It’s Easter, and all over the world preachers are feeling the pressure to preach the better-than-the-average sermon. All week they’ve been burdened to come up with something insightful, something profound, to say about this story of stories, preferably something their congregations have never heard before. Oh, the pressure!
Each week for a sermon, I write, on average, 1,800 words. This is the number of words that I, with my seasoned homiletical and ecclesial acuity, have deemed theologically and linguistically necessary to bequeath the congregation an appropriate word from the Lord. And on the Sundays I need to be better than average, like Easter, I am always tempted to go a little longer, like upward to 2,000 words or more.
Now, my wife Lori believes that I should be able to write a sermon, and she’d prefer I write a sermon, even for Easter, with much fewer words. But Lori hasn’t been to seminary, I tell myself.
That’s why, by the way, every now and again, I throw in seminary words like “ecclesial” and smart-sounding words like “bequeath”—to convince the congregation, and myself, that I know what I’m doing up here. And we preachers especially like to use big words on Easter!
However, as I prepared for today’s sermon, I came to realize that Lori may be right. In fact, esteemed professor of homiletics Karoline Lewis, points out that the best Easter sermon ever delivered, and the sermon we desperately need to hear again today, was nowhere close to 1,800 words. It contained 5. Lewis says that the best Easter sermon ever delivered was proclaimed by Mary Magdalene on that first Easter morning: “I have seen the Lord!”[i]
That’s it. There’s your Easter sermon. “I have seen the Lord!” Now, let’s sing a hymn, have communion, and pass the peace!
Now, because I don’t want to be accused of being lazy on Easter, I will attempt to say a little more. But I tend agree with Rev. Lewis that, too often, our preaching, especially on Easter, is just “too much –too much explanation, too much justification, too much rationalization.” She says our preaching is too much expository and not enough experiential. It’s too much illustrational and not enough incarnational. She argues preaching needs to be less performance and more personal, more down-to-earth, more authentic.
That struck a chord with me this week, as I recently heard local colleague make the shocking assertion, that on some days, he has this sinking feeling that God is not in Lynchburg.
Now, that’s a dark statement coming from anyone, but coming from a pastor in this town, it’s especially chilling. Almost as chilling as it is ironic with the vast number of churches in our city.
Last year, one of my guilty pleasures in life was binging the dark TV drama series called “Preacher.” Lori didn’t care for it. I loved it. It’s a story based on a comic book hero, a Texas Preacher, who’s on a mission in Louisiana searching for God who’s gone missing. God just got tired of being God one day, vacated the throne, got on motorcycle, and headed to New Orleans to listen to some good jazz and have a good time. It’s a very dark and rather bloody story about the chaos that ensues when God forsakes and abandons the world. All hell literally breaks loose as vampires, fallen angels, demons, and the devil himself wreak havoc upon the earth.
And my colleague says this is what it can sometimes feel like serving as a pastor in Lynchburg, Virginia. He says he sometimes wants to cry out like Jesus from the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken us?”
Maybe we have had days when we have wanted to do the same.
The lack of affordable housing, the number of people living with food insecurity, the plans to cut spending on public schools and social services, the ugliness on the city council—it can all seem like God has left the city limits.
Just last week, an owner of a new restaurant told me that he recently served dinner to a member of the city council who had the hateful audacity to advise him to refuse service to members of the LGBTQ community.
And then we have the number of people who claim to be Christians or even “Champions for Christ” who support ways that the exact opposite of the way of the inclusive, universal, unconditional love that Jesus taught, modeled, and embodied.
Looking at some parts of our city, we can easily identify with Jesus when he lamented what seemed like the absence of God in Jerusalem, crying: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!”
And you don’t even need to be religious to believe that God may have even fled the country—a nation where people can be snatched from their homes and disappeared to a gulag in El Salvador without any recourse. Bishop William Barber notes: “Like the lynching trees of the South and the crosses of Rome, these public acts of brutality are designed to inspire fear that compels the masses to comply. But we cannot comply.”[ii]
This is why on this Easter Sunday, we need to hear the personal, authentic, first-person, five-word sermon of Mary Magdalene: “I have seen the Lord!” We need a first-hand witness of the resurrection, not a third-person account, confession, or creed.
In these dark, seemingly God-forsaken days, we don’t need to hear the stale and old: “He was crucified, dead, and buried; the third day he rose from the dead…” or “Christ the Lord is risen; he is risen indeed.” That’s nice, that’s good, but these days, we need more.
We need a first-person, eye-witness testimony. We need to hear of a new and fresh encounter. We need somebody to stand up before us today and exclaim: “I have seen the Lord!”
As we demonstrated during our Maundy Thursday service, the good news is that we can easily point out all the places in Lynchburg where we have seen the Lord, where there is resurrection in the midst of ruin; the light of new life in the shadows of death; love, when all that seems visible is hate. There’s much goodness, generosity and compassion in the midst of all the meanness, selfishness and cruelty: Parkview Mission, Interfaith Outreach, Meals on Wheels, The Free Clinic…It would take much more 1,800 words to name all of the non-profits and organizations that are being the hands and feet of the Lord in this town.
But proclaiming, “I have seen the Lord,” means even more than that.
“I have seen the Lord” means personally bearing witness to the resurrection. It means being a first-person, eyewitness, living testimony of Easter.
In the hateful darkness of a violent world that has rejected the way of Jesus and would crucify him all over again if it got the chance, “I have seen the Lord” means demonstrating that there is another way of being in the world— a loving, justice-seeking, non-violent way that embodies all that is life-giving. It means living and giving and loving and serving in such a way, that when others see you, watch you, listen to you, they say: “Wait one second. Did I just see the Lord?”
“I have seen the Lord” insists that the ways of love will always win over the ways of hate.
“I have seen the Lord” affirms that the way of peace will always overcome the way of violence.
“I have seen the Lord” confirms that the truth of kindness, mercy and decency will always be louder than the con of fear, confusion, and chaos.
“I have seen the Lord” asserts that the voices of compassion will always be heard over the clamor of cruelty and retaliation.”
“I have seen the Lord” is what Gandhi proclaimed when he shared a vision of a world where all of creation and every living creature is revered and respected, thriving in peace and harmony, when all most can see is ecological devastation, violence, war, oppression, injustice, colonialism, and imperialism.
“I have seen the Lord” were the exact words of Martin Luther King Jr. when he preached on the day before his assassination: “I have seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
“I have seen the Lord” is a proclamation that neither death by starvation in India, nor death by a bullet in Memphis, nor death on a cross in Jerusalem, can prevent love from winning and justice from coming.
Mary’s proclamation “I have seen the Lord” proclaims not only that a single stone was rolled away 2,000 years ago, but countless stones are still being rolled away today, all the stones that are used to prevent new life from rising: racist stones blocking paths to citizenship; bigoted stones blocking the doors of closets; corrupt stones blocking the power of free speech and due process; greedy stones blocking care for the environment; deceptive stones blocking the truth of science and history; and violent stones blocking any possibility of new life, justice, and peace.
“I have seen the Lord” is the justice those are demanding on the behalf of Abrego Garcia and every person deported unjustly. It’s the defiance of Harvard University, and the cry of all protesting the rise of fascism.
“I have seen the Lord,” when we speak it into our own lives, become words that have the power to roll back all the stones that confine and constrain the possibility that liberty and justice, dignity and respect can be for all people.
But “I have seen the Lord” is so counter-cultural, so counter-intuitive, often defying what we see with our own eyes, that it can be difficult to speak it. Especially to speak it personally, authentically in the first-person, to speak it with faith and conviction. It’s much easier to walk out of this service this morning and recite a third-person creed, “Christ the Lord is risen. He is risen indeed” than it is to honestly say in the first-person, “I have seen the Lord!”
Perhaps, like anything difficult, we need to practice it, and practice it daily.
So, in what places do you need practice it today? In front of what tomb do you need proclaim resurrection today?
What stone in your life needs to be removed today so you can be free?
What’s preventing you today from experiencing the joy of new life? What is blocking you today from enjoying peace, possessing hope, and knowing love?
On this Easter morning, when we walk out of this church building, where’s the first place we need to go to proclaim: “I have seen the Lord!”
Who do we know that may be unable to say it today, but needs to hear it, because they have been hiding in the tombs too long?
Today, we thank God for Mary Magdalene, the preacher of the best Easter sermon ever proclaimed, the good news we all need to hear today: “I have seen the Lord!”
[i] Sermon inspired by the thoughts of Rev. Dr. Karoline Lewis shared in an article entitled: True Resurrection, March 20, 2016
[ii] From The Power of a Moral Opposition: A Holy Saturday Reflection, April 19, 2025.
Just Love 