There is something very special about being the first one awake in a household in the morning. If there are other people are in the house, I swear that you can feel them still asleep and you can sense them off in the realm of dreams. And I swear that the world itself feels quieter in the early morning. There is a quiet to the early morning. A peacefulness.

I imagine there was quiet and peace that first morning in the garden where Jesus had been buried. Where Jesus’ body had been laid after he was taken down from the cross upon which he had been crucified. I wonder if, there in the quiet of the morning, the women arriving at the tomb heard their breath - a sharp intake or gasp as they discovered that the tomb was empty? The quiet of the morning broken by a kind of muffled cry? Then, two angels appearing as men in dazzling white. I imagine that there might have been more muffled cries from those women, those first witnesses, even as the angels declared the obvious good news - that the one for whom they were looking was not dead, but alive - Jesus Christ had been raised!

Then, oh the noise, I imagine that the women’s breathing as they rush off to tell the others became loud and heavy, and then there would have been the noise of the disciples’ reactions as they heard this news but mostly at first, we hear, disbelieved. And then, when Simon Peter rushes back to the tomb, I wonder if it was suddenly quiet around him again? I wonder if he noticed, or if he stood there on that auspicious day and found that the birds were singing or insects humming? Or maybe he heard his own rough breathing from rushing about? Did he pause in the relative quiet, hesitate before daring to look in the tomb himself?

There is so much to take in with this story. With this deep good news of Jesus’ resurrection – God’s masterpiece of LOVE completed. Yes, there is so much to celebrate and I think there deserves to be rushing about and feasting and joyous shouts and flowers and alleluias but, but…maybe there also deserves to be some deep moments of quiet. Yes, tonight and in the coming fifty days of the Easter season, maybe there deserve to be some moments where we allow God to help us be… dumbfounded…Stilled…Awed by the angels. In wonder at the empty tomb. In awe at this wondrous acting LOVE of God that meets all our busy-ness and brokenness and seeks to quietly and irrevocably Love us back to Life. Amen.