Why Are You Weeping?

A Reflection for Easter Sunday

Toward the Dawn

Toward the dawn

No longer night

Not yet day

They came to see

Their lives shaken

Scared to death

Come and see

They were told

Do not fear

They were told

What you seek is no longer here

They were told

And they did

Come and see

Then they told

Even still gripped with fear

They told

That it was a new day

Why Are You Weeping?

Even though we know

We are still afraid sometimes

But You know that about us

And will always gently ask

Now that we know

Our tears are those of joy sometimes

Especially today

And we are glad to tell when asked

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There is a threshold in the Easter story that we do not talk about enough.

Matthew describes it with stark simplicity: toward the dawn. Not night. Not yet day. The two Marys are walking through the hinge of time — the exact moment when everything that was supposed to be over is, in fact, just beginning. They are not walking in triumph. They are walking in grief, carrying spices, doing the last tender thing anyone can do for the dead. And then the earth shakes and an angel descends and the guards fall like dead men — and the women who came to mourn are the ones still standing.

Scared to death. The poem does not soften it. There is a tradition of Easter proclamation that rushes past the fear — all alleluias and brass and certainty. But Matthew refuses to let us skip it. These women are terrified. They are also the first witnesses of the resurrection. Both things are equally, stubbornly true.

Come and see. Do not fear. What you seek is no longer here. Three instructions arrive in the same breath, and notice what they do together: they do not say all is well in some vague and placeless way. They say: look at where the thing is not. Let the empty place be the evidence. Then go and tell. And they do — gripped with fear and great joy both — they run. Somewhere on the road, Jesus meets them. They take hold of his feet. They worship. The fear does not disappear before the telling begins. The telling begins while the fear is still there.

John's account gives us the garden, and Mary weeping alone in the early light, and a voice offering the gentlest possible question: Why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for? It is not a correction. It is an invitation. The tears are real. The grief is real. And the one who asks already knows — knows our fear, knows our weeping, knows the whole arc of it — and asks anyway, so that we will have the chance to say it out loud, and hear our own voice begin to shift.

Paul, writing to Corinth, names the stakes plainly: if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are of all people most to be pitied. He is not being grim. He is clearing the ground for the thing he actually wants to say — but in fact Christ has been raised, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. The resurrection is not a comfort added to an otherwise unchanged world. It is the hinge on which everything turns. Death is not having the last word. It is simply not.

Jeremiah heard it centuries before the garden: I will bring them back, the remnant of Israel. They shall come and sing on the heights of Zion. It was always for all of them. Peter, standing in Cornelius' house in Acts, says it plainly to people who had no reason to expect it: God shows no partiality. The good news of peace through Jesus Christ — he is Lord of all. The proclamation was never meant to stay inside any single room.

Even though we know, we are still afraid sometimes. This is not a failure of faith. It is the honest condition of people who live in time, who have known loss, who have stood at tombs. But the risen Christ does not wait for us to stop being afraid before he shows up. He meets us on the road. He asks the gentle question and waits for the answer. He lets our tears be tears of joy, when we are ready.

We are glad to tell when asked. Today, especially today.

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The scriptures for Easter Sunday: Matthew 28:1–10 | Acts 10:34–43 | Jeremiah 31:1–6 | 1 Corinthians 15:19–26 | John 20:1–8