Sunday April 5, 2026 Easter

Do You see all these Things?

Happy Easter. This is the day everything changes.

On Friday we stood at the cross. We heard Jesus cry out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" We sat in the silence. The tomb was sealed. Saturday stretched on forever. But today we get to hear the answer.

Pastor Joel begins a new series called Risen. For the next four weeks we follow the risen Jesus as he appears to his followers. Each week focuses on a different gift the resurrection brings. We start today with hope.

He opened with a story about jury duty. When he got his summons, his mind raced over how to rework an entire week around this thing he didn't want to do. On Good Friday he talked about waiting for news. Waiting for the phone call. Waiting for the diagnosis. Jury duty felt like that. Waiting to find out if this thing was going to upend his whole week.

The Saturday before he was supposed to report, a text came: he didn't have to come until Wednesday. Partial win. Tuesday night, another text: the case settled. He didn't have to report at all. His next date was this past Monday.

No cancellation came.

So he went to the Grant County Courthouse in Lancaster, dressed in his clergy collar, one of the first to arrive. And because he was early, he got to witness something unexpected. Of the thirty-five people selected, it seemed like everyone knew at least one other person in the room. He was Juror Number Three. When the judge asked how many knew someone else on the panel, seventeen out of twenty raised their hands. Neighbors. Coworkers. Kids who hang out together. The district attorney and defense attorney both commented how unusual it was. In a courthouse, in a jury box, connection was everywhere.

He went expecting the worst. The news was good. He got released because of his job. But because he was there in that moment, he got to see something he wouldn't have seen otherwise.

Mary Magdalene went to a tomb expecting the worst. It was early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark. She went to grieve, to finish the burial rites that the Sabbath had interrupted. She went because that was all she had left to do.

When she got there, the stone had been rolled away.

Her first thought was not resurrection but theft. Someone had taken the body. The grief she carried to that garden was about to get heavier. She had lost Jesus once on Friday. Now she had lost even the place where he was laid.

She ran to Peter and John. They raced to the tomb. John got there first but stopped at the entrance. Peter barged right in. They saw the linen wrappings lying there. The cloth that had been on Jesus' head was not scattered or torn but rolled up and placed by itself. This was not the scene of a robbery. Something else had happened here. John saw and believed. But they still did not understand.

Peter and John went home. Mary stayed.

She stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept she bent over to look inside. Two angels in white sat where the body had been. They asked her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She gave them the same answer she had given Peter and John. "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." Even in the presence of angels, Mary could not see past her grief.

Then she turned around.

Jesus was standing right there, but she did not recognize him. He asked her, "Why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?" Two questions. She was looking for a dead man, a body to anoint. She was looking in the wrong place for the wrong thing. She supposed him to be the gardener.

And then Jesus said her name. "Mary." One word. Everything changed. She turned and said, "Rabbouni!" Teacher. The Good Shepherd calls his sheep by name, and they know his voice. Mary had been looking for a corpse and found her risen Lord instead.

But Jesus did not let her linger there. "Do not hold on to me," he said. "Go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'"

Go. That is the word he gave her. Not stay. Not savor this moment. Go. Find the others. Tell them what you have seen. Hope is not meant to be kept. It is meant to be shared. Mary went to the garden expecting to find a body. She left with a message and a mission. The risen Jesus gave her both. He is still doing the same thing today.

He is risen. He is risen indeed.