Easter Sunday Sermon -The Rev. Dr. Hillary Raining (April 5, 2026)

[00:00:40] Speaker A: The holy gospel of our savior jesus christ according to john. [00:00:45] Speaker B: Glory to you, lord christ. [00:00:51] Speaker A: 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. 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. 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. Then Simon Peter came following him and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there and the cloth that had been on Jesus head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple who reached the tomb first also went in and he saw and believed, for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes. But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 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. 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. When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 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. Jesus said to her, mary. She turned and said to him in Hebrew, rabboune, which means teacher. Jesus said to her, do not hold on to 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. 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. The Gospel of the Lord. [00:04:14] Speaker B: Hallelujah. Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia. Please be seated. Every year at Easter, I like to follow the Orthodox tradition of starting my sermon with an Easter joke. The Orthodox do this as a way to remember the greatest joke ever, the joke that Jesus played on death when he conquered it on Easter. So here's your Easter. Three guys die on Easter Sunday, and they meet St. Peter at the pearly gates. In honor of the day, St. Peter says, you must tell me what Easter is to get in. The first guy says, oh, that's easy. That's the holiday when we overeat, watch football, and thank the pilgrims for the turkey. Peter shakes his head. Not even close, man. That's Thanksgiving. Go to the back of the line. The second guy steps up. Easter is when we decorate a tree, exchange gifts, and celebrate the birth of a baby in a manger. Peter sighs, his patience being tested. No, no, that's Christmas. We'll talk again later. Back of the line. The third guy, though, he steps up confidently. I got this. Easter is the day Jesus was raised from the dead. He died for our sins and was buried in a tomb with a giant stone rolled in front of the entrance. St. Peter smiles. Excellent, he says. Go on. Well, okay, the guy continues. Every year, the stone is rolled away and Jesus walks out of the tomb. And if he sees his shadow, there are six more weeks of winter. Look, I never promised these to be good jokes, by the way. They're kind of groaners. A few weeks ago, I was listening to a sermon by Nadia Bowles Weber where she mentioned this part of the gospel that we have today, this scene with Mary Magdalene, and this moment when we hear Jesus, this newly resurrected Jesus, calling Mary's name. You can feel the power in that moment, can't you? Mary had come to the tomb that moment, expecting everything but resurrection. We can't blame her for that. For one, it's not particularly common. But for two, like she had just seen Jesus die with her own eyes. And not just any death. It was a gruesomely, long, agonizing death on the cross where she had stood and watched every second of it. He had been gone now for three days, the official litmus test for when the truly dead were dead. In the ancient worldview, this was heartbreaking for many people who loved and followed Jesus. But we have to imagine perhaps it was even more so. For Mary to know this, we have to think a little bit about Mary's story. We first meet Mary in the Gospels, and she is described to us having been delivered or healed of seven demons by Jesus, after which she becomes a devoted follower, supporting his ministry literally every step of the way. Now, here's what we need to understand. Being plagued by a demon or demons in the ancient world was not seen as a moral failing at that time. It was seen as Oppression really more than possession. Indeed, these demons were really more of a representation of extreme physical, mental or spiritual suffering rather than moral failings. And possessions in the Gospel are almost always linked to then the Christ, like liberation that typically follows when Jesus heals somebody, liberation from the powers of this world, like empire, injustice, and even death, so that people can experience the freedom of new and everlasting life found in Jesus, found in the kingdom of God. That Mary was healed of seven demons suggests that she lived a very troubled life, oppressed, likely isolated before encountering Jesus. And that she was healed of those seven demons represents a wholeness in the Bible. That's what that number means, a complete healing, a transformation, a resurrection of sorts for her life, a resurrection found through the pathway that Jesus showed her. So imagine Mary on this Easter morning. Imagine all that she had lost, who she had lost. In Nadia's sermon, she remarked that maybe part of Mary's grief that Easter morning was that to everybody else, she'd always been that crazy demon lady. Maybe she was avoided, mocked, ignored, ridiculed, but to Jesus, she was Mary, just Mary. And each time Jesus called her by name, it must have felt like a complete sentence to her. I imagine that over the years, in the company of Jesus, she had grown used to being seen as a whole person by him, and now he was gone. And maybe part of her grief was wondering whether anyone would see her that way again. But then, as she stood weeping at the tomb, Jesus says, mary. And she turns not at that sound of, hey, aren't you that crazy lady? No, she turns at the sound of her name, so spoken by the one who knew her completely throughout every iteration of her life. Maybe that is what resurrection feels like, just hearing your name spoken in love, calling you out of your tomb. This moment when Jesus speaks her name, she is called to new life, a new mission. She becomes the apostle to the apostles. She becomes the first preacher of the resurrection, if you will, giving the first Easter sermon to the other apostles to tell the others the good news, to call them with love out of their grief and despair, even when they never expected it. Every single day presents us with the opportunity to actually feel the resurrection that was first lived on that Easter morning and that calls us to new life, to not live as people who only know death, but the true mystery of life, to hear and speak the kind of love that transforms it, to speak life with the name Jesus. I'll admit, though, outside of Easter mornings, it can be all too easy to miss those resurrection moments. We miss them when we don't believe that any kind of resurrection is not only possible, but to be expected when we fail to speak the name of Jesus into our life. I remember distinctly feeling that disbelief. One fateful spring flight a little over 20 years ago, my senior year of college, I was on a trip to California to visit a seminary on the west coast, and I was in my own personal tomb, feeling like death warmed over. My parents were getting a divorce, my cat had died. I was going through a tumultuous discernment process, trying to keep my grades up, applying for grad school, working three jobs, and, oh, yeah, planning a wedding on top of everything. And now I found myself taking a red eye back home to make an early class with a pretty bad sinus infection to boot. I did not expect to see resurrection anywhere. Of course, I was seated in the worst seat on the plane. You know, the one in the last row, right up against the wall of the restrooms. So there's always a constant flow of people and flushing, and you can't incline your seat. Well, that was where I was, but I hoped I had a glimpse of hope because the seat next to me was empty and it looked like it might remain there because the doors were going to be closed any moment. And then he arrived. I saw him coming down the aisle, and I panicked, wondering if, by some cruel twist of fate, this man was actually going to be sitting next to me for the next seven to eight hours. He was clearly totally and sloppily drunk, staggering towards me, hitting people with his bag, yelling at his buddies, who I noticed had wisely gotten seats not sitting next to him. And I thought, no, no, all I want is to get a little relaxation and to rest. And here comes my own harbinger of doom. He ungracefully climbed over me, saying, hey, baby, your ride just got a whole lot more interesting. I'll say this for the man, he was a prophet. He accepted, though I never asked, that. He and his friends were just coming from a bachelor's party that had started in Las Vegas and had gone on for several days and state since then that he would never get married like his buddy because he had to get too many to know too many of the ladies first. And then he picked up my hand, well, yanked it towards him and said, hey, speaking of that, I don't see a ring on your finger. I told him that's because he was looking at my right hand and pointed him to my engagement ring on my left hand, not to be dissuaded. He swiftly rebounded and said, girl, by the Time this ride is over, that ring won't mean a thing. And of course, saving the best for last, he introduced himself to me, going by the moniker of Marcus the Carcass. I kid you not. Marcus the Carcass. Fitting, since this felt like my own personal hell. Well, at that point, I knew I wanted nothing more to do with the Carcass, who had just knocked my elbow off our shared armrest and began to look frantically for my earbuds. As I did, Carcass leaned over and whispered in my ear. And by whisper, I mean shout. You know, you're kind of cute, but you'd be a lot hotter if you would just put on some makeup. You know you're having a bad moment when somebody who goes by the Carcass is giving you beauty tips. It's not a good day, I said. I'm going to put my headphones on. Don't talk to me anymore. And I put my earbuds in, closed my eyes and started to pray. At that moment, he reached over and pulled my earphone out. Hey, what do you do? He said. What do I do? I'm studying to become a priest. That's what I do, I told him, hoping this would cut him off at the pass. Well, he froze. The grin dropped from his face. What? He said. Can I. Can I talk to you? I think I'm going to hell, he said. The sudden, sober look on his face convinced me that this man was in pain, that he was being serious, that he had suffered many deaths of many kinds in this life. Perhaps, like Mary, people had only known him as the Carcass, the loud man who didn't have his life together, the person who was messy, loud, crazy. Perhaps he had only known himself by all the vicious names that shame calls us. He began to tell a litany of reasons why he was sure he was going to hell. By the end. He was weeping, so sure of his own damnation. He said the weight of all that fear followed him wherever he went, that he wanted to die but was afraid of what the afterlife had in store for him. He was oppressed, and in a way, so was I, because I hadn't seen beyond the parts that troubled me, that bothered me. I hadn't been transformed either. We talked for a very long time about the nature of God and the afterlife of resurrection. We spoke of a God who knows us, who loves us, wants us to know Heaven, here, now and always. We spoke of the resurrection that Jesus did for us to conquer death. We spoke of the love of God. We spoke of Easter and when we left that plane, something had changed. And it was as though we had left a tomb. I never expected to learn much from Marcus, for that's who he really is. Not the carcass, but just Marcus, a child of God, called by the name of resurrected love. I never saw this resurrection coming. I didn't see him as anyone who was worth my time, just one more deathlike situation that would only lead to pain. Just like Mary when she came to the tomb that morning. But God had other plans. In the resurrection, God shows us that life will not be bound. Not by the narrow definitions we set, not by the narrow expectations we have, not even by the grave. His kingdom is everywhere. Because everything, all creation, can be brought to this glorious resurrection. Resurrection isn't just an ancient story or a distant hope. It's a promise that new life, that second chances are possible right now for each one of us. It means that you are not defined by your failures, your shame, or what others say about you. We aren't even bound by death anymore, thanks to Jesus. You are known by name. You are loved by Jesus, inviting us into something new. And that matters because it changes the way we see ourselves, our past, our future. It changes how we live. And so, friends, today, whether you find yourself at the empty tomb or on the last row of an airplane, or anywhere in between, resurrection is happening all around us. The risen Christ calls each of us by name. Not by our failures, not by what the world says about us, but by our true selves. Beloved, forgiven, whole, redeemed. As you leave this place, may you carry that hope into every encounter. May you hear your name spoken in love, and may you speak it to others. May we speak Jesus name to every person we meet. For Christ is risen. Not just then, but now and always. Alleluia. Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia.