Stroll through Scripture for Easter, 2025

Based on Luke 24:1-12

Easter!  It’s the highlight of the church calendar.  When we participate in the worship life of the church through Holy Week, it feels like a roller coaster ride.  Palm Sunday is the triumphant entrance into Jerusalem.  People are cheering for Jesus, or at least the Jesus they want to show up – someone who will throw off Rome.  Jesus spends time in the Temple, cleansing the Temple of the money-making schemes that are exploiting the poor.  We hear about the Last Supper and Judas’ betrayal, Jesus’ arrest, his trial, being beaten, and ultimately put to death in a heinous and painful way.  We quite literally walk in the valley of the shadow of death through this week.  

And then we get to Easter.  If we just skip from Palm Sunday right to Easter, we miss so much of the story and what’s going on.  We are left with questions that will sound different than if we immerse ourselves in the story.  

Each Gospel offers a slightly different story related to the resurrection.  In Luke’s account, we don’t get to see a resurrected Jesus in the lectionary reading.  Rather, the tomb is empty, and the women are encountered by two men in dazzling clothes.  It reminds us of Jesus on the mountaintop with Peter, James, and John at the Transfiguration.  

Likewise, instead of the words being hidden from Jesus’ disciples about his pending arrest, death, and resurrection, in this account, we are told that the women remember his words. 

Let’s just take in one big piece of this story – it’s the women.  The women are the first at the tomb.  The women are the ones who the men show up in dazzling clothes.  It is the women who are the first proclaimers of the resurrection (and they don’t even see the resurrected Jesus).  And it is the women who aren’t believed.  Women play an essential role in this story.  After all it was the women who stayed at the crucifixion the longest.  The apostles mostly scatter.  

Lastly, I’m struck by the statement of the two men in dazzling clothes – “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”  Again, it raises so many questions.  Why do we look for certain people among other people?  Why do we look for purpose and meaning in places that are devoid of it?  Why do we look for sanity in places of chaos?  Why do we look for vision and hope from people who offer despair and cruelty?  The list could go on.  

Questions for further reflection:

• When we read this Gospel account through the lens of Holy Week, what questions come to mind?  
• What are we looking for among “dead” places?  
• When we are not believed, how do we respond?  When we don’t believe others, why not?