If you would like to listen to the unabridged message listen here: The Stories Are True
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb.
She wasn’t expecting a miracle. She was expecting a body.
That detail matters more than we usually let it.
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”John 20:1-18, NIV
So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in.
Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.
Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary.”
She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”). Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.
A Race and a Garden
John’s account of the resurrection is my favorite of the four gospels — partly because of its theology, but honestly, partly because of its humor.
When Peter and John hear the news from Mary, they run to the tomb. And John, writing about himself in third person as “the disciple Jesus loved,” can’t resist noting — three times — that he reached the tomb first. You can almost see Peter rolling his eyes as he reads the manuscript. Two guys, one of the most significant moments in human history, and John is still keeping score on who won the footrace.
It’s holy and hilarious. It’s the kind of thing only real friends do.
But then the tone shifts.
Resurrection Begins in Not Knowing
We arrive at Easter Sunday dressed in our pastels, ready to celebrate. We know how the story ends. But that first resurrection morning? It was disorienting. Confusing. Heartbreaking.
Mary had watched Jesus crucified. She watched them take the body down. She watched Joseph of Arimathea lay him in the tomb and seal it with a stone. She came before daybreak to tend to his body — to offer him the dignity of proper burial rites. It was the last thing she could do for him.
And the stone was gone. The body was gone. The story, as far as she could tell, was over.
When she looks into the tomb a second time, she sees angels — and here’s something worth pausing on: this is the only appearance of angels in the Gospels where they don’t say “Do not be afraid.” They simply ask, “Why are you crying?”
Mary was so overwhelmed with grief that fear wasn’t even on the table.
She turns and sees a man she assumes is the gardener. She still doesn’t understand. And this, I think, is one of the most honest things the resurrection stories give us: resurrection often brings disorientation before it brings clarity.
We like to think that encountering the risen Christ produces immediate, confident faith. But the resurrection of Christ upends everything we think we know — especially the most basic thing: that death is final. That when someone dies, the story is over. Turn the page, close the book, put it back on the shelf.
Resurrection refuses that logic. And that refusal is disorienting.
I remember sitting in a dorm room at Illinois State with a college student, talking about the gospel. He stopped me and said — and I’m cleaning up his language — “So let me get this straight. I’ve been a dirtbag my whole life. I’ve done really bad things. And you’re telling me that Jesus, who doesn’t even know me, died for my sins 2,000 years ago — and I’m just forgiven? And I don’t have to do anything?”
“Yeah,” I told him. “You trust Christ and grace is yours.”
He looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “There’s no way God would do this for me.”
I couldn’t argue him into it. The resurrection doesn’t always produce clarity. Sometimes it just produces holy confusion — because the grace it announces is so radical, so reckless, so completely outside the logic of how the world works, that the only honest response is: this doesn’t make sense.
Easter begins in not knowing.
The Second Garden
There’s a detail in John’s account that’s easy to miss: this tomb was in a garden.
That’s not incidental.
The story of God’s people begins in a garden — and in that first garden, everything comes apart. Creation is broken. Relationship is fractured. The whole thing unravels.
But here, in this second garden, things are being put back together. Repaired. Redeemed. Renewed.
Jesus is the gardener of a new creation.
And his entire ministry up to this point? He’s been planting seeds. Seeds scattered along a path. A lost son returning home. An enemy showing radical mercy. A tax collector crying out in humble unworthiness. Seed after seed after seed. Little previews of something just over the horizon.
The cross is a burial. Resurrection is growth. In this garden, what was buried begins to live.
One Word
Mary is standing in the garden, weeping, confused, speaking to a man she thinks is the caretaker — and then it happens.
He says one word.
“Mary.”
That’s it. Her name. And everything changes.
It’s like that moment in The Wizard of Oz when the black-and-white world suddenly bursts into color. One word, and the whole landscape transforms.
Jesus doesn’t offer her a philosophical argument for the resurrection. He doesn’t walk her through the messianic prophecies of Isaiah and Micah. He doesn’t present a doctrinal treatise. He simply says her name.
And in that moment, she knows she is known.
This is, I think, one of the most beautiful things about grace. Faith isn’t born from understanding. It’s rooted in being known. The God who knows everything about us — everything — still gave himself for us. Still rose for us. And in the moment we realize we are known by this Jesus, something breaks open.
Resurrection happens by name.
Mary. Dan. Sarah. Bill.
Pick your name.
The Stories Were Never Just Ideals
Here’s what the resurrection does to everything that came before it.
All those parables — the seeds, the prodigal son, the good Samaritan, the Pharisee and the tax collector — they weren’t principles to live by. They weren’t inspirational ideals. They were previews. They were seeds pointing toward a harvest that only resurrection could produce.
Without the resurrection, the sower’s seeds die in the rocks and on the road. Nothing grows.
Without the resurrection, the father running toward his returning son isn’t a picture of grace — he’s just a doormat. A man being taken advantage of. It doesn’t mean anything.
Without the resurrection, the neighbor who stops to help his enemy on the side of the road isn’t modeling love — he’s just a fool. A waste. Naive.
Without the resurrection, the tax collector who cries out “I am not worthy” is left exactly there — in his shame, in his hopelessness, with no answer to his prayer.
But because Christ is risen, those seeds bear fruit.
That father’s mercy is real grace — the grace of one who has given himself completely. The neighbor’s love isn’t foolishness; it’s the way of resurrection, the way of a cross rooted in self-sacrificial love. And the one who knows he is unworthy is lifted up, welcomed in, his name spoken.
The parables were always true. We just needed resurrection to prove it.
What This Means Now
Death is not final. Not anymore.
Grace is not fragile. It cannot be broken — it is reckless and overwhelming and radical, because resurrection backs it up.
And no matter where you find yourself in your story, that story is not over. It never will be. Because at any moment, you might hear your name — and everything will make sense. Everything will be transformed.
Christ is risen.
The stories are true.
Heavenly Father, this Resurrection Sunday, we are grateful that all the stories are true. We are grateful that we have heard our names. And if we haven’t yet — open our ears and our hearts, so that we might. So that we might receive the radical and reckless grace rooted in self-sacrificial love, because of the cross and the resurrection. Christ is risen and the stories are true. Amen.