Easter Sunday: Finding the Living
Why do you look for the living among the dead? This is what the angels ask the women at the empty tomb, and it is a good question for us to ask, as well.
The Roman Province of Judaea, which included Jerusalem and the region of Galilee, was experiencing a national emergency. At a great rate, the Roman empire was imprisoning and dehumanizing citizens of the nations it controlled. Crucifixes lined the highways in and out of the holy city of Jerusalem. This Roman invention was the execution method of choice used for slaves, disgraced soldiers, foreigners and later, Christians. Who knows why they were arrested and left there to die a miserable death?
Many of the people that the empire put in power were either malevolent, like the first king Herod, who ruled at the time of Jesus’ birth and slaughtered hundreds of innocent infants. Or they were somewhat incompetent like Herod’s son, also Herod, whom we meet briefly at Jesus’ death. The Romans orchestrated the execution of Jesus simply for being a good Jew. His mission was to remind the people of God what God’s intention was for them: radical hospitality and revolutionary love. The Romans could not handle this.
The Roman Empire depended on local elites to maintain order and extract taxes, thus driving a wedge between factions of faithful Jews by rewarding the rich and punishing the poor. In addition to extreme taxation, the Romans ruled by strict border control and deportation. If the Roman Empire ruled today, I imagine that someone like Jesus would be no safer. We might have to start worrying about the safety of people who are ill or very poor, or immigrants, because at any moment that their social supports might be taken away.
The people of God, Jesus’ followers, do not know what to do in this state of emergency. They are afraid, they are confused, and after the events which we remembered on Good Friday, they are without hope. If there were newspapers and podcasts back then, many of Jesus’ followers might have stopped reading and listening out of despair and helplessness.
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This is the climate where Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Mary the mother of James find themselves as they head to Jesus’ tomb on Easter morning, to do the faithful actions of anointing his body and preparing him for burial. But see what happens—listen again. Imagine being among those women:
They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. ...Suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. 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.”
We know this part of the story. It is why we are all here, right? He has risen. But these women who are to be the very first apostles proclaiming the resurrection, they are having a moment. To call it cognitive dissonance would be too trivial. Their whole reality has changed and they need to change with it. They need to move from grief into joy. This sounds great, but sometimes it is easier said than done. It can be frightening. But this is what Easter is about, recognizing joy in the midst of despair.
Now for the women at the empty tomb—instead of their duty to the dead, they are yanked into this new reality that we might call “a shockingly and joyfully different world,”[1] a world where life triumphs over death, where love triumphs over empire. Wouldn’t it be nice if we lived in a shockingly joyful and different world? Here’s the good news: we do. The principalities and powers tried to squash Jesus’ revolution of love, and they could not. They could not, because the Jesus movement of revolutionary love cannot be squashed.
Julia Esquivel, in her incredible poem about the massacres that took place in Guatemala under military dictatorship, describes the relationship between bereaved women and their beloved dead: They have threatened us with resurrection are the words she uses as a refrain throughout the poem. They have threatened us with resurrection. Death is not the end of the story, and love cannot die.
Esquivel uses the phrase “marathon of hope.” This is what Easter calls us to do. Peter may sprint to the empty tomb, but we who live on the other side of the cross are called to run a marathon of hope. This is our vocation as Christians, no matter how much we despair, no matter how much we want to cover our eyes and ears, just as the women at the tomb may have wanted to do as they watched Jesus die, and just as Christians have wanted to do throughout history, watching Empire around them. But no matter how powerful, Empire has no power over the revolutionary love and radical hospitality that is the cornerstone of the Kingdom Jesus came to proclaim. The Kingdom that Jesus has left to us to proclaim.
Why do you look for the living among the dead? the angels ask. This is a question that we need to keep before us. Sometimes we look for the living among the dead because it is familiar, known. Sometimes we would rather look backward than forward; it’s safer. (Especially, as I heard someone say a few years ago and I wish I hadn’t, especially if we have more yesterdays than tomorrows.) Sometimes we look for the living among the dead because anything else seems too good to be true. But we are to grab hold of the life that really is life. The living need us. God raised Jesus from the dead to show us that love is real; it is the life that really is life.
Looking for life is essential to this time in which we live. Empire would have us have a very rigid understanding of what it means to be Christian, of what it means to have faith, of what it means to share in community. But the stone rolled away from the tomb breaks all of that wide open.
Our God will not let Jesus stay dead. And, our God will not let our hearts die to compassion and connection. How do we act out our joy? How do we keep looking for the living among the living? We stay together. We check on our neighbors, especially those who are Black, brown, indigent, immigrant, trans, lonely, or afraid. That’s where God is. We look for God in the unlikely places where we know God always shows up.
When we gather each week to share Holy Eucharist as we will in a few moments, we remember what God has done for us in the resurrection, and as we remember this, we re-member—become again the Body of Christ which we have, in truth, never left. In our remembrance, we are always becoming the Body.
Remember—again and again—that our God would not let Empire kill love, and we don’t have to, either. Let us proclaim resurrection every chance we get.
Alleluia, Christ is risen!
[1] Andrew McGowan, “Andrew’s version” newsletter, April 15, 2025