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Resurrection Homily: He Is Risen — Death Is Not the End
📅 June 2026 · ⏱ 33 min read
“He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.” — Matthew 28:6
The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is not a footnote to the Christian faith. It is its foundation. Without the resurrection, Paul writes with startling directness, “your faith is futile; you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17). The resurrection is the event by which God confirmed everything Jesus said and did; the event by which death was definitively defeated; the event from which the Church was born and by which it continues to live. A Resurrection Homily stands at the centre of the Christian proclamation — not merely as Easter preaching, but as the constant heartbeat of every Sunday, every liturgy, every act of Christian witness. We preach a living Lord — crucified, buried, and raised — and that changes everything.
📋 Outline — Resurrection Homily
- The Empty Tomb — What the Evidence Shows
- The Resurrection Appearances — Who Saw What
- Paul and the Resurrection — The Earliest Testimony
- What Kind of Resurrection? — Body, Not Ghost
- The Resurrection and the Cross — They Cannot Be Separated
- The Resurrection and the Holy Spirit — New Life Given
- The Resurrection and Our Resurrection — Corporate Hope
- The Resurrection and Daily Life — Living as Easter People
- Resurrection and Grief — The Hardest Homily
- Objections to the Resurrection — Honest Engagement
- A Complete Resurrection Homily — Homily Text
- Easter Prayer of the Risen People
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1 The Empty Tomb — What the Evidence Shows
The empty tomb is the starting point, not the conclusion, of the resurrection story. All four Gospels attest to it. The women who went to anoint the body — the first witnesses, in a culture that did not credit women’s testimony — found the stone rolled away and the burial cloths lying empty. This was not what anyone expected. The disciples had no category for a single person rising bodily from the dead before the general resurrection at the end of time. They did not go to the tomb expecting resurrection. They went expecting a sealed stone and a sealed grief.
The empty tomb, taken alone, does not prove the resurrection. A tomb can be empty for many reasons. But what the empty tomb does is establish the starting point: the body of Jesus was gone. And the explanations that were offered at the time — that the disciples stole the body, that the authorities moved it, that the women went to the wrong tomb — each carry their own difficulties. The simplest explanation that accounts for all the data is the one the disciples proclaimed: he was raised.
“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.” — John 20:1
2 The Resurrection Appearances — Who Saw What
The empty tomb was followed by a series of encounters with the risen Jesus — appearances that the New Testament documents in careful and various detail. Mary Magdalene in the garden, mistaking him for the gardener until he speaks her name. The disciples on the road to Emmaus, burning in their hearts as he explains the scriptures, recognising him in the breaking of bread. Thomas, placing his hand in the wounds, confessing “My Lord and my God.” The disciples on the Galilean hillside, some worshipping and some doubting. Five hundred people at once, most of whom Paul says are still alive when he writes his letter — available for questioning.
These appearances are not uniform visions or spiritual experiences. They are encounters: physical, conversational, involving eating and touching and recognising. The risen Christ is not a ghost. He has wounds. He eats fish. He speaks names. He breathes the Spirit onto his disciples. He is both recognisably himself and mysteriously transformed — appearing through locked doors, appearing and disappearing, yet insisting that he is not a spirit but has “flesh and bones.”
“Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.” — Luke 24:39
3 Paul and the Resurrection — The Earliest Testimony
The earliest written testimony to the resurrection of Jesus is not in the Gospels — it is in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, written approximately twenty years after the crucifixion. And within that letter, Paul quotes what scholars identify as an even earlier tradition — a creedal formula that was being used in the early Church, possibly within a decade of the events themselves: “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve” (1 Corinthians 15:3–5).
Paul writes this as testimony he himself received and is passing on — a tradition with a traceable chain of custody. He lists the witnesses: Peter, the Twelve, five hundred at once, James, all the apostles, and finally himself — to whom the risen Christ appeared on the Damascus road in a flash of blinding light. Paul’s experience of the risen Christ is what turned the most zealous persecutor of the early Church into its most tireless apostle. It is not an experience that is easily explained away.
“If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.” — 1 Corinthians 15:17
4 What Kind of Resurrection? — Body, Not Ghost
The resurrection of Jesus was not the resuscitation of a corpse — a return to ordinary biological life, like Lazarus, who would eventually die again. It was transformation: a new kind of embodied existence, continuous with his earthly body (the tomb was empty; the wounds remained) but no longer subject to the limitations of ordinary human life. Paul describes the resurrection body using the analogy of a seed and the plant it becomes: radically continuous, yet completely transformed.
The physicality of the resurrection is important because it insists that matter matters — that the body is not a prison to be escaped but an essential dimension of the human person, destined for redemption alongside the soul. The resurrection of Jesus is not the vindication of a spiritual teaching. It is a new act of creation — the first fruits of the new world that God is making — a world in which death, decay, and sin no longer have any claim.
| The Risen Body — Continuity and Transformation | Continuity | Transformation |
|---|---|---|
| Wounds | Same wounds — Thomas touches them | No longer sources of pain or death |
| Recognition | Disciples recognise him | Sometimes not immediately (Mary, Emmaus) |
| Physical actions | Eats fish, breaks bread | Appears through locked doors; ascends |
| Body | Same body — tomb is empty | “Spiritual body” — glorified, imperishable |
5 The Resurrection and the Cross — They Cannot Be Separated
The resurrection cannot be understood apart from the cross, and the cross cannot be understood apart from the resurrection. Together, they form the single saving event — the Paschal Mystery — that is at the heart of the Christian faith. The cross without the resurrection is tragedy: the death of a good man, betrayed by friends, abandoned by God, swallowed by the darkness. The resurrection without the cross is fantasy: a miracle disconnected from the real weight of human sin and suffering.
Together, they say something extraordinary: God entered into the worst that death and sin could do — and came out the other side. The resurrection is not God reversing the cross. It is God vindicating the cross — showing that the love freely given on Calvary is stronger than death, that the forgiveness offered from the cross is the last word on human sinfulness, that the cry of abandonment has been answered by an even louder declaration: “He is not here. He has risen.”
“He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.” — Romans 4:25
6 The Resurrection and the Holy Spirit — New Life Given
The resurrection of Jesus is not an isolated event. It has consequences — specific, traceable, transforming consequences for those who encounter the risen Christ. Chief among them is the gift of the Holy Spirit. On the evening of Easter Sunday, Jesus breathes on his disciples and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). The same Greek word used here — enephusesen, “he breathed” — echoes Genesis 2:7, when God breathed life into the first human being. The resurrection is a new creation, and the Spirit is the breath of that new life.
This connection between resurrection and Spirit means that the resurrection is not merely a past event that we commemorate. It is an ongoing reality that we participate in. The same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead lives in every baptised Christian (Romans 8:11) — and that Spirit is even now at work, raising the dead places in our hearts, bringing life out of the places where we have given up, working the same miracle of transformation that occurred in the tomb on the morning of the third day.
“And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.” — Romans 8:11
7 The Resurrection and Our Resurrection — Corporate Hope
Paul insists in 1 Corinthians 15 that the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of Christians are inseparably linked. “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (v.20). The word “firstfruits” is crucial — it is a harvest term. The firstfruits are not the whole harvest; they are the guarantee and the beginning of it. The resurrection of Jesus is the first instance of what will happen to all who are united with him.
This gives the resurrection a corporate dimension that individual spirituality tends to underplay. We are not waiting for millions of individual escapes from death. We are waiting for a resurrection — a corporate, bodily, cosmic event in which the whole of creation is transformed and the whole family of God is gathered into the fullness of God’s life. “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). The resurrection of Jesus is the beginning of the end — the first act of the new creation that will culminate in the full renewal of all things.
📖 A Story for the Homily
A theologian visiting a small Christian community in a part of the world where persecution was common asked what gave them the courage to continue. An elderly woman smiled and said something that took a moment to translate: “We know the ending.” She had never studied theology. She did not use the word “eschatology.” But she had grasped, intuitively and completely, the thing that Paul spent four chapters of 1 Corinthians trying to explain. The resurrection of Jesus is the revelation of the ending: God wins. Love wins. Life wins. And that knowledge — held not as argument but as conviction — is the most powerful source of courage and faithfulness in the world.
8 The Resurrection and Daily Life — Living as Easter People
The resurrection is not merely a truth to be believed intellectually. It is a reality to be lived. Christians are, as a famous phrase has it, “an Easter people” — a community whose entire way of life is shaped by the conviction that the risen Christ is present, that death has been defeated, and that love is stronger than anything the world can throw at it. This shapes everything: how we face suffering, how we forgive, how we give, how we love, how we die.
- We face suffering differently. Not with denial, but with a hope that does not depend on the suffering going away. The resurrection does not promise an easy life. It promises that no suffering, however deep, is beyond the reach of the God who entered into suffering and came out the other side.
- We forgive differently. Forgiveness is possible — costly but possible — because the risen Christ has already dealt with the ultimate injustice. The resurrection is God’s declaration that the last word on human sin has been spoken — in grace, not in judgment — and from that declaration, the power to forgive others flows.
- We give differently. The person who knows that death does not end what matters most has no reason to hold tightly to what they have. Resurrection hope produces the extravagant generosity that characterised the first Christian communities: “They had everything in common” (Acts 2:44).
- We die differently. Not without grief — Jesus wept at Lazarus’s tomb. But without final despair. “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). The death of a Christian is not an ending but a crossing — into the fullness of what the resurrection has already begun.
9 Resurrection and Grief — The Hardest Homily
The Resurrection Homily preached in the context of grief is the most demanding homily the parish preacher will ever deliver. It must be honest about the pain of death — never minimising the loss, never rushing past the grief, never using theological language as a way of avoiding the raw reality of absence and longing. And at the same time, it must proclaim, with confidence and conviction, the truth that Christian hope is built on: death has been overcome.
The model is always Jesus himself at the tomb of Lazarus: fully present to the grief, weeping with those who wept, and then speaking the word of life. The preacher does not have to choose between pastoral compassion and theological proclamation. Both are needed. Both are possible. The one who holds the grieving hand and weeps with the family, and who also stands at the graveside and says “He is risen; she will rise” — that preacher is doing both at once, as Jesus did.
“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.'” — John 11:25
10 Objections to the Resurrection — Honest Engagement
A good Resurrection Homily can acknowledge honestly the objections that modern people bring to the claim of bodily resurrection, and engage them with respect and confidence. The most common objections fall into a few categories: historical (the evidence is too late and too biased), philosophical (dead people don’t rise; miracles don’t happen), and psychological (the disciples saw what they wanted to see).
Each of these deserves a careful response, which a homily cannot always provide in full. But the preacher can note: the creedal formula in 1 Corinthians 15 is among the earliest documents in the New Testament, predating the Gospels by decades and traceable to within years of the events. The philosophical objection assumes that miracles cannot happen — which is itself a claim that requires justification, not a self-evident truth. And the psychological explanation struggles to account for the sudden, dramatic, costly transformation of the disciples from terrified fugitives to bold public witnesses willing to die for their testimony.
The resurrection is not proven by argument alone. It is encountered — in the scriptures, in the sacraments, in the community of believers, in the inexplicable joy that breaks through even the darkest places. As Paul says: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile.” But he has been raised. And that changes everything.
11 A Complete Resurrection Homily — Homily Text
Suitable for Easter Sunday, any Sunday of the Easter season, or any occasion when the resurrection is the focus. May be adapted for funeral Masses with sensitivity to the grieving community.
Something happened early on a Sunday morning, in Jerusalem, approximately two thousand years ago. I want to be direct about this because I think we sometimes speak about the resurrection in ways that soften its strangeness, make it feel more like a spiritual metaphor, a symbol of hope, a way of saying that love is stronger than death.
All of those things are true. But they are not the whole truth. The whole truth is stranger and more demanding than any metaphor.
A man who was executed — publicly, humiliatingly, completely — was dead. He was taken down from the cross. His body was prepared for burial and sealed in a tomb. Roman soldiers were stationed to prevent any interference. And then, at some point during those three days, in that sealed tomb, in a way that no one witnessed and no one can fully explain — he rose. The same body. The wounds still there. But transformed: no longer subject to death, no longer constrained by the laws of ordinary biological existence, no longer bounded by locked doors or sealed stones.
He rose. And then he appeared. To Mary in the garden. To two disciples on the road. To the eleven behind locked doors — and to Thomas, eight days later, who had refused to believe until he could touch the wounds. To five hundred people at once. To Paul, on the Damascus road, in a light so bright it blinded him for three days.
“He is not here; he has risen, just as he said.” — Matthew 28:6
I want to ask you to sit with the strangeness of this for a moment. Not to make it more familiar, more palatable, more easily digestible. But to let it be what it is: the most extraordinary claim in the history of the world. That a man rose from the dead. That death, which is the most final and irreversible thing in human experience, was reversed. Not undone — the cross was real, the burial was real, the grief was real — but overcome. Passed through. And on the other side of it: life.
Now. Why does this matter — not merely as a fascinating historical claim, but as something that changes how you live on a Tuesday afternoon?
It matters because if Jesus rose, then death is not the last word. On anything. On any life, any grief, any injustice, any apparently wasted love. The resurrection is God’s declaration that the ending he intends for creation is not entropy, not darkness, not the silence of the tomb — but life, abundance, the fullness of love that is God himself.
It matters because if Jesus rose, then the life he lived — a life of forgiveness, of healing, of radical service, of love without condition — has been vindicated by God as the truest possible human life. He did not die as a failed idealist. He rose as the first fully human being — the template, Paul says, for what we are becoming.
And it matters because if the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you — and Paul says it does, for every baptised person — then the resurrection is not only something that happened then. It is something that is happening now: in the places in your own life that seem dead, that seem sealed, that seem beyond hope of recovery. The same God who rolled away the stone at the tomb of Jesus is at work, right now, in the tombs of your life.
He is not here — in the tomb, in the past, in the sealed grief. He has risen. And he is here — ahead of you, waiting for you, having already been to the darkest place you are afraid of, and come back.
Alleluia. ✝
🙌 Easter Prayer of the Risen People
Lord of the empty tomb, Conqueror of death, Living One — we stand before you as people who know the ending and are still learning to live from it. We confess that we live too often as if the tomb were still sealed: as if death and failure and loss had the last word, as if your victory over the grave had not yet reached the fears we carry in our hearts.
Breathe on us again, as you breathed on your disciples on Easter evening. Fill us with the same Spirit that raised you from the dead. Roll away the stones in us — the sealed places, the places we have given up on, the places we believe are too far gone for grace.
Make us Easter people in more than name. Let the resurrection be not merely a doctrine we hold but a reality we inhabit — shaping how we face suffering, how we forgive, how we give, how we love, how we die. Let the Alleluia that bursts from us on Easter Sunday be the ground note of every day that follows.
He is risen. He is truly risen. And we are his risen people.
Alleluia! Amen. 🙌 ✝
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