Believe Women - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

Sunday, April 20, 2025

 

Every time, even now when we tell the story, we will often remember one of the stories of Peter looking in or later on in the John story, where Peter and John race to get to the tomb. Or we might remember the rolled away stone, or we might remember the angels, and still we'll forget to whom the angels are speaking; the faithful women who never abandoned Jesus.  The women who were there when he was on the cross, who prepared his body for burial, and who came to see him.

 

They're the first witnesses of the resurrection and we even hear it today, they see this and they go back and they tell the men, and the men consider it an idle tale. Oh, well, you know, those women, they must be getting hysterical.

 

It is an interesting aspect of the story that if the men would just, I don't know, BELIEVE what the women said they saw, we might have a different story. That has absolutely no relevance for today's life. So we'll just move right on.

 

The women are justifiably scared when they go to the tomb. They are not expecting the resurrection, and I wanna make that clear, this is one of those things we almost forget. Yes, Jesus tells them that this is going to happen, but it is uniformly clear throughout our Gospel readings that every single time Jesus tells them this is gonna happen, they don't understand what he's saying and they don't get it.

 

And when they get to the tomb, they are not expecting it to be empty. They are expecting Jesus to be there and dead.