The Adventurous Lectionary – Easter Sunday – April 5, 2026.
Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
Colossians 3:1-4
John 20:1-18
Matthew 28:1-10
“Christ is Risen! Shout Hosanna!” Words that seem strange and out of character in our world of chaos, division, and uncertainty. Words that were just as amazing and anomalous that first Easter Sunday. In the dark night, new life emerges. The stone is rolled away. And the violence of Herod and power hungry religious and political leaders then and now is trumped by the foolishness of God in God’s message of resurrection to women in a patriarchal society, a ragtag group of frightened followers, and an equally ambivalent congregation today.
The Easter stories overwhelm the linear, rational mind, and the mind waiting for a specified outcome in political or personal life. They confound our fears and sense of loss and hold out hope in the most desperate times. A risen Jesus, a revived and energized corpse, angelic visitors, and death emerging long after the cessation of brain activity – how can such things be? How can it be when bombs drop, immigrants are traumatized, fellow Christians embrace prevarication and domination and throw Jesus under the bus in favor of an aging and irascible political leader. No wonder we find it easier to celebrate the day with chocolates, Easter eggs, new clothes, and hats, and a lavish supper. These all come from the realm of predictability, while Easter turns everything upside down. But now everything is upside down, and we need a real not faux resurrection.
As a preacher, there are times I wonder what I can possibly preach on Easter. But, perhaps, this year, preaching Easter in a time of foolhardy and feckless leadership, rising energy costs, purposeless war, abandonment of environmental policy, and privileging of mean-spiritedness even among Christians will seem authentic and inspiring. A literal Easter story is far too supernatural and surprisingly too wooden, even in a quantum universe. Conversely, the minimalist approach by the Jesus Seminar and some New Testament scholars is far too one-dimensional. No one risks their lives, as the first followers of Jesus did, over a fabricated story and a localized rotting corpse.
Easter surely participates in the interplay of kataphatic and apophatic spirituality: we have to shout it from the rooftops, “Christ the Lord is Risen today!” even as we equally confess that the stories are shrouded in mystery, and that whatever radical event occurred is far beyond our comprehension. Still, amid all the mystery and incomprehensibility, we need a resurrection, a testimony to life in the face of death! In a time of No Kings, we need a True Ruler, who heals the world with love and embraces all people with the message of new life.
A companion of the Risen Jesus, Peter claims the resurrection is a universal reality, transforming history backward and forward. (Acts 10:34-43) Speaking to the Gentiles, outsiders gathered in Cornelius’ home, Peter asserts that all humankind shares in the power of the Risen Christ; its impact transcends all boundaries and citizenship status. Peter preaches about what he has seen and heard but surely can’t fully grasp: Jesus is appointed and anointed and resurrected. The flesh and blood Jew Paul came to know as Savior has special place in God’s global vision of salvation. His resurrection reflects the same reality present in his healing and teaching; his liberation of the oppressed is magnified through resurrection, for with resurrection power he liberates all creation. All who believe in Christ’s mission receive resurrection spirit: the forgiveness of sin and power from heaven. Opening to the risen Christ awakens us to new possibilities; to new life; and to transformation where death was all around. Where will we find resurrection and new life in our world of intentional racism, pillage and death, environmental destruction, division, much of it perpetrated by our nation’s leaders?
Psalm 118 proclaims that this is the day that God has made – the day of new life and salvation – and we shall rejoice and be glad in it. Resurrection leads to celebration and joy. God’s love is faithful and enduring and can bring new life out of death-filled situations. “This is the day that God has made and I will rejoice and be glad in it” is my mantra as I awaken each day: I affirm the amazing gift that I woke up and in the hours that lie ahead, and then ask “how will I embody new life? How will I be a faithful pastor, parent, grandparent, and friend? How will I be a hope giver as I face my own fears? How will I resist the powers and principalities in the spirit of prophetic healing?”
Colossians 3 describes the life-transforming impact of the Risen Christ. All who believe are transformed. Resurrection opens us to new dimensions of life and challenges us to live as resurrection people; being both heavenly minded and earthly good. We share in God’s glory, in resurrection glory; and we are living in Christ’s resurrection reality. Resurrection is a present reality, stretching into the infinite future. No King can stifle God’s resurrection power. God’s resurrection truth goes marching on! Glory Hallelujah!
The Gospel of John depicts two resurrection moments: the first describes the reality of the empty tomb. The disciples view the empty tomb and go home without any fanfare. The quiet perplexity of the disciples raises the questions: What did they think was going on when they encountered the empty tomb? Did they understand its emptiness to be a sign of resurrection? What did they do when they returned home? Did they notice Mary of Magdala crying in the garden as they returned home?
The second resurrection moment: Mary of Magdala’s encounter with Jesus is truly intimate and personal. She doesn’t know that Jesus is risen; all she knows his that the tomb is empty and his body gone. She fears, we might suspect, that his body has been hidden by his persecutors. Frantic, she asks the gardener. But, then Jesus speaks to her, calling her by name, and she knows it is Jesus. She tries to hold onto him, but Jesus doesn’t want her to hold onto him. He is not rejecting her but opening her to new possibilities for understanding his post-resurrection mission. Still, Jesus’ response leaves us with questions: Is his body in process, becoming some form of heightened energy? Or, does he want her to see him as non-local as well as local, no longer bound by time, place, or persona? However we understand this encounter, it points to a resurrection power than embraces everyone, not just a select few. We celebrate Easter to bring resurrection love to the whole world, and to proclaim that God is God and not the potentates and powerful, and that God calls us to practice resurrection, new life, in the face of every form of death.
Matthew’s Gospel presents an alternative story. A group of women, along with Mary of Magdala come to the tomb and find it to be empty. Instead, they encounter a divine messenger who commissions them as Gospel messengers. On the way to deliver their improbable and world-shattering news, they encounter the risen Jesus who gives them a similar commission, “Don’t be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, there they will see me.”
That is Jesus’ message to us. Don’t be afraid. Let the joy of resurrection be your armor of light, empowering you to practice resurrection by following Jesus’ path of healing, inclusion, hospitality, and love in contrast to the values of the world. To be messengers of new life wherever we are.
Both Gospels place women front and center in sharing the good news of resurrection. They see the transformed Jesus, whereas the disciples only see hints of resurrection. They receive the first “great commission.” They believe the impossible, not because of the testimony of others, but as a result of their own experience. Perhaps that is our situation living in a time of state sponsored violence and racism at home and abroad as well: the resurrection stories drive us beyond the rational – they give us images of hope, realistic hope in a death-filled world, such that the only proof of resurrection must be experiential – our own experience of surprising new life when death appeared to be victorious.
A rabbi friend often quoted Martin Buber as saying, “reality is not always understandable, but it is embraceable.” It is a fool’s quest – and an act of hubris – to “understand” the resurrection; but we can “embrace” it experientially and imaginatively, opening to dimensions undreamed of in God’s surprising and ever-creative providence. It is also fool’s quest to control resurrection or describe it in narrow categories. We need a resurrection, and only a surprising, non-linear, not fully understandable and hope-giving revelation, can save us. Only by listening for the Risen Jesus’ voice in the Garden of our lives and as we face the stones in our way will we discover Jesus on every road we travel and in every person we meet.
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Bruce Epperly is Theologian in Residence at Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ, Bethesda, MD and a professor in theology and spirituality at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington DC. He is the author of over ninety books, including his Christological trilogy Jesus: Mystic, Healer, and Prophet; Whitehead and Jesus: An Adventure in Spiritual Transformation; and Messy Incarnation: Meditations in Christology in Process and also Creation Sings: Forty Days of Spiritual Wisdom from the Non-Human World; and Homegrown Mystics: Restoring Our Nation with the Healing Wisdom of America’s Visionaries. He is married to Rev. Kate Epperly, D.Min. and lives in Potomac, Maryland.
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