Holy Week: Sunday

After the Sabbath, as the First Day of the Week was Dawning

Matthew 28:1

Early, on the first day of the week, “the women who had come with Jesus from Galilee” make their way back to the tomb with spices they prepared to freshen up the gravesite—like bringing flowers to honor a deceased loved one. To their surprise, they find the stone rolled away and the tomb empty. They were perplexed by it all when a couple of angelic messengers appear and say: “He is not here, He has risen!”

When the women find the disciples gathered together, they tell them what happened early that morning, when they came to freshen up the tomb. “These words seemed to the disciples an idle tale, and they did not believe their story.” But Peter, checks it out and finds that it’s really true. The stone has been rolled away, the tomb is empty, and Jesus is on the loose. He is risen indeed! That changes everything.

It changes Tragic Friday into Good Friday. If Jesus has been raised from the dead, then something unimaginably good took place on Calvary’s Mountain. It means that the cup of suffering Jesus drank to its leaves, had to do with us and creation itself. On Calvary, “God was reconciling the world (kosmos) to himself” (2Cor 5:19). It changes how we see ourselves, how we see others, and how we see the cosmos.

It changes Monday morning from just another day into “The Lord’s Day.” The first day of the week will never be the same. From this day forward, every Sunday is a little Easter. That’s why Christians gather together “after Sabbath, early on the first day of the week when we break bread together” (Ac 20:7 = Mt 28:1). On Saturday, we rest from our labor. Sunday morning we gather to celebrate “the Lord’s Day” (Rv 1:10). When we gather to sing our hymns of wonder and praise, to pray our prayers, to listen to the sacred text and to break bread together; we receive a little resurrection of our own—renewed to go back “to work, knowing that in the Lord our labor is not in vain” (1Cor 15:58). It changes our days.

The cross, that most brutalizing and demeaning apparatuses of execution, changes into a sign and symbol of our “hope of salvation …through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us” (1Thess 5:8-10). On Easter Morning, God says “Yes” to the Cross. What needed to be done on Calvary’s Cross was done. The Resurrection means God says “Yes” to us. That changes everything.