Not Finished
Our story is not finished. It's just beginning. And Jesus is going up ahead of us - and he'll meet us there, and at every there between here and there.
‘Not Finished,’ a sermon on Matthew 28:1-10, was preached at the Church of Christ at Dartmouth College on Easter Sunday — April 5, 2026. A livestream of the service can be seen here (9 AM service) or here (11 AM service - keep watching for the Hallelujah chorus at the end!).
In the summer of 2005, I traveled to Alaska
to revisit a forest that I’d been studying for almost a decade
in the mountains north of Fairbanks.
The forest was on the upper slopes
of a place called Eagle Summit:
harsh and unforgiving and rugged and wild
and stunningly beautiful —
to be there feels a little bit like being on top of the world.
Over the years, I’d grown quite attached
to the trees that grew there:
grateful for the shelter they gave when a storm blew through,
a little awed by their tenacity,
by the way they’d let the wind shape and form them over the centuries,
bending but not breaking.
It had been a few years since my last visit
and I was looking forward to checking in on my arboreal friends.
But as I rounded the last bend in the road
and the mountain came into view
I could see, even from a distance, that all was not well.
The entire mountainside was blackened and charred —
burned, it turns out, in a wildfire the previous year.
That fire had burned hot.
Every last tree was dead.
Even the organic layers of the soil had burned down to ash.
I remember walking, slow and sad,
across the grey moonscape where a forest used to grow;
becoming more convinced with every step
that there’d be no easy return of trees
after a fire this intense.
But as I walked farther and looked closer,
a hint of green caught my eye, and then another,
and another.
A newly germinated spruce seedling, no bigger than a toothpick,
a sprout from the exposed roots of a charred willow shrub,
tiny purple-green seedlings of the aptly named fireweed.
And once my eyes knew what to look for,
I couldn’t stop seeing green:
in every sheltered spot,
through every crack in that scorched earth,
new life was breaking through.
There are endings that are endings.
And there are endings that are new beginnings.
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As the first Easter began, it looked
for all the world like an ending
that was an ending.
Two days earlier, Mary Magdalene
and Mary the mother of James and Joseph
had stood together on a hillside and watched
as Jesus whom they loved, Jesus who had changed their lives
died on a cross;
they’d sat in silent vigil
as Love Incarnate was sealed in a tomb.
And as soon as the Sabbath had ended
as soon as the grey light of dawn broke
on that first day of that new week,
they returned to his tomb.
To remember.
To mourn.
To pray.
And maybe just to let the shock of it all
begin to settle
there in the stillness and silence
of an early-morning graveside.
But what greeted them
was neither stillness nor silence.
What greeted them was an earthquake.
An angel, bright like lightning, in the dawn’s dimness.
Rolling that stone away.
And then the angel said four words
as astonishing as any earthquake.
He is not here.
“He is not here,
for he has been raised, as he said.
He is going ahead of you to Galilee.
THERE you will see him.”
So the angel told
the women.
__
And as Mary and Mary ran to share the news,
THERE Christ was,
waiting to meet them
along the road.
Real enough,
flesh enough to hold.
And when the disciples arrived in Galilee,
full of haste and hope and doubt,
THERE Christ was,
waiting to meet them on the mountainside.
Just as he had promised.
__
That first Easter began in grief
and chaos and confusion.
And it also began with a promise:
the very same promise with which Jesus’s life began —
those angels’ words ring out at Christmas time:
“and they shall name him Emmanuel,”
which means ‘God is with us.’
In Jesus, God was with us.
And to proclaim Christ risen
is to proclaim that God
is still with us —
that death itself could not and did not and will not
break that promise.
That death itself could not and did not and will not
stop that love.
To proclaim Christ risen as we do on this day
is to proclaim that we are held
by an unbreakable promise of an unstoppable love.
The end was not the end.
It was just the beginning.
Which means our story is not finished.
It is just beginning.
And JESUS is going ahead of us.
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And that is good news, indeed.
Because this Easter arrives much like that Easter did:
in a world aching with grief and chaos and confusion,
in a time in which the bedrock of our life together
is fractured and shaken.
A time in which it’s hard to see
what’s coming next —
and in which so much is not clear.
But this IS clear:
we are held in the arms
of an unbreakable promise.
Christ is risen.
God With Us is still with us.
Always, to the end of the age.
As we find our way into the future that awaits,
the future we are creating together and with God’s help,
JESUS is going ahead of us.
He’ll meet us there.
__
Which means THERE
is somewhere good.
Because where Jesus is, is GOOD.
His whole life told that story.
Jesus moved through the world
leaving a trail of good and better behind him
like a glitter path of grace:
human bodies healed,
hungry people fed,
new life for those who’d been left for dead,
a seat at the welcome table for those who’d been told they didn’t belong.
And that continues in Christ’s risen life.
Whatever happened on that mountain in Galilee,
that sorrowful band of disciples —
disciples who had deserted him, denied him,
and scattered at the first sign of trouble —
left that place restored and renewed,
full of courage they didn’t know they had
and commitment they didn’t know they could muster
to keep walking the path
down which they’d started together.[i]
And that just keeps happening:
a river of grace, a current of holy encounter
that has been changing lives for 2000 years.
The resurrection is not only
a spectacular event that happened to Jesus,[ii]
it is a spectacular event that is still happening
to us and to all creation.
The beginning
of a world made new,
a world made whole.
And no, that project
isn’t quite finished.
Clearly.
But that’s where Jesus is leading us:
into a world made new, a world made whole.
This aching world made new.
This broken world made whole.
On Easter we proclaim
that Christ lives
that Christ’s love is still loose in this world
and if we tune our eyes, I think we’ll start to see its traces —
that ever-expanding glitter path of grace,
love and life emerging like slivers of green in a charred land.
In the sheltered places,
and in the cracked places.
Wherever life improbably
makes a way out of no way.
Wherever mercy rushes in to bind up the brokenness
and kindness rises to fill the cracks.
Wherever love
embraces fearlessly the burning world[iii], Barry Lopez wrote.
Bit by bit a new world begins.
And we’re not there yet.
But Jesus is going ahead of us.
And he’ll meet us there.
And in every there
there is
between here and there.
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A few years after the fire burned
my beloved forest,
I returned to Eagle Summit.
As I rounded the last bend of the road
and it came into view
what I saw took my breath away.
The entire mountain was aglow
with a deep magenta hue —
hundreds of acres of brilliant, joyous, magenta flowers.
The fireweed was in bloom.
A new beginning had begun.
It wasn’t the same.
But it was beautiful.
It was life, thriving.
Life abundant.
And wherever Jesus is leading us,
I believe it’ll be like that.
Christ is risen, beloved!
Alleluia!
Amen.
[i] Adapted from Anna Case-Winters, God Will Be All in All, 126
[ii] New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume VIII, Matthew.
[iii] Barry Lopez, Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World, 121-122.
This beautiful message of hope brings to mind Mary Oliver’s poem “When I Am Among the Trees.”