Easter Sunrise 2026

Text:    “Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb” (John 20:1).

You have kept many vigils in your life. You know what it is to wait.

You have waited for an answer to prayer that did not seem to come. You have waited for work while the bills kept arriving. You have waited for a door to open when every path seemed closed. You wait for justice when those who do evil seem to prosper and justice and equity seem far away. You have waited through long nights when sleep would not come and worry would not let you rest.

You have watched to see if your sin would be exposed; if you would be found out; if your guilt and shame would be laid bare for everyone to see.

You have waited for news from the doctor. And you have kept the hardest vigil of all—sitting at the bedside of someone you love, watching the slow fading of breath. You have waited for the moment of parting that soon would come. You know what it is to keep watch.

You have kept many vigils in your life. You know what it is to wait.

But this morning, you are not keeping watch in the dark. This morning, you have come at the break of day, like the women who went to the tomb while it was still early, carrying their grief, their questions, their love. They came expecting to find a body. They came to continue the sorrow of the long vigil.

But the stone was rolled away. The tomb was empty. The vigil was over.

What they had been waiting through the long night to see—without even knowing it—had already happened. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia.

The Son of God did not remain in the tomb. The work is finished. Death has been defeated. The grave has been opened. And that means that every vigil of your life—every waiting, every watching, every long and weary night—has been caught up into this morning. It is no longer a waiting without end. It is a waiting that moves toward something certain.

It does not erase the nights you have known. It does not pretend that the waiting was easy or that the sorrow was small. The grief is real. The burdens are real. The watches you keep in this life are real. But now they are no longer empty. Now they are filled with promise, because this morning reveals what the night could not see.

When you wait for an answer to prayer that does not seem to come, you are not waiting on a silent God. You are waiting on the Father who has already given His Son into death and raised Him again. His answer is not absence. His answer is Christ.

When you wait for provision—for work, for stability, for a door to open—you are not waiting on chance or fortune. You are waiting on the Lord who has conquered death itself. If He has not withheld His own Son, He will not abandon you now.

When you wait for justice, when evil seems to prosper and righteousness seems forgotten, you are not waiting in vain. The risen Christ is the Judge of the living and the dead. Justice is not lost. It is coming.

When you lie awake in the night, when worry will not let you rest, you are not alone in the darkness. The One who rose at the dawn is the Lord of every hour. Even the night belongs to Him.

And when you fear that your sin will be exposed—that your guilt will be uncovered and your shame laid bare—you are right to fear it. But your sin has already been brought into the open. It has already been judged. It has already been laid upon Christ. And He has risen. There is no condemnation for those who are in Him.

When you wait for news from the doctor, when you face the frailty of your own body, you are not waiting without hope. The risen Christ is the firstfruits of the resurrection. What has happened to Him will happen to you.

Even the final watch beside the bed of someone you love—watching, praying, waiting for the last breath—has been transformed.

You are not watching a life slip away into nothing. You are watching one for whom Christ has died. You are watching one whom He will raise. Even there, in that quiet room, the risen Lord is present. Even there, death does not have the final word.

When the time comes, you go to the grave. You stand where the body has been laid into the earth. You see the stone. You see the name. You see the dates. And unlike those women on that first Easter morning, you do not find the grave empty. There is no angel. There is no voice announcing that the tomb has been opened.

But you do not go there only to remember. You do not go there only to mourn. You go to watch. You go to wait. You go as one who knows what this morning has revealed.

The grave is no longer a place of defeat. It is a place of rest in hope. The body is laid into the earth like seed, waiting for the day when the Lord of life will call it forth.

You stand at the grave of a brother or sister in Christ, not as one who has no hope, but as one who is waiting for a promise to be fulfilled. That is your vigil now. Waiting for the trumpet. Waiting for the voice that will call the dead from their graves. Waiting for the morning when those who dwell in the dust shall awake and sing for joy. Because this morning has already dawned once—and it will dawn again.

The long vigil of the world has been broken by the rising of the Son. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia.