April 5, 2026 Easter Sunday

Do you have a moment of Zen in your life? And I’m not talking about the long-standing bit that regularly ends The Daily Show, though maybe that is it for you. I’m talking about the kinds of moments the great Christian spiritual writer Thomas Merton described as waking from a dream of separateness or of spurious self-isolation. Those moments of connectivity where we feel at ease and have a sense of peace and pure joy—a sense of God breaking through the fog of this veil of tears.

These experiences can be big or small. In 1958, Thomas Merton had a famous moment of such clarity. He writes that in Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, he was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that he loved all those people—that they were his and he theirs—that they were all walking around shining like the sun. They were not “they,” but his own self. There are no strangers.

Then it was as if he suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts—the depths of their hearts—where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach the core of their reality. Our Eastern Orthodox siblings have a word for this: the uncreated light of God. It is the light that the prologue of St. John’s Gospel calls the Word of God—that in the beginning was with God, and that became flesh and lived among us as Jesus Christ. It is the light that showed through the burning bush when God spoke to Moses. It is the light that blinded St. Paul on the road to Damascus. And it is the light of joy and relief that Mary Magdalene—or the Marys, if we read the Gospel of St. Matthew—encounter at the empty tomb this morning.

It is the uncreated light of God that we encounter every time we glimpse God’s true presence in the world around us. It is like a prism taking the purity of that uncreated light and dispersing it into the tapestry of colors and diversities of our human experiences. In a way, it is also a kind of reverse blacklight.

I talked on Good Friday about the insight our Buddhist friends offer about the world of suffering—that life is dukkha, brokenness, and sorrow. And in truth, when we look at the world around us in the normal light of day, it does seem as though all is suffering, all is brokenness. There is an insufficiency and incompleteness to our human condition. But remember, prisms can both disperse and unify light.

If we pause, if we listen, if we orient or attune ourselves to the pureness of that uncreated light, we see not the griminess and filth of life in the regular light of day, but instead we see the pure hearts, the inherent goodness, the beauty that is in each and every one of us as we are all created in the image of our Creator.

And as I said, these moments can bring clarity that is big or small. These moments themselves can be big or small. I often have two such moments that bookend my waking hours each day. The first is a practice I have of rising at 6 a.m. to pray a Benedictine prayer office every morning—that supports my spiritual health. The second is a daily evening run that I take around my neighborhood—that supports my physical and mental health.

Since last fall, the course of my run has produced, in a way, a sort of humorous third experience of God’s light in the world. One house on my run has had one of those ten-foot-tall plastic skeletons up in their front yard since last October. It was rather unremarkable when they first set it up at Halloween, but as they’ve kept it up over the months since, it’s given me incredible joy to watch the skeleton celebrate the seasons too. It started with a festive Thanksgiving get-up, progressed to decked-out Christmas attire, and it now sports a simple but fun pink t-shirt alongside its inflatable bunny partner for Easter.

Our prayer book’s service for burial quotes a medieval chant that says, “In the midst of life, we are in death.” But these moments of joy that we experience in the uncreated light of God remind us that, like the fun plastic skeleton, in the midst of death, we are also in life. The joy we celebrate—especially today in the light of the empty tomb—is such light, such joy, such life in the midst of death.

And it is this light that we strive to carry forward all the time as the enfleshed, material body of Christ in the world today. Christ’s presence in the world is through his Church. We are that prism through which his light shines. At times it is a focusing light, bringing together all our diversities to see the purity and singularity of the light of God. But sometimes, too, it is the dispersion of that light into its rainbow of colors.

If you look in the back of our bulletin, we offer so much as a parish—from our worship services to our formation opportunities, to our community service in the food pantry and support of scouting, to our fellowship gatherings through food, dance, music, retreats, and outings into the community. All of these are ways that we show forth the light of God in the world around us.

But is that where you find the light of God in your life? If not, what can we do to help? I’m going to shamelessly borrow from our United Methodist siblings here: as the body of Christ in this place, as the body of Christ that is St. Anne’s Episcopal Church, our hearts are open, our minds are open, our doors are open. How can we help foster the light in your life? What more can we do for you or for those you know who have needs? Are there needs being unmet? Are there desires untapped? A place of growth and connectivity that we can help foster and grow?

My prayer for us today, in this moment of new life, is that we can fully embody our life as the light of Christ in the world—that we can be the community we need to be for you and for the world around us. But that begins with an invitation to each and every one of you, to us as the body of Christ, and to the world around us, to recognize and celebrate that the light of Christ is already among us. The light of Christ is already within us.

The Marys today do not simply celebrate the empty tomb, but they are activated by the risen Christ and emboldened to go out and proclaim that light to the rest of the world with renewed vigor, renewed joy, and renewed strength. They take that inner peace, that joy, that experience of the uncreated light, and they push forward into works of proclamation, works of justice, works of pure joy that transform the world around them.

And my prayer today, friends, is that we may be that prism of light through which God shines in our community and world—that we may evermore do the work that God is calling us into, and that you might join us in that work.

May the light of this day empower you, strengthen your heart, strengthen your mind. May you find a new wellspring of energy—not only to rest and recuperate in that joy, to be renewed and nourished in it—but to be a part of making that joy known more fully and felt more completely in this place and in every place, this day and always.