Easter 2025

 Every Easter, we hear the story of the empty tomb—and every year, we hear it a little differently.

Because we’re in a different place.
We’ve walked different roads.
We’ve carried different crosses.

Where we are on our own journey to Jerusalem and Calvary shapes how we hear the angel’s words, how we see the stone rolled away, how we recognize the risen Jesus.

Maybe this Easter, you’re celebrating the safe return of someone you feared you had lost—a child, a spouse, a friend.

 If that’s where your heart is, then the empty tomb is more than a symbol. It’s a promise: that God is with us even during the darkest nights and along the most dangerous roads.

Maybe you are grieving—carrying the weight of a spouse, a parent, a child, or a dear friend who has died. 

And maybe this morning, the angel’s question pierces your heart:
"Why do you seek the living among the dead?"

It’s not a rebuke. 

It’s the first light of hope. It’s the gentle promise that the Risen Christ has lovingly carried your loved one into the arms of the Father.

Maybe you’ve lost your job or are struggling to make ends meet. Bills pile up. Hope feels thin. And then you hear about the stone being rolled away. 

That stone, once immovable, becomes a sign: that even when we feel stuck, buried, or forgotten, God’s grace is still at work—opening new paths, calling us forward, reminding us of what really matters.

Maybe you relate most to the women at the tomb—the ones who showed up before dawn with spices and sorrow. They had no idea how they’d move the stone. But they went anyway.

And God met them there.

They were the first to hear the good news.
They were the first to share it.
And through them, God shows us something powerful: that love and humility, even in grief, are stronger than fear, power, or death.

Whoever you are in the story this Easter morning—whether you're the mourner, the seeker, the wanderer, the doubter, or the one who just showed up not knowing what to expect—Christ meets you here.

He walks with you.
He takes up your cross.
He opens up every tomb that entraps you.
He speaks in every act of compassion, in every gesture of reconciliation, in every whisper of peace.

This Easter, in this Jubilee Year of Hope, we are reminded:
Hope is not wishful thinking.
Hope is a person.
Hope has a name.
Jesus is risen.

So whatever road you're walking, whatever burial cloths you're trying to cast off, whatever tomb you feel stuck in—may you hear the angel's words in your own heart:

"He is not here. He is risen."

And may that hope—real, living, Easter hope—set you free to rise into joy, into peace, into amazement.

Amen.