Hope Breaks In—Easter Sunday (Matthew 28:1-10)

That morning, the women who had witnessed Jesus’ death and burial came to tomb. They came needing to grieve and express their love for him. They needed a tangible way to embody the deepest loss they’d ever experienced. This is their lament; it’s the funeral they’re holding for Jesus.  They see the stone has been rolled away and an angel appears and says “Do not be afraid.” Then the angel commissions them to go preach the first Gospel sermon–go tell the disciples that Jesus is alive. Then Jesus appears. If our faith starts with a resurrection, with a dead man walking out of a grave, why would anything else be off the table for us?  If our God brings life from death, is there anything that God cannot do?  And if our God bears scars for us, if forever a person of the Trinity lives with holes in his hands for our redemption, is there any length to which God will not go to pursue us, to demonstrate God’s love for us, to make us whole?