Holy Saturday is the day nobody wants to talk about: the trauma already happened, the air is gone, and the silence feels deafening. We start there because many of us live there. If your heart is ruptured, if love has been met with silence, if hope feels sealed behind a stone, you are not alone and you are in good company with the women who walked to the tomb anyway. 

We open John 20 as a “new creation” story, told while it is still dark, and we watch Mary Magdalene keep showing up before she understands anything. That posture becomes our invitation: let love keep showing up. We also talk honestly about the trap of sin management and self-fixing. The good news is not that we get strong enough to move the stone. The good news is that God rolls the stone away and leads us toward resurrection life. Along the way, we practice noticing resurrection all around us, even through a simple Lenten discipline of listening to the birds and remembering that if God cares for them, God cares for you. 

Doubt and grief get real space too. Thomas is not scolded for needing to see; Jesus meets him with kindness. We reflect on how faith grows through patience, community, and returning “back to the house” and the table, where communion, prayer, and waiting shape us into Easter people. We also challenge the church to refuse hate, choose kindness, and practice resurrection by changing our minds and looking for life among the risen. 

If this sermon gives you hope, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find it. What would it look like for you to live this week as if resurrection is real?

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In the service of LOVE,
Pastors Dennis and Heather Drake