The Unexpected Ingredients of Easter
Preacher: The Rev. Andrew Van Kirk
Scripture: Matthew 28:1-10
Easter invites us to come as we are — not as we think we ought to be. The women who walked to the tomb that morning did not arrive with triumphant faith. They came looking for a dead Jesus. They came with love, and they came with grief, and somewhere in them they also carried fear. These are not obstacles to the resurrection encounter. According to this passage, they are the very ingredients that made the encounter possible.
There is a quiet, liberating honesty in this. So much of our religious instinct is to tidy ourselves up before approaching the holy — to arrive at Easter having resolved our doubts, having achieved sufficient joy, having left our shadows at the door. But the women came with what they had. They loved the one who had died. That love, raw and unresolved, was enough for the angel to work with. It was enough for Jesus to meet them.
The fear they carried leaving the tomb is worth holding too. It was not the paralyzing fear of the guards, who defended the finality of death and missed everything. It was a different kind of fear — the kind that accompanies genuine news, news that unsettles not because it is dark but because it is true, and because it will ask something of you. Great joy, and a little fear. Both are honest. Both belong.
What is striking is the reversal at the end of the story. The women go to find Jesus and discover that they cannot quite manage it. Jesus finds them. The one searching is found. The one carrying grief is met by life. The one with the dollop of fear hears, do not be afraid.
We bring what we have. He brings the rest.
Reflection Questions
What have you brought with you to Easter this year — what is the actual mixture of faith, doubt, hope, or heaviness in you as you arrive?
The sermon describes the love of a "dead Jesus" as the starting place of faith, before resurrection becomes real. Where in your own story did you first encounter Christ as one who suffered and died on your behalf, and how has that shaped what resurrection means to you?
The guards committed themselves to the truth of death and were unable to receive the news of life. Where in your own thinking or circumstances might you be defending a finality that God is not bound by?
The women left the tomb with "great joy and a little fear." What does that combination feel like in your own faith right now, and is there anything you are quietly afraid of in what it might mean to fully embrace the resurrection?
Jesus does not wait at the tomb — he goes ahead to Galilee, to the places of ordinary life. Where is your Galilee, and what might it look like to expect to meet the risen Christ there?
