The women arrive at first light with what the Sabbath had kept them from delivering: 1"the spices they had prepared." Their errand is ordinary, the last sad task of finishing a burial. Nothing about their approach suggests they expect anything but a sealed tomb and a body waiting inside.
What they find unsettles the errand before it begins: 2"the stone rolled away from the tomb," and inside, 3"they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus." An empty tomb by itself answers nothing. It raises a harder question than the one they came to solve. Two men appear in dazzling apparel (verse 4), the number the law required for a matter to be established (Deuteronomy 19:15). The women show the instinctive fear anyone shows in this Gospel at the sudden appearance of the heavenly, bowing their faces to the ground.
The messengers' question goes to the premise the women brought that morning: spices in hand, grief settled, expecting to tend a body that would stay where they left it. Then they point the women to Jesus' own words: 6"Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee," that the Son of Man must be delivered, crucified, and rise on the third day (verse 7). Jesus had said this plainly more than once (Luke 9:22; 18:31-33), and the disciples had heard it and failed to grasp it (Luke 18:34), and now the women, standing where his prediction was just fulfilled, remembered his words (verse 8).
That remembering changes everything. They return and tell the eleven and all the rest (verse 9), and Luke names them: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James (verse 10). Their report lands as an unlikely report might: 11"these words seemed to them an idle tale," and they did not believe them. The word for idle tale is strong, used elsewhere for the talk of delirium. The disciples who will spend their lives proclaiming this resurrection cannot at first credit the women who saw the empty tomb.
Only Peter moves. 12"Peter rose and ran to the tomb." He will not simply dismiss what he has heard, even while doubting it. He finds what the women found, the linen cloths by themselves, the wrappings left behind, and goes home marveling at what had happened (verse 12). He does not yet fully believe, and he is no longer simply disbelieving. Somewhere between the women's report and Peter's own eyes, doubt has begun, slowly, to give way to wonder.
The women are the first witnesses, and the apostles are the last to believe them. Luke gives no description of the resurrection itself, only the empty tomb, the messengers, and the remembered words. The news arrives as a reminder of what Jesus already said. Where are you looking for the living among the dead? Go to the places where Jesus has spoken, and remember his words.
Prayer
Father, thank you for messengers who reminded grieving women of the words your Son had already spoken, so that remembering could lead them into belief. Forgive us the times we have dismissed testimony too quickly, as the apostles dismissed the women's report as an idle tale. And where we still stand marveling and not yet fully believing, meet us as you met Peter, at an empty tomb that answers more than it explains. In Jesus' name, amen.