April 5, 2026

Sermon Transcript

Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb.  The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.  He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in.  (John 20:4-5) 

For many years now, on the day before Easter, Grace Church has hosted an event called “the Easter Eve Walk.”  The purpose of the Easter Eve Walk is to immerse children and their families into the pivotal moments of Holy Week, and even walk with Jesus through the days that bring us out of death into life.  We begin at mid-morning in Tuttle Hall with crafts, games, cupcakes, and candy – which Biblical scholars unanimously agree is not how Jesus kicked off Holy Week.  But we do the best that we can.  When a critical mass of children has arrived, and everyone is sufficiently revved up and ready to go, we move quickly to the heart of the experience.

In the chantry chapel we meet an actor Jesus, and celebrate the high hopes and expectations of Palm Sunday, waving leafy branches and shouting Hosanna.  We move through the aisles of the church to the high altar, where we reenact the Passover meal, complete with the foot washing, tasty matza bread, and grape juice.  We walk on to another station for the arrest of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Finally, Jesus hoists a large, rough wooden cross on his shoulders, and leads us to the Honor Room door.  Behind the door, the Honor Room has been remade into the tomb of Jesus.  The windows are blacked out.  Eerie music and the sounds of thunder emanate from the darkness where Jesus goes, and where we are to follow.

One year, two young boys, about eight or nine-years old, had behaved for the entire morning in ways that were wonderfully impish and age-appropriately awful.  They had used their palm branches to conduct sword fights and tickle the necks of people in front of them.  They had flung the matza crackers like frisbees, and launched mini chocolate eggs into crowds of unsuspecting Passover pilgrims.  They were full of the mischief and bravado that said, “I’m too old for this, but let’s have some fun anyway.”  Then they came to the tomb.  They were among the last to arrive, and I was waiting at the door to close it.  They looked inside, saw the darkness, heard the eerie music, felt the thunder, and suddenly the youthful bluster vanished.  One little tough guy said to another, “Are you going in there?”  The other replied, “I’m not going in there.”

I can imagine Mary Magdalene, and the unnamed “other disciple” of Jesus having a similar exchange of words on the first Easter Day.  Are you going in there?  I’m not going in there.  For Mary, it was her second trip to the tomb already that day.  Earlier in the morning, while it was still dark, she had come to the burial place of Jesus.  No doubt, she was there to grieve the loss of the one whom they thought was the Messiah.  Indeed, Jesus had started a movement that was supposed to usher in God’s new age of perfect peace and prosperity.  But only the last Friday, Jesus had been arrested, tried as an insurrectionist, executed on a cross, and buried in a nearby tomb.  When Mary arrived the first time, and saw that the great stone sealing the tomb had been rolled away, she jumped to the conclusion that the body of Jesus had been stolen.  She ran to get the others, and the footrace back to the tomb ensued.

The unnamed disciple arrived first.  He looked inside the tomb, but no way was he going in there.  Next came Peter who, with all his impulsive swagger, barged right in, only to find nothing but linen wrappings.  Mary came along soon after, and though John doesn’t record any conversation with the other disciple, I can imagine it.  “Are you going in there?”  “I’m not going in there!”  Inside was not only a place of death, now it was also a crime scene.  If the Roman guards came by and found them inside, they’d all be in deep trouble.  They’d have to explain what had happened to the body of Jesus.  The truth is, they didn’t know.  They couldn’t have known.  Not in a million years could they have imagined what had happened.  The other disciple finally followed Peter for a look inside the tomb.  Once there, John reports that he believed.  Believed what?  Most likely, only Mary’s report that Jesus’ body was missing.  He “believed, but as yet did not understand.”  Oddly, Peter and the other disciple then just left the scene, leaving Mary weeping outside the tomb.

Mary Magdalene, weeping outside the tomb, is emblematic of our age.  She was not happy.  Perhaps you’ve heard of something called The World Happiness Report.  For many years now, the World Happiness Report has conducted extensive interviews and issued its findings on which countries are happy, and which ones are not.  How do you think we fared?  Here you are on a glorious Easter Day, and you are saying to yourself: “I feel fine.  I think I’ll go for a walk.  I feel happy.”  Well, I’m here to tell you that the World Happiness Report says you’re not.  Since 2012, studies of Americans have revealed significantly less happiness than the same studies did in prior years, especially among adolescents and young adults.  If you don’t believe me, they have all sorts of charts, bar graphs, and squiggly lines to prove it, generally pointing in a downward direction.  So what’s it going to take to make you happy?

Let’s turn to social media, because clearly, true joys are to be found by staring at your phone all day.  Let’s ask the wildly popular streamer Braden Peters, otherwise known by his online persona, Clavicular.  (May we just pause here for a moment to acknowledge that never, in a million years, would you have guessed that this guy’s name would appear in the Easter sermon?  But here we go.)  Clavicular is a proponent of a pop culture trend called Looksmaxxing, which attempts to identify the proportions of male physical attractiveness.  Once you know what these measurements are, and how your features stack up against them, your goal then is to maximize your looks and strive toward the outward ideal.  If doing so involves injections, implants, and surgery, so be it.  It’s a small price to pay for salvation.  As for the tomb, Clavicular is not going in there.  Salvation is not to be found in there.  Even to peer into the tomb would be to understand that the grass withers, the flower fades, the hairline recedes, the flesh sags.  Does looksmaxxing lead to happiness?  Is Clavicular himself happy?  He may feel happy, but happy people tend not to behave in the inappropriately awful ways that he does.  Recently he tried to run over someone with his car.  Do you know what they are saying now about Clavicular?  His crime was vehicular.

How about Mary?  What’s it going to take to turn her sorrow into joy?  What’s it going to take to make her happy?  Mary is a study in contrasts: not happy out there, but not going in there.  To go inside would be to confront the overwhelming loss of everything she held dear.  Inside was the death of hope.  Jesus was dead.  The movement he started had been crushed overnight.  The darkness had overcome the light.  The darkness is like these stained-glass windows along the south side of Grace Church.  They have been dark for so long now that on many Sundays I don’t even notice anymore that they don’t shine.  For now, they are emblematic of our present darkness.  We’ve just grown used to it.  Likewise, Mary would just have to get used to the new and dark reality that descended upon her.

What Mary could not have known was that Jesus’ body hadn’t been stolen.  Rather, God had raised Jesus to a new kind of life.  John reports that Mary finally looked inside the tomb.  There she saw two angels.  Then she turned and met the risen Jesus, whom she mistook for a gardener.  (May we just pause here for a moment to acknowledge that never, in a million years, would Mary have guessed that the gardener was Jesus?)  It was only after Jesus spoke her name that she began to understand that the Lord had risen, indeed.  The Gospel writers – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – all tell the Easter story in different ways.  But the core of the early Christian message is consistent.  The tomb was empty, and Jesus appeared physically, actually, and objectively to many witnesses, who even ate and drank with him.  The ongoing Easter experience and proclamation changed everything.  The skeptics claim that the church invented the resurrection to put a good face on the loss of their leader.  But the skeptics have it backwards.  The church didn’t invent the resurrection.  The resurrection invented the church.  Without the resurrection, no Christian movement would have made it to Monday morning.  No church would have existed for us to attend today.  But here we are, and these windows someday soon will shine.

Such is the hope that St. Paul encouraged the Colossians to practice, when he wrote (3:1-4): Since you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.  It sounds like a plan: set your mind on Christ, and be revealed with him in glory.  Let us not, however, overlook four little words in St. Paul’s Easter letter: for you have died.  Four little words to bring us up short: for you have died. 

In order to be raised with Christ, we have to die.  In order to appear with him in glory, we have to die.  In order to share in his new kind of life, you have to lay down your old life, take up your cross, and follow him.  Are you going in there?  We can protest.  We can drag our heels and declare, I’m not going in there.  But all of us are going in there.  Clavicular and all the looksmaxxers are going in there, and they will leave their cell phones and their looks behind.  The two misbehaving boys are going in there.  All of us future dead people are going in there.  Nevertheless, we do not lose heart.

Wendell Berry is a celebrated American novelist and poet, who writes as if all of life on this side of the tomb can be a practice run for the Day of Resurrection.  In his poem, “Manifesto: the Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” he describes how first we can die to self:

                        So friends, every day, do something
                        that won’t compute.  Love the Lord. 
                        Love the world.  Work for nothing. 
                        Take all that you have and be poor. 
                        Love someone who does not deserve it. 

Then later on, Berry concludes the poem: Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction.  Practice resurrection.  Those two words beautifully summarize the Christian life: practice resurrection.

This brings me back to the Easter Eve Walk.  You see, what we are doing with the children is practicing resurrection.  Like little foxes who make more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction, we arrive at the door of the tomb to practice resurrection.  In we go, and the door closes behind us.  It is dark and, I must confess, frightening.  But soon we realize that we who have died are not in there alone.  Remember, our life is hidden with Christ in God.  Jesus appears with a lighted candle, and goes from person to person, laying his hands on our heads, saying, “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.”  Then the door opposite the one we entered opens.  You see, Jesus does not lead us back from death.  Jesus leads us through death, and out the other side.  Inside the tomb, our eyes have grown used to the darkness.  So when the gate opens to everlasting life (otherwise known as Huntington Close), the light is blinding.  It takes our eyes a moment to adjust to the resurrection light of the new creation, where death shall be no more.

What will it be like to be revealed with Christ in glory?  What will we see?  Whom will we meet?  Nearly 1,800 years ago, one of the great early bishops of the Church, St. Cyprian of Carthage (died 258), anticipated the moment with these words:

A great throng awaits us there of those dear to us: parents and children, brothers and sisters.  A packed and numerous throng longs for us, of those already free from anxiety for their own salvation, who are still concerned for our salvation.  What joy they share with us when we come into their sight and embrace them!  What pleasure there is in the heavenly kingdom, with no fear of death, and what supreme happiness with the enjoyment of eternal life.

Today we practice resurrection.  Our song of triumph has begun even now, and will continue from this time forth in every direction.  Alleluia and Amen.

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