“In the Dark, Before Dawn” - Fr. Pete's Sermon for the Great Vigil of Easter (Witnesses Along the Way series)

Matthew 28:1-10

I did not go to the tomb expecting anything unusual. I knew what awaited me. I thought. But I went
because love knows where to go, even when hope has been exhausted. I went because there was a
body to tend, and grief that needed somewhere to rest.

After everything that had happened—the shouting in the streets, the long hours at the cross, the unearthly silence that followed—it felt unbearable simply to stay away.

So before the sun had risen, while the city still slept, I walked toward the garden. Another Mary walked with me. Neither of us spoke much. The road was familiar now. Only a few days earlier we’d
seen crowds filling the streets, branches waving in the air, voices crying out Hosanna. Hope had
surged through the city like a rising tide. But that hope had collapsed just as quickly.

By the time we had reached the hill outside the gate, that same city had shouted for his death. We
stood there and watched the cross lifted into the sky. We heard the hammer strike the nails. We saw
him breathe his last. Now we were returning to the place where they had laid him.

The garden was still dark. The air held that strange quiet that comes just before dawn, when even the
birds have not yet begun to sing. I remember thinking only about the stone. It had been rolled into
place so firmly that it seemed to be the final word on everything we had hoped for.

But when we reached the tomb, the ground beneath us trembled. It was not a violent shaking, but
something deeper—like the earth itself had shifted. And before we could even understand what was
happening, we saw that the stone had already been rolled away.

I remember stopping in the path. I was feeling panicked. Had someone taken him? Had the authorities come again to disturb even his burial?

Then the light came. A messenger of God stood before us, bright as lightning, his clothing white as
could be. The guards who had been posted there collapsed in terror. But he looked at us—not with
anger, not with judgment, but with calm assurance—and said the words we would hear again and
again before the day was over. “Do not be afraid.”

He told us what had happened, though I could hardly take it in. “You are looking for Jesus who was
crucified. He is not here. He has been raised.”

Even now, remembering it, the words feel almost too large for the moment that held them. Raised.
Alive. The one we had watched die had not remained in the grave!
The messenger gestured toward the empty tomb. “Come and see the place where he lay.”

We stepped forward slowly. The stone that had sealed death away was now rolled aside, and the tomb stood open behind it. What had been closed was open. What had seemed final was no longer the end.

Then the messenger gave us something to do. “Go quickly, tell his disciples: He has been raised from
the dead, and he is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him.”

Go and tell! Those words startled me almost as much as the message itself. We had come expecting
silence and sorrow. Instead we were being sent out with news that would change everything.

So we ran. The strange thing about that run is that it held two feelings at once. We were filled with
both fear and great joy. Our hearts were still trembling from what we had seen, yet something like
hope—something stronger than hope—had begun to rise inside us again.

And then, suddenly, he was right there, on the path. He did not appear with thunder or lightning. He
simply stood before us, alive, as real as he had ever been.

“Greetings,” he said. That single word broke whatever restraint we had left. We fell at his feet and
held onto them, overwhelmed by the impossible truth standing before us.

The one who had entered the city so humbly, riding on a donkey. The one who had knelt among his
friends with a towel and basin. The one who had remained on the cross even when the world
demanded his defeat—he was alive.

And once again he spoke the same words the messenger had spoken:
“Do not be afraid.” Then he sent us on the same errand.
“Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”
Go and tell! That is how resurrection began—not with an army, not with a proclamation from the
Temple steps, but with a message entrusted to two grieving women on a garden path before sunrise.

Tonight we have heard the long story of God’s faithfulness. We have listened again to the ancient
promises—light spoken into darkness, waters parted, people led from slavery into freedom.

All of those stories have carried us here, to this moment in a quiet garden where death was supposed to have the final word. But death did not get the last word.

The stone was rolled away. The tomb was opened. And the one we thought we had lost forever met
us on the road and spoke peace.

This is how God works. Not by undoing the suffering we have seen, but by transforming it. Not by erasing the cross, but by revealing that even the cross cannot defeat the love of God.

​ The road that began with palms and shouting did not end at the cross. The love that knelt with a basin was not buried in the tomb. The life we thought had been extinguished has broken open the grave itself.

And now the message has been placed into our hands just as surely as the stone has been rolled away.

Do not be afraid.
Christ is risen.
Go and tell!

So we ran from the garden while the morning was still breaking, carrying a story that sounded almost
impossible even to our own ears.

We did not yet know what the others would say when they heard it. We did not know whether anyone would believe us.

But the world was already beginning to change.