An Easter Message

Christ is Risen!
He is Risen Indeed!

Today, we gather to celebrate the cornerstone of our faith, the story that defines who we are and how we are called to live in this beautiful, broken world.

At dawn, when we look to the west, we might still see the lingering shadows of the night. But when we turn east, we witness the brilliance of the sun rising, shattering the darkness. At dawn, when many of us still slumber, shifts are changing at the hospitals, the city streets are being swept, and the world begins to stir.

And at dawn, two thousand years ago, two women, both named Mary, travel to a tomb.

It is worth pausing right here at the beginning of the story to honor these two women. In a patriarchal society where the testimony of women was often disregarded, God chose them to be the very first witnesses to this life changing event. When the male disciples had fled in terror, it was the women who stayed by the cross. It was the women who watched where the body was laid. And it is the women who show up at dawn, carrying their grief, to do the hard, sacred work of tending to the dead.

Each of the Gospel writers depicts that first Easter morning in their own unique way. In Mark, there is fear and silence. In Luke, there is confusion and wonder. In John, there is a quiet, tearful reunion in a garden. But for Matthew, whose gospel we read today, Easter is primarily a triumph. It is a moment where God dramatically unleashes power.

When the two Mary’s arrive, they don’t find a quiet, peaceful garden. They experience a violent earthquake. They watch as the heavy stone is rolled back by an angel of the Lord, whose appearance is like lightning. Matthew makes a point to tell us about the guards at the tomb, armed agents of the Roman Empire, stationed there to make sure the dead stay dead. But in the presence of God’s liberating, life-giving power, these heavily armed guards shake with fear and become like dead men themselves.

The angel turns to the women and says, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised.”

Do not be afraid. We hear those words twice in this passage. Once from the angel, and once from Jesus himself when he meets the women on the road.

What do those words mean to us today? What meaning do these wrods hold in a world where fear often fuels every decision we make as a society? We live in a world that is intimately acquainted with death and finality. We see it in the news, we feel it in our communities, and we experience it in our own families. Death, grief, and loss colour so many aspects of our lives.

Because we are so accustomed to the darkness, it can sometimes be hard to be fully infused by the hope that this season represents. We love the bright symbols of Easter, the lilies, the trumpets, the joyous hymns, but the reality of resurrection requires us to first acknowledge the reality of the grave.

Scott Hoezee, from the Center for Excellence in Preaching, puts it this way:

“Listen: Easter does not happen in a bright, airy, and decked-out-in-white church sanctuary… Easter happens in the E.R. when the doctor comes out to the waiting area and shakes his head. We couldn’t save him.

Easter happens at the funeral home when that first glimpse of dad in the coffin hits you like a cinder block to the solar plexus. You can’t breathe.

Easter happens in the crack house where men and women watch each other slowly kill themselves with drugs, where life has become a living death.

Easter happens on the nursing floor where once strong-bodied men and women watch their peers disappear one by one and where these wheelchair-bound precious people know that all of life has now come down to this long waiting for death.

Easter happens where death is, because that is the only place it is needed.”

Easter follows death. That is a sobering thought, but it is also our deepest truth. Perhaps we have been able to ignore this because we have been so busy celebrating the shiny symbols of Easter without thoroughly discussing where resurrection is needed.

Anyone who has suffered through a serious illness or borne the grief of watching a loved one die, knows that the hint of darkness is always there. Days, weeks, months, or decades later, we still confront and acknowledge the loss that occurred. Walking through the valley of the shadow of death is often a longer, more arduous journey than we ever realized.

But as people of faith, we proclaim that death does not get the last word. We proclaim that God’s love is stronger than the grave. And crucially, Jesus wasn’t just interested in what comes next after we die. His message wasn’t, “Don’t worry about the suffering of the world; everything will be fine in heaven.” No, Jesus was deeply concerned about the here and now. His message had profound relevance to the time he walked this earth, and it carries urgent relevance today. It is about how we live our lives, how we treat our neighbors, and what matters to God right here in this creation.

At a community event I attended a few years ago, I shared that I am a person who believes in resurrection. But I also shared that in order to have resurrection, you first need to have a death. We cannot proclaim the good news that Christ is Risen without first traveling through the painful events of Good Friday.

I asked the group that had gathered that day, what are the things that need to die in order for something else to have new life? What needs to die for us to have honest, productive conversations about the things we feel are wrong in our society and in the world? What prejudices, what systemic inequalities, what economic assumptions need to be let go of, allowed to die, so that we, as a society, can move forward and care for people better? Perhaps our apathy needs to die. Perhaps our judgment needs to die. Perhaps our reliance on systems that prioritize profit over human dignity need to die.

I wonder about this question for the church, too. Not just this specific community of faith, but the wider Church. What needs to die in order for new life to flourish?

Too often, when I talk to people about the church, I hear phrases like: “I remember when…” or “We’ve never done that before…” or “That’s not how we do it.” If we are a people who believe in resurrection, who profess that God brings new life out of the grave, why do we so often fight the necessary death of certain traditions, habits, or institutional structures?

As Christians, we are an Easter people. This is our season. Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard wrote, “Life must be lived forward, but it can only be understood backward.” When we look back, what are the things we are holding onto that prevent us from living in the present and traveling forward into God’s future? We proclaim a message of resurrection, which is inherently a message of forward motion. But we get stuck. We fear the death of our comfort zones and the death of our expectations.

But listen again to the good news offered by the angel to the women that morning: “He is not here.”

He is not here. Stop looking behind you. Stop looking where you are. Stop looking for the living among the dead. Start looking in front of you, because Christ is already leading the way.

Matt Skinner reminds us why Matthew’s version of the resurrection is so deeply political and subversive. It matters that a crucified man, a man the Roman Empire sought to make a nobody, was raised from the dead. Tyrants and empires devote endless energy toward maintaining the power to silence their critics and foes. They know that nothing silences like death, and the cross was Rome’s ultimate tool of state-sanctioned terror.

But what happens when the dead refuse to stay silenced? What happens when a ragtag group of women and marginalized people offer joyful testimony in the face of state-sanctioned death? Christian theology, rooted in resurrection, will not allow the dead to remain silenced and forgotten. God will not allow the Empire to have the final word.

This brings me back to the powerful words of Brian McLaren, which I shared earlier: “Jesus now reigns for us as the non-violent king, the servant-king, the king of love. He has already ascended and has already been enthroned, which is to say that we don’t need to wait for some future day to start living his way. We can, we must, begin the insurrection of resurrection now.”

The insurrection of resurrection. What a brilliant, challenging phrase. We are called to rebel against the forces of death, despair, and oppression with the radical, life-giving love of God. We are called to embody a different way of living, one that prioritizes peace over violence, generosity over greed, and inclusion over exclusion.

And where does this insurrection begin? Notice what Jesus tells the women: “Go and tell my brothers and sisters to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

Why Galilee? Andrew McGowan points out that Galilee is a stark contrast to Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the seat of royal power, religious authority, and political dominance. It was the center of the status quo. In Jerusalem, Jesus was rejected, tried, and condemned by the elites. But Galilee? Galilee was the margins. Galilee was where the poor lived. It was where Jesus healed the sick, fed the hungry crowds, and taught the outcasts who would listen.

Jesus doesn’t tell his disciples to meet him in the halls of power. He says, “Go back to the margins. Go back to the poor. Go back to the everyday people. That is where you will find me.”

Matthew makes it clear that the women were the first apostles,the first ones trusted with this earth-shattering news. Despite their fear, they are filled with joy, and they meet Jesus on the way. Their encounter is part of a journey that calls all of us back to the places where true ministry begins.

Matthew’s gospel begins in fear and darkness, with a tyrant king murdering children to enshrine his power. But it ends with the ultimate triumph of love, and the liberating words, “Do not be afraid.”

Do not be afraid, is the message.
Go and tell, is the message.
Meet me in the margins, is the message.

We look at the world around us, with all its suffering, its systemic injustices, and its deep need for healing, and we do not despair. We live as Easter people. We live full of hope, trusting in the promises of God, knowing that the tomb is empty, that love has won.

There is work to be done. There are systems to dismantle, wounds to heal, and grace to share. So let us step out of the tombs that have held us captive. Let us leave behind our fear and our clinging to the past. Let us step fully into the forward motion of God’s grace.

The dawn has broken. The risen Christ is waiting for us!

Christ is Risen!
He is Risen Indeed!

Amen.