We sat in the near darkness in Monkton, Maryland, USA and heard the words of a man in England who was addressing the whole world. No one can speak seriously about Good Friday without entering into mystery. On Friday we were starkly confronted by a breathless body that had been emptied of life. How does anyone explain what happened for us on the Cross? Archbishop Williams pointed to the heart of Good Friday with these words - "A novelist, some years back, put it very well when he described what it was like to arrive in the empty hallway of a monastery in Yorkshire for the first time. 'There is an impression of intense activity elsewhere.'"

Dim illumination and long periods of silence softened the hearts of our sparse congregation on Good Friday until we were almost invisible, even to ourselves. We heard Williams' words in a church stripped of all decoration. Perhaps there was a small echo - as one might expect in an empty room with brick floors. We saw no outward signs but we could sense the power of God working out our salvation in the motionless twilight of Good Friday.

Christ had died. We were doing nothing. But the work was getting done.

There are no instruments we can calibrate to pick up the effects of grace. There is no archeological site we can excavate that will prove the Gospels. Reason alone is not enough to carry us to the source.

But by acts of faith we are formed into beings that resonate with the hidden work of God - that intense activity taking place beyond our vision but pulsing, nonetheless, into our lives like a spring whose source we cannot see. On Friday our small vibrated and swayed in the silence, having somehow been filled by the cold absence of life on a cross on Good Friday.

But now it is Easter. The church is full. People pack the pews close enough to feel each other's warmth. The chancel, the altar and all the windows are brimming with flowers and gleaming with silver and brass. Last night at the Vigil, we had the light of candles held in each hand- a foretaste of the coming light today. But now the Son has risen fully.

There is light in every corner. Movement, music, fragrance and words fill the space around us - fill our senses 'til they overflow - and yet, in the Letter to the Colossians we are told to set our minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

We are celebrating Christ's resurrection yet we are told that we have died and that our lives are hidden with Christ in God.

How are we supposed to make sense of such words?

The key to abundant living is found in empty places. The secret is hidden in plain sight. Look with me at the last nine days at St. James.

In a little over a week we have shared five baptisms, three funerals, and one wedding and we have moved, together, through Holy week. The purpose of Holy Week is to reenact, relive, and participate in the passion of Jesus Christ. In so doing we discover the water of life that is the groundwater under our feet even in the wilderness, even in the dead of night.

In nine days we have traversed the topography of life drawing vitality from the sacraments like people drawing water from wells discovered in the desert just in time. A well is an empty place that has water hidden at the bottom. If we stop from time to time and reach down far enough we will find, in the cool stillness- on the other side of empty air- that which sustains our life.

The water that we poured on five people last night drew them into the life of Christ. His baptism in the River Jordan and theirs in this baptismal font mixed together inseperably. This makes sense- watch two rivulets of water that are flowing toward one another. When they meet they become one. You can no longer tell one stream from the other. It is one river, indivisible, flowing on from there.

And what is a wedding but the joining of two people, caried forward by the invisible current of God? We asked for God's presence. We asked for God's blessing, and then we received it. The bride and the groom were bouyed by a river of grace, carried by collective joy and transformed just as the water was changed into wine in Cana by Christ in his first miracle. A license from the state of Maryland made the wedding legal but it is the silent grace of God that moves a man and a women to become husband and wife in a covenantal realationship. Is that growth automatic? No, but with God's help-if we reach down far enough and often enough- we will find water sufficient for the journey.

We come in on the water of baptism. In the end we leave as dust. But even the dust is carried by the river of Christ and changed by the silent work of God. We buried three people in the past nine days. We came from all across the world like streams flowing down mountains seeking a place of confluence. Priests and deacons, a bishop and people from many parishes gathered at St. James. God met our grief and our tears with His own- rivers joining into a sea with a distant shore but still part of the same domain. Whether we live or die we are the Lord's, Allelulia. We will miss Ben, Doug and Nancy. But we know where they have gone and we know that the river will carry us to them in time. Nothing is lost. All shall be gathered. Shall we gather at the river even in loss and sing of the power of God? Yes.

Why? Let us reach down far enough to gaze into, and through, the empty tomb. At first all there is to see is an empty place. There is no body. The stone had been rolled away. Our active minds could supply a hundred logical, faithless explanations. But for just a moment let us be still.

We peer into the cool silence of the tomb into which Joseph and Nocodemus had put Christ's lifeless body at twilight on Friday. We stand still next to Salome and Mary and Mary. Even the names echo in the empty space. A young man dressed in white has told them not to be alarmed. He claims that Christ is elsewhere, still at work. But the women cannot see Christ from where they stand. Nor can they see the body. They are suspended between terror and amazement. They flee in silence telling no one that the tomb was not empty. Yes, there was no body. But the tomb was full of mystery- mystery and the sense of intense activity elsewhere.

Clearly in time the women spoke. But first they were submerged in what they had encountered like people knocked off their feet by a flash flood.

We will not figure this out with our minds alone. Resurrection is not a mechanical device we can peer at, prod with our fingers then take apart to see how it works. We can only use some other unnamed sense like dowsers seeking liquid far beneath the dust on the hewn stone floor.

Listen again to the words fromthe Letter to the Colossians: "Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God." Then reach with me down through the silence, down through your senses, down to the river of God flowing under our baptism, under all vows, under all bodies, our minds and our souls. Now let us raise our eyes, our hopes and our voices.

Christ has risen. We have been raised. Alelluia. Allelluia. Alleluia.