It is hard to imagine anything as thrilling and as profound as Luke’s account of the resurrection.

The beautiful, gentle irony of this question and affirmation from the angel to women is wonderful :

“Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen!” Luke 24:5-6 ESV

Three brief thoughts :

1. This is what human beings do all the time. We look for life where there is only death. We pursue life through dead idols, dead dreams, dead relationships. Death stalks us all around, and we think we will find life… Death characterises all that we do and all that we see and we call it life. Death is us, and we think we live. We are fallen humans who have got death and life all mixed up, inside out, upside down. We habitually, fatally look for life where there is only death.

“Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen!” Luke 24:5-6 ESV

2. Jesus came to taste death for us. He died our death, in our place, at the cross. Our death-deserving, death-inviting, death-embracing rejection of God and his will for our lives is paid for and reversed by the one who is life, who gives life, who teaches life. The one whose life was perfect, spotless, pristine and beautiful came to die

3. But now that he has done so, now that he has in fact died, the life he now possesses is incorruptible, inextinguishable and infinite. He doesn’t belong in a tomb, among the dead. His is truly, utterly, completely living. He has vanquished death so that it has no longer anything to do with him. Death is incompatible with Jesus. It is incoherent to associate those two concepts. He is not here in death. He is risen. And where he is, death is not. Death is no more.

Why do you look for the living among the dead? (Ah why indeed?) 

He is not here (Really?) 

He is risen (Hallelujah!)