© 2025 Evan D. Garner
Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video can be seen here.
Tonight is the night when death becomes life, when darkness gives way to new light, when suffering is transformed into glory. But where is Jesus? Every gospel writer recalls for us the moment when the empty tomb was discovered, and all of them have their own particular way of telling this sacred story. Luke’s version, which we hear tonight, includes many of the same details as the other three—the early-morning setting, the stone having already been rolled away, the heavenly figures waiting nearby, and the women—always the women—who were the first to find it—but Luke is the only one who gives us a version that is this elaborate without including Jesus.
Where is Jesus? “He is not here,” the men in dazzling clothes said to the women, “but has risen.” Why do you look for the living among the dead? The question implies a lack of understanding on the part of the women—as if they were confused about a detail that should be obvious to them. If only Jesus were here to explain it to them. If only Jesus were here to show us how to believe.
But Jesus doesn’t show up, at least not yet. Instead, the angelic figures say to the women, “Remember.” “Remember, they said, “how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” These women stood at the place where death had been defeated once and for all—the launching pad from which a categorically new moment in the story of salvation was springing forth—yet the truth of what God had done could only be found by going back—back into their memories, where they could inhabit that transformation for themselves. Only when we remember—only when we return to dwell in that place where our own emptiness is met by the fullness of God’s love—can the truth of the resurrection take hold in our lives.
Of course that truth was declared first to the women. Because of their status in that society, which is to say because they occupied a position of non-privilege, they were able to see the empty tomb and find within its absence the power of the resurrection. Although all four gospel writers remember that the women were the first to discover it, Luke is the only one who allows that discovery to be for them and them alone. In the other three, the women were told to go and share that good news with the male disciples. But not in Luke. Instead, Luke knows what will happen when the women go and tell the eleven all that had happened: their words were dismissed as an idle tale.
The men would not receive their testimony. The men did not believe them. The men did not even bother to go and see it for themselves, except for Peter. Something within Peter was different. Leaving the ten behind, he went to look into the tomb for himself, and, although he did not remember what the women disciples had remembered, he was amazed at what he saw, and amazement is a first step toward faith.
Eight times in Luke’s gospel account someone is said to remember something. Eight different times remembrance plays a role in the unfolding story of salvation. And, in all eight, that act of remembering takes place within a context of loss, weakness, vulnerability, or rejection: Mary’s Magnificat, Zechariah’s Benedictus, Abraham’s convicting words to the rich man in Jesus’ parable, Jesus’ instructions to his disciples about not looking back in their moment of trial, the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper, the request of the penitent thief who hanged on the cross beside Jesus, Peter’s shame when he heard the cock crow, and the women’s moment of realization at the empty tomb. Every time, the act of remembering comes out of a moment of emptiness, and every time that emptiness leads to salvation.
Peter was the only one of the eleven to go and look in the tomb because he was the only one who remembered his own emptiness—the haunting shame of having denied Jesus. The realization of faith may not have come to him yet, but his amazement was a starting point.
Tonight is the night when death becomes life, when darkness gives way to a new dawn, when suffering is transformed into glory. And where is Jesus? He is found right in the center of that transformation—in the very middle of the hollowed out emptiness that is filled with the promise of new life. Suffering must always precede glory. Struggle always comes before salvation. There is no other way. And we must remember that. And, when we do, we find Jesus.
It is hard for those of us who have it easy to see within the empty tomb something other than an absence. It is hard for those of us who live the good life to hear the women’s report as something other than an idle tale. But the message of the men in dazzling clothes is the same for us as it was for them: we must remember.
Remembering is more than a simple recollection. It is the reconstitution of a moment and the repositioning of ourselves within it, and that requires emptiness. When Jesus taught his disciples that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, be crucified, and on the third day rise again, none of them understood what he said. It was not possible for any of them to see how God’s anointed one, the savior of the world, could die a shameful death. And so, when Jesus did die that shameful death, none of them could put the pieces of their shattered expectations back together again until the women were asked to remember. Their example of remembering is God’s gift to us.
Salvation comes from faith, and faith comes from remembering, and remembering comes from being empty, and being empty is where we find Jesus. The women at the tomb teach us that we must be emptied of our self-sufficiency in order to make room for the risen Lord. That is harder for some of us than it is for others. It feels scary to be asked to give up the security we have established for ourselves. More often, it is taken from us without our choosing. But the good news of Easter is that Jesus is always found in the hollowed-out space that has been made within us. It is within that space that remembrance becomes possible, and it is from remembrance that faith springs forth, and that faith is our salvation—our own place within God’s story of new life.
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