How do you get out of bed in the morning when the day, the world is still shrouded in darkness? Pictures of bodies who have known slaughter that accompanies war haunt the horizon. When divisive voices shout across aisles, hope is mocked. Courts don’t feel fair. Storms blow across the country ready to devastate lives in less than a minute. Love is only a memory. So yeah, how are you supposed to stand up when grief, anger, and that tight, anxious fear are sitting heavy in your soul? Why even open your eyes when all you see just slices pain through whatever little faith you got left?

Gather Your People

Somehow, they did. Moving through an emotional fog which they knew would never disappear, the eleven disciples gathered, or rather they cowered, afraid for their lives, paralyzed shock. But even in that fog, they stuck together. Each had been called out of ordinary lives to be by this man who saw something in them. If only in collective memory, they huddled up because being together was the only way to hold on to the pieces of him they still had.

Likewise, the women followers did the same. Sabbath rest had ended, but no one slept. Their minds were stuck on that Friday—blood, screams, the way he died. The burial was rushed; no time to honor and anoint him one more time in death, no time for that last act of love. With slim faith and less hope, they made their way to the tomb where they had seen him laid. If the Roman guards kept them away or if the huge stone blocking it proved immovable, at least they tried. Because trying was better than sitting at home feeling like they’d abandoned him completely.

Let the Inexplicable Be Said

In the dim morning light, they may not have trusted at first what they saw. The heavy boulder which had sealed his burial tomb was off to the side. Inside there was nothing, no body, no indication of entombment. Their thoughts confused, minds spinning. No explanation makes sense.

That huge stone? Rolled out of the way.

Inside?

No body.

No signs of a rushed grave robbery.

Just…nothing.

Into their consciousness appeared two men whose clothing was beyond white, clean, light coming from them, not just shining on them. The women know instantly: this is not regular. This is otherworldly. They drop to their knees.

Now, when his story seemed over, once again, these women had a message just as amazing, “Why are you looking in a tomb for someone who is alive? He isn’t here! He has risen from the dead! Don’t you remember what he told you back in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be betrayed into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and that he would rise again the third day?”” In triumph, the angels/messengers shining with celestial light had returned. The story the women thought was over? God just flipped the script.

Step Back to Remember

Get some perspective with what’s going on. It had happened before. Late one night more than thirty years ago, another messenger showed up in the dark and entered human awareness.  Different crew that time: shepherds. Broke, overlooked, just doing their job for people who had all the power, who controlled their lives. “For unto you is born this day…a Savior,” the sheep keepers were told. (Luke 2:11)

Both the shepherds and the women were told the same thing: God is controlling this, sees it, is in this. Their message was greater than anything the shepherds or women could’ve dreamed up. The promised Messiah had come. And now, what the Messiah had promised has now come true. The worst of all fear has been defeated. Death holds no sting. Death still happens, but it doesn’t get the last word anymore. (I Corinthians 15:55)

As the shepherds ran to Bethlehem to find the baby lying in a manger, the women rushed to find the disciples. And how did people respond? The good news both carried was not altogether believed. Those whom the shepherds told “wondered” at their story. (Luke 2:18) Mary Magdalene and the other women were dismissed as speaking nonsense. Only one disciple was brave enough to try to find out for himself.

Be Amazed

Peter, the disciple who had denied he even knew Jesus before the sun rose of the day of the crucifixion, ran to the tomb. If true, is it good news for him or just a reminder of how badly he messed up?

He gets to the tomb. No body. Just the burial cloths lying there. He’s stunned, caught between disbelief and wonder. He’s not shouting, not preaching, for once not suddenly full of answers. In short, Peter didn’t know what to think or feel.

Why does Jesus’ good news, the announcement of his birth as well as his resurrection, come first to those who are not considered the ones-in-the-know, the ones who rate, the movers and shakers, influencers of world and culture, good people who do the right things? If knowing Jesus is knowing God, why doesn’t God tell first those who could do something about it and aid in its dissemination?

But Jesus had already laid it out: “God blesses those…who realize their need for him, those who mourn, those who are gentle and lowly, those who are hungry and thirsty for justice, those who are merciful, those whose hearts are pure, those who work for peace, those who are persecuted because they live for God.” (Matthew 5:3-10) He describes those who are perceived as poor, wounded and powerless as blessed, bringing joy to God. In other words—the people the world calls weak, broken, or irrelevant. Those are the ones most ready to hear a message that flips everything. Who more so would receive and accept a message based in reversal, a turning around not necessarily of fortune but from a self-centered desire based in autonomy to an acceptance of a life based in love of God and neighbor?

Reverse What You’ve Known

So how does God seal the deal? By going straight at the one thing nobody can beat: death.  Jesus doesn’t just talk about life. He walks into death and then walks back out. The worst the world can do. He takes it. And then he gets up again.

That means the story doesn’t end where we thought it did.

The cross wasn’t the last chapter.

The grave wasn’t the final word.

So again, this Easter, same questions, different year: How do you get out of bed when the whole day feels like it’s wrapped in darkness? How do you stand up when grief is sitting heavy in your bones, in your soul? Why should you open your eyes to a pain that shouts an absence of hope?

Like Peter, do you want to believe but are not yet certain what Jesus’ death and resurrection might mean for you? You know your own mess. You feel the weight of the world. Can you move forward into this day despite your own miserable faults, feeling that heaviness, and still dare to walk?

Choose to Fully Wonder

Try this: Don’t rush past the weirdness of it all. Sit in the wonder. Wonder how God did such an unbelievable, implausible thing. God came here. In the flesh. No god does this sort of thing. Be surprised that God knows who needs this good news, the poor who see no hope, dead ends, in their future and those who live poorly by what the world has done to them and by what they do to others. They’re not that different from shepherds or women regulated to lives of servitude or the Peters who never seem to get it right. No god chooses them as the first ones to hear the headline. No god does this sort of thing. No other god takes on the ugliest part of human life, the inevitability of death, in body, heart, and spirit, and flips it.

But Jesus does.

He dies.

He rises.

He says, “This isn’t over. Not like you think.”           

No god that is except God in Jesus, risen from the dead!

Christ is Risen. Christ is Risen Indeed.

Luke 24:1-12  

Named 2024 Notable Book Award by Southern Christian Writers Conference!

The Trouble with Jesus: Considerations Before You Walk Away by Constance Hastings

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