I’m reading to you from the Gospel of Matthew. Listen for the Word of the Lord to you this day.
After the [first] sabbath [following Jesus’s crucifixion], as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.” (Matthew 28:1-6)
The forces of evil had crucified him, sealed his battered and broken body in a tomb, and moved ahead with the naïve bravado of shallow victory – emboldened in foolish belief that they’d seen the last of Jesus. But God Almighty broke through their strongest guard and mightiest defenses with the power of heaven’s love: Nothing would stymie the new life that came to dwell among us and overcome death for ever and ever.
So profoundly groundbreaking is that Good News that its force is measured in seismic proportions. Like an earthquake, which with violent upheaval permanently reshapes the lay of the land. It is the powerful voice of God in Christ Jesus unleashing the cleansing fire of refinement upon evil and its minions. Upon his enemies, the Lord renders bracing judgment –
You foolish men, you thought an official seal and an armed guard would put an end to your troubles once and for all. You feared him when he gathered a crowd, so you gathered your thugs to call for his death. You trusted human law and judgment, which set the power of Caesar against my desires for my Creation.
I could have destroyed Creation in a moment, plunging the final dagger deep into the broken heart of sin and rebellion – and all those many sordid behaviors that have grieved me since Adam and Eve first thought more highly of themselves than they ought. But my intense love not only spared you fatal consequence, but in my son Jesus, I submitted the full breadth of my holiness and divinity to human constraint, suffering, and death for the sake of your salvation.
That, my friends, is the joy of Jesus’s resurrection. Sure, our Eastertime attentions understandably turn first to the cosmically vast mysteries of faith: “the forgiveness of sins, resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.” But perhaps we give too little year-round attention to the Lord’s loving goodness in our daily living: In springtime’s annual renewal of the good earth; in recovery from illness and acceptance of the cure; in forgiveness and reconciliation after estrangement; in all new hopes and fresh starts that manifest the restoring power of God’s love.
Let us then make space for a spirit of thankfulness to permeate our hearts and minds – while also becoming better aware of our own sinfulness and ingratitude. For indeed, we live, move, and have our being in the healing grace of abundant mercy. The ground is shifting – like an earthquake, and God ever-so dearly wants to roll away the stones from our hearts.
Let us join our voices together in prayer:
We give thanks, blessed Jesus, for your infinite power that comes so gently to meet all our needs – for every showing of that strength in the natural world and in human lives; for the ways in which people can be and are changed by a single touch of heaven’s love.
We confess thinking foolishly that our problems are too great, that our sins too bad for any solution. Help us to know and feel the infinite strength that is there to meet our weaknesses. By your Holy Spirit, teach us not to be afraid to ask for healthy measures of your strength, as we face the fears, anxieties, and growing edges of our lives as well as the terrifying challenges of the world where we feel helpless.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Let us bless the Lord. Thanks be to God.
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I’m reading to you from the Gospel of Luke. Continue listening for the Word of the Lord.
On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them,
“Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.”
Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But their words seemed like an idle tale, and the men did not believe the women. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb. Stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves. Then he went home, amazed at what had happened. (Luke 24:1-12)
With immense sorrow, his friends laid in the tomb a body broken with suffering and clinically dead. But that first Easter morning brought new realization that God’s story really wasn’t over. The stone that had shuttered their hope had rolled away to reveal a hope far-greater than they’d ever known or imagined.
That morning, conventional wisdom arose from a corpse. Some applauded the riddance of a troublemaker; others mourned a cruel, incalculable, and seemingly incurable loss. With eyes made bloodshot in endless weeping, his friends looked again and again at a place of sorrow – fully unaware that the end was just the beginning.
The sight of an empty tomb – the sight of nothing where something should have been – is actually the vision of God’s new reality. And the passing of 2,000-or-so years has done precious little to shed light upon the puzzling mystery of it all: that in Christ emptiness brims with hope. The comfort of resurrection brings not the coziness of the familiar but rather the assurance of something totally new and different.
Thus by faith we live among the living not the dead; we linger not in vanished years of the past nor rattle around among the dry bones of time. By the Holy Spirit we flush decay and corruption from our hearts and minds; we allow heaven’s light to pierce the darkness of our souls. By an empty tomb, we cherish assurance that, whenever it seems like nothing is left, indeed there is so much more to come.
Let us return to a place of prayer:
We give thanks, holy Jesus, for the unexpected joys of life; for the solution of problems that seem unsolvable; for the disappearance of fears and anxieties; for the renewal of hope that has been lost in despair; for the opening of new ways in our Father’s purposes for us.
Speaking honestly, we give up too easily. We fret that every setback is a disaster. We are anxious for a future we can foresee and understand. Help us to trust from day to day and find the way to new endeavor in each apparent failure.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Let us bless the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on the Second Sunday of Easter, April 12, 2026, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Commentary and reflection by Raymond Chapman informs the message.