An Easter Sunday Sermon
Because every Sunday is a little Easter!
He is Here
Matthew 28:1-20
Before the alleluias, before the lilies, before anyone dares to say the word “resurrection,”
…there are two women, walking toward a tomb.
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary are carrying a heavy load of grief and memory.
They are not going to celebrate. They are not going to understand. They are going because love does not know what else to do.
As they approach the tomb, the earth moves beneath their feet! Not metaphorically or spiritually, but the actual ground gives way underneath them. A cosmic shift has occurred.
An angel descends like lightning and rolls the stone away. And then, this strange, almost playful detail: the angel sits on it…as if to say: this thing you thought was immovable...is nothing.
The guards--strong, highly trained, and armed--become like dead men. What could terrify them so?
What would it take to scare us like that?
The women, the grieving and faithful ones, are the only ones left standing.
“Do not be afraid,” the angel says, which is what heaven always says when fear would be the most reasonable response to the presence of the holy.
“Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here, for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.”
And they do, and he is indeed not there!
Every instinct they have is to stay. To make sense of it. To hold onto the moment. To build something around it.
But the angel will not let them. The angel has a mission for them.
“Go quickly and tell the disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee, there you will see him.’ This is my message for you.”
Don’t stay at the tomb, don’t build a shrine, don’t try to explain this, just get moving back to Galilee.
The angel doesn’t spend any more time with them than was absolutely necessary.
Go back. Go to where it all began, back to ordinary life, back to the place that looks nothing like resurrection.
Sensing the angel’s urgency, the women leave the tomb quickly with both “fear and great joy,” and they ran to tell his disciples.
As if their day could hold any more surprises, while they are still running, unsettled, Jesus meets them! Fully embodied, and he greets them.
They fall at his feet and worship! He says, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, there they will see me.”
Go back to the place where it all started, where they first said “yes” to Jesus.
And while the women were running to tell the disciples, the guard had managed to find their feet, and they too ran, they ran to tell the chief priests what had happened. The chief priests and the elders devised a plan to give a large sum of money to the soldiers, hush money, or, perhaps, “narrative correction money.” The guards were told to say that the disciples stole the body under the cover of night while the guards slept.
Why the cover-up? Resurrection is good news… unless your power depends on things staying dead.
The eleven disciples, in various states of belief, make the journey back to where they first heard his voice and dropped their nets.
It’s as if resurrection is not meant to stay at the tomb—it meets us back in the ordinary places of our lives and summons us to new life.
When they get to Galilee, they see Jesus, they worship him, but some doubted.
This gives me hope in my doubts; it reminds me that I belong as his disciple, too.
Perhaps resurrection is something that we have to learn to look for, and once we begin to see it, we then see the possibility for resurrection everywhere around us.
The Resurrection is perhaps the greatest of God’s mysteries. It is a wonderment, as is its impact upon us.
Jesus tells both the believers and the doubters among his disciples to “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you.”
I think Jesus really meant his last words to them, “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Jesus invites his disciples to now take up their own journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, to follow him as he wants to be followed.
Despite some of their doubts, history tells us they got to work following Jesus command, they followed him for the rest of their lives.
Something happened to them over those years. Not all at once. Not in certainty.
As they walked together again, they began to realize over the course of years that they were not alone.
As they ate together.
As they remembered his words.
As they tried—imperfectly—to walk in the way of Jesus, they became people who trusted that he was still with them.
One day, they’re gathered around a table, breaking bread, telling his stories once again, and someone says,
“You know…when we talk about him like this…it almost feels like he’s here.”
And then someone else says, “No…not just like, he’s here…”
“He is here.”
That’s what resurrection does.
It meets us back in the Galilee of our everyday lives, in shared meals, in fragile attempts to love. In choosing peace when it would be easier to choose power. In walking the way of Jesus, even when it still looks like losing.
And over time, we begin to see it. Not all at once and not without doubt, but in truth: The risen Christ is not just a memory; he is with us on our own journeys from Galilee to Jerusalem.
At the end of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says:
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me…Go therefore…And remember, I am with you always.”
Always.
Not just at the empty tomb. Not just in moments of certainty. But in Galilee. In your life.
So go back to Galilee. Back to your life, your journey. Back to your work. Your family, your doubts, your questions, back to the places where resurrection will have to be practiced, the places where resurrection has to take on flesh, and walk in the ways of Jesus.
Not because it is easy. Not because it always works the way we expect, but because the crucified and risen Christ has gone ahead of you…
…and he is already there.
And somewhere along the way—in the breaking of bread, in the telling of the story, in the choosing of love, you may find yourself saying, “it’s not just that I believe this…I know He is here, and his story is keeping me alive.”
Amen.
1148 = 8.8 minutes