The Impossible Story of Easter

“On the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body.” — Luke 24:1–3

Throughout the Gospel of Luke, Jesus has been quite clear about what was going to happen to him when he reached Jerusalem: He would be betrayed and killed and, on the third day, rise again. Jesus said this repeatedly. Understandably, his disciples didn’t know what to make of that information.

Perhaps they didn’t want to believe that Jesus, whom they believed to be the son of God, could die. They didn’t want to face the possibility of losing someone who had done so much for them. And, almost certainly, they had a hard time believing that Jesus would come back from the dead. That must have sounded impossible.

We know that on the first day of the week, three days after his arrest and death, Mary Magdalene and some of the other women who had been traveling with Jesus went to the tomb. Jesus died just before the Sabbath, the day of rest in Jewish tradition, and therefore the women had not had time to properly bury him. The women bring with them the spices and oils they would use to anoint his body for burial.

When they get there, Jesus’s body is gone. Instead, they are met by two men in dazzling clothes. Luke tells us the women bow their faces out of fear — a gesture that appears elsewhere in the Bible as the appropriate response to an encounter with God or one of God’s angels.

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?” the men ask. This is one of my favorite lines of Scripture. It’s a leading question that implies that the women should know the answer already. It’s a gentle reminder that Jesus is who he says he is: the Son of the living God. The angels calmly remind the women that Jesus is alive, just as he said he would be.

Like the women in this story, we live in a world in which it often looks as if sin and death have the upper hand. It’s so easy to look at the state of our lives or the world around us and assume the worst. Despite this story being told repeatedly for millennia, we still struggle with the Easter promise of new life in Christ. It seems impossible.

But, as the angel reminds the women at the tomb, Jesus is who he has always said he is. Jesus calls us to reorient our lives to the reality that, by the grace and love of God, sin and death do not win. Jesus brings about redemption and life where we least expect to find them, where they seem most impossible.

Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here. Jesus is alive. And so are we.

— The Rev. Matthew Welsch

Father Matthew Welsch is priest and director, Children, Youth, and Family.

Read all of Sunday’s scriptures

Step Into the Story

Here are some ways to think more deeply about the miracle of Easter.

Poetry

Minister Chloe Axford beautifully describes the surprise, excitement, and trepidation of Easter: “The promise of the empty tomb says the story doesn't end the way you think it will.”

Travel

Renowned travel writer Pico Iyer (who joined Trinity Talks in the fall) recounts his time in Jerusalem, including repeat visits to the Church of the Sepulchre, which is traditionally believed to be the site of the empty tomb. “What struck me as I wandered, though,” he writes, “was not how old the place seemed but how alive.”

Theology

“[Former Archbishop of Canterbury] Rowan Williams has long argued that the existence of the church . . . is immediately implicated in the resurrection of Jesus Christ,” writes theologian Benjamin Myers. “The church simply is humanity made new, a new world in which the age-old divisions and boundaries and bigotries constitutive of human society have been transcended, and rendered utterly obsolete.”

Visual Art

In the Anastasis (Greek for “resurrection”) fresco at Chora Church in Istanbul, Christ is depicted not merely as leaving the tomb on his own but pulling Adam and Eve — representing all humanity — out of death alongside him.