Morning has broken, like the first morning.  Not one of those slow, sad women thought that.  Easter doesn’t begin with joy; it was just a slow, sad walk to the tomb.  God had other plans, though.  The women are walking from darkness into light.  It’s like the women were beholding a creation moment.  They weren’t aware of it.  They weren’t looking or praying for it.  We find ourselves in some dark places in our lives and someway neglect prayer; we stop looking to God.  We stop looking for God.  But sometimes He gets our attention.

Like in that first light of the new day.  Holy, holy, holy!  Lord God Almighty, early in the morning.  With their myrrh, with its bitter perfume, sorrowing, sighing, dying.  “They found the stone rolled away from the tomb” (24:2).  As Luke writes it, it sounds as if the women just continue on into the tomb, didn’t stop, surprised, stunned.  This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.  This isn’t what they were supposed to find.  They weren’t supposed to find anything, because there wasn’t supposed to be anything to find at the tomb.  No discoveries to be made at the tomb, in the dark of the tomb.  That’s a dark darkness!  We know about graves, but this was a burial place hewn out of the rock: a tomb.  Nobody wants to walk into a tomb.  No one wants to be surprised at the tomb.

Whether it was right away or after a minute or two of confusion and fear, the women enter—together, I’m sure.  There’s strength in numbers.  Even guys get that.  Guys, that is part of what church is really about—strength in numbers.  A faith team, a faith army.  Add to our strength and be strengthened.  “When they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus” (24:3).  Well, did they look around for it?  They didn’t have to.  Dead bodies don’t roam.  They stay put, I assure you.  He wasn’t there.  But they didn’t know what that meant, and they aren’t the only ones.  People even today are walking to a grave in the dark and have no idea what any of it means.  They sort of think maybe it doesn’t mean anything, that maybe nothing really means anything.  “Our nada, who art in nada, nada be Thy name.”  Is that strength, clarity?  It sounds like hopelessness to me.  Hopelessness is helplessness.  People who feel helpless turn any which way.

Those women were trying to understand—what? who? when? where? how? why?  “While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them” (24:4).  I just bet this sudden appearance did nothing to make them feel at ease.  It wasn’t supposed to.  Lightning gets your attention.  It’s supposed to.

This lightning speaks.  Real light comes through speaking, through words, above all through The Word of God.  The Word of God overcomes the darkness, masters the darkness, abolishes it.  “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” (24:5).  Turn the clock back days, months, years.  Why had they followed Jesus, why attach themselves to him?  What did they hope for?  What did they find in him?  They had been seeking something, someone, and they believed they had found him, in Jesus.  No one takes Jesus into his or her life until he or she sees that Jesus offers what he or she has been seeking, seeking and not finding, seeking and getting wounded and fooled and angry and hopeless and helpless trying to find.

The messengers from God were right: those women had been seeking, but not that morning.  Who seeks the dead?  There’s a sad search!  No, those women knew, they were sure, that Jesus was dead.  That tells me they still didn’t know Jesus.  Don’t get me wrong!  He had been dead.  They had seen that.  They knew that.  They knew exactly where he was because they had seen his body laid there, watched as the stone was hefted over the way in, the guard with swords and spears taking their post.  But the messengers from God, shining like lightning, reminded them of something they ought to have held onto, that ought to have been at the center of their thinking, the center of their feeling, the center of their hoping and praying: Jesus who died would rise.  Jesus who died is alive.  Jesus is not dead, any more than God is dead.  The ones in charge on this earth keep proclaiming, reporting, and testifying that our God is dead, as if repeating it often enough, authoritatively enough, forcefully enough, would convince us, or at least shut us up.

God has a message for those women, for the apostles, for us, for all those not here today, and for the ones who believe they’re in charge on this earth: “He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise” (24:6-7).  The rising is the point.  The crucifixion, that death sentence, was necessary to the rising.  Being handed over into the hands of sinful men was necessary to the rising.  Sinful men are eager to do away with Jesus.  The sooner and more decisively the better.  Jesus rises.  Rises over his foes; rises for his followers; rises in creation light, creation power and glory.  It dawns slowly.  It dawns on each of us slowly.  The light comes to us.  Thanks be to God.

This Easter message the women hear is about remembering.  It’s about glory and victory, of course!  Hallelujah, Christ arose!  The message is also about remembering—they were already told.  We have been told.  They weren’t told a lie.  We haven’t been told a lie.  How did they know?  Well, the testimony of two beings dressed in clothes brilliant like lightning might be pretty convincing—impactful, anyway.  That’s all well and good for them two thousand years ago, but how about now?  How about us?  How about those who didn’t make it, today, didn’t bother with church today, and won’t next Sunday?  Beloved, even angel testimony will do no good where there is no faith.  Those women believed not just because the angels said so but because the angels were only reminding them of what Jesus had already told them.  Those women knew Jesus, loved him, trusted him.  Impossible is not impossible for Jesus.  Yes, what he told them sometimes seemed hard to believe and often was difficult to understand, though not all of what he said.  Like the apostles and the many disciples, the women had not only seen what Jesus did—miracles!—they also heard what he said, really listened and took his words into their hearts, minds, and souls.  And God created faith for them, gave them the gift of faith.

All of us here today and those not here this day have access to the words of Jesus.  We can all go to his words whenever we like.  But it’s when we remember his words that we begin to sense something more is at work, someone is at work in us.  Someone who truly, deeply cares about us.  Sometimes, we don’t remember until we are reminded.  Sometimes, others won’t remember, until they’re reminded.

As Mark tells it, the women run away, scared out of their wits.  Too much to take in.  The truth must dazzle gradually.  Luke jumps over that part and shows us the women ready, willing, and able to tell: “they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others” (24:11).  Wonderful!  Oh, if I could be like those women.  They don’t first stop and confer about whether or not they will be believed—they won’t be!  They don’t worry or hold back for fear of seeming like fools to those who listen, which is exactly how their glorious, true, news is received—by the apostles: the ones who, most of all, ought to have received and believed, rejoiced and danced, singing to one another, “I knew it all along!”

They didn’t.  All that those believers knew was that Jesus was dead and couldn’t do anything anymore.  The world had won.  Sin had won.  Darkness had won.  Like always.  Just like always.  Hopeless.  Helpless.  Peter, John, James, Philip, Matthew, Thomas, and the rest listened to what the breathless, excited women were saying, “but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them” (24:11).  Strange that the most hopeless place of all should be among believers, among the faithful.  Are we holding out real hope?  Are we holding on to true hope?  Jesus said many things and did many things, and we could each of us devote ourselves to him for any one of those things he said or did, and still think of Jesus as dead—“we’ll carry on the legacy, Lord!”

We want this to be a place where people can find true hope and real help.  God wants us to be a people among whom tombs are open and empty, because there’s nothing to be found in death.  Sin is death.  Christ is alive with Life, bright with Life, empowered with Life.

Peter didn’t know what was going on.  He was wrestling with a lot, inside, conflicting emotions, conflicting thoughts.  He was such a failure!  He had wanted to be a leader, wanted to show them all how it was done.  And he did, more than he realized, though he was beginning to.  Maybe because he was beginning to, he “got up and ran to the tomb.  Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened” (24:12).  He looks into it for himself.  What the women said about the empty tomb was accurate.  It was true.  He saw for himself.  So what about the rest of it?  What had happened?  He’s left wondering: could the impossible be true, after all?

That doesn’t seem like the most encouraging place to leave off, on Easter.  Victory!  Conviction!  Faith!  Maybe God isn’t asking for that from us or anyone, even today.  Maybe, what He might be asking, today, is to wonder.  Could the impossible be true, after all?  Could God do that?  Could there be a God who would do that?  Wondering is a start.  And if I may say so, wondering doesn’t happen without a little push, a little momentum from the One who causes wonder.  Wondering is also a gift from the same Holy Spirit who gives faith.

To the God of all grace, who calls you to share God’s eternal glory in union with Christ, be the power forever!