By Jared Warner
Willow Creek Friends Church
April 20, 2025
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Luke 24:1–12 (ESV)
1 But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. 2 And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. 5 And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? 6 He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, 7 that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” 8 And they remembered his words, 9 and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. 10 Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, 11 but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. 12 But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened.
He is not here, but has risen.
As I have journeyed through my life of faith, I have often contemplated the message the dazzling men proclaimed to the women that came to anoint Jesus’s body. “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”
I have sat with these words. I have prayed with them. I have tried to create the scene within my mind picturing the electric clothing of the men and attempting to smell the spices in the women’s arms. I want to know the passage, experience the passage. I want to walk around inside it. I want this so that I can know.
“Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”
The passion week is one that is filled with emotions. On Palm Sunday, the disciples cheer for joy. They are shouting at the top of their lungs, “Blessed is the king who comes in the the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” Blessed is the King who comes, or who bear the name.
We discussed this briefly last Sunday, but is important to revisit it today. To bear the name, is to embody the name, or essence of that name. This is why in one of the ten lessons God gave his people in the desert was to not bear the name in vain. God’s people were to embody the essence of God, to bear his image or likeness to the world. Humanity was created to bear that image, to reflect the light and wisdom of God into creation. It is for that reason our First Parents were place inside the garden, which was creations’ temple, the place where God dwelt. But it was our first parent’s fall, they listened to the deceptive words of the serpent and marred the image God created as good. When they praised Jesus on Palm Sunday they praised him saying that He was the one that would restore what was once lost. He was to bring peace between heaven and humanity.
Yet within mere moments the tone changes. The religious leaders quickly seek to silence the celebrants. And Jesus wept for Jerusalem. He enters the temple courts and he see throughout that people are using the image of God to extort and manipulate people, so he drives the vendors. This action further disturbs the religious leaders and they demand an answer, “by whose authority do you do these things?”
The people begin with cheering, and suddenly things begin to change. Has Jesus changed, no, his message remains the same, but the focus shifts. The people are proclaiming the King who will bring peace with heaven. Everything on heaven and earth, if Jesus is this proclaimed king, must be interpreted through him.
The cheering quieted, and soon plotting ensued. Jesus challenged society. He compelled them to look at their own lives, causing them to examine where their identity was found. The answer, “it is better for one man to die than for us to lose our nation.”
I want us to contemplate that statement for a moment. The religious leaders and society in general proclaimed with a justified conscience that it is better that someone should suffer so that we could maintain the status quo.
Jesus went from being proclaimed as the name bearing king bringing peace to heaven, to a wrongfully accused victim of societies injustice. In less than one week. It is easy to accept that society in general did this, but one of his friends betrayed him, and one of his closest friends denied knowing him. And according to the gospel of Mark, someone was so afraid that they ran away naked. Oddly tradition has this individual as being the one that wrote that particular gospel, John Mark. And the only ones that remained were a handful of women, and John who is believed to have been the youngest of the apostles.
These same women are the ones that we see in today’s passage. It is early Sunday morning, likely just as the sun is beginning to rise, and they went to the tomb, taking spices they had prepared. As I was reading this passage I sat with it as I usually do, I try to read slowly and build a mental image of it. I try to imagine the scene and consider things as best as I can from the perspectives of the various people. I do not know if everyone or anyone for that matter tries to do this, but for me, I find this to be my preferred method. These are the same women that had been standing at the crucifixion, because Luke uses feminine pronouns as he continues. They, meaning the Galilean women prepared spices that Friday prior to sundown. They sat all through the Sabbath, that Holy Saturday, in utter despair. And the first thing they do as soon as it is possible they go out to the tomb to bring the spices they prepared to anoint the body of Jesus.
How were they going to do this? They knew how Jesus was laid to rest. They knew that he was sealed in a tomb. They knew that officials from the temple and the civil government had been stationed to guard the tomb. They knew that there was a large stone rolled in front of the entrance, because that was the manner they buried the dead in their culture. They knew this but they did not plan for it. They simply grabbed the spices and went.
I have been in a place similar to this. You are so distraught you are seemingly in a state of automation, just moving forward completing the tasks immediately in front of you but not really thinking about it. And then all at once something is not where it should be, or someone did not show up that you assumed would. In that moment everything comes crashing down around you and you are emotionally paralyzed unable to do anything else.
This is what Luke means when he says that they were perplexed. They brought spices to anoint the body, but there was no body. The word here does not mean they did not see a body, it means there was no corpse to be found.
Their entire world had just come crashing down around them. For years they had followed this rabbi. He had loved them, he had treated them unlike any other teacher Judea. They were on an equal status as the men in the company. Jesus had let them sit at his feet. This was a place reserved for the true disciples. If it were like a classroom today it was the front row. These women were not relegated to the back where those that audited the class would sit, but they were part of the group.
No one else had offered them anything like this. They were with the teacher accepted, not pushed back to the margin, and here they were standing where the body should have been. They looked before them, and they stood perplexed.
Their life had not gone the way they thought it would. They received some glimmer of hope that maybe something would change, and that was taken away from them. And now they had one last thing to do, anoint the body of their teacher and there was not a body to anoint.
Many church leaders like to say that the empty tomb proves that Jesus rose. This is not really the case. Very early people tried to explain how the body went missing, and accusations were made, the problem though is that there is no body to be found, and those that were accused denied taking the body to their death. The empty tomb only proves one thing. There was no body to be found.
The women did not know what to do with this knowledge before their eyes. But when they blinked two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. I do not know what you would do in this case, but I can guarantee you that these women were more composed than I would have been. The word frightened does not quite get to the raw emotion that Luke is attempting to express. We see, “they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground.” But the word for frightened means terrified. They were in a state of such fear they had lost all control of their body. In that moment they were completely subject to the fight or flight impulses within their body. And we are told what their bodies did. They fell.
I personally do not like that they translate the next word as bowed. This gives us the sense that they were in righteous awe, but the word means that they face was oriented to the ground. We can almost get the image that these women knew they were angels and they entered into a state of worship, this is not the case. They were terrified and were unable to control their bodies. Their faces likely hit the stone floor, someone might have even bloodied their nose. They were afraid and rightfully so. Nothing about this situation exudes confidence. The stone was moved, the body was gone, and out of no where two people shining like stars just appeared beside them, and without warning they speak.
“Why do you seek the living among the dead?” Why do you seek the living one among the dead? Why are you looking here? Where are we looking for hope and fulfillment?
“He is not here, but has risen.”
This is an exciting phrase to us. For two thousand years we have proclaimed this to all who will listen. It is exciting, but grammatically its passive. It is as if the angels are looking at these women laying on the floor and in complete boredom as it this is something that happens regularly they say, he has risen. Just like every morning.
Like I said before, these women have a great deal more composure than I have. In my mind as I contemplated on this passage I just wanted to lash out at these angel. What do they mean? How can they with little or no emotion just say such a thing? Then the angel say the thing I really want us to think about, remember.
“Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.”
Remember?
He did not say this once but three times. Once was a bit vague, but two times Jesus was descriptive, giving clear details of the event. Jesus said these things, while he taught them.
He took them to the far north to the mount of Transfiguration and asked, “Who do the people say that I am?” And during that conversation Peter proclaimed the Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of the living God. And Jesus proclaimed to them all that upon that rock, upon that foundation he would build his church and the gate of Hell would not stand against it. Shortly after that conversation Jesus explained for the first time how this would be accomplished. Peter who just confessed Jesus to be the Messiah, then spoke out against him. This will not be. It cannot be. I will not allow it to happen. And Jesus rebuked him and said, “Get behind me satan!”
Again shortly after Peter, James, and John had seen Jesus with Moses and Elijah while they were walking south again, Jesus told them again that he must be turned over to the religious officials and suffer. They did not understand and did not want to ask any questions this time, and Jesus let it remain in the air as they continued to walk. And eventually the mind of the disciples began to wander, and as they walked they began to argue about which of them would be the greatest in the kingdom.
They came to a house in Capernaum, and Jesus asked them what they were arguing about. Again they remained silent. And Jesus looked at the people in the room and brought a child in front of them saying, “Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. For he who is least among you all is the one who is great.”
Who was this child? We do not know, but it was a child of one of someone in that room. The intent of the message was clear. The child was great. The women are great. The ones that are often disregarded within our society, we are to receive them, encourage them, teach them as if they are the most important person within the community. They wanted honor, and Jesus told them that the greatest honor we can have is to encourage those around us to become the people God created them to be.
The final time Jesus spoke of his suffering was as they were walking toward Jericho. A rich man came to Jesus asking what he might do to inherit eternal life. Jesus told this man to go sell all that he had and give it to the poor, then come follow him. This walked away distraught. And the disciples stood in amazement as Jesus told them that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom.
Each of these teachings tell us a similar thing. The ways of this world, what the world values, what the world sees as strength and power are worthless in the eyes of God. Instead there is something more important. And these angels look at these women at the empty tomb and say Remember!
Remember!
This is the same command that God gave Israel when they left the bondage of Egypt which is also celebrated at this time. Remember! Remember that you were once slaves in the land of Egypt, and that God brought you out after he brought the gods of that empire to its knees. Remember.
Remember how God had turned the Nile to blood and other various plagues and eventually broke a dynastic line. Remember. And they remember his words.
They returned to the place the disciples were gathered and told these things to the others. The disciples look at them and their faces tell us a story. Luke says that the words seemed to them an idle tale. This again does not quite catch the emotions of the word. It means utter nonsense, something completely devoid of anything worthwhile. This word scholars believe was only used in a coarse manner. Which I think is important to consider. The disciples looked a these women as if they had completely lost their minds. They thought in their intense grief that they had lost touch with reality. And it is at this point that Peter gets up and runs to the tomb. He bends over looking in. He stoops, meaning he does not just glance in but he investigates. He sees the linen cloths by themselves. He knows that there was once a body within but it is not there.
He walks back to the house marveling at what had happened. The sense of this is dumbfounded. He has no words to express what he had just seen.
He marveled. And he then thinks about what Mary Magdalene and the others had said. He remembers. He remembers the stinging rebuke he received from his best friends and teacher. He remember how he had been reprimanded and humbled as he argued with the others about which of them was the greatest. He remembered the rich man that had everything and was turned away. He remembered. And then he remembered the rest. He remembered that Jesus had said that he must suffer, he remembered what was said around the table just a couple of days prior. He remembered that Jesus had knelt at his feet and washed them. He remembered
But what does it mean?
The crowds praised Jesus as the King who came in the Name of the Lord to make peace with heaven. The powers of this world rejected, killed and buried him hoping to never have to face him again. The powers of the world seek only to gain wealth and power and will use this power to lord it over the people, setting themselves up in the place of God demanding adoration and praise. And Jesus said they were the least among the residents of God’s kingdom if they enter at all. They killed Jesus, and there is no body. Which can mean one of two things. Either Jesus rose or someone had painstakingly removed the body while leaving the linen burial cloths behind. What will we do with that information?
If someone removed the body the powers of this world remain in control and there is no peace in heaven for the kingdoms of earth prevail. But if Jesus rose, everything changes. If Jesus rose the poor are blessed, the meek inherit the Earth, the child is the greatest, women are the first apostles and every human being is a bearer of the image of God worthy of dignity and respect.
In today’s passage the disciples are left in a state of uncertainty. They are left perplexed and marveling at what had happened. They are left without assurance only faith. Later their faith becomes sight. Later they are able to proclaim as we do that He is risen!
He is risen! He has overcome the sting of death, and stand victorious. Yet do we believe? Do we believe or is it merely words we utter? Are we seeking the living one among the dead? Remember! The tomb is empty. What does that mean for to us today?
Previous Messages:
Ransomed to Love
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church April 19, 2026 Click here to join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili 1 Peter 1:17–23 (ESV) 17 And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time…
Born Again to a Living Hope
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church April 12, 2026 Click here to join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili 1 Peter 1:3–9 (ESV) 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born…
Broken Dreams Restored
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church April 05, 2026 Click here to join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili John 20:1–18 (ESV) 1 Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the…
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