Easter Sunday 2026

Transcript is automatically produced. Errors may be present.

Welcome friends. My name’s Alex. I am one of the pastors here. If you are visiting today, it’s great to have you here. If you’re someone that proudly puts your hand up and says, I like church on Easter and Christmas and you are here today, we’re really glad you chose to join us. If you watching online, we’re really glad that you chose to join us as we get to celebrate.

The idea of resurrection and what Jesus did, I’m gonna walk through that passage for a few minutes. But lemme just say this, if you have a kid in the room and they’re making noise, they will not bother me at all. I have four kids. I have to talk over them all the time. And so I’ll just keep going.

So feel at peace to just enjoy our story. Doesn’t start here. In this passage, I think our story starts a week before Jesus is late. His friend Lazarus has been sick for days before they even send Jesus a message, and when they do, Jesus doesn’t turn up. They wait and still know Jesus. When Jesus does finally turn up, his friend Lazarus has been dead for four days.

There’s a moment when Jesus finally arrives, a conversation takes place. The words that Martha, the sister of Lazarus uses are these. If you had been here, Jesus, my brother wouldn’t have died. But I think there’s a ton of undercurrent in that language. I think really there’s heartache, there’s hurt. It’s as if Martha is saying Jesus you’ve healed so many people.

There’s all these stories about you doing all these different things, and you’ve done that for people you’ve never met before. You’ve done that for people you don’t know. You’ve done that for people that if I don’t even seem like they’re particularly good people and when we needed you. When your friend is sick, when he needs healing, the guy that lent you his house, the guy that gave you meals, you’re not here.

Where are you? Jesus is late in our story. He’s late, and I think when Martha says all this, Jesus says What every religious leader would say in a moment of suffering, a moment of pain. What I’ve probably said to tons of people, which is one day. He will rise again. There’ll be a new story coming. So he’s gonna rise.

There’s gonna be a heaven thing, there’s gonna be a thing together. And Martha she says what I think a lot of us might say in that situation. She says, sure, one day that will happen. One day there’ll be a thing somewhere up in the sky perhaps and everyone will be there. Auntie Ethel will be there and Auntie Gladys will be there.

And I have a lot of aunts that were born in the 19th century, so they come with 19th century names and of course, yeah, you’ll be there as well. Jesus. And that’ll be great too. And what we describe is this big heavenly reunion up in the sky. I think it’s where a lot of our minds go in that moment. And then Jesus says something else.

Then Jesus says, I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live even though they die. And whoever lives by believing in me will never die. And then in the story, there’s like a beat and a pause, and then Jesus asks a question, do you believe? This, do you believe this? What an amazing question for a resurrection Sunday.

’cause my guess is in the room that even on Easter or perhaps especially on Easter, there’s all sorts of people that would say all sorts of different things. Maybe you’d say, yes, I’m currently celebrating my 75th or Tith Easter, and I believe this story with every single fiber in my body. And maybe you would say, I don’t believe this story.

I am here because it’s my family’s 75th Easter and they drag me along. They promise there’d be food. They’d promise you’d be short, not in height, in length of sermon. I’m much taller than I look. They promised you all these different things. And so you said if it stops everyone crying ’cause I’m not there, I’ll be there.

And maybe you say maybe you’re like, I’m figuring this out. I’m not sure I’m yet to be convinced. Maybe you’re like my friend Danny, who I had so many conversations with about this stuff, who would put up his hand and say, you know what? I would love to believe this stuff, but I just can’t get there.

For whatever reason, I can’t buy the things that you are. Talking about, if you’re here and you disagree, you have a bunch of doubts. I think you’re be in good company with Jesus first followers, his disciples, we call him, or apprentices, this crowd, his first followers, they didn’t believe him at the start.

They followed him way before they actually believed who he was, and at the end, they didn’t believe him either. At the end when they had this opportunity to stand up for him to show that they really believed the things he said in the end, they all just disappear. Jesus disciples didn’t believe him at the start, didn’t believe him at the cross, but for some reason they stuck around.

Maybe for the same reason. Some of you guys have stuck around. Why did they wait around for three years until Jesus convinced them he was who he said he was. I think like a lot of us, they might have said something like this. I’m not sure about the religious parts. I’m not sure about all the things that you’re talking about, but there’s something about Jesus that’s distinct.

I have that conversation with people more times than you’d believe. I have conversations with people that say, I’m not sure I like church. I’m not sure I like doing organized things, but Jesus seems like he says incredible things and even maybe did incredible things. Something about Jesus kept them close, not because they believed, but until they believed, and in the end when Jesus finally had them convinced their whole life.

Seemed to change in our story. Jesus is late, but Jesus isn’t late. Like some of you guys were late this morning or on other Sundays, and I see who you all are. I keep my eyes open. It’s no secret Jesus isn’t late like we’re late. Jesus is late on purpose. Jesus waits when people think they know what they need and he waits until he can give them.

What they actually need. And so in this story, Jesus, after arriving late, stands in front of the tomb of his friend Lazarus and announces an loud voice, Lazarus come forth. And I imagine his disciples, his first followers in that moment looking at each other and saying, you know what? Think Jesus, you’ve gone too far.

Healing people that were sick is one thing, but this is another thing. And then Lazarus steps out of his tomb. Jesus is late on purpose. ’cause Jesus is about to do what no religious leader could do. He brings Lazarus back to life, and this is this crescendo moment, this amazing moment in John’s biography of Jesus’ life.

This gospel when it seems like it’s hit a high that can’t be beaten, but it’s not enough. Lazarus walks out of this tomb in this story with the same limp he had when he went in. With the same heart that’s got a few decades of beats on it with the same bad attitude towards his friends and family, with the same regrets from the past life that he is lived.

He walks out with all of those things, see Lazarus’s resurrection, let’s call it that for now. It means something to Lazarus, changes his story, changes his sister Mary’s story, and his sister Martha’s story. But it doesn’t change the world. What happens to Lazarus is not enough to change the world.

Something more is needed. And now in our story, Jesus is dead and the only person around in the raising people from the dead line of business is Jesus. And surely Jesus can’t raise himself. But if you’d listen to Jesus talk over the time that we’ve spent in John’s Gospel. You’d have heard Jesus say some things that suggest he believes that his death is different to every other person’s death.

This is a chapter later, chapter 12. Very truly, I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed, but if it dies, it produces many seeds. Jesus says. That my death counterintuitively doesn’t lead to death. It leads to life. And that’s where we land in our story, in this M morning where resurrection has happened.

But it’s a waiting discovery. No one knows yet. And so before we look at that, let me just say this, and I say this most. Easter Sundays, Easter services. I think it’s easy for us to make an assumption in the 21st century, the people in the first century saw resurrection all the time, or at least believed it happened all the time.

Were kinda like those people back then. They always believed in that weird stuff and surely they just expected resurrection. But if that were true. Yeah. After years of Jesus telling his followers, I’m gonna die and on the third day, he even gives them a number, like three days later I’ll rise again.

Then what we’d expect to see in the stories on this Easter Sunday. This first Easter Sunday, it’s a bunch of disciples waiting around the tomb, and as it gets to the morning, they’re like 10, 9, 8, and there’s no one there. 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, go. But there’s no one. They don’t expect it anymore. Then we would expect it.

Resurrection was as surprising to them as it would be to us, but that’s exactly what they get. John chapter 20 verse one. Early on the first day of the week, Jesus dies on the Friday. There was the Saturday, which was considered holy for the Jewish people. No one’s allowed to do anything. And the first opportunity, the first moment of the first day, Mary.

Goes to the tomb while it’s still dark. She risks a journey out into the darkness in a highly charged political climate to do the last thing she can do for Jesus. She goes to embalm his body to give him the proper burial, right? So everything’s done as it should be. This is the least she can do for the one she considers to have saved her from a life of suffering and death.

Mary went to the tomb while it was still dark and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. Her first discovery is that something has happened. She doesn’t know what she assumes the worst. She assumes that someone’s calm and taken the body away. She assumes maybe a grave rubber has come.

All sorts of things that start to run through her mind. She doesn’t think resurrection. But she goes and tells the first two people that come to her mind. The two people she assumes are most interested in helping find the body of Jesus, the two people most committed to him out of his disciples, she comes running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved.

Most people assume the one Jesus loved is John. Who’s also writing the book. He’s humble enough not to put himself in, but not so humbly, can’t refer to himself as the loved disciple. Over and over again, they have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we don’t know where they have put him, and so the two disciples leave, start running towards the tomb.

Another little detail this humble John gives us is both were running, but the other disciple. John outrun Peter and reached the tomb first. Apparently John and Peter are also in the fourth grade and still talking about who won a race somewhere or another. There’s nothing like winning a foot race to make you feel better about hiding in a house when everyone else is out looking for Jesus.

Both were running, but the other disciple outrun Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen. Lying here. Lying there, but did not go in. And here’s the serious point about why John talks about races and who was there first. John actually just wants to give you all the details In a garden, when Jesus is arrested, the other biographers, other gospel writers say one of the disciples.

Cut the ear off a servant. John says, it was definitely Peter, and in case you have any doubt whatsoever, he says, Simon Peter, there’s no way you’re gonna misidentify the culprit. When he talks about Judas, the one that betrayed Jesus, the other disciples say that Judas betrayed Jesus. John says Judas was also a thief.

He wants, he’s got the dirt on everybody and he’s not afraid to share it. But John wants you to know here, he didn’t go in, he paused, and Simon Peter, and if you know anything about his character, this sounds exactly like him, dashed straight into the tomb. It’s him that first sees the body gone, sees the strips of Lenin lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head.

The cloth was still lying in its place separate from the linen. And then finally after Peter goes in and makes this discovery John goes in too. Finally, the other disciple who had reached the tomb first, just in case you missed that, also went inside. He saw and believed they still did not understand from the scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.

He believed, except he wasn’t sure. It’s a strange kind of belief almost. You might say it like this. He believed something. Had happened, but he wasn’t entirely sure what had happened. The story suspends in this moment where everybody knows something happened, but nobody knows exactly what happened. Now, one of the stories about this part of the Jesus story is that there’s a clear solution to this, right?

The disciples just stole the body. Now, this is a terrible explanation for all sorts of reasons. The first being simply that these are men that were deeply scared for their lives. Their master has just been crucified. There’d be very little to stop the same thing happening to them. But the question you might ask in response to this assumption is what would they get out of it?

And unfortunately, I don’t have to share that with you. There’s a video that would do it far better than I possibly. The problem with the theory that the disciples stole the body is that these are the people that had the most to lose. Then next years looked like persecution. Most of them died for their faith.

The most obvious explanation for what happens next is that these men are absolutely convinced that they discovered that Jesus. He’s alive, but right now they’re left in this suspended place, unsure of what happens next. Peter Kret says it this way. Why would the disciples lie? Liars always lie for selfish reasons.

If they lied, what was their motive? What did they get out of it? What they got out of it was standing, rejection, persecution, torture, and martyrdom. Hardly a list of perks were left with this empty tomb. That’s the problem they have to discover. Peter Marshall says, thank God we have an empty tomb. The glorious fact that the empty tomb proclaims to us is that life for us does not stop when death comes.

Death is not a wall but a door. But for these first followers of Jesus right now, the empty tomb is just a mystery that needs solving. And the disciples having encountered this, go back to where they were staying, leaving just one character left. This writer, John loves to take moments and create one-to-one conversations with just Jesus and one other person, and the person left standing outside.

The tomb is Mary and she’s crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white seated. Where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and one at the foot. Mary enters in and sees something supernatural, but not Jesus yet. They ask her a question, why are you crying? And she says, they have taken my Lord away and I don’t know where they have put him.

Her assumption is still that someone has come and stolen the body, still no idea for her of resurrection. The angels say nothing. But their reaction seems to suggest that she needs to turn around and she does to see Jesus standing there. But she did not realize that it was Jesus. It must be heartbreaking to rise from the dead and find that your best friends don’t recognize you.

Although perhaps there’s more to the not recognizing story than we’re let in on. He asked a woman, why are you crying? Who is it? You are looking for thinking? He was the gardener. She said, sir, if you’ve carried him away. Tell me where you have put him and I will get him. Her love for Jesus convinces her that she could possibly go find a body and move it back to a place where it can be buried.

That’s her level of devotion to Jesus, but that’s not the story she gets. Jesus said to her, Mary, I love that Jesus is able to preach an entire sermon with just one word. Some of us, it takes 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes, however long you have to sit here today, really. But with Jesus, it’s just one word.

He says, Mary, and a whole world changes and the whole of history changes along with it. There’s this moment, a first revelation that will spread and spread, and maybe for some of you that believe this stuff. This is the thing you put your hand up to and say, I’ve experienced something, not exactly like this, but like this.

It’s like perhaps in a church service or perhaps in a conversation, or perhaps in a private moment. It was like Jesus spoke to me one-on-one and I’ve been following him ever since, and maybe some of you are still waiting for that moment. Jesus said to a Mary, she turned around to him and cried out in Aramaic, which means teacher.

Jesus said, don’t hold onto me That term doesn’t mean don’t touch me. It means don’t grab to me. Don’t cling to me. Fray have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them I’m ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. Just to hint a tiny hint of what Jesus has done.

No longer servants, no longer disciples, but now brothers, go tell them I am risen and Samari does. I have seen the Lord, she said, and she told them what he had said, that he had said these things to her. This is the first announcement of resurrection in John’s Gospel. This first moment where Jesus is revealed to just one woman.

But there’s a question that I think is important and Easter that it doesn’t address at all. What does resurrection even mean? Perhaps you’ve heard the story of that Jesus’ death means something. It’s perhaps a payment for sin, but why resurrection? Why couldn’t Jesus just die? And then, disappear back to some kind of heavenly space?

Why physical bodily resurrection? What does it teach us? My compatriot fellow Englishman Colin Smith says The message of Easter is not that Jesus is alive. It’s so much more. The message of Easter that is that Jesus is risen. Everything seems to hang on that if Jesus is risen, he doesn’t matter at all.

If Jesus, sorry, if he isn’t risen, he doesn’t matter at all. If he is risen, everything he ever said matters. When we look at the last 2000 years of history, how this story has passed from one person to another, how these disciples hiding in a room suddenly become this force that shares this good news everywhere they go.

These men that were scared to die with Jesus when he was alive and now willing to die with him when he’s not there with them. Everything points to some big event taking place. The resurrection of Jesus is far more plausible than most people outside of the church would think. But again, what does it mean for us?

And my favorite quote on this subject is Frederica Matthew Green. We believe that the central meaning of the resurrection. Is victory. Thus, our traditional image is vibrant and noisy. It rings with a victorious shout. The resurrection is the victory over sin, death, the devil and victory over dark force is that enslave us, despise us, and wish to destroy us.

According to John and the other writers, the whole of history has been a war invisible to us, and that Jesus’ resurrection is a victory moment. Everything changes ’cause of this. Okay. That’s the story they tell. There’s one moment that changes history, and for a moment in John’s story, every bit of this secret is held by one woman who, according to their culture, should be scared to tell anyone and won’t be believed if she does.

A one mesmerizing moment. The news of Christ’s resurrection was held by a handful of women who were too scared to tell anyone, but tell they did, and the story went on un reeling till half a world away, and 2000 years later, it rings out with a loud joy. Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down, death by death.

And upon those in the tombs, bestowing life, 2000 years later, more people call this story their story than any other story in the world. And it all starts with one person, but there’s a missing piece to this story, one we haven’t got to yet. That evening, Jesus appears to 10 of his first disciples, but one of them is missing, and I think his story for some of us might be the most helpful Of all the stories, so far, what we’ve experienced is people constantly waiting for Jesus to turn up when it feels like he’s late.

Lazarus, Mary, Martha, wait for Jesus to turn up so he can hear Lazarus. He turns up late. Mary waits at the tomb, expecting to find a corpse. Jesus turns up late and now for Thomas Jesus turns up late. One character, Thomas known as Didymo, one of the 12 was not with the disciples. When Jesus came, for some reason, unknown to any of us, Jesus picked a moment when Thomas alone was not present.

Imagine what that feels like to be Thomas. You stepped out to play a round of golf to go pick up groceries, to do whatever Thomas was doing. In this moment, you’re like, really? Jesus? This moment, the one moment I was out of the room, and so the other disciples report to him. We have seen. The Lord and Thomas replies in exactly the same way.

Many of us might reply to a story like this unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my head into his side. I will not believe it’s this one statement that has given Thomas the name across history of Doubting Thomas, but that’s not who Thomas is. We only have to go back before that Lazarus story.

When Jesus is about to return to find out who Thomas really is, let us go. Thomas says in that moment that we may die with him. That’s the kind of character. Thomas is someone who will stick with you to the end, but then look what happened. Jesus died and Thomas didn’t do what he promised to do. Thomas failed.

He believed in something as deeply as a person can ever believe in it, and then his faith fell apart. And now what he’d tell you is the same thing many of you guys might say in the midst of a dark night of the soul, a time of struggle, a desert year, any of those things that we might experience, he says, I will never believe again, unless I get absolute proof of it, I’m done.

There’s nothing here. It’s finished for me, but something happens in the Thomas story, one of my favorite parts of it. Look what happens next week. A week later, his disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them in the midst of his sense of, I don’t believe in the midst of his sense of, man, I’m done.

Doesn’t go anywhere. He’s still just there waiting. Why? I think that Thomas deep down knows what a lot of us would say when we struggle with church perhaps, or the way the world is perhaps, or the fact that the church doesn’t seem to help as much as it should, or meeting someone who doesn’t live this stuff, that maybe it’s a thing or maybe it’s a person.

All those different experiences, in the midst of those experiences, I think it’s hard for us to ignore. That Jesus still means something. Thomas doesn’t have anywhere else to go, and a week later when Jesus comes back, Thomas isn’t done, hasn’t gone to find a new community, hasn’t gone back to his old job.

A week later, Thomas is still exactly where he belongs. He’s with his family. I think Thomas Deep down knows that the world is changed because of Jesus. I think Thomas Deep down knows that the church, the Jesus story is an incredible story. I think that’s what I know in my moments where faith is hard, where I feel like things get messy.

I think I know that the story that God came down not expected us to go up. I think the story about God dying for me instead of expecting me to die for him. I think the story about resurrection, I think the story about all the great things that the church has given to the world, almost everything you love about the world probably came from the church, hospitals.

Schools. All those little details that we forget came because of this story, and in the end, I find it’s hard for me to get away from the fact that Jesus changes everything. And so that’s exactly where Thomas is waiting for Jesus. Tom writes us this. The message of Easter is that God’s new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you are now invited to belong to it.

A week later, Thomas is in the house. The doors were locked. Jesus came and stood amongst them and said, peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, put your finger here. See my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Stop doubting and believe, and Thomas gets to make a statement. That none of the other disciples have ever made the first time in history that this statement is made on this level.

He says, my Lord and my God, waiting a week, Thomas gets to see something that no one else has seen, and Jesus replies to him this because you have seen me, you have believed, blessed, those who have not seen and yet believed. Jesus tells Thomas, not everyone will get this story. This story will now get passed on from person to person, family to family.

It will travel across history, thousands of miles, thousands of years. The story will rumble on and on, and people will believe for all sorts of different reasons. But just like Thomas, I think my encouragement to you is when this story seems hard. When everything seems messy, and maybe you have no faith at all in organized religion, find a community, stick around and wait for Jesus to show up all through these stories.

What happened? Lazarus, Mary and Martha thought they were waiting for a healing and instead they got a resurrection. Mary thought she was waiting for a corpse and instead. She got the risen Jesus. And Thomas thought he needed this experience with his brothers, his disciples, and instead he got a one-on-one encounter with Jesus.

Think we’re all waiting for the same thing, and I think if in your life Jesus feels late, like the story hasn’t gone where it’s supposed to think. The message of Easter is when God is late, dare to wait. Wait and continue to ask God to show up when you have no certainty that he will. And across history, millions of people would say, that’s exactly what I’ve done.

There’s been a moment where the Jesus story seemed abstract to me. I was in it for the family thing. I was in it for the friendship thing. I was in it for all sorts of reasons, but I chose to wait and eventually the risen Jesus turned up for me. As well when the New Testament writers tried to unpack all the things that Jesus has done, this is one of the ways they describe it, but God who is rich in mercy, he loved us so much that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead.

It is only by God’s grace. You have been saved. It talks about how life is connected to resurrection, a life beyond any other life, that we get to live a life lived alongside Jesus. But how does it happen? Not ’cause you get it right, not ’cause you read the right books, not because your behavior is perfect happens because the risen Jesus still turns up and meets with people one-on-one.

That’s what we’re waiting for. There’s a song we’re gonna close with a perfect Easter song. As far as I’m concerned, it’s this celebration of what it is to have the Jesus story as your story. Maybe it’s not yet. Maybe you’re still waiting. If you’re waiting, make this a prayer. Ask God to turn up and if he already has, let’s sing this as a celebration.

Jesus, for my friends here, my friends at home. I’m so thankful that this story is my story. Your story has given me every good thing in life. Think of the things that wouldn’t exist without your story. Think of all the ways that you gave commands that still resonate through history. Love your neighbor.

Think about all the education, all the hospitals that came from that. All the things that are beautiful. Art, Beethoven, sixth Symphony, everything that I love came from you, my family, my friends, my church community. Thank you that you gave me the courage to wait when you felt far away. Thank you that you’ve done the same for so many of my friends here, and I pray especially for my friends that would just put their hand up and say, this is so hard for me.

I don’t really get it. Church bothers me. People bother me. I pray that you give them the courage to wait too. But most of all, I pray that you would turn up just at the right time and do what only you can do. Amen.