Grace to you and peace from our loving God, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

This morning, we emerge from forty days of darkness. And what an exit it is!

Yes, I know that the flowering trees, bushes, and early flowers have been providing a display now for a couple of weeks. And yes, I know that we have already known at least one day with summer-like temperatures. But there is a special bloom of fullness at the recognition of our Lord risen from the tomb. There is an all-pervading joy at this spiritual emergence from the darkness of Lent into the brilliant light of the Resurrection.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

This is surely our experience today. But it was not the experience of those who welcomed that first morning which later came to be known as Easter.

The second morning after all the horror, and the crowds and the noise of the day of Jesus' crucifixion, starts quietly. The women who were standing "at a distance" (15:40-41), watching the terrible death of the man they had followed and supported, came early to the tomb.

They made it their business to keep an eye on the body of Jesus, as it was taken down from the cross and laid with kindness and courtesy, but without the reverence they knew it deserved—in the tomb. Although we're told their names, it is not until this final chapter that the women spring sharply into focus. They're the ones who are first to show the ritual courtesy and religious attention due the bodies of all who die. They go to minister to Jesus' body—to cleanse it, anoint it, and give it the honor that had been denied.

Then, as it happens, the quiet scene becomes one of astonishment and fear. While the male disciples are thrown into terror and confusion by Jesus' death, these women are utterly confounded by his resurrection. The young man in white, who has so helpfully rolled the stone away, is saying things to them that they just can't take in.

They weren't afraid of death, nor of handling the body; but they are afraid of the empty tomb and the words of astonishing hope that are spoken to them. They'd heard and understood Jesus talking about his death, but apparently they had blocked out what he told them about the resurrection. (adapted from Jane Williams, Church Times)

They weren't quite as ready to shout their alleluias as we are, even if their anticipated and unpleasant task of mercifully and gently anointing the body of their Lord is short-circuited.

As we reflect on that scene, let me turn to another who went about a task of mercy and gentleness, with this article.

"In the decades since MTV captured the restless souls and short attention spans of our youth, it has become increasingly evident that teaching and learning require new strategies. The classroom lecture is dead, reading is an endangered art, and memorization belongs next to exorcism in the dustbin of discarded teaching arts. To engage the interest of young people, we have to dazzle them with quick-cutting graphics in an environment that is interactive, fast-changing and stylishly fragmented.

"Those statements, commonplace as they are, are all false. How do we know they are false? Because of Mister Rogers, the saintly Presbyterian minister and TV presence whose death on February 27, 2003 felt to millions like the loss of a friend, a teacher or even a father. Mister Rogers won his devoted audience by breaking the rules of entertainment technology: he bestowed attention instead of grabbing it.

"From its debut in 1966 until filming stopped in 2000, "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" steadfastly refused to evolve. It kept the steady camera work, the meager props and the familiar performers who looked more like local talent than TV stars. But it would be a mistake to think that the shows were artless. There was high art in the way they conducted the viewer by trolley from the toy world of the village, to the inner world of the living room, to the outer world of factories and offices, to the otherworld of the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, and safely home again.

"I'm tempted to call it sacred art, for it's clear that this gentle and canny minister saw himself as offering through television the biblical hospitality that makes pilgrims and strangers welcome. Imagine, if you will, a televised moving icon of Abraham and his three guests.

"Sacred hospitality requires homeliness. Therefore Mister Rogers' living room could not keep pace with the current standards for an American home. Where is the open floor plan? Where are the yawning abysses from conversation pit to cathedral ceiling? Instead, we are in a slightly frayed but cozy little sitting room, where we can be ourselves. When Mister Rogers changes into his sweater and takes off his shoes, it's a biblically charged gesture of self-emptying humility and welcome. Moses took off his shoes for God, and now Mister Rogers takes off his shoes for us, as he talk-sings the familiar litany: It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood,/ A beautiful day for a neighbor./ Would you be mine? Could you be mine?"

When I go home in the evenings—if I don't have a meeting later on—I always change from my more formal work clothes into blue jeans and a comfortable shirt and shoes. It is rare that I don't think as I go through that ritual of the ritual that Mister Rogers performed in front of us for all those years, exchanging his jacket for a cardigan and his shoes for sneakers.

"Unfailingly Mister Rogers displays courtesy rather than folksy familiarity, using titles rather than first names, and keeping his tie on along with the comfortable cardigan, as if to say that unlimited kindness expresses itself best through limits and routines. Mister McFeely, the Speedy Delivery postman, is a courier of courtesy as he travels from house to house, making a neighborhood out of what would otherwise be just a zip code. We are reminded that neighborhoods are arbitrary, tumbling us together with people we didn't choose; and that what makes a good neighborhood is not emotional bonds but bonds of courtesy, a virtue whose courtly origins become transparent in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe.

"Oddly, Mister Rogers shows the same courtly attention to inanimate objects. True child of Pittsburgh, his vision of heaven is industrial-pastoral, a world of natural beauty and of marvelous yet human-scale machines. Looking through the Picture-Picture Machine into a crayon factory, Mister Rogers observes with awe the crayon's journey by conveyor belt and human hands from bucket to mold to label machine to collating machine to boxing machine to stores. [I remember that episode.]

"In a wagon factory, we see a robotic arm paint metal-stamped frames wagon-red, as wheels upon wheels. spray-painted white, pop into a giant bin. It's as if we've been privileged to look into the hidden world where things are made, and see at the heart of this shining contrivance the dignity and holiness of human work. Pausing near an assembly-line worker in a sneaker factory, Mister Rogers reflects, "She worked carefully...I never knew it took so many people and so many machines to make a pair of sneakers...I wonder if she ever thinks about the people who wear the shoes that she makes?" An industrial training film on the same subject would be a mind-numbing bore, but under the warm light of Mister Rogers' attention the factory becomes an Elysian plain. Here's proof that the antidote to boredom is not distraction but attention.

"The disciplined, courteous, loving attention which he gave to each person, as a marvel of supreme worth, was what made Fred Rogers a source of endless comfort for his young viewers. You are special, he sang to them, and you can never go down the drain. In a message taped after September 11, Fred Rogers told parents, "Probably what children need to hear most from us adults is that they can talk to us about anything and that we will do all we can to keep them safe in any scary time."

"Keeping children safe is our inescapable obligation and the measure of our adulthood. You and I may differ about what must be done to keep the world safe from moral chaos, tyranny and terror. We may not be pacifist vegetarian teetotalers like Fred Rogers, but if we can learn from him about the life-giving power of self-emptying attention, then there will always be reason for hope.

"I'll be back when the day is new, and I'll have more ideas for you." Where have we heard that promise before? (Karol Zaleski, Christian Century, 4/19/03, 35)

How is it that our gospel characterizes the responses of the women at the tomb as they seek to give loving, courteous attention to the body of their master?"Alarm." "Terror and amazement." Fear.Even as we emerge with the women at the tomb from darkness at the dawn of a new day, we too may respond as children to the unknown and unexpected. Resurrection!? An empty tomb?! Ghosts? These are amazing and terrifying thoughts.

Where will we find the comfort of a calm friend? Where will we discover the courtesy of bestowed, disciplined, loving attention that gives us reason to hope?

In the risen Lord of heaven and earth.

For he loves us eternally, cares for us tenderly, and bestows upon us that sort of graceful attention that transforms-that beckons us from terror to trust, from darkness to light, from death to life.

Fred Rogers was a powerful witness to the gentle, abiding, attention that God lavishes upon us. That witness peeks in upon this day of resurrection and may perhaps make us pause and wonder once more at the inscrutable, unfathomable riches that are poured out upon us at Easter. Alleluia! Amen.

May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord unto eternal life. Amen.