“The two Mary’s left the tomb at once, still afraid but full of joy, and ran to tell his disciples. And then! Jesus met them, and said, ‘Good morning!’ They went to him and grasped his feet and worshipped him” (Matthew 28:9).

When the St. Louis Rams won the Super Bowl three years ago, their quarterback, Kurt Warner, was named Most Valuable Player. Kurt’s a Christian, and when he received the award, he said publicly, “First things first: I praise the Lord. Thank you, Jesus.”

Now this is amazing. It sounds as if he actually knows this Jesus person. He’s talking to him; he acknowledges help from Jesus, as if he were someone on the field with him or on the coaching staff.

Christians often talk that way, and it’s right for us to do so, for when Jesus rose from the dead, he found his friends and greeted them. He said, “Good morning!” to them, inviting them to turn to him in worship and to receive the comfort and joy of his presence.

What’s “Good morning!”?

It’s a single word in the gospel as Matthew wrote it, and it means “Hello,” “I’m glad to see you,” “Welcome,” or “Greetings!” But it’s a twenty-four-hour word, and Judas had used it with Jesus Thursday night, in his bold betrayal of Jesus to the authorities—he said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” and kissed Jesus (Matthew 26:49). So, because today’s story is an encounter just as the sun is coming up, I just translate it as, “Good morning!”

So, what does it mean? It means the end of the night, and the beginning of a conversation.

1. The end of the night

   For the two Marys, their friend who was dead is back again.

   He said, “Good morning!” and they knew that voice. They had often heard it, for they were followers of his from the beginning. They had come up to Jerusalem from Galilee, and were among the people who supported Jesus’ ministry with gifts of money, time, and energy. Both Marys were at the cross, if you can imagine such a anguished vigil, even at a distance. They knew that voice.

   Now, one of the things about death is silence. The voice of the one who is gone is still. It’s only the modern marvel of recording that allows us to hear replayed the voices of people in the recent past, such as Elvis or President Roosevelt.

   We’ve gotten used to recordings because we make them ourselves all the time. People who love us, like our wives or mothers, even save those little telephone messages, just for sentimental reasons. Betty, my wife, usually has a small archive of messages from the boys, which she can replay just to hear their voices.

   But it’s not Thomas Edison’s marvel that brings Jesus’ voice to the two Marys that first Easter morning. It’s God’s miracle of resurrection. They thought those sounds were forever stilled, and now they hear him again: “Good morning!”

   But it’s important to understand what’s happening here. This is not just a restoration. Jesus was back, their beloved friend and Lord, but not for long. Just long enough to be seen and heard, so that his followers of every age might believe. As a restoration, it lasted just forty days, and then he went back to the Father.

   

   Nor is this a revival, a resuscitation, as if code blue technology had brought Jesus back from death, or even as if God’s power had done so, as happened to Lazarus. Poor Lazarus had to die again. But the Jesus who greets the two Marys at dawn has passed through death and conquered it forever.

   It’s resurrection, the biblical hope for what follows death for all those in God’s care.

   You don’t ever need to be afraid of death. You may fear pain; you may resent a wasting illness; you may regret the shortening of your life.

   Death can no longer hold us in fear, for Jesus has passed through it and come forth to show us what lies on the other side—for us as well as for him. What lies beyond death is an existence at once human, recognizeable, and active. We’ll be full persons but divinely transformed by resurrection power.

   The sun is coming up, and Jesus says, “Good morning!” The night of death’s fear is over.

2. The beginning of a conversation

   An alarm clock can mark the end of the night, but a greeting means two people are there, people who can talk to one another. You don’t say, “Good morning!” unless someone else is there; it’s a word of personal connection, the beginning of a conversation. It brings Jesus together with people who need and want his help.

   And that brings me back to talking to Jesus as if he were there. My grandfather once spoke to me about a time in his life that he called, “The year I lost my family.” In the spring of that year, his last brother died. Then, during the summer, his only son, my mother’s brother, drowned at a summer camp, leaving a wife and a son my own age. And finally, in early autumn, his wife died following surgery for cancer. The year was 1939, and I have childhood recollections of those last two funerals, in the small brick church where Gramps was found every time the doors opened.

   I was a child, and children don’t understand what even one such loss means, let alone a series—brother, son, wife, in the space of months. But an adult has to wonder, “How do you get through something like that?” I remember this much: After that summer, following Gramps around the house and yard from time to time, I would sometimes hear him murmur, “Help me, Jesus.”

   I’m sure he didn’t know a little kid was listening—and it wouldn’t have mattered if he did. Gramps believed that Jesus was listening, and he spoke to Him as to someone there in the room with him; in the grief and dereliction of his losses, he asked for help as freely as Kurt Warner gave thanks for it.

   This, too, is one of the things it means to take the resurrection seriously: Jesus is alive, no longer apparent to us, to be sure, but alive and present. And it’s right to think of Him as here; right to talk to Him; to ask for his help; thank him.

   There are young people here this morning. Normally, you’re off to school daily, taking your place in that class and that school, struggling with assignments, teachers, parents, friends, enemies. You’re aware of the changes in yourself that growth brings about. It can be confusing if not scary.

   Listen! Jesus wants to talk! He’s alive; he’s with you. Begin to think of him as there; ask him for help; thank him for triumphs. You don’t have to do it out loud—grandparents are readier for that that young people. Do it in your head. Let him know what you need.

   We have a lot of parents here this morning and other adults in midlife. If there’s anything more bewildering than adolescence, it’s parenthood! We have these other human beings in our lives, other wills, other persons given to us by God and through ourselves. What a difference they make!

   And we all feel the power of a society that is increasingly secular, and we see the weakening of Christian patterns. We feel caught between the need to allow our young people to enter maturity by making their own mistakes and the need to provide guidance and even discipline where the hazards are great and where the young conscience is not fully formed and the young will is still pliable and vulnerable. And parents have their own struggles with mid-life as well.

   Talk about it to Jesus. Tell him how you feel, and ask him for help. Learn the checks and impulses of his Spirit; thank him for guidance and small victories.

   And then there are a lot of older folks here, maybe grandparents, maybe not. Probably you’re grieving the losses that life eventually hands us and are aware of the difficulties of the golden years: not enough money, too much illness (your own or another’s), not enough strength. You hear yourself saying, “How will I get through the next few months? the next week? the next day?”

   And you are the ones most likely to grieve for the church. You are aware of slippage in Christian loyalty across the generations. Someone told me recently that the church is going the way of the family reunion: There aren’t enough people who want to take the trouble to keep it going. I don’t think it’s that bad, yet, but now that I’m as old as Gramps was then, I need to say it, too: “Help me, Jesus!”

   Young or old—Jesus is there, as your friend and helper. He says, “Good morning! I’m here. Don’t be afraid. I can help. Just talk to me.”

   And this conversation is Jesus’ idea. He started it. And within a few lines of our text in the last chapter of Matthew, we hear him say to us, “Remember, I am always with you, to the end of the age.”

Christians of every time and place have learned to depend on the presence of the risen Christ as a divine friend who understands and helps. And that is our faith and our hope, even as we come to the Lord’s Table, where the gifts of bread and wine tell us that the night is ended, and where Jesus invites us not just to a meal but to give ourselves to a lifetime of transforming friendship with him.

Thanks be to God for his Word!