The Sunday of the Resurrection: Easter Day
20 April 2025
O God, who for our redemption didst give thine only-begotten Son to the death of the cross, and by his glorious resurrection hast delivered us from the power of our enemy: Grant us so to die daily to sin, that we may evermore live with him in the joy of his resurrection; through the same thy Son Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Isaiah 25:6-9
Colossians 3:1-4
Luke 24:1-10
When I sat down to write my Easter sermon, I started off by looking at all four Gospel resurrection stories. I have been taking this comparative approach in my sermon preparation a lot the last few months, and pulling out my well worn copy of the Synopsis of the Four Gospels – an important reference resource that has the Greek critical text on the left page and the English Revised Standard Version on the right, with four columns organising the texts so that the parallel passages line-up. (1)
This is what I did last week, when I compared the four versions of the Palm Sunday story and talked about how Luke’s account, while never mentioning palms or branches, places special emphasis on Jesus’ universal kingship. That method helped me see how all the themes of Holy Week are to be found in Luke’s telling of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Luke in particular helps us understand how, despite there being no mention of palms anywhere in his version, Palm Sunday is the story of what happens when the king who comes in the name of the Lord, even Emmanuel, confronts the powers of this world.
So, I thought, why not? Perhaps there is something in Luke’s account of Jesus’ resurrection that is especially incisive in a way that helps us make meaning of this world-shaking moment. And indeed, there are features of the story we just heard that stand apart from those of the other evangelists. Particularly striking, I found, is the sense of calm that envelops the events Luke narrates, when the women meet the “two men [who] stood by them in dazzling apparel,” and who explained that all had unfolded as Jesus had told them it would. Luke has no “great earthquake” or angel descending from heaven and rolling back the stone, as we find in Matthew (28:2-3), nor does he have John’s excited account of Mary Magdalene, Peter, and the Beloved Disciple running back and forth as they try to understand the events unfolding around them. Luke seems not to need that kind of drama to draw us into his account. However, these differences, while interesting and instructive, aren’t particularly helpful in conveying to you all on this Easter morning the wonder and majesty of the Resurrection. Luke does achieve something like this in his wonderful and unique account of two disciples’ encounter with Jesus on the Road to Emmaus, but that is a story for the Third Sunday of Easter – next year.
So when, a comparative approach didn’t develop in the way I had hoped, I went where my instincts took me, and that was to our prophesy from Isaiah. This text is, I find, one of the most evocative and beautiful passages in all of Scripture, and I have always found it both moving and inspiring. Probably composed in Judea during the eighth century before Christ, during a time when the kingdoms of Israel and Juda were under threat from the Assyrian Empire, this passage looks to the future and is meant to convey a sense of hope and expectation, hope for God’s vindication, hope in the coming Kingdom of God and the peace and justice it will bring. Like all the best writing in Scripture, it also transcends its original context, and its themes and language speak to us today.
Sitting here on Easter morning, after having experienced the highs and lows of Holy Week, this prophetic vision can speak specifically, I think, to our hopes for salvation in a time of uncertainty, of war, and of political and financial instability. The Assyrians – whose dominion stretched up the fertile crescent from Babylonia to Nineveh, over to the Mediterranean, down through the Holy Land, and across Sinai into Upper Egypt – may not be on our doorstep, but this is a moment when many in our City and across the country feel particularly vulnerable, and in times like these there is no better moment to hear words of promise that God’s rule will triumph over the powers of sin and death, even triumph over the rulers of the world.
This is the morning when, having experienced in the desolation of the cross and tomb on Good Friday, we find our Lord risen, as he had promised. Here, today, “the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wine on the lees well refined.” Here today, we will find generosity and abundance, a feast that might remind us not only of the wonderful reception we shared last night after the Easter Vigil, but even of the one we heard about a few weeks ago when we our Gospel was the story of Prodigal Son, in which the father killed and butchered the fatted calf to celebrate the return of his son who was believed to be dead, lost and gone for ever, and is now returned. This feast of fat things can also point us to the one we shall ourselves share this morning, in which become partakers of God’s very presence.
Here, today, we at our feast, like the women at the empty tomb, “remember how he told [us], while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise.” We see how the Lord has overcome the worst human beings could inflict upon him and, in doing so, has destroyed “the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations.” Here today, God’s hope breaks through the veil of self-interest and indifference-to-suffering behind which our leaders, those “sinful men,” hide. Death, that fact of human life, loses its power over us, its power to frighten and subjugate, as Jesus shows us how love stands firm and triumphant in the face of injustice, of state-sponsored violence, and the emptiness and sorrow these forces create.
Indeed, the Lord “will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth.” Those death-dealing powers have no chance as our Lord, “will swallow up death for ever,” and feed us not with mere sustenance, the basic necessities, but will provide a true feast of the richest foods and finest drink, teaching us that with the Resurrection comes life lived in its fulness, in relationship with God and with each other.
This morning, the Resurrection is too enormous a thing to be broken down by textual criticism and over word choice. Each of the four Gospels teaches us different aspects of an event that is too great to be contained by a single account. The Resurrection can most fully be glimpsed – for it is impossible from the vantage of our Earthly pilgrimage to apprehend in its totality – when all the accounts are taken together and we use the language and vision of other Scriptural witnesses to the fullness and majesty of God’s power to help us see what God has and will do for us.
On this Easter morning, then, and in the words of the Prophet Isaiah, may we see and experience this “feast of fat things, ... of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wine on the lees well refined,” for today is that day upon which we can cry, “Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his” – and our – “salvation.’”
Andrew Charles Blume ✠
New York City
Holy Saturday, December 14, 2025
© 2025 Andrew Charles Blume
1. Aland, Kurt, ed., Synopsis of the Four Gospels: Greek-English Edition of the Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum, 7th ed. (Stuttgart: German Bible Society, 1984).