Easter Sunday, April 5, 2026
Matthew 28:1–10 | Christopher Ingram
They came in the dark to do what the Sabbath had interrupted.
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary brought spices because that is what you do when someone is dead and you loved them. You take care of the body. You do what can still be done. John tells us the women came while it was still dark (John 20:1), before dawn. It’s a way to picture the last possible moment of night, when grief still has the whole world to itself.
They were not full of hope when they arrived. They were full of exhaustion and spices and the particular despair of watching something beloved destroyed. They expected a sealed stone. They were going to do the next thing, which is what faithful people often do when their hearts are broken. So they walk in the dark to Jesus’ tomb, even when it no longer seems to make any difference.
To their shock, resurrection finds them there. Resurrection does not come when we are composed and ready. It doesn’t arrive once we are standing in good light with our understanding all straightened out. Resurrection is always an interruption, a disruption mid-errand, while we are still working on behalf of someone we thought we had lost.
The angel’s first word to them, and then Jesus’s, is the same: do not be afraid (Matt 28:5, 10). Remember, there is an earthquake and a figure like lightning and guards collapsed on the ground like dead men. But Matthew tells us the women left quickly, with fear and great joy at the same time (Matt 28:8). Easter may not dissolve the fear, but it gives it somewhere to go: “He has been raised, as he said!” (Matt 28:6).
As he said.
Three times in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus told his disciples exactly this was coming (Matt 16:21, 17:23, 20:19). Nobody believed it. Nobody came to the tomb expecting it. Resurrection cannot be reasoned toward or prepared for. It has to be announced from outside, by a messenger, to people who came carrying burial spices to the place of the dead.
What walks out of that tomb is not a man who nearly died and recovered. It is life that has passed through death and come out the other side carrying something death had no claim upon.
Every shadow named across these six weeks met Jesus at the cross. The appetites that hide in secret. The faith that only comes out at night. The shame carried at noon. The certainty we weaponize. The grief sealed behind stone. The violence we do with clean consciences. He took it upon himself, and what the Father raised on Sunday morning was everything death could not keep.
The centurion who confessed at the cross on Friday (Matt 27:54) is the sign that this was never only for the people who already believed it. The tomb is empty for him too. God’s love for the world reaches further than any of us has yet imagined.
The Marys run toward the city. Toward people who do not yet know. They are the first to carry the resurrection somewhere, and they are running with fear and great joy on an ordinary road, which is where most of us live.
That road is still there. Go and tell!
Prayer:First Light, you broke into the world before anyone was ready, before the sun was up, before grief had finished its work. I come to Easter still carrying things that feel like Friday. You know what they are. Your Son walked out of the tomb and your Spirit is already at work in what I cannot let go of. I trust that. Raise what is dead in me. Send me running, like those women, toward someone who needs to hear this. Amen