Contributed By: Rev. Helen O. Harper
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Rev. Harper is the Priest at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Niagara Falls.

During the darkness in the morning chill of the third day after Jesus’ death, several women arrive at his tomb.  They were there to prepare Jesus’ body for burial, a specific role of women in this society at this time.  As followers of Jesus in his lifetime, the women wanted to be as faithful to Jesus in death.  The women had intended to make this one thing right, in a world where days ago they believed everything had gone hopelessly wrong. 

As the women approach the tomb they were confronted by an angel whose appearance, we are told in Matthew’s Gospel, was like lightening, and whose clothing was as white as snow!  But even in all their grief and terror, rather than run away, they stayed, and listened to the angel’s message, and what a glorious message it was.  What they heard was this:  “Do not be afraid…Jesus who was crucified…has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee.  There you will see him.”  They wondered how this was even possible when three days earlier they had watched Jesus die on the cross.   So they left the empty tomb with mixed feelings of fear and joy.  And they brought the good news of Jesus’ resurrection–a message of hope–to the other disciples.  Then Jesus himself appeared to the disciples, and they were able to see Jesus once again, this time in his resurrected body.  They saw Jesus with their own eyes and believed that he, once again, lived among them.  So they worshiped him with pure joy.

And even now while our fear and anxieties about the future continue and overflow into the various parts of our daily living in isolation, even now the message of Easter is the same for us as it was on that first Easter day: “Do not be afraid. Jesus who was crucified is Risen as he said.”

Rev. Helen Harper