Download Sermon TextJoy, Easter Sunday April 5, 2026
Joy, Easter Sunday April 5, 2026
Joy
Homily by Lisa Wiens Heinsohn for St. John’s Episcopal Church
Easter Sunday, April 5, 2026: John 20:1-18
We can’t say it enough, let’s say it again: Alleluia, Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed, alleluia!
I want to take a moment to honor each one of you individually in all your sacred uniqueness, however you come today. Some of us are thriving. Some of us are deeply grieving, having lost loved ones this year. Some of us are fine. However we come, in all our beautiful and wild diversity, we are gathered around a single theme: that love is the one thing that is stronger than death, that the love of God in Christ has the power of an indestructible life that holds us all and will not let us go, will never let us go. When outer circumstances are good, our innate joy arises and we perhaps don’t have to remember where it comes from. But when times are difficult, and they have been very difficult this last year in Minnesota, it is more important than ever to remember the source and origin of our joy which transcends our circumstances and even our character.
In the Episcopal Church we don’t talk about grace as much as our Lutheran siblings in Christ do, but that doesn’t make it less important. Grace is the love of God flowing unconditionally toward us when we deserve it and when we most certainly do not. Grace is the love of God bathing us in kindness when we have forgotten what kindness is. Grace is a warm rain on a parched and dry land, softening the crust of hopelessness or resentment or anxiety that has calcified. Grace is what allows us to have strong backs and soft hearts. Grace is the love of Christ directed toward us in life and in death, in any and all circumstances, in any and all conditions of our character, saying, hold on, dear ones, hold on, here comes the dawn.
Mary Magdalene, that terrible morning before the dawn, had been forced to wait through an excruciating sabbath while her beloved Jesus was dead and sealed in the tomb, not even able to see his body, not able to care for it and give it the dignity he had been denied. I have been with people who for various reasons could not see the body of their beloved after a sudden death, and it is a terrible thing. In my imagination Mary hadn’t slept. How could she? When the Passover Sabbath was finally over, no force on earth could keep her away from her beloved Jesus. So she hurried to the tomb, in the worst circumstances possible, when her whole world had come crashing to an end. And though it didn’t seem possible for things to get any worse, they did. The tomb was open. It was empty. It was the absolute last horror. Can you imagine? She got to the funeral home and the body was missing. In her utter hopelessness and helplessness, all she could do was stand there and lose it. She wept.
And Jesus appeared to her, but in every account of the risen Jesus, he is not immediately recognizable to his loved ones. He is risen, but his resurrected form appears to be different enough that they don’t know who he is. Certainly they can be forgiven. So when Jesus stands there, asking Mary why she is crying, she thinks he is the gardener and just says, if you are the one who took his body please, for the love of God, tell me where you put him. And he just looks at her. Perhaps his own heart is breaking for her. He says her name. Mary. And she does what anyone would do, what we all wish we could do for our loved ones we have lost: she throws her arms around him with a fierce love that will not let go, that can never let go. I know the Bible narrative has Jesus saying immediately that she should not cling to him, but in my imagination it takes a while before he says that.
And hope that was impossible is born in Mary. Perhaps the most important thing she realized was that all the ferocity of the power of Rome, its callous cruelty, its outrageous violence, its capacity to humiliate and to shame and to utterly disregard the dignity of anyone at its own whim, could not destroy her beloved Jesus. He is risen. They unleashed their worst at him, humiliated and tortured him in every possible way, to make a public spectacle of him, and they failed. He is not in the tomb. He is caught in the power of his own indestructible life that cannot be contained by anyone. It is wild and fierce and powerful as love itself, as creation itself. It is deeper and bigger than the power of empire.
When we say, alleluia, Christ is risen, we are saying that no power in heaven or earth or under the earth can defeat the healing power of God’s love. No loss, no circumstances, no failure, no tragedy, no betrayal or horror is ultimate. That does not reverse time and take the losses away. Easter Sunday did not take Good Friday away. It happens because of it.
On Monday, I was with our beloved St. John’s member Sherri Holtke just after she died. Susan Tapp, her dear friend, and I were there and we called Sherri’s sister who lives out of town and who couldn’t make it in time. We anointed Sherri’s beautiful face with oil and offered our love and blessing to her and said our prayers. Then we released her to God. We were quiet for a while and I was listening in my spirit, trying to hear what was needed. What I did hear is just that—a purely subjective experience I can’t prove or explain. But I felt a great awakening, a pure joy. I felt Sherri’s spirit merging with light. I felt her great liberation from the dementia that had crippled her mind and from age that had bent and crippled her body. I felt the joy of birth. I felt the end of pain and the beginning of a wholeness and the crossing a threshold past which I could not follow. It was beautiful beyond description.
The outcome of the resurrection of Christ is the capacity for joy, a joy that is utterly independent of circumstance. In fact, as our Bishop said at this week’s Renewal of Ordination Vows service for clergy, joy is revolutionary. Despair is easy; outrage is easy; grief is easy. These are all natural and appropriate. But joy is what comes when we direct our despair, outrage and grief to God and find we are still able to laugh, even if our laughter comes sometimes through tears. Joy is what comes when we realize that the worst empire can do cannot destroy who we are. They can kill us. They can imprison us. They can throw tear gas at us and go to war. They can do all manner of terrible things. But they cannot stop the power of a community connected and resisting violence. They cannot stop the decentralized power of thousands of people saying no to terror. They cannot take the love out of our hearts.
So however you come today, in your sacred uniqueness, I pray that you encounter the risen Christ. I pray that you recognize the joy that is innate in you because you are made in the image of God and nothing can take that sacredness away. I pray you are able to hold on to your deep joy when times are good and when they are profoundly difficult. This joy does not come from you. It is a well of living water, springing up from the Spirit of God who makes all things new and pouring through the center of your being, world without end. Alleluia, Christ is risen. Amen.
