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Then they remembered his words. When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others.  It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles.  But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.  Peter, 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)

In a Matthew & Mark, the women are commanded to go and tell the (male) disciples.  But, Luke—ever mindful of the place of both men and women in the church—writes it a bit differently.  Here in Luke, the angels don’t command the women to tell anyone.  Instead, the angels remind the women about Jesus own words to them about his coming death and resurrection.  Words which the women do indeed remember—because they are just as much disciples as anyone else. 

The angels just click one piece of the puzzle into place for the women.  “This odd empty tomb you’re seeing now is what Jesus was talking about when he told you he’d be raised on the third day.”  With that piece put together for them: it clicks.  The women remember.  And once they remember—no one needs to tell them to go and tell.  They just do it.  They witness to what they have seen, heard, and remember.

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

Memory plays a key role throughout these resurrection day accounts in Luke, as it does throughout the rest of the scriptures.  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’s movement in the present.  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.  It’s not necessarily meant to be special in the moment.  Perhaps half the time (or more) it seems like nonsense. 

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’s when the memory of these words and sacramental actions click back into place and ground us back into the larger reality of God’s work. 

We remember that in our baptisms God said, “you are my child, whom I love.”  We remember that Jesus fed us at his table and said, “eat, drink, remember and believe that you are forgiven.”  We remember the words of scripture where Jesus has promised, “Behold, I am coming soon.”  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.