The Empty Tomb Speaks Today in You and Me

12 April 2020 – Easter Day

Matthew 28:1-10

Those who came to the tomb on that first day of the week could not know what happened in the tomb. They could know only that the body they saw crucified two days earlier was no longer where they had laid it. They could know only that the tomb they had seen sealed two days earlier was now open and body-less. The fact that we know of the resurrection at all depends completely on the testimony, the witness, of these women.

. . . Like these women, like the gospel stories, we cannot explain the resurrection, we can only bear witness to it and proclaim it. We believe, we acclaim, we bear witness: Christ is risen. No matter how much some think this good news can be controlled, no matter how much some think it can be spun for the exclusive benefit of the powerful or intellectually precocious, God’s power manifest in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead breaks through all such illusions of power. Roman soldiers could not prevent the opening of the tomb nor could they stand in the presence of God’s messenger; they collapsed like the dead in fear. At the same time, unarmed and unarmored women, though afraid, are comforted and rejoice. These same women, witnesses to trial and crucifixion, witnesses to burial and entombment, tell the truth of the resurrection. They were not charged to explain how Christ was raised nor did they try. They were charged to bear witness to what they had seen and heard: the one who was crucified is risen. The one who was wrapped in burial clothes and placed in a tomb is alive. The one they had left for dead has gone before them into the world. Christ is not dead; Christ is risen.

. . . Resurrection faith is not belief in a tragic story that ends in a gruesome death and burial. Resurrection faith is not belief that a tomb filled three days earlier is now empty. Resurrection faith is not belief in a dead body brought back to life. Resurrection faith is the sure knowledge that God acts, that God is faithful, that God has not and does not abandon the weak, the captive, and the sorrowful. Resurrection faith knows that because Christ lives, we live. Resurrection faith compels us into a world that has lost hope, misplaced hope, defeated hope. Resurrection faith compels us to bear witness that the present world of violence and sin in which we live is not the last word. Resurrection faith knows that God is acting today to create a world of justice and righteousness. —E. Byron Anderson

Acts 10:34-43

Peter’s summary of Jesus’ ministry sees it as directed to his exaltation as the Christ, who acts as sovereign “judge of the living and the dead.” Here the purpose of the resurrection is to place Christ in his role. The responsibility of the select few to whom the risen Christ appeared is to bear witness to this alignment—from God through the Spirit to Christ—so that people who affirm this arrangement can “have forgiveness of sins through his name” (v 43). –– Mary Elizabeth Kenel

Colossians 3:1-4

The passage read today. . . explicitly uses the Christian form of resurrection language to describe a kind of realized eschatology whose meaning is best captured in one of the eucharistic acclamations in current use: “Dying you destroyed our death; rising you restored our life.” –– Mary Elizabeth Kenel

Mary Elizabeth Kenel is a writer and clinical psychologist in Washington, D.C.

Homily Service 38, no. 4 (2005): 53-63.