Sermon for April 20, 2025 - The Sunday of the Resurrection

Easter Sunday

“On this day the Lord has acted; we will rejoice and be glad in it.”

We gather this morning to celebrate and rejoice in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. As we once again encounter the empty tomb, we know what comes next. We know that while the tomb is indeed empty, it is not the end of the story, but rather a beginning…a new beginning in which the full majesty, power, and reign of God has been demonstrated in Jesus’ resurrection.

The narrative of the empty tomb signifies overturned expectations, hope renewed, and an invitation to participate in God’s ongoing narrative through Jesus Christ who is risen.

Within the unfolding story in the Gospel of Luke, however, the empty tomb is, as yet, an unrecognized sign. The women and other disciples know tombs. They are sites of memory; a way of keeping those who have died physically present in time and space and place. They are also sites of remembering. They evoke stories, another powerful way of keeping those who have died present in our lives.

The women who followed Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem had watched as the body of Jesus was taken down from the cross. They watched as Joseph of Arimathea took the body, wrapped it in linen, and placed it in a tomb hewed from rock. They went home to prepare spices that would be needed to complete the proper burial of his body.

The tomb that the women approached belonged to their familiar customs and practices that surrounded a death in their community. It was a recognized symbol, a sign of remembrance for the one who had died. It reminds us also of the customs and practices that we associate with death. Such customs and practices provide a visceral way for us to honor the dead and give expression to our grief. They also become a part of our memory and the stories we will recall in association with the one who has died.

As the women approached the tomb they were focused on completing the burial of Jesus’ body and bringing closure to grief. But as they approached, they found the stone covering the entrance to the tomb has been rolled back. And when they entered the tomb, they do not find the body of Jesus. The reality the women expect is not the reality they encounter. The incongruity, says Luke, leaves them perplexed. Not dismayed, angry, or vexed. Perplexed: at a loss to make sense of the disconnect between their expectations and what they find.

The question, “why do you seek the living among the dead?” draws attention to the incongruity between the women’s expectations and their experience. They came to the tomb expecting to find the dead, because that is the function of tombs: to house the dead. What they discover is that the “tomb” is now an empty tomb.

When we set this story into the broader narrative of the past three days, we should ask ourselves two questions: What does this story reveal about God? What does this story reveal about us?

When the women arrive to find the tomb empty, they are confronted with a divine reversal; their expectations and indeed our expectations are overturned. They expected the body to be right where they had left it but instead were greeted by the unexpected. Divine reversals are the foundation of the upside-down Kingdom of God. Throughout Luke’s gospel we have heard stories of Jesus time and again doing the unexpected; dining with the unexpected, interacting with the marginalized. He preached about turning upside-down the values of the domination system that was squeezing the life out of people. The resurrection, the empty tomb, is just the beginning of the Kingdom of God.

This story reveals to us a God who loves us so much that God works in ways beyond our comprehension, in the most unexpected ways. And I would bet that most of us can pinpoint an unexpected moment of divine presence in our walk with Christ.

This then leads us to our next question, what does this story reveal about us; each of us individually and all of us together as a community of disciples. In many ways we can see ourselves in the characters of the Holy Week story. We can see elements of ourselves or remember moments in our past of betrayal, denial, and abandoning those whom we love. We know what it feels like to fall short, and yet we can also see ourselves in the women who came back to the tomb. And when we do so, we see a renewed hope for each of us.

The angelic figures ask the women, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” We too are just as guilty of such a fruitless search. We too want to tend the corpses of long dead ideas and ideals. We cling to former visions of ourselves and our churches as if they might come back to life as long as we hold on to them. We grasp our loved ones too tightly, refusing to allow them to change, to grow, to transform. We choose to stay with what we know in our hearts to be dead, because it is safe, malleable. We cling desperately to memories of a time that seems better than the present. The words of the unworldly messengers are a challenge to the women to move through and beyond the traditional conventions of death towards a new reality because of the empty tomb. Their words are a challenge to stop hanging on to the dead in all its forms and move into new life. Their words remind us that the Holy One dwells wherever new life bursts forth.

On that first dim Easter morning, when the women cowered in the dust and angels picked them back up, pointing them out the door of a tomb into the full light of morning, the power of God was no longer unspoken. The silence was broken, and the women rushed back to tell the others about what they had seen. It doesn’t matter that the others did not believe at first. Who could believe, under the circumstances? It doesn’t matter that Peter had to test the women’s story by running to the tomb, seeing for himself the linen clothes, and wondering all the way back home what he had seen. What matters most in our story this morning are the women.

Throughout these past three days, it has been the women who have proven to be model disciples. They were in the upper room with Jesus. They fled with the others in the garden, but they were back accompanying Jesus to his death. They sat by during the long hours of his death on the cross, and when it was finished, they took the body and prepared it for burial. When they saw the empty tomb the women knew. The women remembered. The women believed. The women responded by breaking their silence to speak the truth of our risen Lord.

We too are invited to speak the truth of how we have experienced the risen Jesus in our own lives. We too are invited to participate in continuing the work Jesus began; to build a community that is rooted in love; a community that seeks to welcome any and all who are looking for a spiritual home. We are invited to transform the world by serving others. The empty tomb continues to renew hope in our hearts that things can and will change in the most surprising ways as together we give life to the upside-down kingdom of God.

“On this day the Lord has acted; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” Alleluia!