A New Day (Matthew 28:1-10)

The New Day

April 5, 2026

Matthew 28:1-10

By: Pastor Mike Conner 

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This past Wednesday, NASA launched its first crewed spacecraft beyond low-earth orbit since 1972. Right now, there are four astronauts, three Americans and one Canadian, traveling closer and closer to moon. The goal of the Artemis II mission is to circumnavigate the moon, seeing even its dark side.

I had no idea that this was in the works, and it was only by mere luck that my family and I watched the launch live. I had just brought the kids home from preschool, and they wanted to watch one of their favorite shows on the Disney+ app. So, we got out the screen, clicked open the app, and discovered the live coverage. In less than 20 minutes the rocket would be blasting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. I explained what was happening, and the kids chose to watch it instead. (Yay!)

The rocket steamed on its platform, and the faces of the astronauts flashed across the screen. A voice from NASA led the final ten-second countdown; the rocket ascended into the sky and shed its boosters; the crowds around Cape Canaveral cheered. Sitting there on our couch, we were all captivated: four human beings hurtling toward their dreams, and a gleaming, ingenious  technological apparatus supporting them.

I wrote my first ever research paper in the 7th grade. The topic I chose was the Space Race between the United States and the USSR. As a kid, I liked that there was a competitive aspect to it, two nations racing toward the moon. But more than that, I remember the magic of it: people accomplishing something, and going somewhere, utterly unprecedented.

In more recent years, my views have been complicated by an author named Loren Eiseley, our son Loren’s namesake. Professionally, Eiseley was a twentieth-century evolutionary anthropologist. That means he studied human bones and human prehistory, piecing together out of the ancient evidence some picture of the emergence of Homo sapiens as a species. But in his several books of essays written for a nonscientific audience, he ponders the mysteries of human consciousness, spirituality, and love.

One of the themes that Eiseley returns to over and over again in his writings is the deep craving in humanity to follow its curiosity, to expand outward, to visit unknown places and seek answers to the most cryptic aspects of nature. We have a need, a drive, to push the boundaries of what is possible. Eiseley often talks about this in the context of the space craze of the 1960s and 1970s, when that longing to sail among the stars and get at the origin of all things, to settle some faraway planet where we might give ourselves a second shot at Paradise, was at its cultural peak.

But then Eiseley says, in effect, ‘Hmm, this is curious. We seem so eager to blast ourselves into the heights of the cosmos, and yet so reticent to presence ourselves into the depths of soul.’ What does it mean, this mystical scientist ponders, that we who are constantly at war, and ravaging planet Earth, and largely failing to care for the poor and vulnerable, what does it mean that we will spend millions to enter the frontier of space but not spend a moment plumbing the human heart’s capacity for love?

These aren’t questions I recommend pulling out at your next dinner party, but let me assure you that they weren’t academic for Eiseley, who lived through both World Wars, Vietnam, the Cold War, and the cultural turbulence of the ‘60s and ‘70s. I’ll admit that I was brooding on them myself this past Wednesday afternoon while watching Artemis II hurtle into the sky.

Don’t get me wrong, I also got teary  in that moment. The bravery of those astronauts is remarkable, and I still have that childlike reverence for space. But even so, the on-air reporting felt like it was trafficking in some out-of-touch and tired commentary. On the ground and in the studio, the commentators were saying this like this: ‘Even though millions of American’s struggle to pay their rent, funding expeditions like Artemis II will lead us toward a better collective future.’ And: ‘This mission has the power to unite our country during a time of division and war just like the first moon landing did in 1969 during the Vietnam War. And: ‘This mission marks a new day for America, a new day for humanity.’

A new day for humanity. That’s the one that really unsettled me.

And I think it unsettled me because I agree with Loren Eiseley, who says that the key to a better world is not out there among the stars but actually in here, in this soft, mysterious organ beating in our chests. It’s because I trust the words of Jesus, who says in the Gospel of Luke, “the Kingdom of God is already among you” (17:21 NLT). As a person of Christian faith, I am confronted this Easter morning with startling news that the ‘new day for humanity’ is already here. It has already dawned. In fact, it began dawning more than 2 millennia ago, when the earth was thought to be flat, and set at the very center of an unchanging universe.

The new day! – Matthew speaks of it right here in his Easter story: “After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb” (Matt 28:1 NRSV, emphasis mine). With these words, Matthew transports us back to the first pages of scripture, to the ancient Hebrew poem of creation. God spoke the universe into being, beginning with the creation of light and the separation of light from darkness, the inauguration of time. God worked for six days, crafting the glories of creation, and then rested from labor on the seventh day, enjoying the “very-goodness” of everything that had been made.

Mary Magdalene and the other Mary had also rested on a Sabbath day. Jesus’s body, dead and sealed away in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb, had rested on the Sabbath day. That Sabbath day, a day of strange, aching silence for both people and God, was a hinge. It was the fulfilment of an old day and the dawning of a new day. As the women set off for the tomb in the early morning hours they entered the new day, not only in the sense of the turning of the calendar, but in the transformed relationship between creation and God. This was the beginning of what scripture calls the new creation, the new birth, the kingdom of heaven.

Paul says, “[We] were dead through the trespasses and sins in which [we] once lived… [But] God has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins” (Eph 2:1; Col 1:13).

Peter says: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading” (1 Peter 1:3-4).

And Mary Magdalene, who rushed to tell the disciples on that first Easter morning, testifies, “I have seen the Lord!” (John 20:18).

And Jesus himself, welcomes not only the women but all of us into the dawning of the day with that single, playful word, “Greetings!”

The key to our happiness and our holiness, the secret to our friendship with God and our love of others, is ready to be poured into our hearts through faith. It is the very life of Jesus. It is his Spirit, his grace. His resurrection proves that nothing, not even the cruelty of the cross, could snuff out that grace. His life and love outlast and overcome condemnation, injustice, and death. Jesus promises to greet us in the new day that is right here and right now, not in some far-off time on a planet not our own.

If there is a mission that we are called to make as Christians, it is first and foremost for the discovery of our spiritual capacities: learning to forgive, to love, to make peace, to be patient, to serve without expectation of reward. If, as Paul puts it in Romans 5, “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5), what is possible for us? What is the daily adventure of prayer and love that we are called to live? That’s the question that all our ingenuity and resources ought to be aimed at answering. At the very least, that’s the question that the Church should be seeking to answer to the astonishment and delight of others.

Using Matthew’s resurrection story, I’d like to name three truths about what it means for us to live in God’s ‘new day.’

     First, we are free to experience the powers of this world, the powers of deception and intimidation, as having been disarmed by the crucified and risen Christ. Out of the four Gospel writers, only Matthew tells the story of the religious and political authorities’ attempt to guard against, and then cover up, Jesus’ resurrection. With Pontius Pilate’s blessing, the chief priests and Pharisees had “sealed the tomb and posted guards to protect it” (Matt 27:66). And after the earthquake and angelic appearance at the empty tomb, some of the guards went back to the city to report what happened to the priests. The priests, conferring with the elders, decided to pay the soldiers to lie about what happened.

Yet in between the sealing and the scheming, God’s angel comes. “For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men,” Matthew says (28:4). Like dead men. There is poetry here! At the site of death, at the tomb, Jesus is announced as alive, while the armed guard is revealed for what it really is—an empty instrument of death.

In God’s “new day,” we have nothing to fear. Though oil prices might spike in result to a thoughtless war, though the market may convulse at the whims of AI developers and Silicon Valley billionaires, though the Idaho legislature may continue to make life harder for women, children, immigrants, LGBTQ folk, and the working poor, we are called to trust the Christ who says, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

This doesn’t mean that we will always be able to protect ourselves or the ones we love from harm. Jesus never promises us victory in a material or political sense. But he does promise vitality and integrity in every circumstance. By his Spirit we can announce the truth of every person’s worth. Because he lives, we can suffer for the sake of love with hope.

A second part of living in the ‘new day’ is that our sense of belonging to one another continually expands. Sometimes Christians get this very wrong. We think we need to circle the wagons, enforce boundaries, get really clear about who’s in and who’s out. We can get to thinking that being faithful means not asking questions or taking risks or caring about what happens in the world around us. But these are habits of the old day.

The angel tells the women to “go and tell” the disciples about the resurrection (28:7). And it is in their going that Jesus meets them, that his living presence is confirmed as a reality. He then repeats the angel’s order: “go and tell” (28:10). And what are they supposed to tell the disciples? That they, the disicples, need to get up and go—go to Galilee, because it will be in their going that they will see Jesus.

This theme of going and telling, and of being met by God in the going, is confirmed as the pattern of Christian life at the end of Matthew’s Gospel when Jesus meets the disciples on the mountain in Galilee and gives the Great Commission: “Go therefore,” Jesus tells them, “and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (28:18-19).

Jesus is always going ahead of us; the minute we’re settled into something comfortable and routine he goes a little farther down the road and asks us to follow him. There is no limit to how much we can experience his grace and share his love with others. To be a person of faith means being a person who takes risks, who embraces change without fear, who wants to know where the call will lead next. The reality of the risen life of Jesus can’t be comprehended from the sidelines; it can only be known from within—by going and telling, and being met by Christ along the way.

The new day promises a widening circle of belonging. As John Wesley once put it, “all the world is [our] parish.” We are free to experience everyone as a neighbor, and each dimension of our lives as the arena of discipleship. With Christ, our world doesn’t get smaller but bigger, because our hearts are asked to hold the infinity of God’s love.

Finally, in this resurrection day, we can expect that God’s messengers will foil our expectations. The people God chooses to teach us of love will expose our pride and humble us. All four Gospels agree that the first witnesses of the resurrection were women. In ancient Jewish culture, the testimony of a woman would not stand in court; it had no authority. If the earliest Christians wanted to spread a convincing story about Jesus’ resurrection, they might have chosen more reputable first witnesses: men, maybe someone like the rich man Joseph of Arimathea, whose tomb Jesus had been laid in. But no, it was the women who were the first to see, believe, and testify.

The next group of witnesses is hardly better than the first. Jesus returns to the eleven disciples who, in the hour when he needed them most, had deserted  and denied him. Jesus is committed to this ordinary, fallible group. He promises to renew their life of witness; their faithfulness will draw strength from his love and forgiveness, from his power over death.

There is a subtle shift in language here. The angel tells Mary and Mary to “go quickly and tell his disciples” (28:7); when Jesus meets them on the road and essentially repeats this command, he says “go and tell my brothers” (28:10).

‍ ‍My brothers. Still disciples in the new day, but also brothers. Siblings of Christ! Children of God! Think of the shift in understanding taking place in the women as they run to find the eleven. They would not only announce good news to students who had let down their teacher and were being given another shot. They would also announce good news to men claimed by the risen Christ as family. They would tell them, “Don’t be hung up on your failures. He called you brothers! There is forgiveness and love with him. You belong to him unconditionally. Go to Galilee!”

In the new day of the resurrection, Jesus gives us eyes to see everyone as a potential witness. Even and especially those granted the least authority in our systems, even and especially those who have failed and been humbled by their failures. God can work through anyone; no one is beyond the reach of redemption. And those who know the rejection and humiliation of the cross are perhaps most able to convince us that we have been reconciled to God, that the new day has dawned.

     Friends, on this Easter morning, we are called to discover the wisdom, compassion, humility, and love that Jesus makes possible in us through his Spirit, through his life which is greater than sin and death. He has procured a new humanity for us in his resurrection. We do not have to wait for the next great technological achievement or feat of human brilliance to bring about the new day. It is already dawning; may it come to a blaze in our hearts as we live without fear, as we draw the circle of our love wider, and as trust the testimony of those whom God chooses to send to us. Thanks be to God. Amen.