Resurrection Sunday Sermon

Because He Lives, Your Labor Is Not In Vain

A Resurrection Sunday Homily on Luke 24:1-12 and 1 Corinthians 15:50-58

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Opening

Very early in the morning, on the first day of the week, a small group of women made their way through the half-light toward a sealed tomb. They carried spices. They carried grief. They carried the particular, exhausted sorrow of people who have watched someone they loved suffer and die, and who have had no choice but to go on living. They were not going to a celebration. They were going to finish a burial.

What they found there changed everything. Not just for them. Not just for Jerusalem. For every human being who has ever lived under the shadow of death, which is to say, for all of us.

On this Resurrection Sunday, we gather around these same texts that the Church has proclaimed for two thousand years. We gather as a congregation of believers and seekers, of the long-faithful and the newly curious, of those whose hope is strong this morning and those whose hope has grown thin. The lectionary places before us Luke's account of the empty tomb and Paul's great crescendo in First Corinthians fifteen. Together they make a single, thundering claim: Christ is risen, death is defeated, and therefore your faithful labor is not in vain.

Let us sit with that claim carefully, honestly, and with the full weight of what Scripture actually says.

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The Women At The Tomb: Luke 24:1-12

Luke tells us that the women came to the tomb and found the stone rolled away. When they entered, the body of the Lord Jesus was not there. Two men in dazzling clothes appeared and asked them a question that has echoed through every century since: "Why are you looking for the living among the dead?"

Notice what Luke does not do. He does not give us a triumphant crowd. He does not give us fanfare. He gives us bewildered women, a missing body, and two messengers who speak a word that the women are expected to remember. "He is not here, but he has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that it was necessary for the Son of Man to be betrayed into the hands of sinful men, be crucified, and rise on the third day."

The resurrection, in Luke's telling, is first of all a fulfillment of a promise. Jesus had said this would happen. The women had heard it. They had simply not been able to hold it against the overwhelming reality of the cross. Grief has a way of making even the clearest promises feel distant.

When the women returned and told the eleven and the others, their words seemed like nonsense. The Greek word Luke uses here suggests idle talk, the kind of thing you dismiss before you have finished hearing it. Peter, to his credit, ran to the tomb. He stooped down, saw the linen cloths lying there, and went home amazed. Luke does not tell us yet that Peter believed. He tells us Peter was amazed. There is a difference. Amazement is the beginning of faith, not its completion.

This is worth naming honestly this morning. The resurrection is not self-evident. It is not the kind of thing that simply washes over you and removes all doubt. The disciples themselves struggled. Mary Magdalene wept at the tomb before she recognized the risen Lord. Thomas would not believe until he saw. The eleven were startled and frightened when Jesus appeared among them, thinking they were seeing a ghost. Luke is not embarrassed by any of this. He records it because the resurrection is a genuine historical claim about something that happened in the world, and genuine historical claims require witnesses, testimony, and the slow, sometimes difficult work of coming to believe.

If you are here this morning and you are not sure what you believe, Luke's account has room for you. The question the angels asked is still the right question: Why are you looking for the living among the dead? Come and see. Look at the evidence. Sit with the testimony of those who were there.

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The Body That Will Not Stay Buried: 1 Corinthians 15:50-58

Paul has spent the whole of First Corinthians fifteen arguing for the resurrection of the body, and he reaches his conclusion in these final verses with something close to exultation. "Listen, I am telling you a mystery: We will not all fall asleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet."

Paul's argument throughout the chapter is that Christ's resurrection is not a spiritual metaphor. It is the first fruits of a harvest that will include all who belong to him. Because Christ rose bodily, those who are united to him by faith will also be raised bodily. The body that is sown in weakness will be raised in power. The body that is sown in dishonor will be raised in glory. The perishable will put on the imperishable. The mortal will put on immortality.

And then Paul quotes two prophets, Isaiah and Hosea, weaving them together into a kind of taunt: "Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, death, is your victory? Where, death, is your sting?"

The sting of death, Paul says, is sin. The power of sin is the law. The law exposes our failure, our rebellion, our inability to be what God made us to be. Death is not merely a biological event. It is the consequence of a broken relationship with the God who is life itself. This is why death feels wrong to us in a way that other endings do not. We were not made for it. We resist it instinctively because something in us knows it is an intruder.

But thanks be to God, Paul writes, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The victory is not something we achieve. It is something we receive. Christ entered into death fully, bearing the weight of sin and its consequence, and he came out the other side. The resurrection is not simply the resuscitation of a corpse. It is the defeat of death as a power, the breaking of its claim over those who are in Christ. Death still comes for us. We still grieve. We still stand at gravesides and feel the full force of loss. Paul does not pretend otherwise. But death no longer has the final word.

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Therefore: The Most Important Word In The Passage

Paul does not end with theology. He ends with ethics. "Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the Lord's work, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain."

That word "therefore" is doing enormous work. It connects everything that has come before to the way we live right now. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not simply a doctrine we affirm in the Creed on Sunday mornings. It is the foundation on which we build our lives on every other day of the week.

Be steadfast. Be immovable. These are not calls to rigidity or stubbornness. They are calls to rootedness. Paul has in mind the kind of person who does not abandon the faith when it becomes costly, who does not give up on the work of love when it becomes difficult, who does not drift away from the community of the Church when it becomes inconvenient. The resurrection gives us a reason to hold on.

Always excelling in the Lord's work. This is the practical heart of the passage. The Lord's work is not only what happens inside these walls. It is the patient care of a neighbor. It is the honest word spoken at cost to yourself. It is the meal brought to someone who is grieving, the letter written to someone who is lonely, the forgiveness extended to someone who has wronged you, the justice sought for someone who has been overlooked. It is the long, quiet faithfulness of a life lived in the direction of God's kingdom.

And here is the promise Paul makes, grounded entirely in the resurrection: your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

Not in vain. Those three words are among the most comforting in all of Scripture, and they are also among the most demanding. They are comforting because so much of faithful Christian living feels invisible. The prayers no one sees. The kindness that goes unacknowledged. The years of faithful service that produce no obvious fruit. Paul says: it is not wasted. God sees it. It matters. Because Christ is risen, nothing done in his name and in his Spirit disappears into nothing.

But they are also demanding, because they call us to actually do the work. The resurrection is not a reason to sit back and wait for God to fix everything. It is a reason to get up and participate in what God is already doing. We labor not to earn our salvation, which is entirely the gift of God in Christ, but because we are already saved, already loved, already held by the one who conquered death. We work from victory, not toward it.

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At The Table

In a few moments, we will come to the Table. The Book of Common Prayer calls this the Holy Eucharist, the great thanksgiving. And what are we giving thanks for, if not precisely this? That the one who was crucified, dead, and buried is the one who meets us here. That the broken bread and the poured cup are not memorials to a dead teacher but a participation in the living Lord. That every time we gather at this Table, we are proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes, and doing so in the confidence that his coming is not a defeat but a completion.

The women came to the tomb with spices and grief. They left with a message they could barely contain. The stone was rolled away not so that Jesus could get out, but so that we could see in. Come and look. He is not here. He is risen.

Go from this place steadfast and immovable. Do the Lord's work with your whole heart. Grieve when grief comes, as it will. Doubt when doubt comes, as it may. But do not stop. Because the one who rose from the dead holds your labor in his hands, and nothing held in those hands is ever lost.

He is risen indeed. Alleluia.

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Sources Consulted

The Holy Bible, Christian Standard Bible. Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2017. Luke 24:1-12; 1 Corinthians 15:50-58.

The Book of Common Prayer. New York: Church Publishing, 1979. The Holy Eucharist: Rite II; the Easter Vigil and liturgical propers for Easter Day.

Green, Joel B. The Gospel of Luke. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997.

Thiselton, Anthony C. The First Epistle to the Corinthians. New International Greek Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000.

Wright, N. T. The Resurrection of the Son of God. Christian Origins and the Question of God, Vol. 3. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003.

Hooker, Richard. Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Book V. 1597. On sacramental participation and the presence of Christ in the Eucharist.