Shelby Road Baptist Church · Shelby Road Baptist Church

Easter Sunday 2026 (Pastor Steve Lister)

April 8, 2026·30 min·2 clips

Why do angels ask a grieving Mary Magdalene 'why are you crying?' at Jesus' empty tomb on Easter morning?

1. Shelby Road Baptist Church's Easter Sunday 2026 sermon features Pastor Steve Lister preaching from John 20:11-16 on the resurrection, framed through the social media concept of a 'glow-up.' 2. Pastor Steve Lister is the sole preacher; he opens by showing before-and-after glow-up photos of named Shelby Road staff including executive pastor Dave Sill, former pastor Bob McNeil, and women's spiritual growth team leader Angie Schiller. 3. The sermon's thesis is that the resurrection is the greatest glow-up in history, and that Jesus — like a gardener working the dirt — turns graves into gardens and loss into new life. 4. Mary Magdalene's backstory is established: Jesus had cast out seven demons from her, restoring her mind, dignity, and life, making his crucifixion particularly devastating and her presence at the tomb an act of love and grief. 5. John 20:11-16 is read: Mary stands weeping outside the empty tomb, sees two angels who ask why she is crying, then turns to see the risen Jesus standing behind her — and mistakes him for the gardener. 6. Pastor Steve addresses Solomon's honest assessment in Ecclesiastes that life is 'meaningless,' interpreting this not as nihilism but as a truthful acknowledgment that life is marked by a series of losses: abilities, relationships, and loved ones accumulated and then surrendered over time. 7. The angel's question 'woman, why are you crying?' is analyzed as making simultaneous sense (her tears reflect real loss) and not making sense (something extraordinary has just happened behind her), capturing the tension between grief and resurrection hope. 8. Mary's misidentification of Jesus as the gardener is presented as understandable given that she watched him die three days earlier, and also as partially supernaturally induced — his resurrected body was recognizably him but different. 9. John 12:24 is cited: 'unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit' — the seed's death and new life is the pattern Jesus used to explain his own death and resurrection. 10. A YouTube video of an expert botanist who buried one tomato slice from a McDonald's Quarter Pounder in soil is described: with three months of watering and care, it produced a tomato plant bearing at least 30 tomatoes — illustrating that new life emerges from buried death. 11. Pastor Steve argues that Mary was wrong about who Jesus was (the gardener) but right about what he does: like a gardener who gets dirty in the soil and brings forth new life from death, Jesus works in the graveyard and in the difficult places of human life. 12. This is connected to the Gospels' portrait of Jesus as someone who spit mud on a blind man's eyes, touched lepers, and engaged with the broken — a Jesus found not in clean places but in the dirt. 13. The key claim is made: 'everything that we lose in this life becomes a seed for something better that Jesus will bring from the dirt of death,' applied to physical abilities, relationships, and eventually physical life itself. 14. Revelation's words of Jesus are cited — 'I was once dead and now I am alive forever, and I hold the keys of death and Hades' — as the basis for confidence that death is not the final word for those who trust him. 15. The turning point of the story is Jesus speaking one word to Mary: her name. He announces himself personally, and Pastor Steve interprets this as Jesus saying to every listener 'this was for you' — the crucifixion and resurrection were personal. 16. An evangelistic appeal is made drawing on Romans 3:23 (all have sinned), Romans 6:23 (wages of sin is death), and Romans 10:9 (confess with mouth and believe in heart), inviting those who have never given their lives to Jesus to do so at the front after the service. 17. The sermon's tone is warm and emotionally candid, acknowledging directly that Easter is not uncomplicated when people carry real loss — and addressing the possibility that some listeners are uncertain whether God exists. 18. The format is a narrative expository sermon with humor at the opening (glow-up photos) transitioning to a sustained meditation on grief, loss, and resurrection hope, typical of Baptist Easter preaching. 19. Adults who are navigating grief, loss of loved ones, declining health, or spiritual doubt will find this most applicable — the sermon is designed to meet people carrying hidden heartbreak on a festive Sunday. 20. Listeners expecting a triumphalist Easter celebration without engagement with grief, or those seeking academic treatment of resurrection theology, will find the sermon's sustained focus on loss and vulnerability unexpected.

As heard by us

A warm Easter sermon that makes resurrection hope feel plain, pastoral, and concrete.

Shelby Road Baptist Church begins with light church humor and a string of glow-up jokes before settling into a resurrection message about the risen Jesus and the hope tied to him.

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want resurrection preaching that lands in everyday language.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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