Easter 2026 - Truth Rises

4/5/2026

1 Corinthians 15:3–4

"Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, … he was buried, … he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures."

Jesus told us that he was the way, the truth, and the life. The same Truth that rode humbly into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday could not be silenced by rejection, suffering, or death. Easter is the discovery that Truth rises — and when it does, it renews everything it touches.

Truth Rides In

A week ago, on Palm Sunday, we watched Truth ride into town — gently, on a borrowed colt, surrounded by people who wanted a king but got a servant. We said that Truth is not an argument to win, but a Presence to welcome — a call, not a threat; an invitation, not a command.

Then, as it always seems to go in this world, that Truth was met with misunderstanding, then resistance, then violence. By Friday, the One who said, "I am the Truth," was hanging on a cross. The crowd that waved palms was gone. The disciples who swore loyalty had scattered. And Truth, by all appearances, was dead and buried in a borrowed tomb.

The Long Saturday

Easter means nothing if we rush past Friday. On Good Friday, everything the disciples believed appeared to collapse. The teacher they followed, the healer who opened blind eyes, the friend who called them by name — gone. Sealed behind a stone.

They did not expect what came next. Not one of them. John 12:16 tells us, "His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered." Luke 18:34 says it even more bluntly: "They understood none of these things … the saying was hidden from them."

On that long, silent Saturday, the people closest to Jesus sat in the dark, wondering if anything they had given their lives to was real.

Many of us have had our own version of that Saturday — a season where something we believed in seemed to die. A relationship. A calling. A hope for healing. We sat in the wreckage thinking, "Was any of it real?" If that is where you have been — or where you are today — hear this: Saturday is real; Truth sometimes gets buried. But Saturday is not the end of the story.

Truth Rises

Early on Sunday morning, the women went to the tomb — not with hope, but with burial spices. They expected to find a body. Instead, they found an empty tomb and a question from Luke 24:5–6 that still echoes: "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen!"

The world tried to bury Truth. It used every tool it had — political power, religious authority, public shame, and finally, death itself. And none of it was enough. As evangelist Reinhard Bonnke once said: "If a lie is buried, it will rot. If truth is buried, it will rise."

That is Easter.

The resurrection is God's answer to every force that has ever tried to silence what is real, what is good, what is loving — the divine declaration that the last word does not belong to cruelty, or injustice, or grief, or even the grave. Paul puts it this way in 1 Timothy 3:16: "Christ Jesus … was vindicated by the Spirit." Vindicated simply means proven right. Everything Jesus said, everything he lived, everything he offered — the resurrection is God saying, "This is true. This one is mine. And this cannot be destroyed."

What Risen Truth Looks Like

Here is something beautiful about Easter morning that we often miss. When Truth rose, it did not come back with a sword. It did not come back saying, "I told you so." It did not come back to punish the people who ran away.

Look at what the risen Jesus actually does:

• In John 20:16, he appears to Mary in the garden and simply says her name — "Mary." She had been weeping. He meets her grief with tenderness.

• In Luke 24:13–32, he walks alongside two confused, heartbroken travelers on the road to Emmaus and listens to their pain before revealing himself. He does not scold them for losing hope.

• In John 20:19, he stands among the disciples who abandoned him, and his first words are not accusation but peace: "Peace be with you."

• In John 21:15–17, he prepares breakfast on the shore for Peter — the one who denied him three times — and offers restoration, not rejection: "Do you love me? … Feed my sheep."

Risen Truth does not punish. It heals. It does not condemn; it restores. It does not demand perfection; it meets people exactly where they are and gently calls them forward. This is what divine Truth looks like when it has passed through suffering and come out the other side. Stronger, not harsher. More compassionate, more understanding, not less.

A Pattern We Can Trust

Easter is more than a story we remember once a year; it is a pattern we can trust in our own lives. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17: "If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: the old has passed away; behold, the new has come." And 1 Peter 1:3 says we have been given "a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." Not a dead hope. Not a wishful hope. A living hope — one that breathes and moves and grows, even now.

This is the quiet echo of what we have been calling Law Three in our Theodynamics series: "The Law of Renewal in the Ruins." God does not wait until everything is perfect to begin making things new. God enters the broken places — the tombs, the Fridays, the long Saturdays — and brings life from within them.

The resurrection is the clearest example of that pattern. Out of the worst thing that could happen — the execution of an innocent man — God brought the best thing that has ever happened: new life that cannot be taken away.

And that same pattern is at work in us. Not someday. Now.

Every time we find the courage to forgive when resentment would be easier — that is resurrection at work. Every time we choose to love again after our heart has been broken — that is resurrection at work. Every time we stand back up after loss, after failure, after a season in the dark — that is the same power that rolled the stone away, quietly moving in our lives.

As Paul writes in Romans 8:11: "If 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."

The resurrection is not only something that happened two thousand years ago. It is something happening in us — whenever we allow Truth to rise in our hearts, whenever we stop clinging to what is dying and open ourselves to what God is bringing to life.

Living as People of the Risen Truth

We do not have to be afraid of the tombs in our lives — the places where hope seems sealed away, the relationships that feel beyond repair, the dreams we have buried. God specializes in tombs. God is not intimidated by sealed stones.

A practice for this week: In the evening, quietly identify one area of your life that feels sealed — a grief, a fear, a stuck place. In the morning, hold it before God and say: "I trust that Truth is rising here, even if I cannot see it yet." During the day, notice one moment where something shifts — from fear to courage, from despair to hope, from distance to connection. Write it down. You are watching Truth rise.

Truth has risen. And it is rising still — in you, in the people around you, in the hidden corners of a world that often feels stuck on Friday.

The risen Christ is not a doctrine to argue about. He is a living Presence — gentle, persistent, and endlessly creative in finding ways to bring new life out of old death.

Love is stronger than death. Truth cannot be permanently buried. And the God who raised Jesus is still in the business of raising things to life.

May we trust that what is done in love is never wasted, and that the same power that raised Jesus is alive and at work in our lives this very day. May we live as people of the risen Truth — gently, courageously, and with great hope. So, may our hearts joyously shout, "He is risen!"