Easter

 

April 5, 2026

+ Although it might not feel like it out there, with all this beautiful fresh snow—ugh!—it is Easter.

 But let’s face it:

 Easter happens no matter what it may be like outside.

 Mary Magdalene, as we hear in our Gospel reading for today, comes to the tomb in the dark, in the cold early morning.

 That’s an interesting detail.

 She comes while it’s still dark.

 Because we need to remember—Easter does not begin in sunlight.

 It begins in confusion.

 It begins in grief.

 In the half-light where nothing yet makes sense.

 Mary comes to that tomb not coming expecting a miracle.

 She coming there to mourn.

 She comes to place sealed up.

 She comes to place that is a final place, a place of burial and disposition.

 She comes to a place where the story, as far as she is concerned, is over.

 But what does she find?

 She finds the stone rolled away.

 Even that’s not enough for her.

 She’s still confused.

 Who wouldn’t be?

 We, like her, would instantly imagine the worst.

 Someone has stolen the body.

 She is prepared, as we would be, for one more terrible loss on top of another terrible loss.

 I think many of us understand this well.

 We’ve been there.

 Few of us, I think, are comfortable with certainty.

 But we certainly understand that feeling of things being away taken from us.

 And when it happens, we try to make sense of it.

 What’s amazing about Easter is that it does not deny us that place.

 In fact, it begins there, in that place of loss and uncertainty and fear and darkness and cold.

 The Resurrection of Jesus is not simply some reversal of death.

 It’s not simply a return to the way things were before.

 It is something so much stranger than that.

 When Mary finally sees Jesus, what happens?

 She doesn’t even recognize him.

 Not at first.

 She mistakes him for the gardener.

 I think there’s something beautiful in that little detail.

 She thinks he’s a gardener.

 And maybe, in some way, he actually is.

 After all, in the resurrection, what is it Jesus does?

 He shows us what God has always done.

 God tends.

 God brings life out of the ground.

 God brings something new out of what seemed dead and finished.

 But it’s here, in this moment between Jesus the gardener and faithful Mary that everything happens.

 Everything changes.

 Jesus doesn’t explain anything to Mary.

 He does not give her some theological lecture.

 He doesn’t preach her a sermon.

 He doesn’t proselytize.  

 He simply says one word.

 One very important word.

 Her name.

 “Mary.”

 And in that moment, with that one word, everything changes.

 Because resurrection is not just an idea.

 It is a relationship between us and the one who has been resurrected.

 Resurrection is being recognized, and called, and claimed.

 Resurrection is about being known—truly and fully known.

 Even when everything has seemingly died around us.

 And in that moment of being known, of our name being called, we know what true resurrection is.

 This is what Easter is all about.

 That death doesn’t win.

 It doesn’t  get the last word.

 Life wins.

 Life triumphs.

 Again and again and again.

 We see it not only today, on Easter.

 We see it in the little deaths in our own lives every day.

 We see it when hope seems dead.

 When certainly seems dead.

 When love we thought would last forever ends.

 We don’t get the final say.

 God does.

 Easter shows us that God has entered into death.

 Not to avoid it.

 Not to soften it.

 But to break it open from the inside.

 And what comes out that broken-open death is not a restoration of the way things were before.

 But rather something completely and radically new.

 Something so incredible we couldn’t even imagine it.

 But let’s not be naïve about it either.

 The resurrection doesn’t magically wipe away everything that happened before.

 The resurrection doesn’t erase our wounds.

 When Jesus appears to the disciples, he still bears those wounds.

 His hand are still pierced.

 He has a wound in still in his side.

 These are not healed.

 They’re not hidden.

 They’re transformed.

 They’re transfigured.

 Easter doesn’t pretend that suffering did not happen.

 It simply states that suffering isn’t the end of the story.

 So if we’re feeling joy today, that’s Easter.

 But if we’re here with darkness on our hearts and worries in our souls, if depression and anxiety still plague us, that is Easter for us too.

 If we come here with doubt or grief or broken relationships in our lives, Easter is part of all of this too.

 Resurrection awaits all of us no matter where we are and no matter what we’re enduring.

 Christ is alive.

 He is alive in us.

 Not as some vague idea.

 But as a real Presence.

 Calling us each by name.

 By our own name.

 And in doing so, Christ restores us.

 Christ makes us whole.

 This is the good news of Easter—

 the stone has been rolled away.

 The tomb is empty.

 Death has been harrowed.

 And the risen Christ stands among us still, calling each of us by name, and leading us out of the darkness into an incredible new life.

 Realizing that causes to respond how?

 We respond by saying,

 Alleluia!

 Christ is risen!

 Christ is risen indeed!

 Alleluia!