Good Morning Friends,
My posts will be more sporadic over the next month as a group of us prepares for the International Handbell Symposium in Aberdeen, Scotland. While traveling, I won’t be posting at all. But as you know, the joy of a trip is often found more in the people we meet than in the places we visit. I love playing handbells, yet there is always more to life. Hopefully angels will watch over us and guide us into something new—even when the journey feels familiar. That brings us to today’s theme: angels and the resurrection. Angels appear throughout Scripture, sometimes clearly distinguished as God’s messengers, sometimes described as spiritual beings—cherubim, seraphim, guardians, heralds. Their prominence rises and falls across biblical history. Pharisees believed in them; Sadducees did not. Yet in today’s Gospel reading, angels appear again, dressed in white. And so, I wonder:
What is the point of believing in angels if we do not experience the resurrected Jesus rebirthing us into new life?
Scripture Summary
2 Corinthians 5:14–17 Christ’s love compels us because He died for all. Our old selves died with Him, and His resurrection brings us into a new creation. We no longer see Christ—or anyone—through merely human eyes. In Him, everything old has passed away; everything has become new.
John 20:1–2, 11–18 Mary Magdalene encounters this new creation at the empty tomb. Angels announce that death’s grip is broken. Jesus calls her by name, turning her sorrow into witness: “I have seen the Lord.” The world of endings gives way to a world of mission and life.
Message: Mary Magdalene’s experience at the tomb shows how Jesus reveals Himself to us and how easily we can miss Him. She comes “while it is still dark,” carrying grief, confusion, and love. Even when angels appear and Jesus stands before her, she does not recognize Him at first. Yet her love and longing open her to the moment when Jesus speaks her name. That is when resurrection becomes personal.Scripture often shows heaven leaning close at turning points. The resurrection morning is one of those moments. Two angels sit where Jesus’ body once lay, symbolically occupying the very place death ruled. Their presence declares: death has been displaced; the new creation has begun. Their question, “Why are you weeping?” invites Mary to reinterpret her sorrow considering the resurrection. Paul echoes this: Christ’s death and rising change how we see everything. Her tears belong to the old creation; her hope belongs to the new. When Jesus calls her “Mary,” the new world begins with a personal address. Resurrection is not escape from creation but its renewal. And it is not a private comfort; it is a commission: “Go to my brothers.” Mary becomes the first witness of the new creation, the first preacher of resurrection. If resurrection is not part of our lived experience, talk of angels becomes empty. Transformation does not come from contemplating God or debating angelology. It comes from encountering Christ’s grace firsthand. Some may come to faith through angels, others through a kind word or a moment of hope, but all true transformation comes from Christ making us new creatures.
And So, if angels mark the dawn of resurrection, our lives are meant to mark its continuation. We are called to see differently, love differently, and hope differently because Christ has died and been raised for us. The old creation has passed away. The new creation has come. Like Mary, we step out of the tombs of our former ways of seeing and into the bright morning of Christ’s risen life.
Pray the Risen Lord, call us by name into the new creation. Pray that when we are sad the angels’ question echo in our hearts, as to why we are weeping, until our sorrows are reinterpreted in the light of Christ’s victory. Pray that God makes us witnesses like Mary, bold enough to say, “I have seen the Lord,” and eager to live no longer for ourselves but with Jesus who died and rose for us. Amen.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 