Alive Here and Now

A Sermon for the Great Vigil of Easter 2026

Go quickly and tell the 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.” So the women hurried away from the tomb, with awe and great joy, and ran to carry the good news to the disciples. [Matthew 28]

There is a meme that has been making the rounds on social media this week. It shows an array of artfully arranged Easter lilies in front of an empty cross with this text:

Since you’re so committed to biblical accuracy,
I assume only women will be preaching
about the resurrection at Easter this year.

Yes, it was a little snarky … but I’ll admit it made me laugh.

And it also warmed my heart that the biblical story that was for generations ignored, denied or buried – the story of Jesus commissioning the women disciples who showed up at the tomb to be the first bearers of the Good News of the resurrection to the male disciples who were hiding in a locked upper room – is increasingly being told and re-told.

And not just by feminist and womanist scholars relegated to backroom bible studies, but by parish preachers and Substack writers and cartoonists meme makers.

To be sure, the erasure of the empowerment of those first women disciples started early. In Luke’s gospel the apostles dismissed the women’s report of Jesus’ resurrection as an “idle tale” (Greek: lēros), meaning nonsense. In fact, the original Greek word implies something “totally devoid of anything worthwhile.” It is the root of the word “delirious,” suggesting the men thought the women were delirious or crazed.

And in John’s gospel -- when he counts up the number of times Jesus appeared after the resurrection -- he leaves out the time he appeared to Mary Magdalene in the Garden.

But wait – there’s more. After 30 years a priest and 70+ years an Episcopalian I was yesterday years old when I looked at this evening’s Gospel text in context – reading the verses that immediately follow the ones appointed for reading in church. Matthew goes on to report:

While the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priest what had happened. The chief priest in turn held a meeting with the elders and, after working out their strategy, gave a considerable amount of money to the soldiers, with these instructions: “You are to say his disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep. And if any word of this gets to the governor, we will straighten it out with him and keep you out of trouble.” The soldiers took the money and carried out their instructions.

So not only did the patriarchy refuse to listen to and believe women, the corrupt officials were giving bribes to ICE agents – I mean soldiers – to propagate fake news and then promising executive pardons if things went south – leaving me to wonder if I was reading ancient scriptural texts or listening to the news at the top of the hour on any day that ends in y.

Now – my sisters and brothers and gender fluid siblings -- all of this is either super discouraging or deeply validating depending on which side of the bed you got up on this morning. And I got up on the Easter side of the bed this morning.

I got up on the side of the bed where the good news of the indestructible power of God’s inexhaustible love is being celebrated after our forty-day journey with Jesus through the wilderness of Lent.

I got up on the side of the bed where the texts appointed for us at this Easter Vigil in the Year of our Lord 2026 remind us that we are not the first generation to experience erasure, misogyny, corruption and oppression … but that we stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before in the service of Creation, Liberation, Transformation and Compassion.

I got up on the side of the bed on the day we gather once again and kindle the first fire of Easter – celebrating the light the world did it’s best to extinguish coming back into the world with bells and candles and flowers and the ancient texts that call us to be people of love, justice and compassion.

I got up on the side of the bed ready to renew not only my baptismal covenant but my commitment to these words from an Easter card I received decades ago:

The Great Easter truth
Is not that we will be born again someday
But that we are to be alive here and now
By the power of the resurrection

And tonight’s Easter Vigil is just the beginning of living that Easter Truth.

As I used to tell the children when I was a day school chaplain: Chaplain Susan didn’t do forty days of Lent to do just one day of Easter! In this church, Easter lasts until Pentecost: Fifty Days of the Celebration of the Resurrection of our Lord. Thanks be to God! [And now we can say it again: Alleluia! Alleluia!]

We’re all familiar with “Lenten Disciplines” -- where the forty days of Lent are spent with special intentions of a spiritual nature. Maybe what we need are some “Easter Disciplines” --to spend the fifty days of Easter considering just what it is to be “alive here and now” -- to look at how we turn our belief into action -- what to DO with that “power of the resurrection.”

To “be alive here and now” is to embrace God’s promise of abundant life -- both now and later. To embrace that promise, not just for ourselves but for all creation: just as Jesus did for us. Listen again to the prayer, which is part of our Good Friday liturgy:

“Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace. So clothe us with your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands of love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you.”

On Good Friday, I asked, “How can we hear these stories and not be changed by them?”

This evening I wonder “How can we experience this joy and not share it?”

• The Great Easter truth is that we are called to tell the story -- called to make a difference.

• The Great Easter Truth is that God continues to work in our lives, in our communities and in our world.

• The Great Easter Truth is that we have much Good News to tell -- and that there’s a world out there yearning to hear it.

We are called by virtue of our baptismal covenant to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ” -- to those who’ve never heard about a God who loved us enough to become one of us -- and to those who’ve never heard that the Good News in Christ includes them.

The Great Easter Truth is that there’s an empty tomb right here in the midst of us -- sending out light, and hope and promise -- giving us the strength and courage to go out and do the work we’ve been given to do.

And although we may not always recognize it immediately -- like the disbelieving apostles hearing what they thought was “an idle tale” -- that hope and promise are here, and once we’ve seen it, experienced it, recognized it – we’re never alone again.

In her book Traveling Mercies author Anne Lammott writes about her best friend who got lost one day. The little girl ran up and down the streets of the big town where she lived, but she couldn’t find a single landmark -- and she became more and more frightened. Finally, a policeman stopped to help her. He put her in the passenger seat of his car and they drove around until she finally saw her church.

Pointing it out to the policeman she told him confidently, “You can let me out now. This is my church, and I can always find my way home from here.”

Wherever you’ve come from, you can find your way home from here.

The risen Lord is here among us and within us – and calls us all to that place where our deep gladness and the world’s deep need meet. And from that place we will be sent – as Jesus sent the women who were the first proclaimers of the resurrection … out into a world that will not always hear us or believe us as we bear the good news of a God who loved us enough to become one of us in order to show us how to love one another.

In few moments, we will baptize Marz and Mia into that work and witness. And then we will gather around this table to receive the holy food and drink of new and unending life as we remember together that we are alive -- here and now -- by the power of the resurrection.

But first, won’t you pray with me:

Holy God, Easter does not promise us
that the empire will reform itself
or that the powerful will suddenly
discover a conscience.

The stone rolled away for the women
before anything in the political order had changed.
Pilate was still in his palace.
The guards were still at their posts.

We know that resurrection isn’t the end of the struggle.
We know that resurrection is the tenacious, defiant claim
that what the powerful call permanent
is not, in fact, permanent.

So give us the gift of stubbornness, O God.
Give us the gift of hope
that doesn’t require certainty to function,
and the nerve to believe that the arc of things
bends somewhere closer to where you are,
even when we can’t see it from here.

But until then, keep us close to one another,
because we know that’s where you tend to show up.
Not in the palaces or the halls of power.
but in the garden, with the weeping and bewildered
with the ones who came to anoint the body
and found an empty tomb.

And so we dare to say it even if our voices tremble:
The Lord is risen. The Lord is risen indeed.
Give us the courage – this night and always –
to live like we believe it.
Amen.

[adapted from Easter Prayer by Dr. Derek Penwell, Substack 2026]