April 5, 2026 – Easter Day
Jeremiah 23.1-6
Mark 16.1-8
The Resurrection Will Not Be Televised
Easter Day
Jesus’ resurrection took place on a quiet morning on an unassuming hillside near Galilee. Sometime during the middle of the night, before dawn, Jesus was raised from a tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea. By the time the first people arrived at the tomb, it was all over: the place was empty, Jesus was gone, and nobody saw what happened. And this is why Mark tells us the women were stunned and afraid, and at first did not dare tell anyone. This is why the apostles, being men of sound and sober mind, thought the women had gone mad. And this is why the civil authorities suspected that Jesus’ body had been stolen in the middle of the night. The actual event of Jesus’ departing the tomb had no audience whatsoever. I wonder what Christianity might look like today if somebody had actually seen it happen. I wonder what Christianity might look like today if lots of people had actually seen it happen. I wonder what Christianity might look like today if the resurrection had been televised.
Although Christmas is celebrated by mainstream culture far more than Easter is, still, the world does tip its hat in the resurrection’s direction this time of year, and Holy Week in particular. I am the grocery shopper for the Froggatt family, since I also handle the lion’s share of the cooking, which I really enjoy. I can recall, back in the days before self-checkout, waiting in line to pay for my groceries, and while I waited I could either peruse the candy selection prominently displayed to the right of the check-out line, or I could read the headlines in such worthy publications as The National Enquirer, Weekly World News, News of the World, and their like to the left of the check-out line. And my favorite time to do this was Easter week, because the headlines of those publications revealed religious tidbits that even I, after years of education, research and sermon-writing, never knew before. For example, did you know Jesus was really an alien being, left behind by errant explorers from another galaxy two thousand years ago? I didn’t. Or that Moses never really died, but runs a gift shop in New Mexico? I didn’t know that either. I’m thinking of suing Princeton Seminary for theological malpractice.
And it’s not just the tabloids. Television too pays its respects to the season. This is the week the networks schedule such classics as The Greatest Story Ever Told, The King of Kings, The Exodus and Ben Hur. Check, as they say, your local times and listings.
Though the years I have celebrated Easter Sunrise Service in a variety of settings. I’ve stood atop Meriden’s East Peak at Castle Craig to watch the sun rise over the hills Easter morning. In western Connecticut we held it on a ridge that overlooks the Housatonic River Valley, even if we could not see the river itself. In Massachusetts we stood on the beach of Bevely/Salem harbor, from whose shore the Hannah, the first ship in Goerge Washington’s Navy, was launched. But I never greeted the resurrection in a graveyard untiI came to Chester, and it has always reminded me of a fundamentalist colleague of many years ago who often said he had no greater desire than, when Jesus comes again, he wants to be standing in the middle of the cemetery, so he could witness all those bodies of the faithful supposedly popping out of their graves and ascending into heaven at the rapture. And he fervently hoped to broadcast it live for all the world to see, so that the reality of the second resurrection would finally and indisputably validate the reality of the first. Now there’s a reality television idea nobody has picked up on yet – Jesus’ Second Coming on the Fox Network! But I think it is a sign of God’s infinite wisdom that the first resurrection happened under cover of darkness with nobody around to see it. Nobody can say they saw Jesus leaving the tomb, bodily or otherwise, which means that the empty tomb, in and of itself, does not prove the resurrection. It can only be taken on faith.
It was fifty-five years ago that American jazz poet and singer Gil Scott Heron wrote a seminal piece of music whose title I filched for this morning’s sermon. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is, in one respect, a wry take on the networks’ nightly new reports of the civil unrest that saturated the airwaves in the late ’60s and early ’70s. But in another respect it was also a prophetic reminder that when the revolution came, it would not be cut to the fashion of popular consumption or expectation. “The revolution will not be televised,” Heron wrote,
“The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox in four parts without commercial interruption… the revolution will not be advertised, sanitized or homogenized. The revolution will not make your clothes whiter than snow or kill germs that cause bad breath… the revolution will not put a tiger in your tank or make you look five pounds thinner or help build strong bodies twelve ways because, brothers and sisters, the revolution will not be televised.”
In other words, Heron is saying, when the revolution comes, it will not be something you can point to and say, “Look, there it is!” Rather it will be more a change of heart, a shift in the social fabric and compact, and things will never be the same again.
Much the same can be said about the resurrection. It was not an event that anyone could point to and say, “Look, there it is.” Neither the women at the tomb nor the disciples who followed could ever capture it on film. The reality of the resurrection is less in any demonstrable proof that Jesus was raised than it is in the legacy he left, the community of faith we call the church, you and me gathered this morning for worship. There is a story in the book of Acts that tells us about the people Jesus left behind after he ascended into heaven. “What shall we do?” they asked each other, suddenly left to themselves in Jesus’ absence. And Peter answered them, “Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ.” And then listen to what happened next:
“They devoted themselves to… teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayers… And all who believed were together and had all things in common… they distributed to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people.”
In other words, what they did from the day Jesus left them is fundamentally what the church still does today: teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread, prayers, distributing to those in need and praising God. I would suggest to anyone who is looking for concrete living proof of the resurrection, that it will not be found in any eyewitness accounts, basically because there aren’t any. But rather the real demonstrable proof that Jesus was raised on that first Easter morning is the legacy of the church he left behind, the church of Peter, James and John, and the church of Margie and Laurel/Sherrie and Ed. And you. And me.
Admittedly, it is a church composed of a good many and varied parts. We are Catholic and Protestant, Congregational and Lutheran, conservative and liberal. Some of us are certain about what we believe; some of us are still searching, and some are wondering if we are even looking in the right places. And in this respect too we are like that earliest gathered church in Acts, composed as it was of Galileans and Mesopotamians and Egyptians and Romans and Arabs and a host of others. Yet the fact that all of them found themselves in one place on one day, and that Christ spoke to their hearts in their own language, demonstrated that as different and as diverse as they were, they still belonged to each other because they belonged to the risen Christ. Which means as different and diverse as we are, we belong to each other because we belong to the risen Christ.
What Daphne read this morning about the faithful remnant of Israel from the book of Jeremiah applies equally to the church of Jesus Christ:
“I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries… and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. I will set shepherds over them who will care for them… Behold, the days are coming when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as ruler and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.”
The people of God, though scattered, though different, though varied and diverse, still belong to the same God who will deliver us all.
Herman Melville expressed this feeling in a letter he wrote to Nathaniel Hawthorne in November 1851, “I feel that the Godhead is broken up like bread at the supper, and that we are the pieces.” For in spite of our diversity, even the differences among us gathered in this room this morning, we are all cut from the same loaf, we are part of a connected community which has been gathered in the name of Christ. Around the world this morning, communities of faith large and small, in a rich tapestry of languages and nationalities and ethnicities and skin colors and ideas of God are gathering for worship, to bear witness to the reality of the risen Lord, and many of those worship experiences look downright foreign to other communities of faith. Yet somehow we are all connected to each other, and whether we share the same language or same clothing style or the same expression of faith, is secondary to the reality that we share the same savior. We are all connected to one another through Jesus Christ.
It is the community of faith, the fellowship of believers, the perseverance of the saints, that is the most profound and eloquent demonstration of the reality of Jesus’ resurrection. The birth of the church, the continuity of Christianity though the most fervent persecution and oppression, and even the church’s surviving its own turn as persecutor and oppressor in the darker days of our history, these are what testify to the firm hand of a loving and redeeming savior who even now lives and works among us. The resurrection of Jesus Christ need not be televised or demonstrated or proven in any independently verifiable manner: its validation is most readily found in the millions of people who belong to God and to each other, and who are drawn to the good news once again this Easter morning.
Because, my brothers and sisters, the resurrection will not be televised.