Easter Sunday 2026

John 20:1-18

New International Version

The Empty Tomb

20 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2 So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

3 So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4 Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7 as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. 8 Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9 (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) 10 Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.

Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene

11 Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 12 and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

13 They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” 14 At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

15 He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”

Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).

17 Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

18 Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey there. It's Pastor John. And welcome to the Lutheran Church of Our Savior podcast at Russian. We are so glad you're here. Whether you're driving, cooking, walking the dog, or just need a little full boost, you're in the right place. If you want to learn more, connect with us, or say hello, shoot us an email at office at LCOSBR.org. Now, take a breath, lean in, and let's dive into a word of grace together. Easter's echo. Not the crash of symbols, not the kind of sound that demands attention and then disappears. An echo. A resonance that lingers in the architecture of the soul, a return that does not repeat so much as deepen. A presence that arrives quietly, then refuses to leave. An echo does not compete with noise, it waits for it to subside, it moves through space differently, it does not announce itself as new. It reveals that something has been there all along. So come with me. Come with me to the Gospel of John chapter twenty. It's early. Still dark even. Not metaphor alone, but atmosphere, not just the absence of light, but the presence of uncertainty, the kind of darkness that does not ask permission to accompany you, that settles into your thinking, that lingers even when morning technically arrives. Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb, and the gospel is careful with her. You see, it does not rush her forward, it does not script her with insight she does not yet have. She comes as she is, carrying grief that has not resolved, carrying love that has lost its object, carrying a narrative that, by all reasonable accounts, has concluded. She is not anticipating resurrection. She is attending to what she believes is the aftermath. And when she arrives, the stone is gone. And what is striking is not what she sees, but how she interprets it. They have taken the Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him. This is not a failure of faith. This is fidelity to experience. She names what is most coherent to her in that moment absence, removal, displacement. The gospel allows that. It does not correct her. It lets her remain there. And perhaps this is the first nuance we need to hold. Resurrection does not begin by overriding our perception. It meets us within it. So she runs. Peter runs. The other disciple runs. Movement follows confusion, urgency follows disruption. When the world no longer aligns with expectation, the body responds. They enter the tomb. They see the linen wrappings lying there. They see the cloth folded with a kind of quiet intentionality. And then we are given this line. He saw and believed. But the gospel does not allow us to simplify that belief. They did not yet understand, says the next verse. So what we are witnessing is not resolution, it is emergence, a kind of belief that precedes comprehension, a recognition that has not yet found its language, and then they leave. But Mary stays. And this is where the narrative narrows, where the lens focuses, where the gospel becomes less about movement and more about presence. She is weeping, not as literary device, but as a human response that resists being tidied up. She bends, she looks again, she continues to search with a space that no longer contains what she is looking for. And even when addressed, woman, why are you c why are you weeping? She does not revise her understanding. They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him. There is a kind of integrity in that statement. She does not rush toward a more helpful interpretation. She remains truthful to what she perceives. And then she turns and she sees Jesus, but she does not recognize him. She assumes he is the gardener, and perhaps that is not simply a mistake, but a theological moment. Because resurrection does not always present itself as interruption. Sometimes it appears as continuity, as something that fits within the ordinary patterns of recognition, and therefore escapes notice. She is standing within resurrection and still inhabiting loss. And then a single word Mary. No explanation, no argument, no unveiling of a grand cosmic mechanism, a name spoken, and that is sufficient. Recognition unfolds not through information, but through relationship. She is addressed, and in being addressed she becomes aware. Rabuni, she exclaims, teacher, not as a recovered category, but as a renewed encounter, and here is where the text invites us into something more subtle than triumph. Mary does not receive a comprehensive understanding of resurrection. She receives a reorientation. Do not hold on to me, Jesus says. And then go. She is sent, not with a system, not with a complete theology, but with a testimony. I have seen the Lord, which is to say, encounter precedes explanation, presence precedes articulation, and that matters. Because many of us live in the space between those two. We experience something of God and struggle to name it fully. We recognize something has shifted but cannot yet describe its contours. And if I am honest, I live there too. There are moments where clarity does not arrive on cue, where the narrative feels incomplete, where I am unaware of movement, but not yet of meaning. And the temptation is to resolve that tension quickly, to force coherence, to name too soon what is still unfolding. But John chapter 20 resists that. She does not arrive at certainty through analysis. She arrives through being called. And perhaps that is the invitation for us, not to bypass our experience in order to reach resurrection language, but to remain attentive within it, to stay, to look again, to listen. Because the echo of Easter is not a one time declaration, it is a recurring call, a voice that returns not louder but deeper, and maybe it sounds like this. Not clarity, but presence, not resolution but companionship, not answers but a name spoken with recognition. And so the question is not do you understand? The question is are you listening? Because Christ is still speaking, still calling, still addressing people with the very spaces they assumed were empty. And that means, even if recognition has not yet come, even if understanding is still forming, even if the story feels unfinished, we are not outside of resurrection. We may simply be standing within it, unaware. So remain. Attend. Allow the possibility that what you have named as absence may yet disclose itself as presence. And when the voice comes, and it'll come, not always dramatically, not always in ways that interrupt everything else, but often in a way that is almost missed. Turn. Not because everything is clear, but because you have been called. And that is enough to begin again. Christ is risen, and the echo of that resurrection continues to sound not over us, but within us. Amen.