Luke 24: Easter Sunday (Episode 25)

This week's message fell on the biggest weekend of the Christian calendar - Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday. But Pastor Brady didn't stop at asking whether we believe the empty tomb as history. He asked something more searching: are we living, right now, as a people of the resurrection?

An Empty Tomb - and a Question for Us

Luke 24 opens in grief. Jesus had been crucified, and His followers were devastated and afraid - many of them in hiding. Then, very early on the first day of the week, the women came to the tomb with spices and found the heavy stone, the one it would have taken several men to move, already rolled away. The body was gone.

Suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them, and their words have echoed for two thousand years: "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen." The tomb had been sealed and guarded by Roman soldiers precisely because of rumors the body might be taken - which makes the empty tomb all the more staggering.

It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James who carried this news back to the apostles. As Pastor Brady pointed out, the very first Easter sermon was preached by women - one more moment in a Gospel where Jesus consistently honored and dignified those the world was quick to overlook. (The apostles, to be fair, thought it sounded like nonsense at first - until Peter ran to see the empty tomb for himself.)

"Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen!"

He Didn't Reverse Death - He Defeated It

Here is the line worth writing down: Jesus didn't simply reverse the effects of death, the way people had been raised back to life before. He defeated death itself, then rose and ascended to the Father. The Scriptures record that more than 500 people saw Him alive after the crucifixion.

This is good news for anyone who has stood at a graveside. Pastor Brady spoke openly about losing his own father in 2005, and Pam losing hers a year and a half ago - and about the hope they hold anyway: for those who belong to Christ, death does not have the final word. It has been defeated.

Resurrection Power for Right Now

After the resurrection, Jesus told His followers to wait in Jerusalem for the gift the Father had promised - the Holy Spirit. That power transformed a frightened, hiding band of followers into courageous witnesses who gave the rest of their lives to proclaiming what they had seen.

And Pastor Brady kept returning to one phrase: right now. Peter writes that God "has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection" (1 Peter 1:3). Paul writes, "I no longer live, but Christ lives in me" (Galatians 2:20). This isn't a memory of power once felt in an upper room - it's power available today, in the carpool line, at your job, in the ordinary chores of an ordinary Tuesday.

"And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who lives in you."

An Invitation to Live It

So the message ends not as history but as invitation. What in your life needs to be made new - a marriage, your health, your walk with God? Pastor Brady's encouragement was simple: stop and ask for a fresh filling of the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead.

And if your world has fallen apart - as he and Pam have known it to - resurrection hope means God is still at work in ways you cannot see. "He's doing holy work in hidden places on your behalf." You're going to make it: not by your own strength, but by His Spirit alive in you.

Death has been defeated. The grave is empty. And the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead is at work in you today - even in the hidden places you cannot see. Whatever feels dead, Easter is the invitation to let it be made new.

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