Easter Day
Psalm 114; Jeremiah 31:1-6; Acts 10:34-43; John 20:1-18
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I.
The verse I would like to call your attention this Easter morning, this day of resurrection, is found in Jeremiah 31:4, “Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel!”
For most people, Easter is a long weekend. Easter eggs. Easter bunnies. Signs of spring, after a long winter.
Even for most Christians, Easter is about something that happened to Someone else, Jesus, rising from the dead.
II.
The prophet Jeremiah tells us this morning that Easter is about us.
Furthermore, Jeremiah tells us that Easter is not just about us as individual men and women, but a people: “You shall be built, O virgin Israel!”
The nation as a whole will be restored. We heard this same message a few weeks ago, on the fifth Sunday of Lent, when we read this passage from Ezekiel:
“Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you home into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people.”
Easter is not just about personal restoration, personal resurrection, but about national restoration, and national resurrection.
Jeremiah begins his prophecy of national restoration saying, “Thus says the Lord: ‘The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness.’”
There are two things about this verse you need to understand. First, Jeremiah is speaking to people who are about to be—or already have been—exiled. That is what is meant by the word wilderness.
Second, he is describing their exile as already completed. They have survived the sword. Past tense. They have found grace. In the wilderness.
While they were still in that wilderness, Jeremiah tells us “Israel sought for rest”—again, referring to the people, to the nation. Yet it is when they sought rest that “the Lord appeared to him from afar.”
What do you notice? Israel, the nation sought for rest. Yet the Lord appears to him, a single person.
Some translations put verse three like this: “The LORD hath appeared of old unto me.”
That’s a difference between the Greek and Hebrew versions of the Old Testament.
The important point is the shift from the many to the one, from the nation to the one man.
Very well, what difference does this shift from plural to singular mean? Does it matter at all? I think it makes a great difference and it matters quite a bit.
First, this is a messianic prophecy. That is the plain meaning of “Again I will build you.” That is the language of restoration. That is the language of the Messiah.
Second, the text is leading us step by step to the conclusion that national restoration, national resurrection, if it is to come at all, must come, and will come, through the work of a single man.
The Lord appeared to him (or me) from afar.
Without this man, there can be no national restoration. Apart from the Lord appearing, there can be no national resurrection.
The same holds true for personal restoration. Without this man there will be no personal resurrection each one of us will experience on the last day.
“Again I will build you.”
III.
Let us continue looking at verse three, Jeremiah 31:3, “the Lord appeared to him from afar.”
I draw your attention to the last two words in the verse, from afar. Do not try to hold a prophet to a particular time or place, or to put it in grammatical terms to tense and mood, singular and plural.
These words, from afar, come immediately after these other words: “the people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness.”
Jeremiah is speaking to a people about to go into exile—or already in exile—from afar. That is the prophet’s prerogative.
To speak to the people from afar. To speak to them from the end of the story, rather than from the beginning, or even from the middle.
Isaiah says that God declares “the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10).
In other words, God has already seen the exile from its end, and has declared its purpose. That is the meaning of these words, “the Lord appeared to him from afar.”
God, through His prophet Jeremiah, is speaking to Israel from afar, from the end of history, and the purpose of exile.
That purpose is national restoration, national resurrection.
We have seen this sort of thinking before, in several of the readings we studied during Lent.
We dealt with the question: who sinned, the man born blind or his parents?
The answer was that it did not matter who sinned.
The man was born blind so that the glory of God might be revealed when Jesus heals him.
Why did Jesus say He was glad that He was not there when Lazarus had died? So that many of the Jews might come to believe that He was the Christ when He raised Lazarus from the dead.
Why then has America fallen so deeply into sin? Why have we become an apostate nation? Why do we face judgment and replacement? Who sinned, this generation or our parents’?
IV.
Before I attempt to answer that, we must make sure that we understand what it means to declare the end from the beginning.
Let me see if I can give you an illustration. Think of God’s word like a very powerful magnet that pulls all things towards it, holding all things in a circle around it.
Even if you find yourself in the very outer ring—which you can call the beginning—you are being pulled toward the center by the very same magnet—which you could call the end.
It may be very far away, but it still determines which way you are facing.
Do you understand better now what Jeremiah meant when he uttered the prophetic words, “when Israel sought for rest, the Lord appeared to him from afar”?
Sin acts like another magnet, pulling you away from God. It corrupts the human mind that the mind becomes incapable of perceiving the end from the beginning.
Sin is most certainly why Mary Magdalene could not perceive Jesus standing in front of her.
She was looking for a dead man. She could not comprehend that the Lord of Life was now speaking to her. “Woman, why are you weeping?” Jesus asks.
The answer is because she has mistaken the beginning for the end. The end is eternal life. Death is only the beginning.
Exile, national death—this is the grace that Israel found in the wilderness.
Mary replies that she is weeping because, “they have taken away my Lord.”
All of us have to feel that loss. Christ Himself knew it on the cross. He cries in a loud voice at the ninth hour: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
Our Lord must be taken from us so we can have Him back.
If that is true for Jesus, how much more must it be true for His people? Must not Israel be exiled so she can be restored?
Only when Jesus speaks her name is Mary called back from her exile in grief.
She tries to hold Him, but He won’t let her. He cannot stay.
But the moment is enough. Mary now understands how the story ends.
Jesus says, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”
And that is why Mary ran back to the disciples with the news “I have seen the Lord.”
V.
Very well, now we can return to Jeremiah 31:4 and ask: do these words apply to us today? “Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel!”
Do these words apply to us today? Or is this a false hope? There is a spirit of despair descending on us.
I hear every reason why we are failing, as a nation and as a people: Trump is failing, that politics can’t be fixed, that Connecticut must be escaped, that the earth’s magnetic core will fail, that interstellar radiation will sterilize the planet, that climate collapse will bring crop failure and starvation, and that population replacement will finish the job.
These are the cries of exiles — tortured souls who need not go to hell, because they are already living as if they are there.
For them the wilderness offers no rest; they cannot see the Lord from afar, and have forgotten how the story ends.
Yes, our generation has sinned. Yes, so did our parents’.
Israel earned its exile and our sins nailed Christ to the cross, but this was merely the preface. Perhaps, a few pages of Chapter 1. But we know how the story ends.
The words “Again I will build you, and you shall be built” apply to us today as much as they applied to Israel centuries ago. There is a great deal left for us to do—both as individuals and as a nation. The resurrection is proof. Death has no dominion in this realm. It is a defeated enemy.
Now, you can live your life bemoaning your lot as a 21st Century American, or you can live your life as a citizen of virgin Israel.
You can build anew with Christ, or you can complain that the deck is stacked against you. That life is short and then you die.
Well, Easter Day says you don’t die. It says you die once and live forever.
And Jeremiah tells us that not only individuals but also entire nations have a future—a glorious inheritance.
It is time to get to work. The dark night is over. The eternal day has dawned.
Preached on April 5, 2026, at the First Congregational Church, Woodbury, Connecticut (https://www.firstchurchwoodbury.org).
