He Is Not Here

Reflection

At dawn on the first day of the week, women come to the tomb carrying spices, expecting to tend a corpse. They come in grief, prepared for death, with no category for anything else. Instead they find the stone rolled away and two figures in dazzling clothes who ask a question that must have stunned them: "Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen." Everything in the Christian faith turns on that announcement. The cross would be a noble tragedy and nothing more if the story ended at the tomb. But "he is not here." Death did not have the last word. The grave could not hold him. The one who was crushed for our iniquities walked out of his own tomb in victory. Notice that the women were looking in the right place for the wrong reality. They sought the living among the dead. Sometimes we do the same — expecting defeat, rehearsing grief, assuming that death and disappointment always win. The resurrection confronts that expectation. The God we serve is in the business of raising the dead. This is the hope at the centre of everything. Because Jesus is risen, his finished work on the cross is vindicated, his promises are trustworthy, and death itself has become a defeated enemy. Whatever tombs you are standing before today — of failure, of grief, of hopelessness — the angel's words still echo: do not seek the living among the dead. He is risen, and in him, so shall we rise.