April 5 ~ Easter Sunday

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/3ef8bd_27534918a1e54460ab1393ee5311446a/720p/mp4/file.mp4

Jeremiah 31:1-6

Psalm : 118:1-2, 14-24

Acts 10:34-43

Matthew 28:1-10

Sermon by Joel Crouse

Christ is Risen!  Christ is Risen!  Alleluia!

Easter morning invites us into a story that is both familiar and astonishing, and yet it is easy to let its power slip past us. We hear about an empty tomb, an angel, two women running in fear and joy, and we think we already know what it means. 

But the heart of Easter is not simply that Jesus arose. It is that God’s answer to a world full of harm, fear, and injustice is not to condemn us but to offer renewal.  In despair, we are offered possibility. In resignation, we are given courage. 

Jeremiah gives us the first hint of this when he speaks to a people who have lived through devastation. They know exile, violence, and the collapse of everything they trusted. Yet God says to them, “I have loved you with an everlasting love… again I will build you, and you shall be built.”  

This is not a sentimental promise. It is a declaration that even after the worst has happened, God is not finished. We are not finished. God imagines a future where people plant vineyards again, where joy returns, where communities rebuild what was broken. The resurrection is a moment of new beginning, and fresh starts, and renewed energy. God opens the tomb and builds us up.

That is an important message on this Easter. We arrive here to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus – this miracle offering from God – and yet also burdened by difficult realities of the world right now. We see leaders who trade truth for power. We see communities targeted because of who they are. We see the vulnerable pushed aside. We see the ethical bar fall lower and lower. We are good at condemning.  We are less strong when it comes to pushing back and building up. This is why God comes to us at Easter and does the building up on our behalf.

Easter is the happy ending to Lent. And sometimes happy endings get a bad rap for being easy and maybe fluffy. But in happy endings we find goals to aspire to, we find comfort in grim times, and we find hope. And that’s the story of Easter – an aspirational, comforting, and hopeful promise from God. 

But Easter also asks something of us: a response. To look for the people who need protection. To shift our attention from the ones who cause harm to the ones who bear its price. 

There is a village that shows us what this looks like. During the Holocaust, the people of Le Chambon‑sur‑Lignon (luh sham-bon-suer-leen-yon), a small Protestant community in the mountains of France, quietly sheltered thousands of Jewish refugees. They hid children in their homes, forged identity papers, and smuggled families across borders. They did this while so many others responded with fear and conformity. When asked why they risked their lives, many villagers simply said, “We had no choice. They were human beings.”

Their pastor, André Trocmé, told his congregation that the Gospel demanded a refusal to cooperate with injustice. And they listened. They did not spend their days condemning the cruelty around them, though they knew it well. They spent their days saving lives. They focused not on the perpetrators but on the vulnerable. Not on judgment but on service. Not on fear but on courage. They lived as if resurrection were already happening. And because of their bravery, many lives were saved.

Easter is the celebration of that serving, saving spirit that resides in each one of us. A spirit embodied by Jesus throughout his ministry. When he told the story of the Good Samaritan, he did not linger on the priest and the Levite who walked by; he lifted up the one who stopped. When he met the woman at the well, he did not dwell on the people who had shamed her; he focused on her dignity and her voice. When he called Zacchaeus down from the tree, he did not define him by his past; he invited him into a new future. Jesus revealed what was wrong in the world not to condemn it, but to show us what could be right.

And so, Easter morning begins with two women who refuse to be bystanders. They go to the tomb. They face the darkness. They show up. And because they show up, they are the first to hear the angel say, “Do not be afraid.” They are the first to see the risen Christ. Their courage becomes the doorway through which hope enters the world again.

This is the invitation of Easter: To build the world Jeremiah imagined, where people plant vineyards again, where joy returns, where communities rebuild what was broken. Easter is the call to live like the villagers of Le Chambon—quietly, courageously, persistently rolling away stones. To feel joy, and to create joy. To see the empty tomb and to be inspired with the power of the gospel. To be the women who bravely ran forward, and, in their courage, found God. 

Lent has ended. Easter has arrived. Christ is Risen!  Christ is Risen! Allelujah!

Now it is our turn.  

Amen