Easter Day by Fr Jack
Holy Week 2026 sermon series
Holy Week and our day to day life now:
The events of salvation,
the font of Grace,
the sacramental life of the Church today.
Reading:
St John 20.1-18
Eucharist and Baptism
Alleluia. Christ is risen.
Today Jesus stands before us, He has put death behind Him. In His divinity, He is God inviting us home to God’s self. In his humanity, He has taken the sting of death, the grasp over hell, and put them behind (not just Himself, but through His humanity) us (too).
The Resurrection of Jesus twenty centuries ago, a few thousand miles that way, changes everything, for ever, for all of us.
This Holy Week, the sermons each day have linked the stepping stones of Holy Week with one of the sacraments of Christian life. Trying to be practical and helpfully down to earth, we’ve asked ourselves how these events of salvation in Holy Week reflect and illuminate the sacramental way we actually live as Christians. (The sermons are all on the website if you want to go back and browse).
And today, Easter Day, could not be a better destination for us. We’ve gone through denials, arrests, Mary with her nard, and alongside this we’ve examined Confession and Confirmation, Marriage, Ordination, and Last Rites. Today, Easter Day, before us, is Baptism and Eucharist. The Dominical Sacraments: one’s that the Lord Jesus directly gives us.
And Baptism and Holy Communion are all about Easter and vice versa, because they are all about death and resurrection. Baptism and the Mass don’t just point to death and resurrection, or tell us about death and resurrection. They aren’t Jesus’ school assembly prop’, or a powerpoint presentation about death and resurrection. They ARE the very substance of death and resurrection itself, or should I say, Himself.
Stick with me.
We heard St John’s account of the first Easter morning just now. In the course of Eastertide we will hear one of my favourite moments in the whole Bible, a few verses on from today’s Gospel. When in St John’s Gospel the Risen Jesus appears to His disciples (who have gone off and abandoned Him by the way, back to their fishing boats). And Jesus doesn’t appear on a fiery chariot, or with trumpets and fireworks. He appears on the beach, having made a barbecue, to cook them breakfast. He calls them in from their fishing boats, and he takes a few fish and roasts them on the coal fire. Wonderful. This is the Risen Jesus, this is God, showing us what He is like. (St John 21)
He makes a meal for us, and shows Himself to us, He feeds us literally and feeds us through relationship with Him. It’s true of the beach barbecue, and it’s true of Holy Communion.
At every altar in the world, at every Eucharist, Jesus makes this little meal, for us to be with Him through the journey of life. Jesus does the same in St John’s Gospel in the feeding of the 5,000 and in the Wedding at Cana, when He choose His first miracle to be the creation of buckets and buckets of (very good, we’re told) wine, to keep the party going. (St John 2 and 6)
You may have heard me say before: St John’s Gospel is especially rich with symbols and imagery, very much on purpose. The beach barbecue, the loaves and fish for the 5,000, and the wine at the wedding feast are all very deliberate teachings by St John about the Eucharist. He wants us to see what this Jesus is like. And what is He like? Generosity, abundance, hospitality, friendship, and joy. That is our Easter faith. That is our Eucharistic life. That is life with this Jesus.
Just like, in St John’s account account of Jesus’ crucifixion that we heard on Friday, the evangelist is very careful to tell us about the water and the blood that flows from Christ’s side (St John 19.33). Of course, it is an image of baptism.
In Baptism and the Eucharist, human beings are given by God’s grace and the ministry of the Holy Spirit nothing less than immersion into the death and resurrection of Jesus. Those realities become, not thoughts in our head, or words on a page, or realities we recall but hold at arms length, no, they become sacramental gifts we take into our bodies, or rather, our bodies inthem. The reality of you and me, and all that we are, gets swept up in the life of Jesus, in God’s life, here and now.
And all this is just part of the reason we make such a fuss about the sacraments. And these mysteries in which we find ourselves living aren’t just for Easter Day, but every day. Every ordinary day filled with joy, challenge, disappointment, boredom, delight and all the rest. Baptism and Eucharist are the pavement we walk through life, the nourishment we need for that journey, they are God with us on the way, and the map by which we find our way. All these things; because they are the death and resurrection of Jesus
When you are baptized, you are baptized by name. That is very important. God calls each of us by name, knowing who we are, better than we can ever know ourselves.
God knows us and calls us by name into this life; into Baptism; and to this altar. In today’s Gospel Jesus said to her ‘Mary’, and then she turns and recognises Him.
Today Jesus meets each and every one of us, and calls us by name, just the same. The risen Jesus calls us, just as St Peter rushed to Him from the boats, to sit with Him around the beach fish barbecue.
In the quiet, during and after Holy Communion today, with the ear of your heart, hear Him. Hear Him know you, and love you, and call you. And know that that call is not just today, but a love song that lasts our whole life long, and in fact, much longer even than that. Thanks to what happened today.
Alleluia. Christ is risen.