Sermon For Easter Sunday

He Is Not Here: The Resurrection That Changes Everything

A Homily For Easter Sunday

Brothers and sisters, welcome. Whether you have been coming to this place for decades or whether this is your first time inside a church in years, you are here on the right morning. Whatever brought you through the door today, I want you to know that the news we are about to sit with is not seasonal decoration. It is not a tradition we observe the way we observe a birthday or an anniversary. What we proclaim this morning is a claim about history, about the nature of reality, and about the future of every human life. It is the claim that a man who was dead is now alive, and that this fact changes everything.

Let us begin where the Gospel of John begins this story: in the dark.

Before The Sun Rises

John tells us that Mary Magdalene came to the tomb while it was still dark. That detail is not incidental. John is a careful writer, and darkness in his Gospel always carries weight. This is the same Gospel that opens with light shining in darkness. And so when Mary arrives before dawn, she arrives in the posture that grief always takes: she comes before the light, she comes not expecting anything new, she comes to do the last thing she can do for someone she loved. She comes to mourn.

She finds the stone removed. She runs. She tells Peter and the Beloved Disciple that someone has taken the Lord out of the tomb. Notice what she does not say. She does not say, "He is risen." She says, "We don't know where they've put him." Even the disciples who run to the tomb and find the linen cloths lying there, the face cloth folded separately, see the evidence and still do not fully understand. John writes plainly: "For they did not yet understand the Scripture that he must rise from the dead." They saw the empty tomb and they went home.

But Mary stayed. And in staying, she received what the running disciples did not. She wept. She looked again into the tomb and saw two angels. She turned and saw a man she took to be the gardener. And then he said her name. "Mary." One word. And she knew. She turned and said to him in Aramaic, "Rabboni," which means Teacher. The risen Christ called her by name, and she recognized him.

This is where the resurrection first breaks into human experience in John's account: not in a theological argument, not in a mass spectacle, but in a garden, in the dark turning toward dawn, in the sound of her own name spoken by the one she had thought was gone forever.

The Historical Weight Of The Claim

Now, if the resurrection were only a beautiful story, a spiritual metaphor for hope or renewal, we might leave it there in the garden and let it warm our hearts. But the Apostle Paul will not allow us to do that. In the fifteenth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul does something remarkable. He does not speak of the resurrection as a feeling or a symbol. He speaks of it as a datable, verifiable, contested historical event with named witnesses.

Listen to what he writes. He says that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. After that he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom, Paul notes, are still alive. He appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all to Paul himself.

Paul is not writing poetry here. He is writing the kind of argument a lawyer or a historian makes. He is saying: if you doubt this, there are people you can ask. He is staking the entire Christian proclamation on the factual resurrection of a body that was in a tomb and is no longer there. And then he draws the conclusion with absolute clarity. "But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain, and so is your faith."

This is not the language of a man who thinks the resurrection is a helpful metaphor. This is the language of a man who knows that if the tomb is not empty, the whole thing collapses. Paul is willing to say it plainly: if Christ is not raised, we are to be pitied above all people. We are still in our sins. Those who have died in Christ have perished. The resurrection is not one doctrine among many. It is the load-bearing wall of the entire structure.

And then he says: "But as it is, Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep."

The Meaning Of Firstfruits

That word firstfruits is worth pausing over. In the Old Testament, the firstfruits were the first portion of the harvest, offered to God as a pledge and a promise. The firstfruits were not the whole harvest; they were the guarantee that the rest was coming. When Paul calls the risen Christ the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep, he is saying that the resurrection of Jesus is not a solitary miracle. It is the beginning of something. It is the down payment on a harvest that will include all who belong to him.

This is the living hope the resurrection gives. Not a vague optimism. Not a feeling that things will somehow work out. But a grounded, historically anchored confidence that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work in the world, and that death does not have the final word over those who are united to him.

The Anglican tradition has always held together Scripture, reason, and the witness of the church through the ages, and on this point all three speak with one voice. The creeds we say together in this liturgy, the Nicene Creed we will confess in a few moments, do not say "I believe in the spiritual survival of the soul." They say "I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come." The church has always understood that what happened to Jesus on the third day is the pattern and the promise for all who are his.

What This Means For The Living

So what does this mean for us, gathered here this morning, in this particular season of our lives?

It means, first, that grief is real but not final. Mary wept at the tomb. The disciples were devastated. The resurrection did not erase their grief; it transformed it. If you are carrying loss this morning, if there is an empty chair at your table that was not empty last Easter, the resurrection does not ask you to pretend that grief is not real. It tells you that the one who wept at the tomb of Lazarus, the one who cried out from the cross, is the same one who walked out of the tomb on the third day. Your grief is held by someone who has been through death and come out the other side.

It means, second, that our lives are not ultimately defined by our failures. Paul reminds the Corinthians that Christ died for our sins. The resurrection is the Father's declaration that the sacrifice was sufficient, that the debt was paid, that the record against us has been dealt with. The risen Christ who appeared to Mary, to Peter, to five hundred witnesses, is the same Christ who bears the wounds in his hands and his side. He rose not as though the cross never happened, but as the one who went through it and through death itself, for us. Whatever you have done, whatever you carry, that is the news of this morning.

It means, third, that how we live now matters. Paul's argument in 1 Corinthians 15 does not end with a statement of belief. It ends with a call to action. "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." Because the resurrection is true, nothing done in faithfulness to Christ is wasted. Every act of mercy, every word of truth, every moment of patient love given in his name is part of a story that does not end in the grave.

Toward The Table

In a few minutes we will come to this Table. We will do what the church has done since the first Easter: we will break bread and share the cup in remembrance of him, and in that act we will proclaim his death until he comes. The Eucharist is itself an Easter proclamation. It is the community of the resurrection gathering around the table of the risen Lord, receiving him, being sent out by him.

Mary was not permitted to cling to him in the garden. He sent her. "Go to my brothers," he said, "and tell them." She went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord." That is still the vocation of the church. We are not a community that guards a memory. We are a community that has encountered the risen Christ and has been sent to say so.

So go from this place today carrying the news. Not as a slogan, not as a seasonal greeting, but as the deepest thing you know: that the tomb is empty, that death has been defeated, that the firstfruits have been raised, and that the harvest is coming.

He is not here. He is risen. And he has called you by name.

Thanks be to God.

Sources Consulted

The Holy Bible, Christian Standard Bible. Holman Bible Publishers, 2017. 1 Corinthians 15:1-20; John 20:1-18.

The Book of Common Prayer. Church Publishing, 1979. The Nicene Creed, The Holy Eucharist, and the Easter Vigil liturgy.

N. T. Wright. The Resurrection of the Son of God. Fortress Press, 2003.

Gordon D. Fee. The First Epistle to the Corinthians. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Eerdmans, 1987.

Raymond E. Brown. The Gospel According to John XIII-XXI. Anchor Bible. Doubleday, 1970.

Richard Hooker. Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Various editions. Book V, on the sacraments and the nature of Christian hope.