"Come and See" A Sermon for Easter 2026

 

And now...the Easter sermon! 

The Easter Vigil featured the story of the resurrection from Matthew's perspective. This morning's Gospel was the John telling of the story.

And the joy of the night before carried over into this morning's celebration back at St. Barnabas.

Text: John 20:1-18

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One of the fun projects we’ve done here at St. Barnabas in these last couple of years is the painting of our Easter rocks.

I invite my friends Kris and Sally to come here from Tallahassee with their rocks and paint pens and we spend about an hour or so letting our creative juices flow.

We paint them with lots of colors and images with a word or a message of hope and encouragement.

And then we put them out around the city with the intention of an unsuspecting person finding them and brightening their day.

We also put on the back side of the rock some kind of identifier that this piece of rock art is brought to you by St. Barnabas in Valdosta.

We blessed our basket of Easter rocks last Sunday…and gave everyone an opportunity to take a couple to put out there in the world.

Easy enough assignment.

But I had someone come up to me with this one rock…beautifully decorated with hearts and a message of “Love.”

“I can’t put this out.”

OK….I’m thinking why not?

“I don’t think you want this out there?”

Now I’m totally confused.

Why in the world would I not want a message “Love” put out in the world?

I mean, that’s the point of this exercise.

“You don’t know what this says…”

And I’m like, “Yes, I know what it says….I saw all of these rocks. I was the one who sprayed the sealant on all these rocks!”

She flipped the rock over.

I saw that it had a hashtag with the church’s name.

I’m still confused as to what the problem was with this rock.

“Yeah OK….Hashtag Saint…..”

And that’s when I saw it.

Instead of St. Barnabas… it was inscribed “Saint Barabas V-L-D”

I thought I knew what I was seeing…but clearly I did not.

My eyes and my head were looking for one thing…only to find something else.

It’s funny how when we expect to see one thing…it’s hard for us to recognize the unexpected.

Such was the case with Mary Magdalene…Peter…and the other disciple.

They knew what had happened to their friend and teacher.

Peter was still carrying the guilt that he hadn’t stood up for Jesus.

The disciples had all scattered when the Romans showed up to arrest him.

Mary Magdalene and the other women had stood by helpless…crying…and horrified by the spectacle of seeing Jesus die on the cross…watching Roman guards cackling and picking over his clothing like vultures.

This was all real.

And their pain and sorrow were real.

Mary had thought that she could go to the tomb in the pre-dawn hours after the Sabbath to properly care for Jesus’s body.

What she hadn’t anticipated was to find the stone rolled away…and an open and empty tomb.

Whoa!! This is NOT normal.

Mary runs and finds Peter.

Then Peter and the other disciple are racing each other…likely with Mary joining in this sprint.

They get to the tomb…Peter goes in…and…uh oh.

There’s the head cloth neatly folded over there.

There’s the linen wrappings tossed aside over there.

Unlike Lazarus…there was no need to unbind this body!

John tells us the other disciple then got up the nerve to go into the tomb…saw the same thing and “believed.” But then he and Peter went home.

I’m thinking that they did one of those slowly backing up from this scene…blinking their eyes a few times…oh my goodness, this is…wow!  He’s really been raised from the dead?!

Remember: this whole ‘dead person brought back to life’ is not normal for them…any more than it is for us.

So they go home.  Home is safe. Home is normal.

Mary…still half out of her mind with grief…finally looks in the tomb for herself.

She doesn’t see the head band…or the linen wrappings.

She sees two angels…sitting in the place where these two items had been.

Whaaaaatt?

She begins wailing again.

The angels are confused and concerned.  This ought to be good news that Jesus has risen.

“Woman, why are you weeping?”

Now she’s confused.

“Why am I weeping?? I came here to care for Jesus’s body and he’s gone!”

“Woman, why are you weeping?”

Is there an echo in here??

Mary turns around and sees some strange guy…asking her the same question.

Through the tears in her eyes…she looks at this man.

“OK, look mister! I don’t know who you are but if you took Jesus’s body you better give him back…”

“Mary!”

That voice.

That tone.

He said he was the shepherd…and the sheep would follow him because he calls them by name and they recognize his voice.

Just like Peter and the disciple…she blinks…looks again…and realizes…this is Jesus.

It’s really him.

She wants to touch him…to hang on to him…to never let him go again.

But in the words of the great modern theologian Sting…

If you love somebody…set them free.

And Jesus has a job for her to do.

“Go tell the others that I am ascending…to our common Father and God! Go my beloved sister. Go tell them to come and see what you have seen.”

Come and see.

That is the overarching theme that we’ve been hearing for several weeks now…building to this moment of Mary Magdalene seeing the resurrected Jesus…and being tasked with becoming an apostle to the apostles.

Nicodemus took the risk to venture out into the darkness to come and see this rabbi who seemed to have a message that was striking a chord with the people.

The Samaritan woman at the well… like Mary Magdalene… became an apostle to her people…the rival Jewish faction… telling them to come and see this incredible man.

Even Jesus was told to come and see where they had laid his friend Lazarus…so that he could call him out of his tomb.

It brings us back to that field with the shepherds at Christmas…when they are told to come and see this new life that was destined to be the one to show them the way to abundant life.

When the unexpected happens… when something extraordinary occurs… the response is to come and see.

And once we have seen it…don’t we naturally want to share this amazing thing?

That’s what Jesus is counting on…and that’s God’s purpose in this feat of the resurrection:

Come…and see…take this in…and then go and share.

And share in ways that are meaningful.

Not standing on street corners with sandwich boards and bullhorns.

As people of this Easter time…we are to share in a manner that changes lives.

We share through telling our stories….how we’ve been touched and shaped by the God of Love…who transforms us.

We bring those stories to those who have not known that type of Love coming from the church…and give them a different experience of what it is to be “Christian.”

We make Jesus manifest through our caring and kindness to our frail and vulnerable friends and family members.

We show that love in our interactions with strangers who may be struggling…or that co-worker who is going through a difficult time.

We do it by letting others see the light of Christ that is within us…shining out through the ways that we live and move and have our being in the world.

Imagine what it would be like if others…having met us… in our revived and renewed Easter selves…turned to their friends and said, “There’s something different about these people…they don’t seem like what I’ve heard about ‘Christians’ from the news.”

Think about it.

“Come and see!”

Easter is the time to emerge out of whatever fears or doubts we’ve had…and to trust that the God of Love will never give up…and will carry us through to a life filled with hope.

That’s worth sharing…so that others may come and see.

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.