Between Sundays for Week of April 10, 2023
Early in the dawning hours of a new day, women came to a tomb to see! They saw the earth roll under their feet as an earthquake struck. They saw an angel descending from the heavens like lightening and moving the stone away. They saw strong and powerful armed guards faint away like dead men. When they left the tomb with their charge to go tell the disciples, they saw for themselves the risen Christ! You can read it all in Matthew 28:1-10.
The message of the empty grave is intended for all to see, and hear, and experience: there is no death, no darkness, no broken or hidden corners of our life that lie beyond God’s power to redeem and give us new life. There is NO place and NO situation in all of God’s creation where the final word is anything but:
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
We may still have questions. We may still want answers. Unlike the women on that first Easter morning, we may doubt that there is anything worth seeing. But the good news of the empty tomb is good news for us, even in the place of our questions and doubts.
The risen Christ meets you here and sends you to the world to share this most amazing news! May you SEE him just as he promised!
On the first Easter, two women went to Jesus’ tomb to see. What were they looking for? What brought them there? What are you seekign at the empty tomb this year? No matter what it is, Jesus meets us with new life and promises we will see him!
Ponderings
In his sermon titled The Mystery of Easter, Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer proclaims: “Christ did not come into the world that we might understand him, but that we might cling to him, that we might simply let ourselves be swept away by him into the immense event of the resurrection” (Chestnut Ridge, NY: Crossroads Publishing, 1997). Bonhoeffer’s capital murder took place by hanging alongside fellow resistors at Flossenburg concentration camp on April 9, 1945. In the spirit of Bonhoeffer, we give witness to the immensity of the resurrection.
