We Aren't Meant to Dwell in the Grave - New Life & Being Home

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
April 5, 2026
Easter
Colossians 3:1-4
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
Matthew 28:1-10

Yesterday, I was reflecting on Good Friday, on the crucifixion of Jesus, and while I often feel rather somber or a little sad when thinking on Jesus’ death, I instead felt a sense of gratitude for Jesus’ crucifixion. Gratitude and peace, rather than the emotional turmoil of cry night. Now, if you haven’t heard me mention cry night before, that’s the night at various youth camps, or even adult camps, where the leaders get all the youth to cry about all the bad things they’ve done and how they were the ones who killed Jesus. 

Ok, the idea of taking our sin seriously is a good one, and leading people to repentance for their sin, helping people see the damage they have done, also good. Emotionally manipulating tired teenagers to ensure a tearful response to Jesus’ crucifixion and death, however, may not be the best approach in the world. Also, while tears, sorrow, and guilt are totally appropriate responses to Jesus’ crucifixion and death, they are not the only appropriate responses. 

Yesterday, on Holy Saturday, thinking of Jesus in the tomb, I felt a profound sense of gratitude. Jesus died to join with us in death. God experienced death to join with us in death. So, I felt gratitude, rather than guilt. When my dad died, he was not alone in death. God was with him in death because in Jesus, God died a human death so that even in death, we are joined with God.

So today, on Easter Sunday, as we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection, returning to life from the dead, I find that I can trust Easter because of Good Friday and Holy Saturday. I can trust in Jesus’ resurrection because Jesus joined with us in death. I can trust in new life after death because Jesus walks with us in death.

At the same time, with resurrection life, we don’t really dwell on the death. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb, and the angel who was there told them, to go take a look at see that Jesus wasn’t there, but after that, they weren’t supposed to hang around the tomb, turning it into a shrine, and praising God there. No, they were told to go away from the place of death, meet Jesus, and live new life. 

“Jesus died for our sins.” “Jesus died for our sins.” “Jesus died for our sins.” We hear that over and over, and yes, that is true, but what’s really important is Jesus lived. Jesus came back from the grave to keep on living. So, we are not meant to dwell in the grave. We are meant to live. Beyond the grave, past the grave, after all the many deaths in our lives, Jesus’ resurrection tells us to mourn death for a time and then to leave the tomb behind and move forward into new life.

Now, what will that new life look like? Well, resurrection after our physical deaths, new life in God’s eternal kingdom, end of time type resurrection, we’re talking joy, bliss, huge banquet, surrounded and enveloped in love, tears no longer will fall type of new life. 

Regarding our lives, here on earth, we suffer various deaths throughout our lives, and the new life of resurrection happens for those deaths too, and that’s going to look different for all of us, each time that new life happens, but there are some things that seem to mark the new life of resurrection.

When Mary Magdalene and the other Mary left the tomb, they were filled with joy at the news Jesus had given them. New life of resurrection is marked with joy. That doesn’t mean that the two Marys, happy for the rest of their lives. Even after they saw Jesus, they had times of sorrow in their lives. The new life of resurrection is still life. There will be times of happiness, times of sorrow. 

In fact, former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, said, “God doesn’t want us to be happy.” See, of God wants us to be happy, then we deserve happiness, and happiness becomes an end in itself. Rather than happiness as a result of relationships, or achievement, or growth, we desire happiness just because we want to feel happy. 

That sounds like addiction. Archbishop Williams noted the problem of expecting happiness from anything and everything in our lives. Relationships are supposed to make us happy. A concert or a game is supposed to make us happy. Then if it doesn’t, we end up resenting it. After 10 years of marriage, does that person make you happy? Well, one, it’s not their job to make you happy, so really asking, “Does this person make me happy?” is the wrong question. A better question would be, after 10 years of marriage, do you feel at home? That’s joy, and joy rumbles along underneath in our lives, even with challenges and trials on the surface. 

So, a resurrection life is a life marked with joy, and a life marked with joy is a life marked with hope, with love. A life of joy is a life which accepts sorrow not as the end or the final way we will feel, and a life of joy does not expect happiness to be the way we will feel all the time. A life of joy finds fulfillment in relationships, feeling at home. A life of joy is a life of hope and love, feeling at home during times of happiness and sadness.

Another mark of the new life of resurrection is that there are barriers that are no longer present in the new life. In the new life of resurrection, the two Marys were the first apostles. The first two people Jesus appeared to and sent to tell about his resurrection were Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, as Matthew calls her. In the new life of resurrection, women were leaders in the church, until men decided they didn’t want that, relegated women to lesser roles and determined since Jesus was a man, only men could lead the church. They were looking to the old life of power struggle and one group trying to be more holy and more blessed than the other.

In the new life of resurrection, we are all blessed by God because we are all made in God’s image, and we have all been united to God through every part of our lives through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Truth is, we know from scripture that we already were all blessed by God, we already were all made in God’s image, and we already were all united to God. We just wouldn’t believe it. In the new life of resurrection, Jesus invites us to accept our blessedness, to accept the image of God in which we are made, and to accept our unity with God and one another.

Finally, in the new life of resurrection, there is unexpected blessing. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went from the tomb in joy because the angel had told them that Jesus had been raised from the dead, and suddenly, unexpectedly, Jesus met them, showed them that he truly had been raised, told them not to be afraid, and placed on them the mantle of apostles to the apostles. Unexpected blessing.

That meant letting go of the past, letting go of their former life and embracing this new life of apostle to the apostles. That meant a death for them, a death of their old life in embracing their new life. 

For us, whenever a loved one dies, whenever the path we thought our life would take dies, whenever the assumed future that we think we will have dies, we are encouraged to let go of the past, to let go of our former life, learn to embrace our new life. 

A young man I know is headed down a dark path of addiction and stealing, and it may already be too late for him to avoid jail. His parents have had to call the police as he keeps stealing from them and despite all their good efforts, he just keeps at it. For them, the death is letting go of the thought that they can help their son get off this path when he simply won’t choose to get off. For them, the death is accepting that their son may end up spending time in jail and may end up spiraling even further after that. For them, this means letting go of whatever future they thought they would have with their son and accepting the future that will come because of their son’s actions. 

What will new life look like? They don’t know, and they are mourning. They are looking to the future with hope of some kind of resurrection, with no expectation of what that will be, and right now they are mourning. 

We get to mourn. We get to return to the tomb, just as the Marys did, but we don’t stay in the tomb. We don't stay with cry night. We move forward into the life of resurrection that is coming. It may take longer than three days, and it won’t be happy all the time, but new life after death can be joyful. New life of resurrection is a life with joy rumbling beneath the surface. New life of resurrection is a life in which we look around after a time and realize, “I’m home.” New life of resurrection is life in which some of who we were and the ways we knew were right may not be anymore, and the new life of resurrection is life in which we find unexpected blessing. 

Unexpected blessing like God choosing to die with us so that we are not alone even in death. Unexpected blessing like Jesus being resurrected so we can look to the future with hope and joy. Letting go of the past, releasing our fear of death, we can embrace the new life of resurrection and find that we are home.