“They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, 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.’” Luke 24:2-5

Lent is the most challenging season of the Christian year for me. You may have picked that up from the
last issue of Trinity Tidings.

After the dark nights of winter and the cold days of March I usually have had enough of this season.
Additionally this year we had a horrible incident of carbon monoxide poisoning at the church—making this
time even more difficult.

As I passed through the different accounts of the Easter story, what I liked about Luke’s version was the
adjectives—words like ‘perplexed’ and ‘terrified.’ These are not common words in our Gospels but ones
which show real emotion.

I, too, have been perplexed and terrified this season—also afraid, surprised and relieved. After officiating
at last Sunday’s worship service around a time of “Listening, Reclaiming, and Healing” I also know that
there similar sentiments in all of you right now. We, like the disciples, are full of a lot of mixed emotions.
What resonated for me in these words, then, was that no matter our state of mind or our mood—Easter will
come and Jesus will be resurrected. Easter does not depend on our mental readiness for its arrival.

The other piece that I found interesting about this account is that none of the women or disciples who
came to the tomb ran to tell others or shared the news. Instead, disbelief (“they did not believe”) set in on
them and Peter was the only one who was ‘amazed’ at what had happened. I like this account for that
reason—how it offers a version that ‘keeps it real’—with real emotions and real behaviors of people. Such
an account only offers more weight and power to the Resurrection story – it’s our story, too.

Happy Easter, friends.
Pastor Amanda

This entry was posted on Monday, March 30th, 2009 at 9:33 am and is filed under Easter/Lent, Pastor's Message. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.