April 5, 2026 Easter Sunday, First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA
John 20:1-18 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. 2 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” 3 Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. 4 The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7 and the cloth that had been on Jesus’s head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed, 9 for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10 Then the disciples returned to their homes.
11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb, 12 and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. 13 They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” 14 When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her, “Do not touch me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ” 18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and she told them that he had said these things to her.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
There’s just no doubt about it. On Friday, Jesus died. He’d suffered a torturous death, wracked with pain, and his death was a blessing – insofar as it’s ever a blessing when someone you love dies – it was a blessing that he died so quickly. Some crucified victims lingered for days. But Jesus had died. And he’d been buried. True, it was in a borrowed tomb, but it was a tomb, and there was a great big rock, a boulder, rolled in front of the tomb’s entrance. Some of the stories even say there were guards making sure no one stole Jesus’ body. He was dead and buried.
On Sunday morning, the women came to anoint his body with spices – they’d been in a hurry to bury his body before the Sabbath began at sunset on Friday, so this was the first chance they’d had to do what was right. There’s different versions of what happened then – the stories weren’t written down for decades and so the details were a little fuzzy – but the central point is clear as a bell. In today’s version, when Mary gets to the tomb, Jesus’ body is gone. He is not there; someone appears to have stolen his body.
The astonishment, the fear of the disciples when they realize Jesus’ body is gone is the clearest testimony that they weren’t plotting a fake story. And when they first see Jesus, they all have pretty much the same reaction – they think he’s a ghost and they are terrified.
These days, people who hear the story for the first time also wonder if we’re not following a zombie God. That points us toward today’s big question – just what is the Jesus that Mary, and then the disciples, see? Is it all a con? Was he a ghost, a zombie? A real person???
We all know that people don’t come back from the dead. Modern medicine can bring people back from pretty close to dead, but if your brain is dead, or if you’ve lost all your blood, you’re dead in a really final way. Jesus was dead, so it’s not surprising that many people think there’s something fishy about this story.
It’s true that if you look at, listen to, this story from an absolutely factual, totally scientific way, our modern minds come up with more questions than answers. So, we’re not going there this morning. This is not a modern algebra problem with a “one right answer”. It is not an anatomy and physiology lesson. Jesus’ Resurrection was a miracle; miracles, by definition, are unexplainable. This is, instead, a story about love and how love conquers death.
Last week we talked about the way in which the Last Week’s events told us what was really important in Jesus’ ministry, that he wasn’t trying to overthrow an earthly authority, but rather to re-set our understanding of what really matters.
It can be argued that ghosts are spirits without bodies, and zombies are bodies without a spirit… Russell Moore suggests that we wander through this world as ghosts, unconnected with our neighbors, but at the same time, we feel like zombies, pushed this way and that by algorithms. We are unconnected with ourselves and unconnected with our communities. The Resurrection of Jesus re-connects us, body and soul.
Here’s another way to head in the same direction. There’s a video going around from former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in which he says Jesus didn’t come so that we’d be happy. It’s kinda shocking when you hear him say it – after all, happiness is a good thing, right? Who doesn’t want to be happy. But Williams says that happiness is all about personal indulgence, getting what we want whenever we want it, no matter how it affects anyone else. He draws a difference between the cheesiness of happiness and the solidity of joy.
He goes on to say, what God wants for us is joy – the deep joy that comes from building everything we want on a foundation of love – not just for our personal selves – but for all the world. Sometimes, often, that means putting aside what we want, for what others need, and in the end, creating something better for everyone. In other words, we bring together our souls and our bodies. No more zombie-like mindless consumption. No more ghost-like lack of connection.
When we focus on being happy, of fulfilling our personal desires, we put ourselves first, and it ends up destroying community. If my goal, if my desire, is to have a cookie, when there are 5 cookies for 6 people, then someone – not me – is going to go without. This is the hardest lesson for little kids to learn and some of us struggle with it all our lives. In fact most of us struggle with some variation of it all our lives. Greed is poison to community.
This is what Jesus’ Resurrection is really about. It’s about the death of death, the death of the greed that kills community. It’s about the life that carries good on beyond the individual deaths of people. It tells us that when we work for good, that good does not die with us, but continues, just that the good the founders of this church started in 1721 still carries on.
Greed is all about me and mine; love is all about we and us. Greed separates us, soul from body. Love brings us back together. Today we celebrate that Love came back from Death and we celebrate that for us, it is love that rules the world.
Death is dead today; Love reigns forever. Happy Easter!
Amen.
© 2026, Virginia H. Child
To Believe is to Care. . . To Care is to Do 