Easter Sunday
April 20, 2025

When Resurrection Comes to You

Tom Are Jr.
Interim Pastor

Psalm 13:1–6
Luke 24:1–12

---

Peter races to the tomb now empty. He can’t make heads or tails of what he finds or fails to find. He was amazed, which is an acceptable response to resurrection.

In this strange moment resurrection has occurred, but Jesus’ followers are still in grief. It is as if resurrection hasn’t come to them yet.

Nowhere in scripture is the resurrection described. All we have is the testimony of those to whom he appeared after the fact.

It would have been nice had someone been there. But resurrection happened away from human gaze. Somewhere in the dark God does what only God can do. If I understand the text, resurrection is not only something that happens; it is something that must come to us.

Let me tell you how resurrection has come to me.

I’m not giving you answers.

I’m not making a case.

I’m just telling you my story.

It was a cold January in 1987. William Vogelein lay in a casket not six feet from me. He had lived ninety-five years. I had been a pastor for six months. I had never done a funeral before.

I said, “Christ is the resurrection and the life.”

I said, “Nothing separates us from the love of God.”

I said, “Do not be afraid,” but the truth is my knees were shaking. I can confess it now; resurrection had not yet come to me.

I thought William Voegelein was a fine man. I had visited him both in his home and in the hospital. He had been an elder in the church. I thought he was a fine man, but I wouldn’t say I loved him. I have learned there is no way to talk about resurrection unless love is involved.

The women begin this day with work to do. They carry spices to the cemetery. It’s the work of caring for the body, but when love is involved, it is work that can break your heart. They were going to rub the body with spices to hold down the stench that is death’s lingering insult. But when they arrive there is no body.

Angels were there.

“He’s not here,” they said.

“He has been raised.”

These women, the first Easter preachers, tell the apostles. The apostles didn’t believe them. They thought it was an idle tale.

It struck them as non-sense. Dead means dead. It was easy to doubt

We all do until resurrection comes to us.

They didn’t believe, but our believing it is not what makes it true.

My buddy Frank taught me to water ski. He and his family had a place at a lake. They invited us for a long weekend of swimming and water skiing. There was a fabled place at the lake where a rock cropping rose up out of the water several stories high. If you were brave enough or otherwise inspired you could jump from the precipice down into the waters. It was a long way down.

Frank and I climbed the rock. It was a magnificent view.

I wasn’t going to jump, but Frank jumped.

It was only after he hit the water that I realized the only way I wasn’t going to be up there to this day was to jump.

I jumped.

I told my father I had jumped and it had to be thirty feet up in the air. He said, no way. He thought it was an “idle tale.”

In a moment very unlike my father he said, “Let’s bet. I will pay you $1 for every foot over 25 feet you jumped, but you have to pay me $1 for every foot less than 25 feet.”

We went back and, using fishing line, measured the distance. Before it was all over my dad paid me $21.

I don’t know if my father was more disappointed in the fact that he had to shell out $21 or that he had a son who was dumb enough to jump off a 46-foot-high rock.

He thought it was an idle tale, but his believing it had no bearing on its truth. The rock was the rock.

They thought it was an idle tale. It’s an understandable response until resurrection comes to you.

Still, Peter runs to the tomb. Maybe he hoped these first Easter preachers were the only sane ones around.

But when he gets to the tomb, he finds it empty.

There is no hallelujah.

There is no “He is risen.”

The angels felt no need to stick around; after all they had the testimony of the women now. That should be enough.

Peter stands in this tomb now empty and wonders what happened.

If I understand it, resurrection is both something that God has already done, but resurrection also has to speak your name; it has to come to you.

It was hot as blue blazes in the South Carolina midlands. I stood with my shoes in the dirt.

Not six feet from me the body of Leonard Gaw lay in a casket.

I had been a pastor for six or seven years and had done more than a few funerals, but this was different.

Dr. G, as we called him, was my friend; I loved him. He stopped by the pastor’s study on my first day as pastor of the church. I was unpacking boxes. He thought I was with the moving company. “You know where our new pastor is?” (When he talked he sounded a bit like Henry Fonda in a bad mood.) I said, “Yes, it’s me.” “Good god, you’re a kid,” he said. I was twenty-nine, and he told more truth than I realized.

He came by often.

We would talk about everything and nothing.

Sometimes I would ask him about my sermon.

Once he said, “Tom, I’m eighty-three years old. Do you have any idea how many sermons I’ve listened to? Now what makes you think I’m going to remember the one you gave two days ago?”

It’s a good point.

When his time came I said,

“The Lord is my shepherd.”

I said, “In my father’s house are many rooms.”

Resurrection had come to me, because I loved him.

Because I loved him, I was confident God loved him too. Resurrection comes to us when we trust that God is love. Grief is our best teacher, because the one thing that love does very poorly is let go. Love holds on.

And God is love. So God holds on and simply refuses to grant death the power to pull us from God.

Resurrection is something that happened. God did what God does.

From that dark place where breath ceases and bodies decay God created resurrection.

But also the scriptures profess that, in time, resurrection comes to us.

I’m not giving you answers.

I’m not making a case.

I’m just telling you my story.

What I know of love from my own life is that love holds on. Love doesn’t let go.

Years ago, we took a family trip to Washington, D.C. When we made our plans known, Stormy, a dear friend in the congregation, said, “Will you do me a favor?” Stormy was always cheerful. She sang in the choir 108 years. I love Stormy, so I would do anything she asked. “Tom, will you go to the Vietnam Memorial? I want you to look for my son’s name. A friend went two years ago and couldn’t find his name. Would you look? I just need to know that his name is there.”

Of course it was. We took a picture. My children, with great care, rubbed a pencil over paper to obtain the relief: Gary L Shank.

His name was etched in black granite. But long before that it was etched on a mother’s heart. And long before that it was etched on the heart of God. A God who says “You belong to me. And when all is said and done and this world has let go of you or you have let go of the world, I will hold you fast.”

Resurrection is not first about power. Resurrection is what love does.

I have come to trust it with my whole heart. When I was young, resurrection was a theological problem for me; it was an intellectual quandary for me; but now it’s a relational reality.

My trust in resurrection has grown because I have learned what it is to grieve.

Grief is what love looks like in the face of loss. And what we know about love is that love holds on. Love never ends, as the apostle says.

So, today we give thanks that when death comes there is only God, and God will do what God does. God is love, and resurrection is what love does.

So even if your heart is broken today — particularly if your heart is broken today — sing, because we only grieve because we love, and those we love God also loves. And resurrection is what love does. So

               Sing hallelujah.

               Sing he is risen.

               Let us laugh and sing.

For when you love, resurrection will come to you.

At least, that is my story.

---

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church