When they awoke early that morning, I can only imagine it was after a night of fitful sleep. Mary of Magdala, Joanna, Mary mother of James would have woken up devastated to the reality they wish they weren’t living through – no, it wasn’t all just a nightmare, it was real: their dear Jesus, their dear teacher of the good way of God’s Love Supreme, was dead. Maybe the horrific images from the days prior came rushing in that morning, maybe they felt an unbearable aching absence in their hearts, but they got up and out of bed to meet the day, for this was the day to anoint and bless the body for burial, and their love for their dear teacher and their love for each other compelled them forward.

I imagine that when they rose early for another day, despite their desolation, all would have been quiet and still around them in the early morning light – quiet and still, except for the birds.

Like any other morning, the birds would have been singing as Joanna and the two Marys made their way through the rocky, dawn-lit landscape toward the grave of their beloved.

You may have experienced something like this. I know I have. In times of deep devastation in the midst of bereavement, having your attention suddenly caught by some striking moment of beauty. In the midst of grief, we can notice signs that – Oh, right – the world keeps turning, our heartbreak did not tear open a black hole that swallowed the universe, the “sun also rises,” new sprouts push out from the seeds that have lied buried all winter, the birds sing again to greet the new dawn.

In one view this can feel like the indifference of a universe that appears unbothered by the one thing that has changed everything for us. But in another view, it’s a beckoning to continue to stay in the dance of it all in this broken and beautiful world, a beckoning that can call us forward, through the flames of heartbreak, into the fierce and flourishing tenacity of the spirit of life. 

There is birdsong even above the rubble of a war-shattered landscape.

I imagine it was the birdsong at dawn that helped these three grieving women, these dear friends of Jesus, move forward into the new day, despite their devastation, to continue to act from their love, to continue to place their faith in a God who has a way of making “a way out of no way.”

As we know, they were in for an astonishing revelation about just how true this can be.

If we too were to listen to the birdsong of the Holy Spirit calling us out at dawn toward the mystery of the resurrection, what would it be calling us to in our lives and times?

During Lent here at our church we have been exploring what it can mean for us that the Way of Jesus is about God’s “kingdom come, God’s will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

The Way of Jesus is not about just how to get to heaven after life on earth. The Way of Jesus is about how to live out the promise of the realm of heaven while here on earth.

Jesus meant it when he taught that the “realm of heaven is within you and among you” here and now if only we could recognize it. Jesus showed the world what it means to live out in the course of a human life, in the here and now, a total embodiment of God’s Love Supreme, on earth as it is in heaven.

The theological term for this is “incarnation”: the in-the-flesh-ness of the divine. For this reason, it is significant that the resurrection experiences, in all their astonishing strangeness, are not of a ghostly dis-embodied phantasm, but of a distinctly embodied presence of divine glory. The story of Jesus, from beginning to end to after-the-end, is meant to be a glimpse, a revelation of the realm of heaven on earth, which does not cast off the fleshly and earthly, but seeks to transform it.   

More than anything, Jesus was very clear that living out the realm of heaven in the flesh here on earth means growing in our capacity to love, to receive and share extravagant love; he was clear this means growing in our capacity for mercy, our capacity to pursue the ways that make for peace and turn from the ways that make for war, our capacity to see and honor the humanity and dignity of all, even our enemies, our capacity for moral courage, to let God expand our moral imagination beyond the pettiness around us and give us the clarity do the right thing, to do the next right thing.

Jesus was also clear this means growing in our capacity for heartbreak, our ability to feel the tragic distance between human life as it is and human life as our Good and Holy Creator intends it to be.

Jesus embodied this all so fully that he was willing to suffer as the ultimate scapegoat. Because of the nature of how Jesus died, because of his clear identification and solidarity with “the least” among us – “that which you do to the least of these, you do to me” – the story of Jesus’ death gives us an opportunity in particular to feel the grief of all those who suffer innocently due to violence, greed, lust, pride, vindictiveness, neglect, and so on. This is particularly important in times of war, such as the time we are now living through, when hate and dehumanization on such grotesque display and so normalized.

Jesus was clear that through it all we must realize that God’s love is so strong, so absolute and resolute, that God loves us through the pain of our separation from what is good and true and right and just and holy, God loves us through the valley of the shadow of death, God loves us through to the other side.

God loves this world back into life.

Jesus embodied the power of God’s love so fully that what seemed like the end for him was not in fact the end. In the resurrection of Easter, we see the triumph of God’s love over these forces of sin and death, we see the power of God’s enduring promise to reconcile all creation to Godself, to bring heaven to earth, to bring forth heaven from earth, and make all things new.

Any human effort to resist this is, in the end, pathetic before the great power of our Holy Creator. It will not come about because of us, it will come about despite us, but we will be a lot better off if we don’t get in the way, but let God mend our ways and change our hearts so we may do our sincere best to cooperate with God’s call on our lives.

In the words of Walter Wink, who was one the 20th century’s many hardworking peace-workers, and a biblical scholar, “The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus are the assurance that there is a force at work in the world to transform even the most crushing defeat into divine victory. We are thus freed from having to succeed; we have only to be faithful. We are freed from having to produce results; we have only to live as seeing the invisible. We are freed from despair; we have only to trust the One in and through and for whom all things exist.” For Wink this meant a bold and unwavering commitment to being people of peace in times of war. (Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, pg. 219)

In our lives, here and now, the reality of the realm of heaven on earth beckons to us, through the Holy Spirit, into a renewed life in partnership with the God of all life, who can free us to live out our deepest life-purposes on behalf of what is good and true, just and right, holy and loving and beautiful.

It may be calling us to deeper prayer, or greater service, or more sincere solidarity, or wider mercy, or bolder hope, or truer witness, or greater courage, or more generous and peaceful community with neighbor and stranger, enemy or friend. It may be calling us to mended ways and transformed hearts.

It can beckon to us like birdsong at dawn, like the birdsong that started in the dark and the fog this Easter morning, like the birdsong I imagine called to Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary Mother of James, calling them forward into the new day to do what their love and faithfulness compelled them to do. In following this call, they discovered that the full union of heaven and earth, the complete enfleshment of divinity in humanity, which they found through their beloved Jesus, is something that lives on beyond devastation. And so can we.

How do you hear those bird-calls of the Spirit here and now? Calls from the world that is possible, the world as God dreamed it, the world that is to come, where heaven and earth are one.

The call for you may be like the ethereal shimmering of the hermit thrush in the deep woods. Or it may be for you something like the insistent croak of a savvy old raven; or the pure-hearted joy of robin-song, that harbinger of spring; or the blackbird “singing in the dead of night,” speaking “like the first bird” of Creation; or the Spirit may call to you like the gentle coo of the dove.

They all sing out, in their way, “Hallelujahs” to our shared Holy Creator, calling us to join in the chorus, calling fresh at each new dawn, even in the midst of devastation, calling us forward into the new day,

For, Darkness sought to overcome the light

But Christ is risen! Halllelujah!

Fear sought to cloud God’s peace

But Christ is risen! Halllelujah!

Hate sought to destroy love

But Christ is risen! Halllelujah!

Death sought to triumph over life

But Christ is risen! Halllelujah!

Thanks be to God.

Delivered Easter Sunday, 2026, by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg, at the United Church of Christ at Valley Forge.

Image by wal_172619 from Pixabay