Holy Week in Luke’s Gospel: Easter Day Sermon, 5 April 2026
Easter Day, Cornerstone Community Church, Sedbergh
You can read the sermon below, or listen here:
A reading from the Gospel according to St Luke
But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.’ Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.
Luke 24.1–12 NRSVA
A reading from the Acts of the Apostles
Then Peter began to speak to them: ‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.’
While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, ‘Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?’ So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days.
Acts 10.34–48 NRSVA
Last summer, our family had a wonderful holiday in Barcelona. We were fortunate to visit the Basilica of the Holy Family, designed by the Spanish architect Gaudi. It is an amazing building, with large stained glass windows that bathe the stonework in deep reds and dazzling blues. It would be a very appropriate venue to celebrate Easter Day, as it reflects something of the radiance and glory of the risen Christ.
But amazingly, more than a century after the first stone was laid, the basilica is still under construction. When Gaudi died in 1926 (100 years ago), he left behind detailed architectural plans and models. Yet the work is so complex it is only expected to be completed sometime in the next decade! The vision was there from the beginning, but it has taken a long time to bring it to fruition.
As we have travelled through Holy Week this year, we have been learning from Luke’s Gospel, and the particular way he portrays the life of Christ. We have seen that Jesus is presented as a prophet of God, who preaches a message of the forgiveness of sins, and who willingly goes to the cross in obedience to his Father.
On this Easter Day, we reflect on another important feature for Luke – that the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ inaugurate a new age: the Age of the Church. For Luke, the Resurrection is like an architectural blueprint from which the Church is now called to build. As Peter says in our reading from Acts, the resurrection is a sign that God has appointed Jesus Christ as judge of the whole world, the living and the dead. The task of the church in this age is both to proclaim the Easter message, and to seek to transform our lives and society in a way that makes the Kingdom of God visible and tangible to all.
When God raised Jesus from the dead, he announced a new building project. All humanity is invited to look to this foundational event in history, and rediscover what it means to be human in the light of the Risen One. And that is not a quick task – like the building of a great cathedral, it is a work which extends over centuries and millennia. This is the vision that Luke gives to the church.
In order to see this, we need to understand another unique feature of Luke’s Gospel. It is the only Gospel to have a ‘part two’ – the book of Acts. In fact, you may not have realised, but the two readings we have heard this morning are both from the same author. They should really be printed together in our Bibles! The Book of Acts picks up where Luke’s Gospel closes – with the ascension of Christ. It then follows the growth of the early church, first focussing on St Peter, and then following St Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles. What Luke is doing with the book of Acts is preparing the way for the Age of the Church. He’s letting us know that the church is in it for the long run.
Luke’s perspective here is important, because the first believers thought that Jesus was going to return soon, and it must have been unsettling when they realised this wasn’t the case.
Our expectations around time are important. When you post a letter in the UK, you expect it to be delivered in a few days or at most a week. But can you guess the longest time that someone has had to wait for a letter to be delivered? Here is an entry from the Guinness Book of Records:
The longest time elapsed between a letter being posted and its delivery is 89 years. In 2008, Jane Barrett, a guest-house owner in Weymouth, Dorset, UK, received the letter – an RSVP to a Boxing Day party invitation, which had been posted on 29 November 1919. The message inside read: “Dear Percy, Many thanks for the invitation, be delighted. See you on the 26th December. Regards Buffy”. (https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/106716-longest-postal-delay)
I think Buffy would have been surprised to have been told that the letter was going to take 89 years to be delivered! I hope she got to the Boxing Day party alright.
But that is what it was like for the first Christians. The earliest writing we have in the New Testament is St Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, where Paul is assuming that Jesus will return within his own lifetime.
And when we look at later writings of the New Testament we discover that this has become something of a problem for the church. In 2 Peter 3 we hear of outsiders mocking Christians about the fact that Jesus hadn’t yet returned. And the mocking continues in our own day – you may have seen the joke printed on T Shirts or coffee mugs: ‘Jesus is Coming. Look Busy’.
St Luke responds to this by showing that the resurrection wasn’t a ‘quick fix’. Rather, it gives the blueprint for how the church must now live and worship in the light of the Resurrection. Luke encourages those who are doubting when Jesus might return, to take heart, to roll up their sleeves, and to get stuck into the building project.
As we reflect on these things today, we have to acknowledge that since the Enlightenment, questions have been raised over how we should interpret ancient understandings of cosmology and eschatology. Without going into the details, we can agree that Christians come to different conclusions as they prayerfully try and make the best sense of our inherited faith, alongside a modern worldview.
But however we make sense of the Resurrection philosophically, we must recognise that it is at the heart of Christian belief and practice today. It shapes our Christian worldview: death has given way to life, evil has been overcome by good, and we have been released from the bondage of sin, into the glorious freedom of God. This transforms our view of reality.
It has been noted by scholars that Christianity played a significant role in the introduction of hospitals, orphanages, and schools for all. The idea of a ‘welfare state’ is in fact a deeply Christian instinct. As the church today, we are called to think through our lives and society in the light of the good news of the resurrection, and participate in God’s building project.
As we do this, we of course rely on the power of the Holy Spirit as the agent of change within the church.
The Good News of the Resurrection tells us that Christ has defeated death. He has triumphed over the powers of evil and sin. And if we follow the apostolic instruction, to fear God, to do what is right, and to trust in Christ, then we can have confidence that we too will receive the forgiveness of sins. We can play our part in transforming this world according to the values of the Kingdom of God. And when our day of departure from this life comes, we can have confidence that we will share in the Resurrection life of Christ for all time.
Amen.