Bishop Jonathan's sermon for Easter Sunday (5 April, 2026)
Easter Day Sermon
John 20:1-18
Do you ever find yourself saying, “What on earth is going on in the world?”
With me it’s a pretty regular occurrence, whenever I wake up in the morning and listen to the news headlines. Internationally, politically, economically, socially, environmentally and spiritually – the world is in a mess!
The reality is that the gods of materialism and of humanism – the twin beliefs that all we need is what the material world can afford us and that human beings are able to solve all our problems by our intelligence and ingenuity – these gods have failed us, and we and our offspring are paying the price for the folly and hubris of humankind.
So why is it that these gods have failed us so spectacularly – and what is the alternative? These are the questions I would like us to consider in the next few minutes – and don’t worry, I will be coming back very soon to the theme of Easter – because that of course is precisely where the answer lies.
Materialism and humanism have failed us for three main reasons.
Firstly, because they do not understand human nature. Secondly, because they do not have an answer for evil. And thirdly, because they cannot offer hope, only blind and empty optimism.
Liberal humanism is built upon blind faith in the goodness of human beings.
It assumes that if we create the right conditions, human beings will behave well towards one another, and if they don’t what is needed is more education and more support.
This is frankly nonsense, as every parent of a toddler knows all too well!
There is a part of human nature that is wilful and selfish and destructive of both self and others. It is what the Bible calls sin and it is written into our spiritual and moral DNA.
It is what in the end took Jesus to the Cross, to break the power of sin and to open the way to humankind being forgiven and set free to live another, better way. Humanism and materialism cannot understand or take adequate account of human nature.
Similarly and as a consequence, neither do they have an answer or an antidote to evil.
They cannot recognise or comprehend that there are forces at work in our world that are not explicable in purely material and mechanistic terms. Yet we see evil at work in our world at all sorts of levels each and every day.
Evil requires an answer, both in terms of its origin (the Christian tradition talks about rebellious fallen angels) and its antidote. And for Christians the answer and the antidote to evil lie in the Cross of Christ, in the willingness of the Son of God to take on the power of evil at the Cross and to defeat it by the power of love, even at the cost of his own death.
He gave his life to break the power of evil, and his victory was declared by his resurrection from the grave. Jesus Christ is the answer and the antidote to the power of evil.
And that brings me to the third and final failure of humanism and materialism, namely that they cannot offer hope, but only a blind optimism that somehow or other things will get better in the end.
Well, tell that to those who are starving in Sudan or living in constant fear across the Middle East. Tell that to those whose livelihoods are being devastated by climate change.
Optimism alone just won’t cut it in today’s world, and a whole generation is waking up to the fact that humanism and materialism have nothing to offer – and they are beginning to look for different, spiritual answers to the questions they are facing.
The Christian faith has answers to those questions, answers rooted in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, going back to the events of Good Friday and that first Easter Day.
Let me outline very briefly what those answers look like and what they can mean for us today.
Firstly, the Christian faith is rooted in history, not in myth or ideology.
The Christian faith is first and foremost about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, recounted in the pages of the gospels and attested in contemporary accounts by both Jewish and Roman writers.
What we are dealing with in the gospels is the testimony of eyewitnesses, collected and collated within a few years of the events themselves. Let’s do away with any lingering nonsense about these stories being myths fabricated by either deceived or deceitful followers trying to keep the memory of Jesus alive.
What we read a few moments ago from the Gospel of John, in common with the accounts of the other gospel writers, is a dramatic account of events that took place on that day, bringing out their deeper meaning but utterly faithful to what actually happened – however difficult that may be to understand.
That brings me to the second crucial thing we need to understand about the Christian faith, namely that it is totally and utterly and unashamedly a supernatural faith.
For too long, since the days of the so-called Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, people have tried to water down the supernatural content of the Christian faith, to make it seemingly more palatable to modern ears.
But the result in the end is that the whole thing falls apart, because unless Jesus really died and really rose again, then as St Paul says, we have nothing to offer to the world and we above all are most to be pitied. So please, let’s be clear, the tomb was empty and Jesus really is alive.
He met with Mary on that day and subsequently with many of the other disciples. He ate and drank with them, but he also did things that his former, purely physical body could not have done, like appearing in a locked room to a bewildered and frightened group of disciples.
This is the supernatural reality which is at the heart of our Christian faith, that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, that he is able to meet with each and every one of us by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit and that he is able to do amazing, wonderful things in our lives just as he did when he walked this earth as a physical human being.
It is here that I draw to a close, by focusing on what happened with Mary that morning, as Jesus spoke with her and she finally recognised him.
Faith begins when we start seeking, just as Mary came to seek Jesus that morning. It often begins falteringly, until somehow or other we hear Jesus speak our name and realise that it really is him.
Seeking leads to personal encounter, just as Jesus promised when he said “seek and you will find”, and that personal encounter changes everything, because from that moment we begin to discover that the whole thing is true after all: that Jesus is alive, that he has conquered death, that we can know him and that God really is at work in our world, bringing hope instead of fear, light instead of darkness and life instead of death.
There is so much going on in our world that is deeply scary at the moment.
The lesser gods of our own making have failed us. Now is the time to turn back to the one true and living God who can guide us and lead us through all that lies ahead; to turn back to the one who has conquered sin and death and who offers us the hope of new live in this world and in the life to come.
Now is the time for us also, like Mary, to carry the news of Jesus and his resurrection to those who so desperately need the hope that he alone can bring.
Amen.
Bishop Jonathan Gibbs
Bishop of Rochester
5 April 2026