Alive in the World -- Matthew 28:1-10, 16-20 (Easter Sunday)

"Meet Me in Galilee" by Hannah Garrity,

used with copyright permission

A Sanctified Art LLC | sanctifiedart.org

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Mary and the other Mary wake up that morning in a bad-news world.^[1]

Good Friday was a gut punch – and they’ve been walking around in stunned silence. As they rise that day... Herod is still in power, and so is Rome. All the corrupt religious leaders – they’re still running things too. The soldiers march through the streets. The women will likely walk by the hill and the cross where they crucified Jesus. And today, the women will have to pick their lives back up They’ll have to scrape and scrounge today – like every day – to make ends meet. Folks in their world live a bare subsistence living – they have to find enough food for this day, and the next. The wealthy will feast, and the poor will go hungry. And ever it was so.

Mary and the other Mary wake up that morning in a bad-news world.

And, as they rise that day, everything is about to change.

Mary and the other Mary rise that day, and they go to the tomb... to look. I love that. In the other gospels, the women go to the tomb with tasks in mind. They’ve been preparing, and they take their things – their spices and embalming supplies – to bathe Jesus’ body in love. They have things to do.

But in the Gospel of Matthew, Mary and the other Mary go to look^[2] – it’s a beholding verb in the Greek – they go back to the tomb to take it all in: What has happened here? What will happen next? What will we do now? We know what that’s like – to have lost one we have loved – and in deep grieving – it’s all we can do – to ask the questions and to take it all in.

Every Easter, we gather in this place, and we go with Mary and the other Mary – with the women – to the tomb. We go with them, because we know what it is to wake up in a bad-news world. 

We live in a nation at war – in a nation that has waged war, with leaders who cannot tell us why. They’ve sent our sons and daughters to war – and they’re bombing the sons and daughters of other nations – bombs hurled back and forth. The suffering grinds on in Gaza and in Ukraine.

Here at home, our nation is at war with itself – our Congress so divided that it cannot act, our Executive bent on keeping us divided and apart. Our immigrant neighbors fear masked squads. And families across the nation struggle. In the face of economic inequality and rapid change, families spend their days figuring out how to pay the rent and put food on the table. We know the bad news all too well. And in our day, it’s all too accessible. We can’t stop scrolling through the headlines – it’s too easy to spiral into what Harvard professor Arthur Brooks calls a “doom loop.”

Out of the troubles of our own bad-news world, we come here every Easter, and we go together –we go to the tomb with the women – to look – to remember and to experience again – we hope – the Good News that we might find here.

With the women, we breathe in this new day. And the earth quakes – the whole world trembles. In the other gospels, by the time the women arrive, the stone has been rolled away – but here in the Gospel of Matthew – with the women – we get a front row seat. The earth quakes – the heavens open – and a fiery messenger (an angel) descends like lightning. As the tremblers continue, the angel rolls away the stone, opens the already-empty tomb. And the angel takes a seat on that stone, and waits for the women to come near. And just off to the side, there are Roman soldiers, standing their stunned, “like dead men.”

And then the angel speaks to the women: “Fear not.” (That’s what angels say, because when fiery angels appear, people are afraid.) And here’s the news that the angel brings: “Fear not. You have come looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here. He has been raised. He is alive in the world.”

Come and see. The angel invites the women to come and see this good news, and then the angel instructs them: Now, Go and tell.

Here at last – in this bad-news world. Here at last – is some good news. Today, there is a different kind of headline.

Here’s some good news: Herod’s reign is effectively over, and so is Rome’s. God is sovereign in Jesus Christ – not Herod, not Caesar, not those corrupt religious leaders who plotted and planned. Remember, this is the story where, at the very beginning, Herod set out with a vengeance to kill a child he heard had been born king. Herod tried to enlist the Magi – launched a genocide – displaced families – sent them fleeing into other nations.

And, years later, the powers who have been menacing throughout Holy Week – they have done their level best to kill that child too – now, the grown Jesus. They deployed the instruments of state terror and crucified him – and even when he was dead, they placed Roman soldiers at the grave, just in case... 

But here we are – the angel announcing: Jesus is alive in the world, while the Empire’s soldiers stand there stunned “like dead men.” (Notice that they are not dead – just rendered speechless and powerless – this has been a nonviolent revolution.) The powers have fallen; Christ is risen.

We know the powers of our day – the petty tyrants – and we know the powers that have raged down through history. We remember some of their names – but not many. Powers rise, and powers fall. But here we are – a couple thousand years later – telling the story of Jesus – trying together to live in the Way of Jesus – with millions others around the world – celebrating Christ, alive in the world.

Here’s some good news: God’s power is more powerful than every power – more powerful even than death itself.  Now make no mistake: The powers have not gone down without a fight. They have done everything they could to destroy Jesus’ body. They have beaten, scourged, mocked, shamed, and crucified Jesus. And yet, as one writer puts it, “they cannot keep him dead.”^[3] The angel tells the women, “He is not dead. He is risen. Come and see.” And as the women run with the Good News – they encounter the Risen Christ embodied, healed, and whole. Jesus comes to meet him. The women see him, hear him, touch him.^[4]This one whom they thought they had lost to death – they now embrace.

There is cosmic good news for this day – but there is also good news that is deeply, deeply personal. Let’s be honest – we come to this place every Easter, in part, because we need this good news – deep down – in those places that can ache the most. With those women, we know what it is to lose one we love.

And so we come to this place – to claim this particular good news – reminding each other of those truths we say together at memorial services. There is nothing – nothing in all creation that can separate us from God’s love for us in Jesus Christ. Not a thing. Not life. Not death. Not any power. Not things present, not things past, not things to come. Not height, or depth, or length, or breadth – nothing in all creation can separate us from God’s love. Love never dies.Or as the poet Philip Larkin puts it: “What will survive of us is love.”^[5]

Come and see the women embrace the Risen Christ. This story does not end in death. It pauses and lingers in this embrace, and then lives on from there.

Here is some Good News: This is not a story of death after all. It is a story not just of life, but of birth and of re-birth. What is happening here – as the earth quakes and Jesus rises from the dead – what is birthed is a New Creation. With this Good News, we look back over all that Jesus taught, and we see. We look fresh, with the women, at all that we have experienced in Jesus, and we see now through the lens of Resurrection.

As the powers fall, what we see – what has come to life is the world that Jesus proclaimed: Blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek and the merciful; blessed are the peacemakers; blessed are all those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. What has come to life is a world that centers the vulnerable – our immigrant neighbors, children, and all whose backs are up against a wall. A new creation, alive by the power of Resurrection.

Into this world of power-over, of hierarchy, of patriarchy, just look who is entrusted with the Good News: these women, Mary and the other Mary.^[6] This new world is a world where women and all who have been marginalized are given voice – where voices long-silenced, speak, where we are heard. The four gospels agree on two things when it comes to Easter: (1) Christ is risen, and (2) women were “the last at the cross, the first at the tomb”^[7] – the first to bring the Good News.

Here’s some Good News:  This is Good News for those women, and for the disciples, and not just for them – this is Good News for everyone. The women run with this Good News, and share it with the disciples – and then a little while later, the Rise Christ comes to meet the disciples too, saying: Go and share this Good News... with the world – with all nations, with all peoples. What has begun as the story of God’s love for one people – struggling in a world where powers rage – has become Good News for all people.

In Herod’s world, and in Rome’s, the powers maintain power by working so hard to keep us separate and apart. We see that in our world too. But not in the world that comes to life in Resurrection. The Risen Christ shatters every barrier – everything that keesp us apart – so that together all of us – everybody – we might live healed and whole. Go and tell.

Here’s some Good News: In Resurrection, we are given something to do – we are given life to live. Jesus tells the disciples: Go now. Make disciples – and that involves two things: baptize – welcome everyone – and teach – teach what Jesus taught, share this Good News, it is not for you alone. And again, now through the lens of Resurrection, we remember all those things that Jesus taught – give the hungry something to eat, give the thirsty something to drink, clothe those who need clothes, look after those who are sick, visit and free those who are in prison. When you do this for the least of these, you do it for me. All along this is what Jesus has been talking about – how to live out all this Resurrection life – free from the powers that have too long held us back – centering the vulnerable – doing good in the world. The Risen Christ gives us something to do.

Here’s some Good News: The Risen Christ says, “I am with you always” – in the long arc of history, bending toward justice – and also in the ordinary moments of ordinary days. Stocking the community fridge. Hospitality for our immigrant neighbors. Raising our kids. Speaking out for justice. Holding the hand of those who are grieving. Laughing, Weeping, and those blissfully ordinary moments in between. “I am with you always.”

Here’s some Good News: The Risen Christ says, “I am with you. not just in this moment, but until the end of the age.” Barbara Brown Taylor says it’s as if Christ is looking over the disciples’ shoulders, down through the generations, all the way to us.^[8] I am with you always – and you – and you – and you... always. God’s love – with us always – now and forever.

Every Easter, we come to this place, and we go together with these women to the empty tomb to look – and what we see time after time is all this Good News alive in the world. And what we realize is that it has been there all along – and will continue on out into forever – the very heartbeat of God pulsing in the fullness of humanity – the very heartbeat of God pulsing in the fullness of us.

With these women, let’s breathe in this new day.

Christ is risen.

The Good News is alive in the world...

and so are we.

© 2026 Scott Clark

^[1] For background on the Gospel of Matthew and its telling of the Easter morning story, see Efrain Agosto, Commentary in Feasting on the Gospels: Matthew, vol.2 (Louisville, KY; Westminster John Knox Press, 20103), pp.356-73; M. Eugene Boring, “The Gospel of Matthew,”  New Interpreters’ Bible Commentary, vol. viii (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995); Warren Carter, Commentary in Connections, Year A, vol. 2(Louisville, KY; Westminster John Knox Press, 2019); Barbara Brown Taylor, Commentary in Feasting on the Gospels: Matthew, vol.2 (Louisville, KY; Westminster John Knox Press, 20103), pp.356-73; Herman C. Waetjen, Matthew’s Theology of Fulfillment, Its Universality and It’s Ethnicity (London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017).

^[2] See Brown Taylor, pp.357-59; Carter, pp.204-05; Waetjen, pp.293-94.

^[3] See Carter, p.205.

^[4] See Brown Taylor, p.361.

^[5] Philip Larkin, “An Arundel Tomb” in The Whitsun Weddings (London, UK: Faber & Faber, 1964).

^[6] See Agosto, p.361; Brown Taylor, p.361.

^[7] Quoting Rev. Dr. J. Alfred Smith, Sr.

^[8] See Brown Taylor, 369-73.