Easter Day – Eucharist – 20.iv.2025
(Acts 10.34-43; Luke 24.1-12)
“Why do you look for the living among the dead?” The women who on Good Friday had seen Jesus taken down from the Cross and buried go back to the tomb, and find the stone rolled away – and the body gone. Instead, there are two men dressed in dazzling clothes who ask them this question: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here…”
Easter follows only after Holy Week. And Holy Week is a time of encroaching menace in which the forces of fear and terror close in upon that which is good and true to work violence upon it. Hailed as a King on Palm Sunday, Jesus on Good Friday will be reviled as worse than the criminal Barabbas and then crucified – and in between there are plots against him, betrayal by a disciple, desertion and denial by his friends, a record of faithlessness on the part of those who said they would follow him. In our world today, these days of Holy Week have seen still more horror and savagery visited upon innocent people in the atrocities of war and oppression in Ukraine, Gaza and so many countries of Africa – not least Sudan now two years into a civil war which has displaced millions. And then there are all the uncertainties with which we all live - with tariff war, falling stock markets, rising prices and job insecurity, and the fickleness of political strategy.
Where can we put our trust and faith today? Where can we see signs of hope? What are those women doing who go to the tomb of someone they have seen killed just a couple of days earlier? What do they seek?
Just a week ago, early on Palm Sunday morning, the Ahli Arab Hospital in northern Gaza came under air attack with just twenty minutes warning. It’s a hospital run by the Anglican Church in the Diocese of Jerusalem. Its two storey Genetics department was destroyed. The Pharmacy and Emergency Department were damaged. Patients were evacuated, though one - a child who was being treated for a head injury - died in the process. It’s just one incident among many in a region where death tolls continue to rise, where most of the population has been made homeless, where power and clean water have been cut off, and food and medical supplies have been severely restricted – and where Israeli hostages continued to be held as a bargaining chip for both sides in deadlocked negotiations for a ceasefire.
What hope is there in situations like this? When I spoke recently about life in today’s Holy Land (Israel / Palestine), I couldn’t get out of my mind an image which is lodged there: of standing by the sea in Tel Aviv–Jaffa with its hotels, beaches, surfers and sightseers - and knowing that just a matter of miles to the south that same coastline was shared by the population of Gaza. I went online the other day to work out how far Tel Aviv is from Gaza. It’s about 40 miles. Google Maps offers to tell you how to get from one place to another, but where you look to find the directions there was instead just a message: “Can’t seem to find a way there.”
How can you travel from Tel Aviv to Gaza? You can’t, except perhaps in a military helicopter or an armoured car. What hope is there in our world where so many barriers have been raised by war, fear and suspicion?
That message: “Can’t seem to find a way there.” It’s not only about travelling along roads on a map. It’s something we may find in the lives we lead: in the frustration of things in which we fail; in the failure of relationships between people; in the lack of hope so many people feel in the absence of meaning in their lives, or something or someone to trust.
“Can’t seem to find a way there.” That might have been the experience of those women who went out looking for the tomb of Jesus. What could they hope to find?
The women who went out to seek the tomb of Jesus on the first Easter morning left home at early dawn. You can imagine them leaving their home before it was properly light. They go with the expectation of finding only death – to do for the body of Jesus what they had been unable to do before his hurried burial, taking spices which should have been wrapped into his shroud. They find the tomb – but not the body. The stone is rolled away. The one they loved has gone.
With hindsight it may seem strange to us that their response is not of joy but perplexity. They don’t understand – in fact St. Luke’s Gospel tells us they were “terrified.” They find two men dressed in dazzling clothes – but there’s no ready assumption that these are angels. They can only be reminded that Jesus had spoken of his death – and that he would rise again. Now go and tell other people about it!
So they do. And what happens? The disciples don’t believe them: the women’s words “seemed to them an idle tale.” Only Peter goes off to see for himself. He finds no body – only cast-off grave clothes. We’re told simply that he is “amazed” – nothing more.
That’s something that may speak to us. Resurrection faith does not come about just because a grave is found to be empty. People don’t necessarily believe merely on the say-so of other people. Empirical evidence and argument only go so far. Knowing Christ to be risen is something that goes much deeper – it grows out of a sense of encounter and relationship… and in St. Luke’s account these are still to occur. The Resurrection needs to be made real in the hearts and lives of people called by Jesus.
The story doesn’t end at an empty tomb. Luke will take us on to relate how two disciples fail to recognise Jesus on the Emmaus Road until he breaks bread with them and shares his blessing. Mary Magdalene fails to recognise the Risen Christ until she hears him speak her name. The remaining disciples continue meeting in fear behind locked doors until Jesus comes to stand in their midst, to show them the scars of his wounds, to share food with them.
It’s been pointed out that if a first century writer had been making up the story of the Resurrection, he wouldn’t have women be the first to discover that the Tomb was empty. With all the prejudices of the time and the value placed on the witness of a woman who would take them seriously? Who would believe them? It’s not the way the world worked then. It’s not the way it works now.
But these women are the first witnesses to the Resurrection. They go even when others might say they have no hope of finding the way there. This is a truth we need to lay hold of. We can start today with those women who went early to the tomb with no real sense of hope but would find their lives transformed. We come together, and with open hearts we may find the risen Christ in our midst.
Let’s make these words of Janet Morley our prayer:
When we are all despairing;
when the world is full of grief;
when we see no way ahead,
and hope has gone away:
Roll back the stone.
Although we fear change;
although we are not ready;
although we’d rather weep
and run away:
Roll back the stone.
Because we’re coming with the women;
because we hope where hope is vain;
because you call us from the grave
and show the way:
Roll back the stone.
