Easter Sunday 2025

What are you looking for?

Easter egg hunts. They’re always lots of fun. Mostly because the end product is that you have lots of chocolate.

The Easter Egg hunt has a very clear focus. You usually know exactly what you are looking for, and generally speaking, you stay focused on that hunt until all are found. Although, I suspect many of you have experienced that egg that gets missed, and then in about a months time, you find a very sad looking egg in the garden.

But sometimes when you search, you’re not quite sure what it is you are looking for.

For anyone who has done any kind of academic writing, you’ll know the search to find something that will back up your argument. This is a very different kind of search. It’s the search where you kind of know what you want… that when you find it, you know it’s what you want. But sometimes what you find is quite different to what you thought it might have been.

Life can be a bit like this. You searching for something. Life’s not quite right. You know there’s something you need. You’ll know it when you see it.

It’s like there is this missing hole in your life. Where do you find it?

Sometimes we think we know what we’re looking for. We think it’s that promotion at work. Or perhaps the new car. For some, it might be about finding a partner. Someone who you can spend the rest of your life with. Whatever it might be, we figure that once we find it, our life will feel more complete.

Mary’s Search

This morning, as we continue on with the Easter story, we find Mary on a search.

Actually, she’s pretty confident in what she is looking for, and she is pretty confident in where it will be.

Her search is going to take quite the turn though, but in a way that will completely change her mind.

Let’s back track for a moment and see how we got to this point.

First, let me introduce to you Mary Magdalene. There’s quite a few Mary’s in the bible, and it can be a little tricky keeping a track of them all. There’s Mary, the mother of Jesus. And then there is Mary, the sister of Lazarus. That’s the Mary that we’re more familiar when we pair her with her sister, and so we get Mary and Martha.

But Mary Magdalene, is another Mary again.

She’s an interesting person, who to be honest, we don’t know a whole lot about, although there has been quite a bit of speculation.

Luke’s gospel tells us that she was one of the woman that often accompanied Jesus on his various travels. When Luke introduced her in chapter 8, he mentions without any elaboration that she was the one whom seven demons had come out.

And by the way, Magdalene is not so much her last name as a description that she comes from a place called Magdala.

Well, in John’s gospel, the first mention she gets is not until Jesus is on the cross, and we’re told that she is one of the women who were witnessing the event.

But in John 20, Mary Magdalene takes centre stage.

You see, Jesus died on the Friday and was placed in the tomb. They had to do things quite quickly because the Sabbath was about to start, and remember, the Sabbath is a Saturday and it began at Sundown on Friday evening.

So, early on the Sunday morning, Mary finally has her opportunity to go to the tomb.

She’s searching. And she knows exactly what it is she is searching for. She’s searching for the body of Jesus inside the tomb that she knows he has been laid in.

But this simple search takes a twist when she arrives.

While it was all clear in her mind how it was all going to play out, things are not as she expects when she arrives. The stone has been removed.

The way the account is written, it would seem she makes a very quick assessment of the situation and assumes that they have taken Jesus from the tomb.

Her first task, she needs to tell Peter and the other disciple, which is generally assumed to be John.

She does this, and now the search takes on a different element. Now the search is for where the body has been taken to.

She wants closure. She wants to be able to mourn this great loss. She wants to make sense of what has happened to the last few years of her life. Up until a few days ago, everything had started making sense. But slowly, it had all started to crumble.

The search is to desperately put it all back together.

Well, she’s got Peter and John onto the search now.

They run to the tomb. Their minds are no doubt spinning as they try to make sense of it all.

John outruns Peter, but as he peers in, he doesn’t want to go in.

But Peter goes straight in. If he’s part of this search, he wants to know what’s going on.

The search now gets more confusing.

You see, the strips of linen around the body of Jesus were still there. The cloth that had been around his head was still there.

If someone stole the body, why did they leave the linen there?

These two men, still a bit confused went back to where they were staying.

Not Mary. Something was not quite right. Her search was not complete.

She stayed there. Not entirely sure why, but she did. Naturally, the tears start flowing.

But now, something more strange happens. With tears streaming out of her eyes, she looks up, and there are two angels, seated right where the body of Jesus had been.

They say to her “Woman, why are you crying?”

It might seem that it’s a question with a rather obvious answer, but it does give Mary an opportunity to verbalise her thinking - in a way, to verbalise what her search has become.

She says: “They have taken my Lord away and I don’t know where they have put him”.

She searching for closure. But it’s not closure there’s a deeper search she doesn’t even realise she is on. You see, it’s not closure… but a new beginning.

In fact, she didn’t realise just how close she was.

She turned around, and standing in front of her was Jesus. The first born from the dead. The first to receive his resurrected body. Yes, it’s true that there are others who have risen from the dead. Even back in John 11 we saw Lazarus being raised from the dead. But Jesus, he’s resurrection is different.

But Mary doesn’t recognise any of this, because at this point in time, she doesn’t even know that it is Jesus.

She presumes it must be the gardener.

But Jesus asks the same question as the angels: “Woman, why are you crying?” although he adds to this: “Who is it you are looking for?”

Jesus knows she is searching. And he knows the search she is on is actually misdirected.

She’s still looking for the body and she will do anything to get it. And so she answers Jesus telling him as much.

Jesus simply answers by saying her name: “Mary”.

With the name was an intimacy. This man knew Mary.

That name… Mary. She had come looking for a body… looking for closure. But when Mary heard that name, everything changed. Her search was over. But not in the way she expected.

It was like her eyes were opened. This was not the gardener - at least, not a gardener in the sense she had thought of. He was a gardener of souls.

She turns to the one that she now recognises as Jesus and cries in Aramaic “Rabboni!”

The difference Jesus makes

Now, let me just pause here, because I want to give some consideration to what it means that Jesus rose again.

Now, I don’t want to suggest that Mary at this point in time fully comprehended everything I’m about to say. For her, this is something raw and intimate.

Everything is true

The first thing I want to suggest is that because Jesus has risen, everything else is true.

You see, I was here on Friday saying that when Jesus died on the cross, he was providing the forgiveness that we all desperately need.

But a question that often gets asked is - but why in the world would someone dying two thousand odd years ago make any sort of difference to me today? That would be a valid question if he had of just stayed dead. For someone to come alive in the way Jesus did - that is where he breaks through the bonds of death in such a permanent way, well, this proves he is not just another person. If he can do this, we can trust that when he says we are forgiven, then you are forgiven. When he says he is creating something new, we can believe it.

In fact, I’ll go as far to say as our whole Christian faith rises and falls on the historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus. If it did take place, everything we teach is real. If it didn’t take place, everything falls apart.

It actually makes this a very important thing for us to consider.

Mary had to the privilege where she could see it with her own eyes. We are 2000 years after the event, and so we rely on the testimonies of those who recorded it. For some, this makes it hard to believe… but yet, with some rational thinking, we can see that any suggestions that the witnesses just made it up starts to fall apart when you realise these witnesses died for making the testimony they did.

God’s kingdom breaking in

So firstly, because Jesus rose, we can trust everything Jesus said.

The second thing is that because Jesus rose, we can see that God’s kingdom is breaking into this world around us.

You see, I said Mary was on this search that she didn’t even realise.

What she’s actually found, is that a new kind of restored kingdom is breaking into this old one.

When Jesus rose, he didn’t rise with his old worn out body, he rose with a new resurrected body.

In fact, he is the first person to do so.

You see, this is a big difference between Jesus rising from the dead, and others, like Lazarus. When Lazarus rose again, just like other similar stories throughout the Bible, they actually come to life with the old body they had. They did not receive their resurrected body.

When Jesus rose, this new way starts breaking in.

Now, we’re not going to get our resurrected bodies until Jesus returns, but yet, a change does start to occur in us.

In fact, while our earthly bodies start to decay, a new life begins within us, and this life will never fade or spoil.

The resurrection of Jesus is the guarantee that this will happen.

You can start to experience the kingdom that Jesus has established right now, and we can do this because Jesus has already broken through the bonds of death and allowed the new to come in.

The promise of a future kingdom

Now, a follow on from this, is that the resurrection of Jesus also points us the future promise of his return.

It’s like a deposit of things to come. A day is coming when Jesus will come back. When he comes back, all things will be made new.

While I was juts saying that there is a present element to the kingdom that will can experience now, but there is an even better promise of a full future restoration. When this happens, you will no longer be encumbered by your worn out bodies. You will no longer be bothered by the evils of this world, because everyone who enters will be recreated with their own resurrected bodies.

Jesus resurrection points to this future time.

Finding Jesus

Now, as I mentioned before, I’m not suggesting that all of these points were necessarily clear in the mind of Mary at this particular point in time.

But yet, when she found him, there would have been a sense that everything is going to be okay.

But even though she has now found the risen Jesus, the others hadn’t.

That was about to change.

John’s gospel takes us to the place where the disciples were staying.

By now, it is the evening and the disciples have locked the doors because… well, they’re afraid.

Mary might have told them, but in a sense, they are still on their search.

Sometimes you can be told something, but until you find it for yourself, it doesn’t really make sense.

But as the disciples sit in their locked room, the object of their search is about to find them.

Jesus stood among them. How? It doesn’t tell us. We do know that he’s not a ghost and he does have a real physical body. Sometimes we just need to accept that there are things we don’t understand. Jesus got inside, and we don’t really need to know how.

As he stood among them he said: “Peace be with you!”

That might just sound a bit like a pleasantry, almost a bit like when we say to someone: “I hope you’re doing well”.

But from the lips of the risen Lord Jesus, this statement is the culmination of their search.

This is real peace being offered to them. This is a change to everything they’ve been going through.

Jesus is alive, and their search is over.

In verse 22, it’s says Jesus then breathed on them and said ‘receive the Holy Spirit’.

We’re going to see the giving of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost - a day that is still 7 weeks away, but yet, here again we get just a little foretaste of what is to come.

Verse 23 then might seem like its a bit out of place, like a quick change of subject. He says “If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven”.

Yet, while you might wonder why he is suddenly talking about forgiveness, it’s because this is so central to all of this.

You see, for this peace to be even remotely possible, forgiveness is needed.

They’ve been searching… they’ve been searching for the peace of God… they’ve found it, but to receive they need forgiveness. Both the forgiveness they receive and the forgiveness they give.

Conclusion

We’re all on a search. For some, we’ve already found life in Jesus already. For some, I know that you’ve already experienced this peace and forgiveness… and I want you to allow this Easter period to really be a time to just press into the life that we get from this. This is life that we get to the full.

For others, you may still be on a search. Perhaps you don’t really know what exactly it is you’re looking for. You may be like Mary… perhaps trying to find closure on some tragedy in your life… and perhaps the answer to what you’re searching for is actually found right here… right here in the story of Easter.

Take the time and reflect… what is it that you are really searching for? Because the answer might be far closer that you realise.

Some of you might not even realise you are on a search. But the fact you are here, I want to encourage you to really examine your life. Where are you finding hope? Where are you finding satisfaction? Is this life really all there is?

Mary found what she was looking for. In it, she found life. She found something new. She found hope for the future. And you can too.

This Easter, know that Jesus is there and he is ready to give you life and life to the full.

Let me pray...