“Do not be afraid… He is not here; for he has been raised.”

This morning begins in darkness.

Matthew tells us that “after the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.”

They come carrying grief and shock.

They come bearing the heavy reality that the one they loved, the one they trusted, the one in whom they had placed their hope, had been executed by the powers of this world.

They are not coming to the tomb expecting a miracle.

They are coming because love is what remains when everything else has been taken away.

That is important for us to remember.

The women are not naïve.

They know what death is.

They have watched Jesus die.

They have seen the machinery of empire do what empire does: crush what it fears. They have seen violence pretend to be order.

They have seen public cruelty dressed up as political necessity.

They know death when they see it.

And still they go.

They go because love goes.

Love shows up.

Love keeps vigil.

Love moves toward the place of pain, not away from it.

That is where Easter begins: not in triumphalism, not in certainty, not in easy answers, but in faithful love walking toward a tomb at dawn.

Then the earth shakes.

The stone is rolled away.

The angel speaks.

The guards tremble.

And the women hear words that echo down through the centuries to us this morning: “Do not be afraid.”

Do not be afraid.

That is not a denial of reality.

It is not a command to stop feeling what we feel.

It is not a suggestion that grief is weakness or that fear is failure.

It is the announcement that fear does not get the last word.

Death does not get the last word. Empire does not get the last word.

Violence does not get the last word.

God gets the last word.

And God’s last word is life.

That is what resurrection means.

For many modern people, resurrection is hard.

Perhaps even for many of us here this morning.

We know too much to be simplistic, and too little to dispel the mystery.

We know dead bodies do not ordinarily rise.

We know Easter cannot be reduced to something predictable, measurable, or controllable.

Resurrection is not normal.

It is not natural in the ordinary sense.

It is not one more example of how the world usually works.

It is the inbreaking of God.

Maybe that is why the gospels never really try to describe the resurrection itself.

They give us no eyewitness account of the exact moment.

What they give us instead is an empty tomb, terrified guards, astonished women, and lives changed forever.

The resurrection itself remains mystery.

But its effects are unmistakable: where there was despair, now there is hope; where there was paralysis, now there is movement; where there was silence, now there is proclamation; where there was death, now there is life.

And perhaps that is how resurrection always comes to us: not as something we master with our minds, but as something that seizes us in our guts; not as a proposition to be solved, but as a reality to be entered; not as an argument to win, but as a hope by which to live.

The angel says, “He is not here; for he has been raised.”

And then he tells the women to go: “Go quickly and tell his disciples.”

And as they run, afraid and joyful all at once, Jesus himself meets them on the road.

That detail matters.

Jesus does not wait for them at the end of their courage.

He meets them in the middle of it.

He meets them while they are still trembling.

He meets them while they are still trying to make sense of what has happened.

He meets them while fear and joy are still tangled together.

And he says again, “Do not be afraid.”

Then he sends them with good news.

Before there was a church, there was these women.

Before there was doctrine, there was their witness.

Before there was certainty, there is their trembling, faithful testimony.

We should not miss the significance of this.

In a world that discounted the testimony of women, God entrusts the first proclamation of Easter to women.

In a world organized by hierarchy and exclusion, God begins the new creation from the margins.

In a world obsessed with power from above, resurrection is first announced through those whom society was least prepared to believe.

That is not accidental.

That is gospel.

It tells us something essential about God.

It tells us that God is always confounding the arrangements of this world.

God is always lifting up those who have been pushed aside.

God is always choosing unexpected witnesses.

God is always saying no to the old order of domination and yes to a new community shaped by dignity, justice, mercy, and love.

Easter is God’s yes to Jesus.

Yes to the way he lived.

Yes to the way he loved.

Yes to his table fellowship.

Yes to his healing.

Yes to his refusal to answer violence with violence.

Yes to his proclamation that the kingdom of heaven has drawn near.

And Easter is also God’s no.

No to the lie that might makes right.

No to systems that devour the poor.

No to cruelty masquerading as common sense.

No to the fear that teaches us to hate one another.

No to every cross the world keeps building.

The resurrection is not only a promise about what happens after we die, though surely it holds that hope too.

The resurrection is God’s declaration about life now.

It is God’s insistence that love is more enduring than hatred, that justice is stronger than oppression, that peace is more real than violence, that new creation is already breaking into this weary old world.

That means Easter is not escape.

Easter is commission.

The women are not told, “Isn’t this wonderful? Stay here and enjoy the moment.” They are told, “Go.”

Go and tell.

Go and announce.

Go and gather the scattered.

Go and bear witness that the crucified one lives.

Go and live as if death has been defeated, because it has.

That is our calling too.

We live in a world that still knows Good Friday very well.

We know war.

We know racism.

We know transphobia and homophobia.

We know poverty amid abundance.

We know the crushing loneliness of so many people in a culture that has forgotten how to love its neighbor.

We know a planet groaning under exploitation.

We know what it is like to stand at tombs of one kind or another and wonder what could possibly come next.

Easter does not ask us to pretend these things are not real.

Easter asks us not to surrender to them.

Easter proclaims that the worst thing is never the last thing.

Easter proclaims that despair is not destiny.

Easter proclaims that another world is not only possible, but already being born by the power of God.

And so, we who follow the risen Christ are called to become Easter people: people who practice resurrection in public.

Every time we choose compassion over contempt, we practice resurrection.

Every time we tell the truth in the face of lies, we practice resurrection.

Every time we feed, welcome, shelter, liberate, protect, forgive, or organize for justice, we practice resurrection.

Every time we refuse cynicism and dare to hope again, we practice resurrection.

The risen Christ still meets people on the road.

Still calls them by name.

Still tells the fearful not to be afraid.

Still sends unlikely witnesses into the world.

Still rolls stones away.

So perhaps the question for us this morning is not whether we can explain resurrection.

Perhaps the deeper question is whether we are willing to be changed by it.

Are we willing to let Easter interrupt our despair?

Are we willing to let Easter unsettle our accommodation to injustice?

Are we willing to let Easter call us out of the tombs we have learned to live in?

Are we willing to believe that God is even now making all things new?

The tomb is empty.

Christ is risen.

Love has won.

And the women are already on the move.

So let us go with them.

Let us go into this wounded world with courage.

Let us go with joy, even if it is trembling joy.

Let us go and tell, with our words and with our lives, that death does not have the final word.

God does.

And God’s word is life.

Alleluia. Christ is risen.

The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.