Easter Sunday; April 5, 2026

speaker-1: Our epistle reading this morning is from Colossians chapter three. So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. Therefore, as God's chosen one, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other just as the Lord has forgiven you. So you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called in one body. and be thankful. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Our Gospel reading comes from John chapter 20 and verses 1 through 18. Listen with me for the word of the Lord. Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one who was writing this gospel, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, they've taken the Lord out of the tomb.

John 20 · chapter mention

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speaker-1: And we don't know where they've laid him. Then Peter and the other disciples set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together. But the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came. following him and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. And then the other disciple who, just in case you forgot, reached the tomb first also went in. And he saw and he believed. For as yet they did not understand the scriptures, that Jesus must rise from the dead. And then the disciples returned to their homes, but Mary, Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. And as she wept, She bent over to look into the tomb and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. And they said to her, woman, why are you weeping? And she said to them, they've taken away my Lord and I don't know where they've laid him. And when she had said this, she turned around and she saw Jesus standing there, but she didn't know that it was Jesus. And Jesus said to her, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for? Supposing him to be the gardener. She said this she said to him sir if you have carried him away Tell me where you've laid him and I will take him away Jesus said to her Mary and She turned and said to him in Hebrew rabbi which means teacher Jesus said to her don't keep holding on to me because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my father and your father, to my God and your God." Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, I've seen the Lord. And she told them that he had said these things to her. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let us pray. Or is it Jesus? This Easter morning, may we hear our names being called by you. May we respond in love. Now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing and acceptable in your sight. O Christ, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. It's midnight in April 1999 and Don Allison is just getting off of work, heading back to his car when a man named Marcus Chiffin jumps out of an alleyway and points a gun right into his face. Without argument, Don gives him everything. Car keys, wallet, doesn't want any trouble. But Marcus is new at this. and he gets nervous and he panics a little bit and he shoots. And he misses Don, but shoots through his shirt. He takes his car keys and drives away in the car that is stolen, but then he gets nervous. Again, he's new at this. And he thinks to himself, what's going to happen if he can ID me? So he turns around his stolen car and he drives back to the scene of the crime and in for a penny, in for a pound, I guess, shoots Don again. And this time he hits him right through the leg and into the other. Centimeters in either direction and Don bleeds out in minutes. Marcus wasn't very good at this. He's found very shortly thereafter he was a rookie criminal and a jury would very quickly convict him of second degree attempted murder, sentencing him to 95 years in prison. A life sentence. And Don Allison believed that Marcus Chephin deserved every single minute of it. After about 15 years, was transferred to the Louisiana State Penitentiary. And listen, I got gassed once in Streveport, so I can only imagine what the state pen is like. And it was there. It was there that something in Marcus began to shift. He learned to trade.

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speaker-1: He started to turn his life around and out of that desire, or out of that came a desire to reach out to Don to take responsibility for what he had done, the pain and the grief that he has caused him and his family. So he began to write letters. He didn't expect for his apology to be received. He wasn't writing to get anything out of Don. He just knew that because something was changing in him and because he wanted to start a new chapter in his life, he knew that the first step on that road was to say I'm sorry and mean it. Letters would arrive and Don would read them, but Don remained unmoved. And every time Marcus came up, for parole even 15 plus years in, Don felt justified in testifying that he believed that Marcus Chepin deserved to stay in prison as a menace to society. He believed he knew what the right thing was. Marcus had caused him so much pain physically, mentally, his family so much pain. And the law, a judge, a jury, and the whole nine, everybody agreed that this punishment was just. And he felt good about it. But 23 years into a well rehearsed pattern, after testifying yet again that Marcus ought to stay where he belonged, as they got into the car to drive away, Dawn's wife looked over at him and she asked, Dawn, do you think you did the right thing in there? think you did the right thing. When I read the Easter story and the Gospel of John, I see two men who have all the right ideas, all the right beliefs, but still aren't free. Mary reports to the rest of the disciples that the tomb is empty, and Peter and John rush to the tomb in the most self-serving report of a foot race ever. And John arrives first. and he looks inside and both of them still breathless, they recognize that the grave clothes are folded neatly, deliberately, as if someone left this tomb quite a lot unlike how they have arrived to it. And the scripture said that in that moment, they understood the messianic prophecies, the resurrection. All these scriptures, ⁓ a flood of flashbacks, fit together in their minds like that Zach Galifianakis meme from The Hangover. Jesus had been raised! And they get it. And you would think, you would imagine a reasonable person could assume that knowing the right thing about the resurrection would change everything for them. But if you keep reading, it just doesn't. In just a few verses. They will be found with the rest of the disciples behind locked doors, hiding in fear because of what might come because of their association with Jesus. They know all the right things, but they do not feel free. They feel imprisoned. The same as Marcus in his locked jail cell. The same even as Don in his righteous anger. And there, behind those locked doors, they cycle through the same fear and the same grief that they've been stuck in since Jesus' arrest. All of the right ideas, all of the right knowledge about the resurrection gets them nowhere. But not Mary. Mary's different. Mary has never left Jesus's side. She was there through the trial. She was there at the foot of the cross when everybody else had deserted him. And here she is first. Take that, John. First to the empty tomb. And whatever he has risen intellectual moment that these boys are having, she's not having it. She doesn't get the aha. She's just heartbroken. And so she lingers there weeping outside the tomb. And when she gathers the courage to look inside, Mary sees angels. And this must have been these angels' first gig, because they don't know what angels are supposed to say when they show up, which is, don't be afraid. All the angels say that. Instead, these guys ask, no emotional intelligence at all. Why are you crying? My brother in Christ, know Deggum well why she's crying. But she tells them anyway, they've taken my lord. And I don't know where they've laid him. text doesn't tell us that Peter and John have shed a single tear. But Mary is wailing because she had experienced the death of a friend. Jesus' death shattered the disciples' dreams. It broke Mary's heart. And with those tears still running down her cheeks, she steps outside and she is confronted for the first time by the risen Jesus, who is unrecognizable to her in her grief until he calls her by name. And there, she grabs onto him. It's a bad translation, what we just read, and I subbed some words out. I don't know if you noticed. Jesus says in our translation, Don't hold onto me. But that's a bad translation of the Greek. What he's saying is, don't keep holding onto me. She clings to him immediately because that's all she's ever wanted to do. She's just wanted to be near him. She hasn't been looking for what Jesus could do for her. He wasn't an idea to her, some fulfillment of prophecy or a ticket to power or heaven. She knew him as Lord, but she loved him simply as friend. And that experience of being reconnected to the love of her friend. that came through even death changed Mary forever. We know this because while the rest of the disciples are hiding in fear with all their knowledge, Mary is living free. She's moving, announcing, running door to door to get the band back together. And I've got to wonder if she's still crying, but now they're happy tears, the sort of tears that soften an arid soul. When Don Allison's wife asked him if being right was enough that day, he reports that he felt caught. But she wasn't trying to catch him. It turns out that God wasn't only bringing renewal to Marcus's life in that jail cell. He was moving in Don as well. Don was discovering the idea that justice just wasn't enough. That ideas, that being right, are never better than people. Being right doesn't get any of us free. But being reconciled and being healed and restored together surely does. And Don didn't want to be Peter or John anymore. He wanted to be free like Mary. So later that year, entered the victim offender dialogue program through the Department of Corrections. And through this program, Marcus got a chance to say everything that he had written in those letters face to face with Don. And they had a chance to become something more than victim and victimizer. And Don had the opportunity to receive that apology. And finally, after all these years, move past it. And when parole came up for Marcus in 2020, Don testified that he believed that Marcus Chepin had been rehabilitated and changed. And later that same year, Don and Marcus both walked free. All of our good beliefs and all of our good ideas about Jesus, my friends, no matter how many crosses we've got on the living room wall, no matter how many fish bumper stickers we've got on our car, no matter how elaborate our cross tattoos and jewelry, none of it matters. unless our lives are actually transformed by a living, loving relationship with Jesus. until we receive, truly receive the love of God for us, letting it saturate our souls and permeate every place that we didn't think that God or anybody could love. Until we allow that love to so fill us that it flows out of us as free people, we will remain locked in the same old patterns, frustrated and fearful and wondering why nothing in our lives or in our world can change. The good news of Easter is that Jesus pulls us out of these stinking cycles of violence and regret and pain and anger that we have been trapped in, which is something that no idea, no matter how good, can do. Only God can do that for us. Indeed all that anger and pain and violence and regret Peter and John in their hiding all of these things are based in our trying to preserve our lives or our pride or hide our wrongs from everybody else or ourselves But with Jesus we get to put that aside and know ourselves as supremely loved So that we can lose ourselves in love of God and of neighbor trusting them when we when we give our lives away like this in love and in friendship then we will find them. For it is only in loving that any of our ideas about God make any sense at all. You know if you've been around for a minute you will know that I've been sneaking this theology into church for quite some time. I always end my prayers This we pray in the name of Jesus who is our Lord and our friend. And some of you have probably thought that's weird. And others of you might have found that a little bit casual. But I am completely committed to it because I think that the word friend is doing more work than the word Lord for me half the time. Because here's the truth. Learning to say you believe the right things is not hard. You can call Jesus Lord and slap a religious sheen on just about anything. Learning to love, though, with everything that love costs, learning what friendship with God and one another means, that is the work of a transformed lifetime, a resurrected lifetime, and I once was blind, but now I see lifetime. The good news is that this truth is in this truth as that belief has a ceiling. You can believe perfectly, but that belief can be broken. It can be frightened. It can be locked in a room. Peter and John are witness to this much. But Easter doesn't invite us into perfect belief. It invites us into loving connection with the God of the cosmos who turns us to one another and demonstrates with his life and his death and resurrection that love just keeps going. There is no ceiling to love. There is no end to love. It just keeps growing something new. reclaiming hearts and relationships and God willing even societies like a weed planted by some mysterious gardener in the night. The risen Christ didn't appear first to the ones who believed the right things. He appeared first to the one who couldn't bring herself to leave because she loved. Jesus called her by name. just as he is calling you today. So may we hear Christ's voice and be transformed by a love and a friendship that truly sets us free. For we can only truly know that which we love. day, Marcus and Dawn get together for lunch pretty often. Marcus calls Don his best friend. They've even worked in prison ministry together to demonstrate, by the way, Don is now a prison chaplain in the Catholic Church. And they work together sometimes to demonstrate with their own lives the sort of transformation that's possible, not only for offenders, but also for victims and for all of us when we let Jesus get a hold of more than just our heads, but also our hearts. So may the undying love of Jesus be poured into each of you today, that your lives may be witness to the same. Thanks be to God. Amen.