In her blog, entitled: “The Hell of Holy Saturday,” which appeared in The Christian Century for Easter 2020, Shelly Rambo urged that “the miracle of Easter resurrection…is that witnesses run to the tombs.” The Easter Gospels emphasize the role of witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and as Rambo notes, witnesses run. In the Gospel of Matthew, Mary Magdalene—the Apostle to the Apostles—the first to encounter the empty tomb, is sent by an angel to bring the news of the Risen Christ to the eleven with these explicit instructions: “go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead…’” And sure enough, Mary and “the other Mary” “went away quickly, fearful yet overjoyed, and ran to announce this to his disciples” (28:7-8). In the Gospel of John, upon discovering the tomb, Mary “ran and went to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved,” to report what she found. In response, John reports that “they both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first.” As blogger Jon Ericson states, the beloved disciple may have been the faster runner, but Peter was the stronger swimmer. In the Gospel of Luke, upon hearing the news, Peter runs solo to the tomb, and upon seeing the burial cloths alone, he went home amazed at what had happened. So, there is a lot of running in the Easter Gospels.

Rambo, who in 2020 was writing just about a month into the pandemic, suggested that “witnesses run to tombs—because they refuse to be disconnected,” convinced by their Easter faith that “love survives.” As we celebrate the octave of Easter, seeking, celebrating and bearing witness to the signs of the resurrection, that love indeed does survive, may we be as excited and inspired as the disciples were that first Easter day, to run forth to tell the good news of this victory of God’s love, which surpasses all things—even death itself.