The literal Greek at the beginning of today’s gospel lesson is wonderfully vivid to my American English ear. It begins, “And on the first day of the Sabbaths”—perhaps a phrase used in Hebrew or Aramaic for the word “week”—“while the dawn was deep,”[1] [the women who had come with Jesus from Galilee, who stood at a distance from the cross, seen him die, and laid in the grave,[2]] went to the tomb, found the stone rolled away, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord. And it happened that they saw two men standing before them in dazzling apparel—angels. Fear—awe—overtook them. They bowed their faces to the ground—worship. The [angels] said to them, words that can reach through grief, “Why do you seek the Living One among the dead? He is not here; he has been resurrected. Remember what he said to you when he was . . . in Galilee.”[3] Then we have a statement by the evangelist of the faithfulness of the women who were Jesus’ disciples: “[the women] remembered [Jesus’] words.”[4]
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