Before Jesus sends the apostles to the world or gives them work to do, he gives them an experience of Himself. Because before anything changes out there, something has to change in me. God renews the world, beginning in the hearts of people. Peter describes it in 1 Peter—a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is not a metaphor for self-improvement. It is a way of saying that the very life of God has been breathed into us.

Faith compels Mary to be at the tomb even without hope, to be faithful without “purpose.” And it is precisely that faithfulness that places her at the moment the light of the world is revealed. In her darkness, she kept moving. And so did God.

While it was still dark, Jesus had already risen from the dead, and the risen Christ was already moving towards her, closer than she could know. While Mary is in despair, Jesus was already risen. While Mary is weeping beside the tomb, Jesus was already risen. While it’s still dark, God was at work. And so it is still.

At Christmas, we confess Jesus is fully human, and fully God. The payoff for that doctrine is Good Friday. On the cross, the full brokenness of our humanity – the Roman soldiers and Judas’ betrayal and Peter’s denial and Pilate and Caiaphas’ cowardice, and every sin and every sickness and every disappointment and every injustice and every violence and every war – is present here. WHILE AT THE SAME TIME all of the love of God – his humiliation to become human and his counting of the hairs on your head and the tears he sheds with us and the life he promises to give us and his great love that lays itself down - is present here as well. Today, all things human and all things divine collapse into a single thing, a singularity, where ALL sin meets ALL God’s love.