April 05, 2026
• Rev. Mindie Moore
Easter 2026
What Does Resurrection Mean To You?
Luke 24: 1-11
Intro Self and St. Luke’s Midtown
· This is our fourth Easter as a community!
· We’re a place where EVERYONE is not only welcome, but honored and affirmed. We hope that whoever you are and whatever your story looks like, you know and feel that today. We’re so glad you’re here.
Pray
Several years ago, I invited someone to church for Easter. They looked at me with a kind but amused expression, and let me know as gently as they could that while they would definitely be interested in coming to my church sometime for Christmas, Easter was sort of a no go for them. In their words, they weren’t particularly interested in a weird church celebration for “Zombie Jesus.”
And, look, I appreciated the honesty! Even though it did take me by surprise. I really had to unpack what they had shared with me, because even with all the faith deconstruction I’ve done throughout my life, even having looked at all of these stories through an academic lens at seminary...I’m not sure I had ever thought of Easter quite like that before!
But I get it. Easter is...kind of an odd day. I remember Matt and I were talking once and he really affirmed what this person was sharing with me—it's a lot easier to invite someone to church on Christmas than Easter. Because at Christmas, you're talking about a baby. And we understand babies, many of us feel at least neutral or positive towards babies. But on Easter...we’re talking about a dead person come back to life. Normally this is a storyline accompanied by a lot of scary stuff! But we’re doing it with flowers and celebration and our nice church clothes.
So it begs the question: What do we do with Easter, and the resurrection specifically? What do we do with a story that defies most of our logic and comfort and at the same time is an essential part of The Church? If a major part of our collective faith story is based on something that can be really hard to understand or believe...how do we let THIS story (SLIDE) shape our faith beyond just one Sunday a year and make a real impact on how we live our lives?
Hold that question with you as we look at this story together today.
Now, all four Gospels have their own account of the resurrection, each with its own unique angle and flavor. The Gospel we’re reading from this year is from Luke, and I think it’s especially interesting to have a story about a dead man come back to life coming from Luke...because Luke was a doctor. So he has a pretty great handle on what is and is not possible when it comes to the physical realities of the world. I would guess that BEFORE he encountered Jesus, if you’d asked Luke if someone could come back from being dead, he would have been a pretty decisive “no.” That wasn’t how things worked—dead things stayed dead, especially when they had been dead a couple of days.
But in this story, here we are, a couple of days after Jesus’ death...and we’re encountering what SHOULD be impossible. A group of women who were close to Jesus have come to this tomb where Jesus’ body was taken so that they can give him proper preparations for burial. They had to wait because of when Jesus died. His death occurred too close to the Sabbath, and these women wanted to honor their religious practices of doing no work ON the Sabbath. I imagine that day between was pretty terrible for them. Waiting, grieving, imagining what would come next in their lives without their dear friend.
When they finally arrive to the tomb, they're not in any kind of hurry to get there. After all, they know where this story is going.
So you can imagine how confusing and scary it would be for them to show up and find no body waiting there to be prepared. Luke says, “they were perplexed by this,” which feels exactly like what someone who has seen a lot of hard things in his life and is a “calming presence” would say.
But they are perplexed or whatever, and as they’re sorting through what they’re seeing and what it could mean, these men show up out of nowhere...and they’re apparently bright and “gleaming” whatever that means.
And now the women have moved from being perplexed to just being afraid. They don’t have any kind of paradigm to process what's happening and it’s understandably overwhelming. And as they try and sort out all this confusing, frightening stuff that’s happening so very fast, the men (who you and I know are heavenly messengers) ask them a question that ONLY appears in Luke’s account of these events. They ask them (SLIDE): “Why are you looking for the living among the dead?”
What a strange question. Is that what they're doing? I didn’t really think so when I read this. It seems obvious that they’re looking for a dead person! It’s why they’ve got their burial preparations in hand, it's why they were able to wait a day before showing up. They seem pretty clear on what they expect to find in this place where dead things lie.
Maybe this question is actually meant to reframe why these women understand that they’re here and what they’re supposed to be looking for. Maybe what the heavenly messenger is implying is that they SHOULD be looking for life, even if death is the most obvious assumption. I don’t necessarily think these women are being critiqued here—after all, it’s not like this is something that happens regularly! But I think this question is more of an invitation, and maybe even a challenge for them.
Because the way these women are showing up...it’s good and faithful and right...AND. It’s also incredibly limited.
Limited by what they already know.
Limited by what should be true.
Limited by what they understand to be possible.
Limited by their expectations.
I think we often get limited by these kinds of things too, and that can make it really difficult to spot resurrection in our midst. I think it’s actually SO much easier to be on the lookout for the metaphorical “dead” than the “living.” I have NO problem seeing the worst possible outcome. It takes NO time at all for me to start to spiral into despair. It doesn’t take a lot of convincing for me to believe someone is up to no good or that all the broken things that exist in our world is just the way that it’s going to be.
It’s not hard to find the dead.
But to find the living...that might take a pretty radical shift in our perspective. And it might mean a radical shift in our faith.
We see this in the way the women respond to their encounter with resurrection. They don’t just WITNESS resurrection, but they LIVE differently because of what they’ve witnessed. After they talk to the angels, they get on the move. They have to go tell the others.
And when we read this NOW, I’m not sure we understand just how much of a risk they were taking in letting themselves be the messengers of this absurd information. I’m not sure we fully understand how foolish these women would have seemed as they told their friends that Jesus was not dead, but was in fact ALIVE.
Did you catch what it said at the very end of our Scripture reading? How Luke tells us the disciples react to what the women share? It says: (SLIDE)
But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.
Essentially what this is saying that they just thought these ladies were being silly gossips. That they were overreacting to the situation at hand, because you know how women do that.
And if you felt like I just majorly devalued them and their experience, that was on purpose. Because THAT was how women and their word would have been viewed at that time. Women were SO discounted during Jesus’ day that if there was a legal case that was based on the testimony of women...it would have been THROWN OUT because it would have been deemed to be unreliable!
So can you imagine being one of these women, just barely having processed the impossibility of your friend coming back to life after you watched him die on a cross, and being BRAVE enough to go tell a group of men who would have been culturally predispositioned to not believe what you’re about to tell them simply because you’re who you are? Can you imagine being SO moved by what you’ve witnessed that you don’t care. To believe that it’s worth the potential ridicule. That it’s worth the risk of what could happen if they don’t believe you. That it’s worth whatever comes your way because this news is too good, too life-changing, to not be the story you’re telling.
THAT is the kind of power of that resurrection can have in our lives.
When we believe in resurrection, when we see what God can do, there’s this urgency to live like we believe it. Resurrection doesn’t just change the logical order of things, but it changes US at our core. And when we witness God’s hope and life happening around us, we can act from that reality and let that hope be the thing that holds us steady even when everything else is a swirling mess. Resurrection keeps us going even when it feels like we should give up. Resurrection gives us a reason to hope even when logic says we shouldn’t.
Sharon MacMahon recently published an article called “The Case for Hope in an Exhausted America.” In it she talks about how hope is often a fairly improbable and highly participatory endeavor. I’ll put a link to it in our Facebook group if you want to read the whole thing. But she tells a few different stories of Americans who have chosen to act in and for hope, even when logic would have said that the story they were in would have a very different ending. Listen to what she says (SLIDE):
"In every one of these moments, the story looked like it was already written. It was not. None of these people acted because they were confident they would win. They acted because they understood that the ending was not yet decided — and they refused to let someone else write it for them."
Here’s what is beautiful in a story shaped by resurrection hope...despite what all the hopelessness of the world might have to say about the state of the world and how we should feel with so many difficult things going on around us...resurrection hope reminds us that the ending of THIS story actually HAS been decided! And it’s been decided for good, good things.
And we get to decide how we’re going to live BECAUSE of that good ending. Because of resurrection, our hope has the potential be off the charts! Not because the world is easy or life isn’t full of heartbreak, but because we are living in a story where hope is where we will end up. Oppression or pain or darkness or even death don’t get to have the last word.
When I think about the power of resurrection, I think about the fact that thousands of years ago, the resurrection of Jesus defied logic and systems and power and death to say that God was capable of more good than anyone could have ever imagined. And I really believe that God is still creating resurrection moments today. And that if we look hard enough, we WILL find them.
We had family over last weekend for an early Easter celebration, and we had an egg hunt for the kids. And as I was hiding the eggs, I ventured over to the side of our yard. The side that I have to admit, gets very neglected by me and my gardening. The side that unfortunately for our very sweet neighbors, they have to look at and probably cringe every time they come out of their house.
There are three peony bushes on this side of the house, and they’ve all started growing back up again as we’ve tiptoed into spring. And what I saw on the side of my house, both made me say, “sorry neighbors” and go, “wow...this is a great picture of resurrection.” This is what one of my peony bushes looks like:
(SLIDE)
I’ve done NOTHING to help this bush thrive. I did not properly clean it up last year, and now this plant is living in the adverse conditions of all of my gardening shortcomings. But it’s alive. It’s coming back. And it’s this simple thing that reminds me of what is possible.
And if I can look at my wider world with that lens of possibility, with the truth of what resurrection can do, I can see God’s hope all over the place. And it’s not a naive, cheap kind of hope. Because in my work, I see a lot of the hardest, saddest things in people’s lives. AND. I also see a lot of the most beautiful, improbable, hopeful things...usually those things exist side by side, kind of like this dead peony bush and the new shoots coming out.
I’ve seen families and relationships that I was certain could not be healed find ways to deal with trauma and find a new and better way forward.
I’ve seen people who had been essentially kicked out of church communities because of their identity or beliefs find their place again and be reminded of the truth of God’s love.
I’ve seen the bill that’s too big find a way to get paid, I’ve seen the job offer come through after months of waiting, I’ve seen the thing work out that you could write off as just coincidence or random luck but that has God’s work written all over it.
I’ve seen bodies be healed.
I’ve seen prayers be answered.
I’ve seen people be there for each other when nothing miraculous happened, in fact when the worst outcome has happened, and I’ve watched that support and community become the miracle in itself.
It might seem foolish to believe in resurrection—either the resurrection of Jesus so long ago or all these everyday resurrections that God is up to right now. But this is how I hold on to hope. This is how my faith carries me through a world that feels chaotic and full of heartbreak. And maybe it IS kind of foolish to look for resurrection when life is hard...but if we don’t look...how will we ever find it?
You might be in a season of life where resurrection feels like the most obvious thing. Or you might be in a season where it seems absurd and impossible. Whether you’re skeptical or eager, I’ll just ask you again (SLIDE):
What does resurrection mean for you?
And how might resurrection hope make its way into your world?
Let’s pray.