Easter Sunday
April 20, 2025
Luke 24:1-12
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| by He Qi |
Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia! Grace to you and peace from our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
My daughter recently asked me what my favorite holiday is. After thinking a moment, I said, “Easter. It’s pure joy. Beautiful flowers, great music, everyone comes to church in their nicest clothes. It’s just lovely.” But even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t true – that is, I do love Easter, but it is not pure joy, as a careful reading of Luke or really any of the Gospels will tell you. In fact, in Luke’s telling of the resurrection, there isn’t really any joy at all! Reading through Luke’s account, here is what I do see: the women are perplexed and terrified, and finally remembering and sharing; and from the 11, we get distrust and lack of belief, as they dismiss the women’s story as nonsense; and from Peter, willingness and amazement, but not joy. There’s not a joyful person in the whole lot of them!
Of course, I can’t say I blame them. Even though Jesus told them he would die and rise again, actually to see it happen is something else altogether! Plus, they don’t actually see it happen – Jesus makes no appearance on Easter morning; he won’t show up until later that evening. It’s hard to believe something so out of the ordinary with so little evidence to go on.
But all of this, and the fact that the first Easter isn’t pure joy, makes the day and this story all the more special to me – because the world we live in is never pure joy either. It’s full of grief, and anger, and mental illness, and addiction, and estranged family members, and conflict within and between both families and nations. All those feelings I mentioned above? Those are our real lives. We are perplexed that anyone could possibly say or think or do the things they do. We are terrified about the ramifications of actions and decisions of those we disagree with, especially when those people are in positions of power. We share things we know are important, only to be dismissed and told that our deeply held convictions are nonsense. We are distrustful of each other, and of authority, and the press, and refuse to believe anything that pushes against our values. And, sometimes, like Peter, we are amazed in what I think might be a good way – a way that opens our hearts to the possibility of hope, and something more than our jaded or grief-stricken world view had previously allowed.
In short: the Easter story is not joyful, but it does reflect real life, in all its complexity and nuance.
So then, how do we approach this story – a mind-blowing story from 2000 years ago that reflects our current human condition while at the same time being completely apart from anything we have ourselves witnessed? How do we approach it?
I offer you three words of caution, and three suggestions.
First, resist trying to define or explain Easter. We love to know things, right, and we tend to trust facts and certainties and verifiable data. But the resurrection defies that effort. To define Easter is to miss the mystery and potential of what God is doing. Just like the twilight “early dawn” hour in which Luke places this story, which is still a little fuzzy but is yet full of what could be – we must approach the resurrection as the mystery that it is: full of potential and uncertainty. Come to it not with a fact-seeking mind, but with a wondering mind. And don’t approach it just once, but again and again. Which of the many emotions and experiences resonate with you today? Is it the sadness and sorrow? The fear? The perplexity? The disbelief? The amazement? Enter into the story through that emotion or experience, and let the good news speak to it: the good news that God is working a new thing, a mysterious thing that we cannot yet, in this twilight hour, fully understand, that we may never understand this side of heaven. Approach the resurrection like a mystery, not a news story.
Second, do not assume that Easter is over once you leave the church building or turn off the TV or computer today. It is not finished once the last egg has been found and the ham has been packed up and put in the fridge. No, Easter is a call to action. We know all too well that the wounds and sorrows and loneliness we may or may not have left at the door when we came to church today still remain when we walk out that door again. They did for those first witnesses, too. Jesus was raised, but his wounds remained. The brutal and corrupt empire – the one they all thought Jesus would overthrow – was still in power. The disciples still lived with the guilt of having abandoned Jesus in his hour of need, and who knows what other pains they carried. Maybe some of the same ones we do.
And yet now, they carry them with the knowledge that God is redeeming and restoring the world. They carry them with the knowledge that as heavy and thick as fear and death and grief and endings can feel when we are in the middle of enduring them, they are not the end of the story. And so, Easter is a call to action, a call which asks us, “And what role will you play in God’s story of redemption?” In what ways will you live to bring about healing and encouragement, justice and kindness, in this world that is still so troubled? Jesus didn’t die and rise to make all those things go away; Easter isn’t a magic cure-all for whatever ails us. No, the resurrection is a promise that enables us to persevere through death, just like Jesus, and keep bringing life into a world so riddled with death. And it is an invitation to be a part of that work. So, how will you participate in the Easter story? How will you work with God to bring about redemption?
And that brings me to the third thing that Easter is not: Easter is not an anomaly, a once-in-a-lifetime thing, never to be repeated. I mean, in one sense it is – that particular moment in time in which the incarnate God was raised from the dead will not be repeated. But Easter is better thought of as an icon of the work that God is doing, has been doing, and will continue to do, in and around us every day. There will always be pain and sadness – and God will always be there with us in it. There will always be fear and perplexity and distrust – and God will always be there saying, “But I am trustworthy.” There will always be death – and from it, God will always bring about some form of new life.
And this is why today, when we celebrate Easter, it is a joy. Maybe not pure joy, for we are human after all, and experience all the diversity of emotion that goes with that. But Easter is joy nonetheless, because it assures us that whatever suffering we are enduring, it is not the end of the story. When we experience the betrayal of Judas on Maundy Thursday; when we feel guilty for having failed to stand our ground like Peter on Good Friday; when our friends abandon us in our hour of need; when we are mocked, or when we are the ones doing the mocking; even when life and light itself seems to be sealed up in a tomb – all of this is along the road to redemption, to resurrection, to new life. None of this is enough to defeat God, or keep God from victory. That is the iconic story that is told on every Easter, and on every day in between Easters: that death does not win. God does.
I don’t like having to live through Good Friday any more than the rest of you. It is all the emotions we have already mentioned and then some. We doubt, and cry, and exclaim in disbelief, and sometimes shout in anger and exasperation. We wonder – “when will this end?” and too often, it takes a lot longer than three days to get to the end. Yet I am encouraged by this iconic Easter story, which assures us again and again that after the night comes that twilight hour, when new life starts to come into view. We may not yet see it clearly or at all. We may still be perplexed and afraid of how the world has shifted beneath our feet. And when someone points it out, we may not even believe it at first. But eventually, our hearts become more willing to venture into the empty tomb. And they crack open enough to be amazed that once again, God has come through, and brought out of the worst of fear and death, the promise of a new and glorious life.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Let us pray… Risen Christ, we come today with so many emotions in our hearts about so many things. Speak to us exactly where we are at, and bring our aching hearts into a place that is ready to receive the good news of new life. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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