Happy Easter! Today, we celebrate the greatest news in history: Jesus is alive! The tomb is empty! Death is defeated! Today’s sermon encourages us to look to both the cross and the empty tomb, reflecting on Easter’s intersection of grief and hope.
The year’s Scripture readings for Easter are Isaiah 65:17-25; Psalm 118:1, 17-24; and Luke 24:1-12. This sermon concludes this year’s Lent theme Everything [in] Between from A Sanctified Art. I also found helpful Will Willimon’s 2010 reflection, Now Can We Sing? in The Christian Century. Here’s the sermon podcast audio from Christ the King and the livestream from Living Hope.
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Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and Jesus Christ our risen Lord. Amen
After worship last Sunday, I went with Christin and a group of our Lighthouse youth to see a new movie called The King of Kings. It’s an animated story of the life of Jesus, framed through the author Charles Dickens telling it to his son.
It’s kind of an odd framing, but apparently Dickens wrote a book called The Life of Our Lord just for his kids, and he’d read it to them every Christmas. It wasn’t published until 64 years after Dickens died.
Anyway, if you’ve seen any movie about Jesus, this movie The King of Kings will feel familiar. But part of what stuck out to me was how good a job they did at making it child-friendly. It’s challenging to show Jesus dying on a cross in a way that’s serious and sad, but still PG rated.
As we gather this morning to celebrate the good news of Easter, as we sing alleluia and enjoy breakfast and hunt for Easter eggs, we can’t forget the cruelty of the cross, why it is Jesus is in a tomb in the first place.
Today’s theme is “Grief & Hope” and I want to invite you this morning to both look to the cross and to look to the empty tomb.
The cross represents evil, the very worst humanity can do. PG-rated cartoons aside, in reality Jesus had first been whipped nearly to death, his flesh shredded, before being paraded through the streets to the place of execution.
Crucifixion is a horrible way to die, almost unimaginably cruel, where the victim is stripped naked, then nailed to a wooden beam and hung in the air until death. It’s designed for humiliation, to make an example of rebels and criminals by killing them as painfully and publicly as possible.
When we look to the cross, we see a depth of brutality, of misery and suffering that’s hard to believe. And yet, looking around the world today, perhaps it’s not quite so hard to imagine.
I think many of us right now are carrying a weight of grief, sadness, loss, fear. We see the brokenness. There are genocides, people thrown in prison without trial, families ripped apart, lives lost to addictions and overdoses, jobs cut, disasters wiping out whole neighborhoods.
Some of you are grieving today because this is your first Easter without beloved family members at the table.
My heart has been breaking this week for friends in Minnesota whose three and a half month old son just died – I watched part of his funeral as I was writing this sermon. My heart is breaking for a hospital bombed in Gaza, for immigrant neighbors living in fear.
When we look to the cross, we see the violent realities of our world. We see Jesus arrested, unjustly condemned, executed. We see the grief of his disciples, the crushed hopes of people who thought he would be their salvation, thought he would set them free.
On the cross, we see the victory of death. And it’s no surprise, because we know the world is broken. It’s a familiar story, because we’ve all lived the reality of grief and loss.
And yet, the cross also represents love. Look to the cross to see how much God loves us. God’s heart was broken by the suffering of God’s children, and so God came into the world out of love, refusing to leave us alone in our brokenness and sin.
Jesus came to join us in our fallen world, to demonstrate God’s love, God’s care for God’s children, for this world.
Jin Kim writes, “When Jesus suffered violence on the cross without retaliating, he emptied violence of its power once and for all. Violence itself was crucified in Jesus.” Jesus took our sins and put them to death on the cross. And it cost him his life. The good shepherd laid down his life for the sheep. Look to the cross to see God’s love for you.
On that first Easter morning, the disciples knew the reality of the cross. The women went to the tomb expecting to find a body to tend. They came with spices to complete the burial ritual because they didn’t know what else to do; they weren’t coming because they hoped he was alive. Perhaps they came out of love, but not hope. But when they arrived, they found the tomb empty.
We look to the cross in grief at the brokenness and cruelty of our world. But we look to the empty tomb in hope.
Because Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Jesus’ resurrection changes the story. We’re used to the story where death wins, the story of loss, the story of so much of our world.
But on Easter morning, there’s a twist to the familiar story. The tomb is empty. The grave could not hold him! This time, the cross—the power of death—does not win! This time, death is not the end of the story!
Two thousand years later, we hold on to hope in the midst of grief, because you and I are Easter people. We are people who believe in resurrection, who believe God brings life out of death.
I’m not saying we shut our eyes and plug our ears and ignore all the brokenness and hurt around us. I’m saying that because of Easter, because of the empty tomb, we don’t have to pretend everything’s ok. We know that death is real. We know that evil has power.
And we know that life has more power. We don’t need to be afraid, because we know evil and fear and sin and death do not win. We can risk loving our neighbors, risk standing up against the powers of sin and death in this world, because we know the hope of Easter.
We have hope that the prophet Isaiah’s vision isn’t just wishful thinking, some pie-in-the-sky pipe dream.
It’s a vision of God’s kingdom, and the God who defeated death has the power to bring this vision into reality, to bring us into this kingdom, this new heaven and new earth where there will be no more sounds of weeping or cries of distress.
No more shall there be infants who live but a few days or months. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together. No more concentration camps, no more cancers, no more overdoses or heart attacks or hurricanes. God’s reign is justice and peace.
Can you imagine what that new reality feels like? That’s the hope of Easter. It’s not some idle tale, because the tomb is empty. God gives new life – to Jesus, to me, and to you!
Every time we gather for communion, we live in between grief and hope. Grief at Jesus dying, grief at his sacrifice for us, grief that our sin demanded he give us his body and blood, and hope because he was willing to.
Hope because his sacrifice sets us free. Hope because we are joined into his risen life. Hope because at Jesus’ table, there is a place for you. Look at the empty tomb. The dominion of death is ended.
We dare to sing of victory, to proclaim the battle is won, even as the world around us offers all sorts of evidence to the contrary. We dare to believe in new beginnings, in possibilities, in the goodness of life, because the tomb is empty. Jesus is on the loose. The grave can no longer hold us.
Like the women on that first Easter morning, we are charged to carry that testimony, to share the good news. As followers of the risen Jesus, we invite people to look to the cross. And to look to the empty tomb. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Let’s sing.