne was absolute and no system beyond critique. This was not a spirituality designed to stabilize society. It was a disruption. A refusal. A declaration that loyalty to God meant resistance to empire when it dehumanized.” Further, Jesus “was not executed for trying to found a religion, he was executed because he was perceived as a threat- politically, socially, symbolically. He announced a kingdom that didn’t run through Rome…he exposed the emptiness of power dressed up as holiness.”

But as we are learning, now in 2026, the Emperor and the Empire want our allegiance and they don’t like being exposed. Instead they prefer to dress war in religious language, they prefer the garment of greed, and so they don’t like having light shed on things- the machine runs better in the dark, creating chaos and confusion, hiding the hurt, and yet exposing things for what they are is exactly what is happening now, because it’s all out for the world to see, the destruction, the incompetence, the soullessness…which is part of why it’s so hard to see.

We were telling ourselves a different story. Or at least many of us were. White Americans have never had to deal with this level of open injustice, open corruption, open discarding of bodies murdered in the streets with no effort to hold people accountable. This was the reality of others, but we didn’t see it, maybe not fully, until now. Instead, we went all the way to the cross with our illusions, thinking we had left our racism and sexism and homophobia and colonial ways in the tombs of history. But now here we are, with things exposed, revealed for what they really are. It is easy to blame individuals, but I believe spiritually speaking, the individuals are mere symptoms of our cultural wounds, of our sicknesses. For decades we allowed money to infuse every part of our lives and now we are looking for the next person to help us feel better, to tell us what we want to hear, to save us…

But in many ways, the old world is done, finished.

Where is the light of hope? 

Who will save us now?

What are we supposed to do next? 

What do we do with all of these unknowns?

What do we do when “the unknown comes to our door unbidden?” That’s the question posed by indigenous leader, prolific author and Episcopal priest Steven Charleston not long ago. And he said that we already have the answer, writing, “Now the unknown comes to our door unbidden. (and) It was for this moment we were called by Spirit, It was for this challenge that we were brought into kinship…(that) we hold high the light of peace that it still may be seen, even in the darkest hour…”

When the Empire has a tight grip on most everything in its orbit. When it feels like compliance is the culture, asserted in different proportions, when those at the top apologize for sympathy calling empathy toxic, distorting themselves to justify hypocrisy, when some judges bring their own ideas of justice, feeling accountable only to the social strata to which they serve and are indebted. When right and wrong yield to the realities of rank, when the rich, have it rigged, when just some of us are counted as worthy, when the dark clouds have settled in, where is the light of hope?

I think Jesus was showing that if we are to be about love, truly, deeply, eternally devoted to it, as our cause, our allegiances never belongs to any empire. The light of hope will never come from there.

The light of hope, comes from the truth, from courage, from acting out of conviction, being committed to carrying on through something hard. In this country, we are now in what is called competitive authoritarianism, and our collective strength, more than any individual heroism is what is needed. Much is gone, the old world is done, finished, but there is so much worth protecting, worth showing up for, worth bringing ourselves out into the unknown for. Because what is our life is this world even now at it is, is incredible too. As we heard from the poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer 

Only this world—not some unknown chanceof life somewhere else,only this here, this life,this improbable chanceto be steward of meadowand desert, mountain and cliff…only this world….

I have hope, not just because of what is could be, not just because I know this too shall pass, not just because I have seen that evil is actually unsustainable, but because what we have here in only this world is simply spectacular…this darkness that comes when our planet spins, Artemis 2 going to the moon…What if the light of hope gets more of us stop waiting for something or someone to save us? Doesn’t it seem like we too are seeking a savior, looking for one person, to get us out of this? But what if that’s not the answer? What if that is never the way to overcome the rule of the Empire? Maybe part of what we can take away from this Easter story this year is that they took that one person, the Empire killed that one, but from there something happened that made it way bigger than just that one? What if part of the message for us, is the way out of this really is us? The big us, the all of us. 

In the early 90’s Thich Nhat Hanh spoke at a meditation center in Northern California, urging the gathered group to focus their spiritual lives not just on their individual practice, but on how they are supporting others, seeking to understand them as a way of watering the seeds of peace, joy and loving kindness. He said, “Then these persons bloom like flowers, we all become happier. We have to help each other in our practice. The practice of meditation is not an individual matter. We have to do it together.” 

He went on to say that the world desperately needs more love, but a willingness to love is not enough- we must be willing to grow a capacity to understand. He said. “The capacity to understand the other person will bring about acceptance and loving kindness. And it is possible the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community, a community practicing understanding and lovingkindness, a community practicing mindful living. And the practice can be carried out as a group, as a city, as a nation.”

Who will save us now?

What if it’s us?

What if the answer to all these questions is us, we will save us, the light of hope is us collectively, putting our hearts and hopes together. Rebecca Solnit said recently that hope is an act of defiance and that “Maybe changing the world is more like caregiving than it is like war.”

Mary Magdalene models for us what we might do next. She’s the only one present all the way until the end in all the Gospel accounts. She went on to lead and teach and grow the movement.

Let us never forget that the one thing Emperors and empires fear, is unmanageable movements, spiritually evolved, noncompliant humans, scaling up peaceful actions…Let us live like Mary Magdalene, choosing not to stop showing up to the tombs of this time. We can still weep but we do not become paralyzed with overwhelm, we do not curl up and turn inward, we refuse to cower in fear. And we too will keep going,

Because we have only this world—not some unknown chanceof life somewhere else,

We have this with its starsand its bones, its pricklesand petals, its sweetnessand ache, this worldwith its hopelessnessand, oh dare I say it,its hope.”

Communal Reflection

Where are you finding the light of hope in this time when the unknown has come to our door unbidden?

Beloved of God in many ways the old world is gone, done, finished…And yet, “it was for this challenge that we were brought into kinship…” We are the saviors we have been waiting for. We can weep and keep going, sacred shifts are collective, changing the world is more like caregiving than it is like war… 

This story might have begun with sorrow, in confusion, in the dark, but it ends with the light of hope, in each of us and all of us together. Alleluia! Amen.