The gospel that I’ve chosen for our Easter celebration is from the Easter vigil on Saturday night. It is taken from St. Matthew, 28th chapter, first through the 10th verse. After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake. For an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, approached, rolled back the stone and sat upon it.

His appearance was like lightning and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were shaken with fear of him and became like dead men. And the angel said to the woman in reply, do not be afraid. I know that you are seeking Jesus the Crucified. He is not here, for he has been raised just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.

Then go quickly and tell his disciples he has been raised from the dead and he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him. Behold, I have told you. Then they went quickly from the tomb, fearful yet overjoyed, and ran to announce this to his disciples. And behold, Jesus met them on their way and greeted them. They approached, embraced his feet and did him homage.

Then Jesus said to them, do not be afraid. Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee. And there they will see me. Sometimes when I listen to these stories, I feel a little bit cheated that I didn’t get the experiences that the early disciples had. But imagine going to a tomb and seeing an angel and having an earthquake and having the angel speak to you and then having a dead person appear to you. It’s just amazingly, overwhelmingly clear what Jesus had said is true.

And he wants us to take these images of these people and somehow imagine that that kind of enlightenment, that kind of conviction is possible for us. We have to join in their experiences as well as our struggles, and to be absolutely convicted, convinced that there is this power in us that can do all that Jesus did. It’s the mystery in the heart of the Easter celebration. Let us pray. Father, the story that you have told of your life on this earth often remains just in a book somewhere that we know it’s there. We read it every now and then or we hear it in a service, but we don’t ponder it and wonder about it and try to imagine ourselves in it.

Bless us with that awareness that can only come with reflection on who you are, how you lived and how you were seen. And we ask this in Jesus name, Amen.