Woo … welcome everyone. How good it is to be together again this Easter Sunday. It’s a powerful thing to feel moved. And Easter is a powerful day for feeling it. Or it used to be, if it’s not still for you. We anticipate enough people coming to our worship service here that we had an earlier one. On a morning that usually finds about sixty to seventy people gathered in this room, we gather many more. Some come out of obligation, surely. But I trust many of you are here once again at least hoping to be moved, somehow – by the music, by the morning itself, by the memories of Easter’s past.

And it only begins with a morning gathering such as this. On Easter, we anticipate a brunch, and/or some gatherings with friends or families, or maybe just an afternoon quieter than most because … well, it’s Easter Sunday and everyone who usually bothers us later is busy with brunch or a gathering of some sort! We are “moved” on Easter morning, more than most mornings, for one reason or another, in one way or another. And this is a powerful thing, because …

We are made to be moved.  To be Human is to be affected, to seek that which stirs us and allows us to never be the same again. We were not made, and we are not meant, to “stay the same”, year in and year out (or every day in and day out). We lament that with our nostalgia – Remember how it used to be? Remember when … But we are made to “move,” and be moved. And Easter Sunday morning is a powerful day for doing both. How good it is to be together again on this Easter Sunday. We’re so glad you’re here. Pray with me …

Good and gracious God, in the face of violence, you chose peaceful resistance. On the cross, you joined all those who know suffering. After death, you defied the grave. So, today we have good news to proclaim: love wins! You are with us and your goodness is alive in the world. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, you who are our Rock and Redeemer. Amen.

And now, let’s prepare to listen for the Word (capital “W”) this morning through the Resurrection narrative of Matthew. All four Gospels share the early morning experience on what became that first Easter. They’re actually pretty remarkable in how similar they are, given the disparities in dates and location of their individual writings. In each one, it is “the women,” or just one woman, who first discovers the empty tomb. In our Lenten book study this past season, two other women, the Reverends Christine Coy-Fohr and Cynthia Campbell, note that the women in these narratives were seeking – just like us this morning – to be moved, seeking “that which would move them”. They went to be reminded of Jesus, of this person who had “reshaped their lives and their understanding of the world” so profoundly in life (Meeting Jesus on the Road, 93). They went with no small measure of nostalgia, I’ll bet. They wanted badly to “go back” to the way it was with Jesus. We’ve all been there. Some may be there even now. What they got was not “pulled back” but “moved forward”. It was …

Read Mattthew 28:1-10.

Jesus Has Risen

28 After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. ² There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. ³ His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. ⁴ The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men. ⁵ The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. ⁶ He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. ⁷ Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.” ⁸ So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. ⁹ Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. ¹⁰ Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Did you hear the movement in this reading?! And not just in the women, but all around them. The earthquakes, the angel’s dazzling descent from heaven – an appearance like lightning, the stone rumbling and rolling back, the Roman guards shaking and falling to the ground “like dead men”? More than any of the other Gospels, Matthew emphasizes the seismic movement, the tectonic shifts, that happen to these women – and to all those who have given their hearts to the Way of Love that reshapes them – when we realize that Christ is alive. Could Matthew make this any clearer to us?

And after all this seismic activity, we hear again (rather comically this time) the words that began the Gospel we know so well, way back at Christmas: “Be not afraid.”

Are you kidding me?!

This quiet visit to the tomb of a beloved to silently lament and seek to be comforted, has become loud, astonishing, and nothing but fearful! The women leave the tomb with great joy and fear, we read. And it’s not until they meet Jesus, himself, which is blessedly quick, and he says “Be not afraid”, that I’m ready to consider maybe they’re able to do that. And they’re able to do that because of the directive they’re given next:  (Do not be afraid) go to Galilee … there you will see me.

They are told to move, now … move forward … move ahead … move beyond … beyond the death you experienced here, beyond the death you experience everywhere. Move … on.

Easter is a powerful day to feel … moved. Resurrection means new life, new possibilities, new promises.

And here is where Easter Sunday gets challenging for so many of us. How can we trust resurrection when death is still on the world’s throne in any way, shape or form? And death is present in our lives in many ways, shapes, and forms. The jeering crowds, the taunting soldiers, the heartless Pontius Pilates were still around for the first disciples. War and violence were still realities. Sickness and sadness were too. And they still are today. Our world today still says “no” – over and over and over again – to the Way of Love and the call to full life revealed for us in Jesus. How can we believe in, let alone trust, resurrection in our world still so full of all this, any more than Mary, and Mary, and those that first were told to “move” could?

Only by being unwilling to take this world’s “no” for an answer. To any of it. To any form of death. God refused. Jesus refused. And they invite us to do exactly the same. Say “no” to death.

A very dear colleague of mine sent me something the week before Holy Week. I am one of Bill’s prayer partners in his retired ministry. He shared a quote with me from Clarence Jordan, the founder of the Koinonia community in Georgia and translator of the Cotton Patch Version of the Bible:

“The resurrection of Jesus,” Clarence instructs us, “was simply God's unwillingness to take ‘no’ for an answer.  God raised Jesus, not as an invitation to us to come to heaven when we die, but as a declaration that God's very self has now established permanent, eternal residence here on earth. God is standing beside us (stirring within us), strengthening us in this life (to say ‘no’, too).  The good news of the resurrection of Jesus is not that we shall die and go home to be with God, but that Christ (Love incarnate) (is alive) and comes home with us, bringing all God's hungry, naked, thirsty, sick prisoner (siblings) at the same time.  (Common Prayer:  A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals)

We simply … must be unwilling to take the worlds “no” to full Life and abundant Love for an answer.

And we might consider doing that this year by “moving on” ourselves. To “be not afraid” and to listen to Jesus’ resurrection instruction, as well, to “go” – move, now … move forward … move ahead … move beyond … beyond the death you experience. Move on … holding all we are dealing with tenderly and intentionally but holding it now with a faith and trust in something more – a “yes” to Life and to Love.

Going to Galilee is going to the place where it all began for these women and for the first followers of Jesus, to where they first felt moved by the Way of Jesus. We can go to that, to those places, too. Maybe that’s a part of why we are here – we’ve returned to where it all started, whether we actually recall it starting or not. Galilee is the place where Jesus’ ministry – which embodied the Kin-dom of God on earth – life abundant and love unmeasured, was lived out – where the disciples (men and women) were first called, where Jesus taught the crowds, healed the sick, appointed the Twelve, showed compassion on the suffering, offered rest to the weary, spoke in parables, fed the multitudes, blessed the children, challenged the rich man, and taught us what it means to be God’s anointed. Where he began saying “no” to the world’s insistence on power, authority, violence and death.

This is the place, one place at least – and perhaps the only place outside our own families – where we first learned this Way of life, where we first learned to say “no” and help an unpopular kid on the playground; offer some tutoring to a classmate who needed special attention; decide to share our lives with another in marriage or lifelong commitment; spend time out of the office with a co-worker in need; challenge policies that diminish or demean anyone; rally against fear and tyranny in any form; sit with the aging and share their life to enrich our own; engage and face dementia, cancer, car wrecks and heart attacks head on. We learned to say “no” to death here in a place such as this. It will not have the last word in our lives.

I believe that’s why we gather in larger numbers on Easter. We come to be moved and to be reminded that “moving on” is the only faithful way to live, that moving beyond the “no’s” of the world and into the Life that began with Jesus and that is ours in the experience of the Risen Christ every day of our lives is the Way of Christ. Christ is alive when we are moved. On this day a movement began. And on this day, we are moving on still.

Happy Easter, everyone! We wish that tomorrow may be just as life-giving. And the day after, and the day after that, and the day after that. “Christ is alive! Let Christians sing!”  Amen.

Reverend Joel Weible, Pastor

Pewee Valley Presbyterian Church / April 5, 2026