A Sermon Delivered on Easter, April 5, 2026 by the Rev. Dr. Patrick H. Wrisley.
A funeral director asked a young preacher to hold a graveside service for a man who had died with neither family nor friends. The service was to be held in a remote corner of the county, and the young pastor got thoroughly lost on the way there.
When he finally arrived a full hour late, he spotted a backhoe and a work crew, but the hearse was nowhere to be seen. Off to the side, the workers were sitting in the shade eating their lunch. The diligent young pastor made his way to the open grave and found the vault lid already in place and covered with dirt. Feeling terrible about his tardiness and sensing that the crew had been waiting on him to finish closing the grave, he launched into his prayers and poured his heart out in a deeply passionate, albeit a rather lengthy graveside service; he was preaching his very best for an audience of exactly one.
When he finally said his “Amen,” he returned to his car feeling he did his best to honor the gentleman who had died; the deceased did not care he ran late; he was not going anywhere. The young pastor was filled with a renewed sense of purpose and dedication to the Gospel ministry to which he had been called.
As he rolled down his windows and caught his breath, he began to overhear the workers talking in the shade. One man, foot propped up on a stump, leaned over to his friend and said:
Ya’ know, I’ve been putting in septic tanks for 29 years and I ain’t never seen anything like that before.
Surprise!
This Easter morning, we also have a wonderful, surprising story that takes place. I invite you to turn in your Bible to John 20:1–18 and listen for the Word of the Lord.
John 20:1–18 (NRSV)
20.1 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. 2 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” 3 Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. 4 The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7 and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9 for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10 Then the disciples returned to their homes.
11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; 12 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. 13 They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” 14 When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her, “Do not hold 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.’ ” 18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
Can you imagine being there at that tomb on the first Easter? It’s still dark and you are there to finish what could not be completed on Friday at the beginning of the sabbath. Friday was a whirlwind and Mary came to ensure Jesus’ dead body was properly prepared for burial. She arrives and discovers the tomb’s covering removed. She panics and runs to fetch Peter and John and tells them her discovery. They run to discover the body missing but the grave clothes remained intact. What did the two pillars of the church do then? They went home. Sure, we read how John believed but his belief did not translate to action. And while the men went home scratching their heads, Mary lingered. She was grieving, crying because Jesus had now been taken away twice from her – once at his death and now his empty tomb.
And then the angels spoke: Daughter of Eve, why are you crying?
As readers of the Story, we mentally reply to the angels for her, “Why wouldn’t she be crying!? What else would she be doing?” She came to see Jesus and now he is gone. A cemetery is a place of remembering and with remembering often comes tears.
You have seen people do that, haven’t you? When someone dear to us dies and is buried, that place of burial becomes a holy place for the living. It becomes the last point of physical connection between those who are here and those who are gone. Standing at a graveside is a place of reflection and remembering; it is the place where we contemplate the way things were, and the way things might have been.
So, it was for Mary Magdalene. She came to mourn. She came to remember. All those walks with Jesus. All those meals around the table together. All those times he played with the village children or challenged the young people at the synagogue to read Moses and the Prophets with fresh eyes. All those people he healed. All that courage he carried. Mary came to emotionally reconnect with Jesus.
So, let me ask you, beloved: What did you come out to see this Easter morning?
Is it the music and the choir? Is it the new clothes and the familiar faces? Is it the Easter dinner waiting at home? Is it simply the obligation of showing up at church once a year and checking the box?
Our culture works hard to push Jesus to the margins on this day. We tend to make Easter about the arrival of spring, a long weekend, a family meal, a basket of candy, or fulfilling an obligation requested from a parent or spouse. The evidence of pushing Jesus to the margins is proven by the fact many people come to worship only two days a year: Today and what is the other one? Oh yes – Christmas. We find ourselves doing exactly what Peter and John did: come to look in the tomb, acknowledge it, nod at it, and then go back home as nothing has happened.
My prayer is that we, like Mary, will be interrupted by the angels of Easter and be reminded of what today is all about. Easter is so much more than Easter eggs, bright clothes and colors and Sunday dinners. I suggest we do two things this resurrection morning.
First, let us begin by suspending all our formerly held assumptions about this story and experience what the Lord wants us to see today.
Like Mary, many of us come to the tomb defined by our past. We sit beside the grave of our old life, our old hurts, our old failures, and we think about the way things were, or the way things should have been. Easter is the day when the angels of God shake us by the shoulders and says: “Wake up! Look at this! The tomb is empty!”
When we step inside the empty tomb for ourselves, when we examine what the resurrection of Jesus really means, something shifts within us. We no longer look backward with nostalgia but turn our head and face the present moment and the incredible possibility of a different type of future. We begin to wrestle with the living Jesus as opposed to simply remembering the historical one.
When we look and truly see the tomb is empty, we experience life differently. We start to see:
• Life’s open doors instead of only its dead ends.
• Possibility where the cynic sees only the status quo.
• Hope and potential in people and situations when everyone else says, “There is no use.”
• Our spouses, our children, our parents, our friends not only as they were or what we wanted them to be, but we can begin seeing them as they are and what they can be for us today.
That is what it means to investigate the tomb. It is not a passive glance at an old story. It is an encounter with the living God that changes the way we see and experience everything now.
The second task of Easter is equally urgent: Jesus tells Mary to go and tell.
Mary came to the tomb to look quietly and grieve but the angels and Jesus’ presence moved her from being a spectator to a messenger. She was commissioned to go tell others what she had witnessed. The resurrection was never meant to be a private experience.
Beloved, how does the world around us know we have experienced the empty tomb this morning? It is not by simply going home and hoping on the train called Status Quo. People know we experienced the empty tomb and Christ’s gentle presence through the tone and tenor of our everyday lives. Does our life reflect new-life energy or tomb-like thinking?
Peter and John’s experience of the empty tomb is to simply return home after the fact. Do we? Do we experience the empty tomb and resurrection only to treat the people around us as though they are disposable? Do we experience Easter only to ignore the poor and the broken? Do we meet the risen Christ only to live as though absolutely nothing has changed?
Friends, Easter demands a response from each of us: We are to come and see and then we are to go and tell. Let me share the heart of what Easter means for how we understand our own lives.
When we come to the tomb only to look and then walk away unchanged, we tend to live as though life is a sentence that ends with a period. We are born, we live, we die. The end. Period. Full stop. Life is a closed chapter.
But that is not who we are. We are not period people. We are resurrection people and resurrection people live their life with an exclamation point! If you want a piece of punctuation that captures the Christian life, it is not a period. It is a semicolon followed quickly by an exclamation point!
When death comes to someone who belongs to Christ, we place a semicolon, not a period. A semicolon says: we are still in the middle of the same sentence, but a new and glorious clause is beginning. This earthly life may be over — semicolon — but because of Easter, the second half of the sentence is the story of eternal life in the presence of God — exclamation point!
Death is not the final word. Death is not even the last chapter. It is merely the transition to life’s second half and that is a life in the presence of God that, remarkably, begins not only in eternity but in this very moment, as we walk with the risen Christ today.
Yes, come, look, and see the empty tomb. Let it surprise you all over again, as though you were hearing it for the very first time. Let the angels interrupt whatever you carried in here this morning and say to you: He is not here. He is risen.
But do not linger at the tomb. It is Easter! Beloved, the tomb is not the or our final destination; the tomb is the starting line.
Today is God’s exclamation point. Like Mary that first resurrection morning, we too are sent from this place not merely as people who have heard a story, but as people who have met the living Lord and are commissioned to go and tell. We are not period people. We are semicolon-and-exclamation-point people!
Because the tomb is empty.
Because he is risen.
He is risen indeed! Amen.
© 2026 by Patrick H. Wrisley. Sermon manuscripts are available for the edification of members and friends of First Presbyterian Church of Glens Falls, 8 West Notre Dame Street, Glens Falls, NY 12801. This sermon may not be altered, re-purposed, published or preached without permission. All rights reserved.
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