Easter Sunday – April 5, 2026
Can This Be True?
John 20:1-18
Can this be true? Disciples of Jesus and Christians in every age have wondered about the resurrection of Jesus. Can this be true? Was it a dream? Or just a story?
This week, just before the great three days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday began, there was another big holiday in our home: April Fools’ Day. On April Fool’s Day, my family knows, I am always gullible. Every year, I say, “You won’t get me.” And every year, they get me.
Here is their best-ever, from a few years ago. The kids ran to tell me there was a skink in the house. Now, a skink is like a lizard, and I really don’t like lizards or reptiles in general. I had long lived with a low-grade, irrational fear that a skink would find its way inside, grow large in the dark, and eventually eat us all. So, when they told me there was one in the living room inside a lamp, I was terrified and – with no thought for my own safety – sprang into action.
I told everyone to leave the house and asked Luke to keep an eye on the skink. I grabbed the heaviest gloves I had, thick fireplace gloves. With gloves on, I tiptoed across the room toward the lamp with my heart in my throat.
I could not believe my luck that it had not yet moved. I took a deep breath… reached inside the shade… and grabbed a piece of paper that had been cut out and taped on the shade, positioned perfectly to cast the shadow of a skink.
I was absolutely certain of something that turned out not to be true. And I felt like a fool.
In the hot summer of 1922, when his own nation and world was rocked by political upheaval and economic collapse, the great theologian Karl Barth told a group of pastors that the real question people bring to worship is simply, “Is it true?” Not, is it interesting or does it work. But is it true that God is present, alive, and speaking today?1
Is it true that death does not have the last word? Is it true that there is hope beyond this life and beyond this world? Is it true that there is new creation?
The story begins before dawn. The Sabbath was over. Mary Magdalene — who had followed Jesus from Galilee, who waited and watched at the cross, who had watched Joseph of Arimathea seal the tomb — came back as soon as the law allowed. She came to finish what she had started, to anoint his body properly for burial.
When she saw the seal of the tomb was broken, she stopped in her tracks and ran for Peter and the other disciple — the one John calls the “one Jesus loved” — and she told them: they’ve taken the Lord away. They sprang into action. It took courage to run toward the tomb. If Jesus was stolen, their own lives might be in danger. But love, or instinct, or hope – something sent them running.
They found the tomb empty. The linen wrappings were lying there. And the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head — this is a strange and important detail — was folded neatly in a corner. Grave robbers don’t unwrap a body, nor do they fold the linens. Whatever happened at the tomb, it had not happened in a hurry.
When the disciple Jesus loved – the one who ran with Peter – saw all of that, John tells us he believed. He saw the evidence, and though he did not understand it, he believed. His story reminds us that faith often precedes understanding.
And when they saw, these two disciples went home.
But Mary stayed.
As I read over the story this week, it occurred to me that Mary may be the one many of us can most relate to on Easter morning.
She got up and went to the tomb in the dark because she was faithful, even though she was exhausted. She went to do what love required, even though her hope was gone. And she remained at the tomb, weeping, after the others had left.
Some of us know just what it feels like to stand and weep. An illness that has changed your life and your future. A marriage that is breaking. A child you can’t reach. A parent you are slowly losing. Headlines that carry the weight of the world and fear for the future. A sense of un named dread that keeps your muscles tense.
Mary stood weeping at the tomb, and Jesus met her there.
At first, she didn’t recognize him. She thought he was the gardener, which, in the symbolic world of John’s gospel, is not entirely wrong. John has been building toward this garden from the first line of his gospel: “In the beginning was the Word.”
He opens with echoes of Genesis 1. God made humans in a garden. Now, God raises the first of a new creation in a garden. The risen Christ, who is the mediator of new creation, appears as a gardener.
You can’t miss what John is telling us: this is not just the resurrection of one great man. This is the start of a new creation.
Jesus asked her: “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” She still didn’t recognize him, until he said her name.
“Mary.”
You see, he didn’t say, “It’s me.” Or “I am risen!” It was not a theological announcement. It was a name spoken in friendship.
The theologian Rowan Williams says that the resurrection creates a community of grace, and this is how it works. The risen Christ appears, not to the powerful or to the religious, but to the people who followed him but failed him, who fled when he was arrested, who denied him when he was on trial.
He returns to them, and now he calls them brothers. It is the first time in John’s gospel Jesus has used that word for them. They are closer to him now than they were before.
The community formed by the resurrection is not a community of the worthy. It is a community of the found and forgiven and beloved. Jesus creates for them, and for us, a community of grace, not merit.
When she recognized Jesus, Mary grabbed him. The Greek is vivid: she clung to him with both arms. And he said, gently: “Don’t hold on to me like this. I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go and tell my brothers…”
Jesus had a mission for Mary to fulfill. And as hard as it was to leave him, she did as he told her to do.
Mary went to tell the brothers the truest thing she knew to say: “I have seen the Lord.”
It’s just that simple, you see. This is the church’s announcement on every Easter in every age. We don’t have a theory of the resurrection. Our faith rests on a feeling of the divine. Instead, we have this testimony that has been passed from one person to another: I have seen the Lord.
It is not wishful thinking, nor a powerful illusion. It is not a paper skink in a lamp shade. It is the truest thing we know, tested and witnessed to, lived and died for across twenty centuries.
The powers of this world put Jesus in a tomb and sealed it shut. The living God said no: sin, death, and evil will not have the final word. And when God raised Jesus from the dead, God proclaimed an eternal yes to all that is good, and beautiful, and true. God proclaimed an eternal to human life, and to you and me.
Our world, and each one of us, needs to hear the good news that Christ is risen, that God’s love conquers death, and we need to hear it as urgently as the world has ever needed it.
My favorite line to sing on Easter — we sang it this morning in the first hymn — brings me to tears every year as we shout it out with gusto. It speaks of going out to tell the “grim demonic chorus” that “Christ is risen. Get you gone.”
This is Mary’s commission, and it’s the call of all who come after her. There is a demonic chorus in the world — a chorus that is larger than any one nation or movement or administration — it is an ancient chorus of sin and death and the powers that crush life in all its created goodness. The church has been entrusted with a word of truth to speak into this darkness with bold faith.
At the bedside of someone we love who is dying, we must whisper it with fierce urgency, even through tears: Christ is risen. O death, get you gone.
At the places where people are unjustly detained or demeaned or diminished, we must say it with words and deeds and silent witness: Christ is risen. You powers of death — get you gone!
In the face of human need, of personal heartbreak, of the bitter and broken; we must say it and live it with compassion and conviction: Christ is risen. You powers of death – get you gone.
Can it be true? Is Christ risen? Does God’s love have the final word for the world, for the ones we love, for each of us?
It is the unbroken testimony of the church. Mary left the garden to tell the others, and it has been handed down to us.
When we leave worship and go back to our lives – to our gardens, our appointments, and our distractions; to the coming and going of families and friends; to the politics of nations; to daily work and lifelong commitments – this word must go with us and live within us.
Not because we have reasoned it out. Not because doubt has been banished. Not because all the evidence says death is destroyed.
The word of faith goes with us because we have heard the testimony of Mary. And through her voice, amplified by the saints of every age, the living God has spoken. We too have heard the Lord. And it is true. God is present.
Christ has laid hold of us. By faith we lay hold of him.
Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Amen.
Rev. Patrick W. T. Johnson, Ph.D.
First Presbyterian Church
Asheville, North Carolina