When we have completely given up, God has not. God acts and out of the darkness, new light bursts forth. Easter is the proof that death and despair do not win in the end.

Here is something we easily forget about Easter morning: nobody was expecting it.

The women walking to the tomb in the dark were not going to witness a resurrection. They were going to finish a burial. They carried spices. They were already wondering aloud who would roll the stone away. Their category for what was about to happen did not exist. It wasn’t something that they could anticipate. None of Jesus’ followers did – even though he had told them.

The disciples hiding behind locked doors were not waiting for news of an empty tomb. They were waiting for the knock that would mean the authorities had come for them next.

Even those who had heard Jesus speak of rising on the third day had apparently filed that away as metaphor or misunderstood it entirely. Because when the news came, nobody said: yes, of course, just as he said. They said: this cannot be. Mary Magdalene’s first instinct was that someone had moved the body. The disciples on the road to Emmaus were walking away from Jerusalem — the direction of defeat and resignation.

What this means is that the resurrection was not wish-fulfillment. It was not the disciples’ grief generating a vision that matched their hopes. It shattered their categories rather than confirming them. Nobody was primed for it. Nobody produced it. Nobody even asked for it in quite that form.

God acted. Unilaterally. In history. In a way that required nothing from those first witnesses except that they be present to receive it, and even then, they barely could.

You can view the sermon here.

https://entangledstates.org/2026/04/04/easter-2026/ #Sermon