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On the Wings of the Dawn

Luke 24:1-12

April 20, 2025

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It was in the pre-dawn darkness of Sunday morning that Mary Magdalene and the other women arose, still chained to the desperation and desolation that had imprisoned them since the previous Thursday night. 

 

That’s when Jesus was arrested. Jesus — the man who had cured Mary from a mental illness so severe that she had been said to have been possessed by seven demons, the man whose ministry she and others supported with time and money, the man through whom God worked so powerfully that even casual crowds became convinced that he might be the long-awaited Messiah. The man to whom she had fully devoted her life had been arrested, brutally beaten and humiliated and put to a horrible and shameful death on a cross. 

 

As he took his last breath, the women felt as if they, too, had died. Almost as soon as he was laid in the tomb, the Sabbath began, but the ancient rituals honoring God for creation and for the salvation of humankind held no comfort for them when the one they loved lay dead, brutally murdered. 

 

It was only the power of their love for Jesus that broke through their lethargy on Sunday morning and led them through the pre-dawn darkness to the tomb where they planned to perform the traditional burial rites as their final tribute to Jesus. Here’s how David Cobb once described what happened next as reported in the gospel of Luke:  

 

“I imagine the followers of Jesus were feeling broken. They had brought spices to prepare his body. Freshly ground aloe, the bitter resin of myrrh, the cinnamon and cane pungent in the air. Down the hill toward the tomb they carried them. Even his burial had been rushed to make allowance for the Sabbath. I can see them in the cool 58-degree morning air, the dappled lemon-yellow sunrise filtering through greening trees. I can hear the steady crunch of rocky soil underfoot, the heavy load of a necessary burden, stumbling, then steady again, the swish of silent flaxen robes. Little conversation broke the silence.

 

“Then when they came to the tomb, another broken thing, the earth itself, staring darkly out of its hole, the stone rolled away. Oddly they entered. Something about feeling broken, it impairs your judgment. You don’t always know when you ought to be afraid. The threat of tomb robbers still present, yet they enter.

 

“[…] I imagine their confusion. They’d thought of everything else—the spices, the hour, the meeting place, the route. They were probably even prepared to roll away the stone themselves. Sad and broken, at least they knew they could count on the predictability of death—that was a brokenness they understood. But then even death is broken. The stone is rolled away. […T]here is no doubt that something extraordinary happened that morning. We can be sure it happened in the midst of broken hopes, broken dreams, broken spirits, broken hearts.”

 

As the women approached the tomb, dawn was breaking so they could see to their surprise that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance to the tomb. Going in, they saw that the body they had come to anoint was gone. Their Lord — their master and friend — was simply gone. The tomb was empty.

 

I would guess that in that moment, all the pain and frustration and anger of the past few days washed over them. And tears must have filled their hearts. Hadn’t the Sanhedrin done enough to Jesus already? Must they steal his body, too?

 

Can’t you just see a silent scream welling up from the core of their beings, filling the tomb until they were emotionally drained? And it would have been in that moment that the women suddenly became aware that they were no longer alone in the tomb. 

 

Two men wearing what Luke calls “dazzling clothes” appeared beside them. I suspect that was Luke’s way of referring back to the Transfiguration story to imply that these strangers were actually angels. With the nerves already frayed nearly to the breaking point, it’s no wonder that this unexpected encounter terrified the women.

 

As if that wasn’t enough to throw these grieving women dizzily off balance, then they were struck by the angels’ astonishing words. 

“Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.”

 

Unlike Mark’s account of the resurrection, the women immediately remembered Jesus’ words and they ecstatically rushed to the place where the disciples were hiding to tell them the good news. But in that patriarchal society, when confronted with this impossibly joyful news, the disciples refused to believe it. They simply assumed the women were suffering from some form of mass emotional delusion. Therefore, they rejected the joy that was being offered to them. 

 

So, as it is reported in each of the four gospels, the reality of the unexpected joy of that first Easter morning dawned ever-so-slowly on those who loved Jesus. Yet, once the truth had been revealed to them — even though the clouds of sadness over the events of Good Friday still remained — Jesus’ followers began a massive celebration that has never stopped in spite of the 2,000 years that have followed that first glorious Easter morning. 

 

That’s because, as humans, we all know the kinds of feelings that the two Marys and Joanna and all the other disciples experienced as they mourned the senseless and excruciating execution of Jesus. 

 

As a species, we’ve had loved ones die; we’ve had marriages crumble; we’ve had friends abandon us; we’ve had illness consume our lives and our finances; we’ve been lost in the grim shadows of depression; we’ve lost those jobs that used to define who we were; we’ve turned to things like alcohol — or perhaps something stronger — for comfort, and then we’ve stumbled over its power to enslave anyone who would turn to it for escape.

 

We’ve become locked into any of the hundreds of situations in which life seems to disintegrate in our fingers and hope seems to shimmer like an unobtainable mirage on the distant horizon. That’s why Easter is for us. The story of Easter isn’t just a dusty tale of a long-ago empty tomb — some charming story from a foreign land about a one-time-only historical event. Instead, Easter is our story. Easter is God’s promise to each of us that new life awaits us beyond whatever may be imprisoning us. 

Jesus said, “I am the first and the last. I am the living one. Because I live, you shall live also.” Therefore, we can know for certain that we will eventually see our loved ones who have died, because that is one of the promises of Easter — our own life after death.

 

But Easter is much more than that. For Easter is a promise from God. Easter is the promise of a whole new creation. Our lives and deaths, our joys and sorrows — everything we see and everything we are — is now no longer limited by what happened in the past. 

 

Through the power of Easter, the past is finished and gone; everything has become fresh and new. Through the power of Easter, we can leave our sins and shortcomings behind in the tomb. We have been set free. And God calls us forth into the world to join in the work of God’s new creation. 

 

The resurrection means that Jesus can no longer be confined by our ability to perceive his presence or by the limits of this world. As the Risen Christ, he goes ahead of us into the world to comfort and to heal, to bring joy and justice, to bring peace and wholeness and to breathe new life into dead places.

 

Bill Gordon says, “Resurrection is life replacing death—[it’s] a new creation, something new coming out of nothing, a dead end that suddenly becomes a whole new possibility, a whole new pathway. Resurrection is a reality that I can never fully explain, dissect, duplicate, achieve by my own effort, or control. Nor can anyone for that matter. Because, you see…resurrection is not our thing. 

 

“Resurrection is God’s thing. Resurrection is about God’s newness, God’s surprising newness in the face of impossibilities and dead ends — God’s ‘glorious unpredictability, God’s emphatic ‘Yes! in the face of our or the natural universe’s ‘No.’ It is not something we can predict or control. We can only either trust it and live by it…or not.”

 

So what does that mean for us today? Barbara Brown Taylor says, “We do not know what resurrection will mean for us in the end. We cannot know how it will feel or work or look. But we do have evidence it is so. God has woven resurrection into our daily lives so that we can learn the shape of it and perhaps learn to trust the strength of it when our own times come.”

Christ’s resurrection offers us the courage to dream of a world in which God’s justice finally prevails, because it points us to the truth that nothing is ever stronger than love, whatever our fears and disappointments may shout at us. God’s love is more powerful than any struggles we may face. 

 

It’s the faint flicker of hope in the darkness that will become the spectacular dawn. It’s the first buds of spring that transform the winter-deadened world into a riotous carnival of life.

 

It’s the growing awareness that no matter what the ultimate outcome of a lingering illness may be, it can still result in a healing. It’s the feeble but sure sense of self-worth that remains when all others have turned their backs. It’s the new creation that beckons beyond the intense lure of temptations and addictions. 

 

But most of all, Easter serves to show us that God is neither absent nor indifferent about our lives. Instead, God will allow nothing to stand between us and his love for us — not even our own pride and our sinful nature. 

 

Easter comes to our Good Friday world, and when it comes, we can see that Christ is the embodiment of God’s great love — a love so expansive that not even the shadowy netherworld of death can swallow it. Jesus is alive and he’s here even now in the midst of our sorrows and griefs, bringing new life and a resurrected joy. 

 

Into our Good Friday world — filled with hurts and pains, heartbreak and heartache, sorrow and sin — comes the incredible good news of Easter:  The tomb is empty — Jesus Christ is alive!

 

He’s alive — in our world and in us — touching us with healing grace, shattering the walls that divide us and bringing us hope and courage and love. The risen Christ is with us now and always! Thanks be to God! Amen. 

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by Jim McCrea