The scandal of the good news

The Scandal of the Good News

by David Beers

We always seem to forget

the truth that was revealed that first morning.

Women—doing their duty—

the ones who had stayed when others fled,

who came to clean and prepare the body,

to serve the dead with quiet honor—

they were the ones who encountered the miracle.

The empty tomb.

Were they afraid?

Did they say nothing?

That seems unlikely—

for how else would we know the story?

Who did they see?

A young man?

Two beings clothed in light?

Voices saying:

“Why do you seek the living among the dead?”

These women—

who might be passed over in the streets,

dismissed in the synagogue,

forgotten in the footnotes—

they were the first to see.

The first to believe.

The first to speak.

And yet today,

women are still told to be quiet,

to stay in their place,

to let others speak first.

But it was a woman

who brought us the good news.

So why do we ignore them?

Why do we silence the ones

who stand outside the circles of power?

The one they served had no throne.

He wore no crown.

And yet when the mystery was revealed,

it was outsiders who told the world.

Who followed after them?

Not kings.

Not scribes.

Not the wealthy Joseph of Arimathea.

Not even Nicodemus of the Sanhedrin.

No—

it was Peter.

Born Simon.

A man with rough, weathered hands,

calloused by nets and salt,

brown-skinned and sunburnt

from years on Galilee’s waters.

He ran to the tomb—

not because he was righteous,

but because he was broken.

The one who had denied.

The one who had lied to save himself.

The one who had wept in shame.

And grace met him there.

Not in perfection,

but in failure.

And then came another—

the one called beloved.

The one who laid his head on Jesus’ chest.

The one we avoid talking about with honesty—

whose intimacy with the Christ

makes us uncomfortable.

He, too, entered the tomb

and saw the cloth,

neatly folded.

The sign of something holy,

something finished—

and something just beginning.

From the margins—

that’s where the resurrection story begins.

The poor.

The broken.

The disregarded.

The ones who have nothing to gain

and everything to lose.

They are the ones

who first knew what it meant to be redeemed.

Not by wealth.

Not by power.

Not by intellect.

But by the sheer, reckless love

of the Divine.

And though the story made it through

the end of the first century,

and into the second—

we buried it again.

We dressed it up,

boxed it in,

locked it in temples,

and told only the righteous

they could speak it.

But still—

even today—

the voices of the forgotten rise.

They are still proclaiming:

The tomb is empty.

Love has overcome.

And it is still love—not might, not wealth, not status—that saves.