Second Sunday of Easter

Scripture
Luke 24: 1 – 12

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?” This was the question the women who went to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body as per Jewish dead ritual. Whether they understood the question at that time or not, what stood out for me is defeat of death by a resurrected life. The power of a resurrected life is so obvious that to think of the resurrection as a miracle or mysterious occurrence will undermine the reality of a resurrected life lived in the flesh.

This resurrection of Jesus was before his ascension. Therefore, it is a resurrection of the body. The two men announcing Jesus’ resurrection saw it fitting to tell of Jesus’ being alive in the body, the very thing the women are in the tomb to anoint as part of the dead ritual.

We see that the ointments brought by the women to the tomb are of no use. They have to be of no use for everything that has to do with death does not apply to the newly resurrected space through Jesus. What is displayed clearly here are the two main extremes, life and death. What is for life cannot be used in death, and what is of death cannot be used in life.

Our world today is battered with death even though we preach life in Jesus through his resurrection. People continue to die, and we continue to look for things we are used to in the spaces of the dead. That is why humans goes around in a sort of merry-go-round without ending, looking for many answers in wrong places.

I want to bring to you the answer of the two angels, the dead don’t live here. We are believers in Jesus. We are people of the resurrection. Our lives should portray a resurrected life, and it should bring freshness and life in full to those around us. Nothing in us should be of the dead. If Jesus is the Lord of the resurrection and is the centre of our lives, then people around us should find life in the life we exhibited.

-Isaako Soliola Tunumosos, Congregational Christian Church in Samoa

Prayer

Peace on earth as our world is battered by war and hatred.
A resurrected church across the world to be witness of God’s justice.
This Easter, may we experience the living Jesus.
May we never, ever, look for the dead in the spaces of the living, or the living in the
spaces of the dead

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Image attribution: LeCompte, Rowan and Irene LeCompte. Christ shows himself to Thomas, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54879 [retrieved April 19, 2022]. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/maryannsolari/5119341372/