Matthew 28:8-10. 8So [the women] departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9And behold, Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him. 10Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.”
I’m sure the first Easter Sunday morning looked nothing like our normal Easter Sundays. No lilies. No baked ham. No big hats. No chocolate bunnies or plastic eggs. Just a group of distraught women coming to say their goodbyes to their son, teacher, and friend. But, of course, that morning there was no goodbye. No preparation of a dead body. Only the most shocking greeting in all of history. Shocking because, well, just a few hours ago Jesus was dead. And shocking because it is a greeting and a commissioning of a group of women.
That may sound like no big deal to our modern ears, but, like we said in yesterday’s reading, the decision by Jesus to reveal himself to a group of women and to make them the first testifiers to the resurrection goes against every cultural expectation. Truly you can’t make this stuff up.
Certainly women are recorded as the first to greet the resurrected Christ because that is what actually happened, but is there also a deeper reason? What is God teaching us here about the role of women in the new covenant kingdom?
All four gospels agree; women were the first to see Jesus on Easter morning. And all four gospels agree that Jesus treated women far differently than others in first century Israel. In fact, there is a specific blessing that Jewish men would pray each day – “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has not made me a woman.” Yes, you can argue that this traditional blessing for men was not about superiority, but let’s be honest…
In Christ’s kingdom there are no second class citizens, including women. The women who went to the tomb of Jesus had also stayed with Jesus at the cross. The men fled. The women remained. And now here they are on Sunday morning, the only ones with the courage to walk back to the guarded tomb to honor Jesus with a proper burial, and a proper display of grief. And where are the men? Hiding in a room.
Who are these amazing women? Each gospel seems to give us different names. And the sheer number of Mary’s alone is staggering. Mary the mother of Jesus. Mary Magdalene. Mary the mother of James the less. Aunt Mary, wife of Clopas. Salome, mother of James and John. And Joanna, wife of Chuza, King Herod’s household manager. These women live on in history and theology, their lives eternally testifying to the extraordinary upheaval of the resurrection within not only this time and place, but every time and place.
Before Christ, before the resurrection, it was not at all considered true that men and women are equal in value and dignity. Our modern view that men and women are both to be treated with respect and are deserving of the same rights is a Christian invention. That is, it comes from Jesus. Christianity does not degrade women, it upholds them and honors them and their voice – go and tell my brothers.
Think about everything we would not know about Jesus if women had not born witness to it first: Jesus’ conception and birthright as son of God (Mary), Jesus as Lord (Elizabeth), Jesus as the Christ (Samaritan woman), Jesus as the resurrection and life (Martha), Jesus as the resurrected king (these women).
Why women? Why not women? Women are consistently coming to Jesus humbly, desperately, the way we all must come to him. Women are consistently serving Christ, honoring him, worshiping him the way we all must worship our Lord. Women are consistently learning from Christ, listening to him, being taught by him (the longest recorded conversation of Jesus is his conversation with the woman at the well), as we all must sit at his feet and listen.
But this resurrection appearance to women isn’t just about the value of women (it is), or about comparing the women to the men (though this is not wrong), it’s about God’s great big reversal. In the garden of Eden, when mankind failed and the curse was pronounced by God, it was first to Satan, then to the woman, then to the man that God spoke. And now, in this garden, God is unwinding the curse. By the Spirit, Christ has gone into the grave, into Sheol, to confront Satan. Next he will restore the woman in the garden. Finally, he will restore the man when he tells the women to tell the men of his resurrection. Just as Eve handed the fruit of sin to Adam, these women will hand the gospel to the men.
Curse reversed.
Now in Christ, we live curse free lives, both women and men. Whether male or female, we are all one in Christ Jesus. One in his love and respect. One in his life. One in his saving grace.
You: Do you see yourself as living free from the curse of sin?
You in Christ: Do you see both men and women as equal in dignity and value?
Christ in you: How might you honor both men and women in the family of God equally?
Prayer: Father, the resurrection is my curse reversal. You have restored us all to where you wanted us to be all along, one in your life and love. Amen.
To Live is Christ 