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Easter Message 2025

Bishop Dr. Sani Ibrahim Azar

Mark 16: 1-4

“Saturday evening, when the Sabbath ended, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome went out and purchased burial spices so they could anoint Jesus’ body. Very early on Sunday morning, just at sunrise, they went to the tomb. On the way they were asking each other, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” But as they arrived, they looked up and saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled aside.”

Dear sisters and brothers, grace and peace to you from Jerusalem, the city of the risen Jesus Christ.  

When I wrote my Easter message last year, I could not have imagined that this year our people would be facing another Holy Week and Easter season amid a brutal and devastating war. After 18 months of violence and destruction, the situation in our land is as dark as it has ever been.

As Easter approaches, we are looking for the hope of the resurrection, but we find ourselves at the cross. In this, we see ourselves in the story of Jesus’s companions during the first Holy Week.

After the darkness of Good Friday, Mark writes in his gospel that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices and came early on the first day of the week to anoint Jesus's body.

But as they made their way to his resting place, Mark tells us the women were worried. They asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away for us from the entrance of the tomb?” The stone door to the burial site was enormous, far too heavy for them to move alone.

We are facing many such stones in our life today. As Palestinians, we face the stones of military occupation, forced displacement, and the inability to move freely. As Palestinian Christians, we face the stones of discrimination, erasure, and, as many of our brothers and sisters leave this land, the risk of extinction as a community. These stones seem unmovable, like the stone at the entrance of the tomb must have seemed to the first witnesses of the resurrection, Palestinian women. Like these women, we fear that Jesus is behind these stones, and we will not have the strength to reach him. 

But when the women reached the tomb that Sunday morning, they were shocked to find that the stone had already been rolled away. Jesus Christ, who conquered death and the grave, had already moved the stone. 

When we feel we lack the strength to move the stones that burden us, those that separate us from God, the wonder we experience is that Christ of the Resurrection has already moved them. Even when we do not see him, God is acting in our time. 

The stones in our lives are not only external. We each have a stone in our hearts that separates us from one another, and from God. We have not loved God with our whole hearts, and we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. But we know that through prayer and through our work to understand and love one another, these stones can also be moved. We can draw closer to God and closer to each other. Through his unconditional grace and love, Jesus rolls away these stones as well.

Though for another year we will not celebrate as usual, we will uplift the joy and the mystery of Easter: Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. We will pray for the day that the stone will be rolled away, and we will bear witness to the resurrection. Until then, we continue to proclaim the truth of the Risen Christ. May his peace be with you, and may you have a blessed Easter. 

Amen.