From Grief to Hope

This is Easter Sunday. The scripture is the Matthean account of the women arriving at the tomb to be met by an angel and then by the risen Jesus. Having been in “a Good Friday place” for several weeks now from our community’s sorrow, and having preached on “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” in a Good Friday service, Carol confessed to having felt lost as late as yesterday. From this text in Matthew, she realized that those closest to Jesus must have felt down and lost, too, from the burial of Jesus through their Sabbath day. Then on the first day of the week those two Mary’s went to the tomb, still deep in grief, only to witness an angel opening the tomb and announcing the resurrection. They are convinced and leave to tell the disciples as the angel had instructed them to do, but in a culmination to their experience, the risen Jesus appears to them. We, too, leave this place having experienced the resurrection, so that we, like the two Mary’s and the disciples, are sent out to love in the power of resurrection, recalling the words of Jesus, “I am with you always.”