Preaching on Easter Sunday, the sermon opens by tracing three predictions Jesus makes of his own death and resurrection in Mark's Gospel — Mark 8:31, Mark 9:31, and Mark 10:33-34 — each stating plainly that the Son of Man would be delivered up, killed, and rise on the third day. Despite hearing these predictions repeatedly, the disciples, including Mary Magdalene, did not believe them. The sermon then turns to the central text, John 20:1-2 and 20:11-18, focusing on Mary's encounter with the risen Christ at the empty tomb as a case study in what genuine faith actually is.

The sermon frames the exposition around two questions: why did Mary not believe at first, and why did she come to believe? On the first question, the sermon explains that physical resurrection within present history was, for first-century Jews, considered impossible. Unlike the Greco-Roman view that regarded the body as a prison for the soul (so that death itself was liberation), Jewish theology held the body to be part of God's good creation, and expected resurrection only as a corporate event at the end of the age — not for one individual man in the middle of history. Compounding this, Jewish monotheism made the idea of a man being God unthinkable. The sermon stresses that Mary's unbelief at the empty tomb — even standing before the rolled-away stone — was not naivety but the opposite: the disciples' minds were, in the preacher's words, closed even to the possibility of resurrection, exposing the common modern caricature of ancient people as gullible believers in miracles as false. Thomas's demand to touch Jesus's wounds before he would believe (John 20:25) is cited as further evidence of this hard skepticism among Jesus's own followers.

The sermon then addresses the charge that faith is merely emotional or psychological — that people believe (or reject the gospel) for relational or felt-experience reasons rather than truth. It concedes this happens in both directions: some embrace Christianity from social pressure or a vague sense of peace, while others reject it due to being hurt by hypocritical Christians or coerced upbringing, not because they examined the evidence. Citing the atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel's admitted "fear of religion" — his candid wish that God not exist because God's existence would make total claims on his life — the sermon argues that unbelief is frequently driven by self-interest rather than dispassionate inquiry. Using a topical illustration from Indonesian politics (the conflict of interest in the Constitutional Court ruling involving Gibran), the preacher argues that all people have "self-interest" at stake in whether Christ is risen, since if he is risen and reigns, no one can live autonomously — making true neutrality on the question impossible.

Turning to the second question, the sermon insists Christian faith rests on objective evidence, not merely subjective relevance, and highlights one of the strongest proofs from the Gospels: the resurrection appearances were first attested by women, whose testimony was legally inadmissible in Jewish and Roman courts of the time. The Gospel writers had no rhetorical incentive to invent this detail — it could only have been included because it was factually true. The sermon adds a second proof: the psychological transformation of the disciples, who went from cowering in fear after the crucifixion to willingly dying as martyrs proclaiming the resurrection. People do not die for what they know to be a lie, and had the disciples stolen Jesus's body, they would have known their testimony was false. The sermon then contrasts objective truth with subjective belief using examples like Nazi racial ideology and early COVID-19 denial — beliefs that eventually collapsed under the weight of reality regardless of sincerity — to argue that Christian faith must be grounded in what actually happened, not in what feels helpful.

Yet evidence alone, the sermon insists, cannot produce faith apart from grace, because sin has blinded the human heart (citing Romans 1:21). This is dramatized in the moment Jesus calls Mary by name (John 20:16): only when the Good Shepherd calls his own sheep by name (echoing John 10:3-4) does recognition and worship occur. True faith is therefore both objectively grounded in historical fact and subjectively given by grace — it is never generic ("Jesus loves the world") but always intensely personal, as with Paul's confession in Galatians 2:20 that Christ "loved me and gave himself for me." The sermon closes on Jesus's words to Mary in John 20:17 ("do not cling to me... I am ascending to my Father and your Father"), read as a promise that though Christ ascends, he sends his Spirit so believers may continue to experience his presence, peace, and love now — a partial foretaste, in a still-broken world, of face-to-face fellowship to come. The sermon ends with an appeal, inviting both believers to give thanks for the grace that produced their faith and strugglers to respond to Christ's call, closing in corporate prayer and an altar-call-style response.

Bible Verses Used

• Mark 8:31: First of three predictions by Jesus of his suffering, death, and resurrection on the third day, establishing that the disciples had been told repeatedly yet still did not believe.

• Mark 9:31: Second prediction, reinforcing the pattern of unbelief despite explicit forewarning.

• Mark 10:33-34: Third and most detailed prediction, used to show the disciples' unbelief cannot be attributed to lack of information.

• John 20:1-2: Mary discovers the empty tomb and concludes the body has been taken, illustrating that her first reaction was not faith but confusion and unbelief.

• John 20:11-18: The central text — Mary weeps at the tomb, encounters the risen Jesus without recognizing him, and only believes when he calls her by name, forming the sermon's core argument about the nature of true faith.

• John 20:25: Thomas's demand for physical proof before belief, used as further evidence that the disciples were skeptics, not credulous believers.

• Romans 1:21: Cited to explain the doctrine of inherent spiritual blindness — futile thinking and darkened hearts — that prevents unaided human reason from producing faith.

• John 10:3-4: The Good Shepherd calling his sheep by name, used to interpret why Mary recognizes Jesus only when he says her name.

• Galatians 2:20 (referenced as Paul's confession): Cited as the model of personal, individual faith — "the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."