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Then they remembered his words.\xa0When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. \xa0It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. \xa0But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. \xa0Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened. (Luke 24:8-12)

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In a Matthew & Mark, the women are commanded to go and tell the (male) disciples.\xa0 But, Luke\u2014ever mindful of the place of both men and women in the church\u2014writes it a bit differently.\xa0 Here in Luke, the angels don\u2019t command the women to tell anyone.\xa0 Instead, the angels remind the women about Jesus own words to them about his coming death and resurrection.\xa0 Words which the women do indeed remember\u2014because they are just as much disciples as anyone else.\xa0

The angels just click one piece of the puzzle into place for the women.\xa0 \u201cThis odd empty tomb you\u2019re seeing now is what Jesus was talking about when he told you he\u2019d be raised on the third day.\u201d\xa0 With that piece put together for them: it clicks.\xa0 The women remember.\xa0 And once they remember\u2014no one needs to tell them to go and tell.\xa0 They just do it.\xa0 They witness to what they have seen, heard, and remember.

Now, no one believed them at the time.\xa0 To the others who had not witnessed what the women had witnessed, it seemed like utter nonsense.\xa0 It would only later click into place with the others as they too had experiences of the living Lord that caused them to remember.\xa0

Memory plays a key role throughout these resurrection day accounts in Luke, as it does throughout the rest of the scriptures.\xa0 It is our remembering of the whole story of the Creation and Salvation of our God that forms the lens through which we interpret our experiences of God\u2019s movement in the present.\xa0 It is this same remembering that colours in all our expectant hopes and longings for the future.

This is one reason why we continually rehearse and remind ourselves through preaching, sacrament, and devotion of all great deeds of our Lord.\xa0 It\u2019s not necessarily meant to be special in the moment.\xa0 Perhaps half the time (or more) it seems like nonsense.\xa0

But then, at the significant junctures of our lives, when we find ourselves on utterly new and unsettling terrain as the women did that first Easter Sunday, that\u2019s when the memory of these words and sacramental actions click back into place and ground us back into the larger reality of God\u2019s work.\xa0

We remember that in our baptisms God said, \u201cyou are my child, whom I love.\u201d\xa0 We remember that Jesus fed us at his table and said, \u201ceat, drink, remember and believe that you are forgiven.\u201d\xa0 We remember the words of scripture where Jesus has promised, \u201cBehold, I am coming soon.\u201d\xa0 And as we remember, so we are again enabled to believe, and therefore also to witness anew to the faithful work of the risen Lord in our lives.

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