Easter Monday
Easter Sermon - 2026
“12For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:12–13).
“17Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:17–18).
The word Easter is Anglo-Saxon for Spring Equinox. Easter was calculated using the equinox, and the term for the equinox (Ēostre), according to Bede, gave its name to the Feast of the Resurrection.
We used to worship the goddess Ēostre. She was said to be the power behind the equinox. But she’s been forgotten. The heavens, which shout the praises of God, have come to be recognized and understood for what they’re really saying. The word itself has been cleansed as the gospel’s gone forth. Easter is now the festival day the Church has set aside to celebrate the fact that winter is not just overcome every year, the winter of the world was overcome when the true Spring began. When the Son of God burst the grave as he was raised from the dead by the power of the Spirit of God, the winter of the world was wrecked.
With our sin, Adam and Eve cast the world into winter, but God began giving hints of spring,
In our passage that we heard in Ezekiel 37, we see that God pulled Ezekiel out to the wilderness to a field full of dry bones. Then he had Ezekiel preach to the dry bones. They start to rattle and clatter and come back together. Then muscles and flesh grew back over the skeletons. Then God told Ezekiel to preach over the dead bodies, and the Spirit of God blew through the valley of corpses and brought them all back to life so they could get up and sing and dance and march.
God sends his Word and Spirit into the winter graveyards of the world and new life bursts out.
All throughout the Old Testament God makes it clear that Spring is coming. Resurrection is coming. History itself will have a Spring Equinox. History will turn from Winter to Spring.
This is why we call this festival Easter. This is why we named it after Spring, and why Spring itself has come to mean resurrection. The true meaning of Spring, the actual reason that God set up the cycle of the equinoxes and seasons, is that God is a God that brings life from death. So everything Spring is a legitimate symbol in our resurrection celebration. Be it eggs, rabbits, flowers, dressing the kids in new outfits, ladies in fresh and chic Spring fits, it’s all a wonderful and magnificent way of celebrating the resurrection. When Jesus came out of the tomb, the winter of history had broken and the spring has come. So we decorate our houses and bodies like Spring and we come to Worship the God who broke the back of the winter of sin.
Background
So when we heard from Luke’s Gospel this morning about the first Easter morning, that the stone was rolled away, that they didn’t find the Body of Jesus, and that two men, whose clothes shone like stars, we heard that the women who were coming to take care of Jesus’ body were afraid.
But the angels said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? 6He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, 7that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.”” (Luke 24:5–7).
They said, “Don’t you remember? You were told the story in advance. Jesus is the Son of Man. He was always headed to resurrection. And if you are going to be raised, you have to die. He was following his Father, the resurrecting God.”
Exegesis
They call him the Son of man. That is a title that also comes from the Old Testament. In Hebrew (which the Angels were most likely speaking), it would be the “Son of Adam.” (Adam is the word for Man). In Psalm 8, we sing “What is man (Adam) that you are mindful of him or the son of Adam that you care for him?” And until God’s people went into Exile to Assyria and Babylon, that was how the phrase was always used. In this sense, we are all sons of Adam.
But then, When God’s people were in exile, through the Prophets, God renewed an old promise, given to Eve before Adam and Eve were kicked out o the Garden. He said to Eve, See that dragon that came into the Garden and lied to you? That came in trying to murder you with his slippery, deceitful tongue. I promise that a son born to you will crush his head. That lying serpent will not win. I will send a dragon slayer through you Eve.
And God, through Daniel and the other prophets, told us that this Son of Adam was coming. That he was on his way. And that he would bring all of creation out of the winter of the world that Adam had thrown us into. That he would be born of a virgin (not inheriting any of Adam’s guilt) and begin restoring the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve. That he would return us to God. That he would suffer and die for us, but on the third day he would raise Adam’s race from the dead.
He would free us from the tyranny of winter, from the tyranny of the dragon, from the tyranny of darkness, from the tyranny of death. He would come as the seed of Eve that would crush the head of that old dragon that was in the garden in the beginning.
So when the Spirit of the Lord raised Jesus from the dead, He was declared to be, not just the Son of Man, but also the Son of God.
But because he is the Son of Adam, and the Son of God, When he died on the cross and was raised, he wasn’t just doing it for himself. In the same way that Adam represented the whole human race in the garden of Eden and carried all of Mankind with him into Sin. Jesus, when he died on the cross, carried the human race with him into death. And then carried the newly restored human race, and all of the world, with him into new life in his resurrection.
And it was the Spirit of the Lord, the Holy Spirit who is, in his person, Resurrection Power. And the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, is now at work in the world, in you, pressing Jesus death and resurrection into your life.
“17Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:17–18).
You are being restored to the Image of God, being restored to what you were created as a Son of Adam, restored to what Jesus is as the Image of God. Because Jesus became a man, like us in every way (but without sin), then he died and was raised from the dead.
The Spirit of the Lord is bringing you freedom by pressing your life into the shape of Jesus. He has shaped your life, is shaping your life, and will shape your life to pry the scales from your eyes so you will see Jesus. He sends high winds into your life to whip the veils that cover your eyes so that you will see Jesus, so that you can be moved from Glory to glory through a series of deaths and resurrections in your life.
God is repairing, re-forming, refilling you back into his Image. He is the Wind that rattled those dry bones together and filled their lungs so they could do the electric slide in the wilderness. Romans 8:11 tells us that “11If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.”
But what does it mean to be restored to the Image of God? How does a restored image of God live? In 2 Corinthians, Pauls tells us that We, with unveiled face, behold the Lord and are transformed into the Image of God. In 1 Corinthians he uses the same logic, but gives more detail about what it looks like to live as the restored image of God who is still being restored.
Application
“12For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:12–13).
We see God, in his triune life of love, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in perfect fellowship, enjoying and delighting in one another, giving themselves to one another in perfect communion from all eternity. Then creating everything out of his overflowing love. God is fully and completely revealed to us in Jesus. If we wonder what God is like, we look at Jesus. Even though now we see God like a reflection in a muted mirror, even that imperfect vision changes us.
But we also see that God sees us fully and completely. He knows everything about you. Knows you thoroughly and exhaustively, all the way to deepest thoughts and intentions of your heart. Yes, even that one. And he loves you. God loves you. Jesus is not ashamed to be your brother. The Father is not ashamed to call you his child. He loves you with the same complete and eternal love that he loves Jesus and the Holy Spirit with.
And we are changed. We are changed in the seeing. We are changed by being seen. We are changed by every new vision of the Beauty of Holiness. Changed by seeing God’s smile as he sings his love over us.
We are changed into people that love one another.
Faith, hope, and love abide, (persist, last), but the greatest of these is love.
So what does it look like to be restored to the Image of God? It looks like love. It looks like love.
Love your people, love your neighbor, love strangers, love your enemies.
Love is what it looks like to be living like the image of God.
Love is patient, kind, humble. Love isn’t envious, arrogant, or rude. Love puts others first. Love is cheerful, tenderhearted.
Love is what it looks like to be like God your Father, to be like the Holy Spirit, to be like Jesus. It is what it looks like to be truly living as the image of God. To take on the family resemblance of the family you have been adopted into.
Jesus died and was raised form the dead because he loves you, so that you could be restored his love, so that you could be restored to being loving. That is what we are celebrating at Easter. Jesus changed the direction of history. He freed the world from winter. Cheer up and love one another.
Live like it’s Spring.
Live like Jesus died and was raised for you.
Live like God loves you, because he does.
