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Easter - Sunday

Isaiah 65: 17-25 and John 20:1-18

An unexpected ending is now a beginning

Friends, we are truly glad you’re here today.

Whether you come every week or find your way here at Christmas and Easter, your presence matters. There is something sacred about choosing—amid busy lives and many demands—to step into a place of worship and be among others who are seeking God. That choice is meaningful, and we honor it.

These seasons remind us that God meets us in powerful and unexpected ways—in a manger, at an empty tomb, and in moments just like this one. And wherever you find yourself on your journey of faith—full of belief, full of questions, or somewhere in between—you are welcome here.

Today, you are not guests. You are part of this community, part of this story, and part of what God is doing in the world.

I found that to be true because I’m here as a guest preacher. I’ve felt like part of this community. And part of what God is doing in the world. 

So, on behalf of my community, we’re grateful you came.

We’re grateful you came.

In both Christmas and Easter, we celebrate God doing something remarkable through the life of Jesus. In both seasons, we remember God entering the world in a new way and transforming it and we look forward to when God will enter the world and transform it again. 

In the Advent/Christmas and Easter seasons, we read from Isaiah because Isaiah lives in the tension between promise, fulfillment, and future hope. Isaiah speaks into a world that feels broken and announces: God is not finished. 

Based on this vision from Isaiah, Glenn L. Rudolph wrote the song, “The Dream Isaiah Saw” and I want to share some of the lyrics with you:

Lions and oxen will sleep in the hay

Leopards will join with the lambs as they play

Wolves will be pastured with cows in the glade

Blood will not darken the earth that God made

Peace will pervade more than forest and field

God will transfigure the Violence concealed

Deep in the heart and in systems of gain

Ripe for the judgement the Lord will ordain

Nature reordered to match God′s intent

Nations obeying the call to repent

All of creation completely restored

Filled with the knowledge and love of the Lord

Little child whose bed is straw

Take new lodgings in my heart

Bring the dream Isaiah saw

Life redeemed from fang and claw

Bring the dream Isaiah saw

Justice purifying law

Bring the dream Isaiah saw

Knowledge, wisdom, worship, awe

For Easter, we might change the chorus to:

Risen Lord, who left tomb’s cold maw

Change my life, dwell in my heart

Bring the dream Isaiah saw

Life redeemed from fang and claw

Bring the dream Isaiah saw

Justice purifying law

Bring the dream Isaiah saw

Knowledge, wisdom, worship, awe

God enters the world to transform it into a new creation. We will have new ways of relating to God and one another. All manifestations of evil will be gone: no sorrow and no pain. The animals will not hurt or destroy each other either. I cannot imagine a lion and an ox eating straw together, nor can I image that a wolf and a lamb as playmates. These visions seem as unlikely as resurrection. As unlikely as seeing Lazarus walk out of a tomb. As unlikely as Jesus standing in the garden beside his grief-stricken friend.

The new creation God proclaims is so different from the world as we know it. And yet, God’s new reality for all creation, generating a good life where peace reigns, can be seen breaking through even in the most unlikely places. 

Isaiah’s vision of this transformed redeemed world can inspire us to work towards new life, a resurrected life. 

In John’s telling of the resurrection, Mary comes to the garden alone, not to anoint the body, not to do anything, but simply to cry near Jesus’ grave. 

Mary comes to the tomb—not with hope, but with grief. 

She has been a witness to all that has happened to Jesus in the last week, so when she finds the tomb empty, she assumes calamity, another humiliating thing has happened to him. His body has been taken. She imagines an anonymous “they” who have stolen the body. This is suffering upon suffering. She turns away from the tomb and runs to tell the other disciples. Maybe she is hoping they will help her locate Jesus’ body. Maybe they will know what to do next. Maybe she simply doesn’t want to be alone in this moment. 

They run back. Peter and the beloved disciple race back. And John makes a big deal about the beloved disciple arriving first but stopping outside the tomb. Peter, arriving second, rushes into the tomb. He sees the empty tomb first, and then the linen wrappings and cloth laying there, but we don’t know how he reacts to the sight. The beloved disciple sees and he believes. John doesn’t tell us what he believes but that he believes but does not understand. So, they turn and go home. They do nothing with the information that the tomb is empty. They just go home.

They go home. But Mary stays.

Mary stays and weeps outside of the tomb. Eventually, she looks in and sees two angels where the body was, one where Jesus’s head would have been and the other at his feet. This image is a vague reminder of the arc of the covenant with the angels on each end of it. Perhaps we are to think of Mary as entering the tomb as if she is entering the holy of holies, God’s dwelling place on earth. 

Mary’s grief has brought her into the heart of God.

When the angels ask her why she is weeping, she repeats what she said to the disciples, “they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” 

In most biblical scenes, angelic appearances provoke fear, awe, or even fainting. It’s as if Mary’s sorrow narrows her world so completely that even heaven breaking in doesn’t register as remarkable.

Mary cannot see past her grief. She cannot see past the reality she knows. 

Jesus has died and on top of it, someone has taken him. 

She assumes that “they” have done something, and not that God is doing something. 

And after all the horrible things she has witnessed in the last week, who could blame her for assuming the worst.  

She then turns to see a gardener. And has the same conversation all over again. He asks, “Why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?”, And Mary says, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” She is sure that someone moved the body and her only hope is that this gardener might be able to tell her where to go next. 

Because after all, the disciples, who she called for help, have gone home. She is consumed by sorrow. In her grief, all she can think about is what has happened, and what they have done. She cannot see that she is standing on holy ground in front of the living God. 

Then he calls her name. God calls her name. Mary.

The gardener is the creator of the world; the good shepherd who calls the sheep by name; Her favorite Rabbi, and when he calls her name, she recognizes him. 

I like to think she recognizes the love in his voice. Jesus.

He tells her not to hold onto him. 

Maybe what he means is not to hold onto the past reality but to live in this new life. 

The story is still unfolding. This is not the end. 

He calls her by name to announce to the disciples—and by extension all who would believe, even us, —an unimaginable future. This good news is only the beginning of an ongoing revelation of what resurrection might mean, resurrection is a commissioning. 

Resurrection is sending Mary (and all believers) into the world to say that death is not the last word. Death seemed final, but it wasn’t. Resurrection felt like a conclusion too; but it isn’t, it is the on-going work of the reign of God that is continuing to unfold in our lives. 

Mary is sent.

She becomes the first witness of resurrection.

The first preacher of Easter.

She goes to tell the others:

An unexpected ending is now a beginning—

a new revelation in the on-going work God has been doing in creation. 

Isaiah’s vision and Easter morning meet here: A world being remade. A creation being restored. A future breaking into the present.

And we are part of it.

We are sent—like Mary—to live resurrection lives.

Because resurrection is not just something we believe. It is something we live.

Like Mary, the disciples, and all believers, we are invited to participate in this earth changing mission. 

We are called to work for the end of war and all forms of cruelty. 

We are charged to demand justice and healing, helping the poor and oppressed. 

We are sent to share the wisdom we have received from God about how this world could be with our neighbors. 

We do all these things in the way Jesus would do them. 

And I hope that when we do, our neighbors will hear          his love              in our voice. 

Amen.

Benediction:

Go now as people of the resurrection.

Do not remain at the tomb,

do not cling to what has been,

but step into the new life God is unfolding even now.

Go as those who have heard your name spoken in love.

Go as those sent, like Mary, to share good news:

That death is not the last word.

That hope is alive.

That God is still at work in this world.

So seek peace where there is violence.

Bring justice where there is brokenness.

Offer love where there is grief.

And as you go,

may the risen Christ walk beside you,

may the Spirit give you courage,

and may God’s new creation take root in you and grow through you—

until all things are made new.                Amen.