Would We Have Believed? Luke 24: 1-12

A text – Luke 24:1-12

24 But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. ² They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, ³ but when they went in they did not find the body. ⁴ While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. ⁵ The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen. ⁶ Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, ⁷ that the Son of Man must be handed over to the hands of sinners and be crucified and on the third day rise again.” ⁸ Then they remembered his words, ⁹ and returning from the tomb they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. ¹⁰ Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. ¹¹ But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. ¹² But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

A reflection:

These five women (or more, but at least five), as dawn breaks, come to complete the burial work that couldn’t be done on Friday evening. They must have been incredibly sad, still reeling, after all, but they knew they needed to get this done and they were going to do it with love. These were women completely part of the circle of disciples, because when the angels tell them to think back to what Jesus had told them, they knew what he had said. They had been close followers. So they came back to wherever the eleven disciples were, still stunned, and told what had happened. Ten of the eleven just scoff in disbelief. But Peter heard the women and took their story seriously enough to go himself to the tomb.

Peter himself was still reeling, not just at Jesus’s horrible death but also at his own denial of Jesus, though he had sworn he would never do that. He had denied knowing the man who had named him the rock of his church, a leader in the Kingdom.  Peter had caved for fear of the authorities who were holding Jesus prisoner. On this new morning Peter just had to see what those faithful women had been shown – an empty tomb, Jesus faithfully keeping his word even though Peter had broken his. Peter did not scoff. And his reward for believing the women was to behold the empty tomb.

I wonder if we would have believed the women’s story. Jesus seems to have taken women seriously, unlike most men of their day. How good of God to place angels in the empty tomb to help us believe what our imaginations might have been concocting. How generous to reveal to us humans what had happened for Jesus and for us. Raised from the dead. The power of death broken. For all of us.

A prayer:

Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for being in your nature a God who keeps promises, who goes through death and destroys it so we can know, for all of our lifetimes, that we can be raised, too. We can be convinced, like those women. We can even just flicker a little belief, like Peter in his despair. Help us to know that we are part of this story of yours, forever. Amen.