Team member Chris Keating ponders the implications of that metaphorical yet quite explicit clue about where we will find Jesus. Chris suggests that we won’t find him in our fancy church buildings; rather, we are to go to Galilee ourselves -- i.e., out into the world. If we remain cloistered and inward-looking in our churches, we are essentially searching for Jesus in a tomb that we have already been told is empty. Moreover, Chris notes, if we don’t engage with the world we may be dooming our faith to the slow death of cultural irrelevance... a fate backed up by some alarming data from recent sociological research. That means we must leave our temples and take the Good News of Jesus’ resurrection out to Galilee -- to people and places in dire need of the comfort and joy that the gospel can bring.
However, sharing that message is not always easy -- especially in the face of events so heart-wrenching that you don’t know what to do or say. Yet, as team member Dean Feldmeyer points out, Jesus challenges us to get up and go to Galilee anyway... to proclaim the gospel and do the work of sharing and being with those who are in distress. Dean considers how we might go about applying that mission in one extremely difficult instance -- that of last week’s fatal plane crash in the Alps, which was apparently a case of mass murder by the airliner’s co-pilot. How does one go about preaching the hope and new life of the resurrection to the surviving friends and families of those who perished? At first glance that seems cruel, especially for those mourning the young lives of those who were on a school trip. But Dean notes that if we cannot communicate the resurrection message to them, then we cannot communicate it to anyone. That is our challenge -- and Isaiah gives us some words to start with when he tells us that the Lord God “will swallow up death forever” and “will wipe away the tears from all faces.”
Jesus Has Left the Building
by Chris Keating
Mark 16:1-8
There’s something missing from Mark’s Easter story.
Each gospel writer puts a different slant on the resurrection, though only Mark leaves out someone pretty important -- Jesus.
He’s all over in the other gospels. John shows Jesus consoling a weeping Mary, while Matthew offers a vignette of the two earthquake-shaken Marys being surprised by him. While Jesus has fled the tomb in Luke, he does show up on the road to Emmaus and then breaks into the disciples’ fear-filled conclave back in Jerusalem.
But Mark’s abrupt ending to his gospel is different. There’s fear, consolation, and a commandment to get moving. But Jesus is nowhere to be found. He’s gone ahead to Galilee, and the fearful yet amazed women are told that’s where they will see him.
This may surprise us -- you wouldn’t have Easter Sunday without a preacher. No church would celebrate the resurrection without festive hymns and maybe even crowded pews. Don’t forget the peeps and jelly beans either. But Easter without Jesus?
Mark has important instructions for us on where Jesus will be found. And in a culture where millions have fled religion, perhaps we’d do well to pay attention to what the angel tells the women.
In the News
Jesus’ tomb might not be the only thing that is empty this Easter. Many churches may not feel as full as they once did -- and attendance may only be going down.
Church attendance patterns continue to drop across the United States. New data, however, suggests an even more alarming trend about the continuing evolution of American religion. Studies confirm what has long been suspected -- we’re not as religious as we used to be. Easter brunches are drawing bigger crowds than Easter sermons, and hunting for church parking spaces may be easier than finding chocolate eggs.
The upshot of this means church attendance is no longer such a useful indicator of a congregation’s vitality. More significantly, however, other findings from the recently released American Values Atlas reveal that America is no longer a majority Protestant nation.
The Public Religion Research Institute compiled this comprehensive study of the nation’s attitudes toward religion and issues such as abortion, immigration, and same-sex marriage. Its results confirm what many in the church have long presumed, though that doesn’t make the data easier to accept.
More than one in five Americans are no longer religiously affiliated. Only 47 percent of the nation identifies as Protestant, and the percentage of unaffiliated Americans (22%) is exactly the same as the number of American Catholics. White Evangelicals and Catholics tend to be older, on average, than other religious groups such as Hindus and Muslims. In places such as Portland, Oregon, the number of unaffiliated jumps as high as 42%.
Confirming this decline in religious participation is the latest General Social Survey, which is considered to be the gold standard for sociological research. Its figures show that 7.5 million Americans have stopped practicing religion since 2012. Through the 1990s, the percentage of adults who indicated no religious affiliation was in the single digits. But as the “nones” break past 22 percent, it is conceivable that in just a few short years they will represent the largest religious group in the United States.
By comparison, if 7.5 million people moved out of New York City, the Big Apple would be smaller than San Jose, California.
Canadian blogger/pastor Carey Nieuwhof makes this observation:
I think the change we’re seeing around us might one day be viewed on the same level as what happened to the church after Constantine’s conversion or after the invention of the printing press. Whatever the change looks like when it’s done, it will register as a seismic shift from what we’ve known.
This new exodus from faith is not just a story about the so-called “nones,” either. There’s another identifiable group that could be labeled the “dones,” those once-stalwart believers who still pray and consider themselves Christian. They’re just not going to church. There’s no exact reason why the “dones” are leaving -- burnout, boredom, frustration over tedious church policies could be some possibilities -- but as blogger Mark Sandlin observes, it is a real phenomenon:
The thing is: the rise of the Dones should be seen as the last warning shot across the bow of the Church. The crack of that cannon should perk up the ears of the body of Christ, and every last ounce of energy it has left should be used to begin stripping back the layers of lacquered-on community expectations and obstacles that have nothing to do with love and nurturing. (Read more of Sandlin’s thoughts on the rise of the dones here.)
Paying attention to realities of the dones, nones, and unaffiliateds may mean taking a cue from the risen Lord. The young man’s instructions to the women in Mark are clear and direct -- get moving, go to Galilee, look for Jesus there. Interestingly, one who seems to understand what it means to get moving is Pope Francis, who recently welcomed homeless persons to a private tour of the Sistine Chapel.
Upon learning of the needs of the homeless gathered on his doorstep, the pontiff took action. In addition to finding bedrolls, providing haircuts, and arranging hot showers for those sleeping near the Vatican, the pope took the unprecedented step of scheduling a VIP tour for 150 homeless persons. After the tour, the pope greeted each guest and told them, “Welcome, this is a house for all. Your house.”
His words match his spirit. He has redirected the work of the papal almoner -- a position that has existed since the 12th century but has more recently been responsible for organizing the Vatican’s charities. But the pope wanted a more direct presence, and so directed Polish priest Konrad Krajewski to hit the streets in order to serve the poor. “You can sell your desk,” the pope told Krajewski. “You don’t need it.... You need to go out and look for the poor.”
This week, Garry Wills noted that some Catholic writers are correct to be worried about the pope’s orthodoxy: “They are right to be in a panic. They are not used to having a pope who is a Christian. They call Francis a radical because he deplores the sequestration of great wealth for a rich few and deprivation of the many poor. But Francis is a moderate. Jesus was the radical...”
Indeed. If Jesus is headed back to the place where his ministry was directed to the poor and outcast, perhaps the church should get moving as well. Even Protestants might find the pope’s words encouraging this Easter:
I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars. You have to heal the wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds.
It sounds a bit like the instructions the angel gave to the two Marys: “Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee.”
In the Scriptures
Mark’s resurrection account is clumsy and awkward. Didn’t his teachers tell him a preposition was not something to end a sentence with? Yet what most scholars hold as the original ending of the gospel ends on a grammatically jarring, perhaps incomprehensible note. The women were afraid -- and didn’t say anything, to anyone.
What’s the deal, Mark? Not only is Jesus absent from his own resurrection, but you also leave us with the image of fearful disciples, quaking and seized by terror? This isn’t just an enigmatic ending. It’s hardly any way to start a church.
Which, of course, is why later generations most likely appended the longer ending of Mark. Verses 9-19 make an attempt at theologically tidying up the mess made by the missing Messiah. In the longer ending Jesus appears, though the disciples fail to believe. Jesus upbraids them for their “lack of faith and stubbornness,” and then commissions the whole disbelieving lot to go into the world. As scholars point out, scribes obviously thought Mark’s story needed a more appropriate conclusion.
Reading Mark 16:1-8 on Easter may feel clumsy. Or, as literary critic Frank Kermode wrote, perhaps it is “incredibly subtle.” (See William C. Placher, Mark [Westminster/John Knox Press, 2010], p. 240.) Mark’s subtlety claims our attention. As fear seizes the women, we are reminded of what it means to affirm the truth of the resurrection: He is not here. He is risen.
Moreover, the angel’s instructions pinpoint the exact location of where Jesus can be found. He’s on his way to Galilee. Where else would Jesus go? This was where Jesus had ministered. It was in Galilee that Jesus brought sight to the blind and cast out innumerable demons. It was in Galilee that the twelve were chosen and the crowds instructed.
“He is going ahead of you to Galilee.” It’s an enigmatic ending. But perhaps it is just the beginning -- a reminder of how the church is to be about the gospel mission.
In the Sermon
Barbara Lunblad is correct when she observes: “Of all the Easter Gospels, Mark’s story invites us to stand where those first trembling witnesses stood.” Like the women, we have not seen Jesus. We have not touched his pierced side or felt the raw wounds of his hands. The story may cause us to be filled with questions, even as it reminds us of where we are called to go.
A sermon that would explore the response of the trembling, fear-filled women could be a word of welcome to some of the “dones” and “nones” who may show up in our pews on Easter. Even if they are there under duress, it would be welcoming for them to know that the church has always struggled with doubt and questions. Our honest and candid exploration of feeling overwhelmed by the resurrection might resonate with those whose own faith is uncertain. Younger millennials are among those who yearn for a faith that wrestles with ambiguity -- which of course is where Mark takes us on Easter.
But Mark also points beyond fear and questioning. Here a sermon could point to the work the church must do today -- leaving behind its buildings, perhaps, or at least its security. Risking it all means we may be terrified. But as we go we will meet Jesus, because he has risen. He has risen indeed!
Mark’s curious ending leads the church back to its mission. In going to Galilee, Jesus is going back to where it all began -- it is almost an invitation to begin reading the story over again. Yet this time we are called to see how we are participants in this work. We come back to this familiar territory as witnesses to all we have seen and heard in Christ. To go back to Galilee is a reminder that the church is given an important mission.
Jesus has left the building. He’s on his way -- and the question now becomes: “Will we follow?”
Not Here
by Dean Feldmeyer
Mark 16:5-7
Easter Sunday is finally here, and what a relief it is!
Frankly, we’re all tired of the sturm und drang (storm and stress), the angst und zweifel (anxiety and doubt), the drama and passion and wailing and moaning of Lent.
And we’re tired of giving up whatever it is we’ve given up.
It’s all such a downer, such a nuisance, such a massive inconvenience.
So let’s strike up the band and carve the ham, unwrap the chocolate and put our dancin’ shoes on, because Easter has finally, mercifully arrived and we can get back to life as it should be.
Praise the Lord! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Only it’s not that simple or that easy for some.
There are those in our midst, our brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors, for whom Lent has been more than just a nuisance. There are some among us for whom this particular Lent has been a descent into hell, a journey into the darkest reaches of the human soul, an abrupt encounter with unimaginable grief and despair.
When the co-pilot of Germanwings Airbus A320 crashed the airliner into the Alps, killing all 150 souls on board, he plunged hundreds of families, husbands, wives, parents, grandparents, friends, and co-workers into a kind of absolute darkness of the soul.
If Easter brings a message of light and hope, it must speak not just to the petty nuisances and inconveniences of our lives. It must speak to the families and friends of these poor victims in the midst of their grief, and to all who suffer from that despair which Keirkegaard called “the sickness unto death” -- for if Easter has no message for them, it has really no message at all.
In the News
The front lawn of the Joseph Koenig secondary school in Haltern, Germany (near Dusseldorf) is festooned with flowers and balloons, all surrounding a large, crude plywood sign with a single word printed in bold, black letters: “VARUM?” (Why?)
Why, the students want to know, did 16 of their classmates and two of their teachers perish along with 132 other innocents on Germanwings Flight 9525 when it crashed into the French Alps on its way from Barcelona to Dusseldorf?
Why did the captain leave the cockpit with only one person left there?
Why did that one person, co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, 27, lock the captain out of the cockpit and intentionally fly the plane into the side of a mountain, killing himself and everyone else onboard?
What was the medical diagnosis that made him unfit to fly that day, and why did he hide it from his employers and choose to die instead? Why would any person choose to be remembered for one of the worst acts of mass murder in human history?
How could any human being hate himself and others who have never done him ill so much?
Varum? Why?
As if there is an answer to that question that will somehow explain away the painful reality. As if there is a rational, well-considered reason for killing 149 others when what you really want to kill is yourself.
As it turns out, the question was answered fairly quickly -- and it doesn’t help a bit. It doesn’t make the pain go away. We cannot fill that awful, hollow void in our gut with an explanation or a diagnosis.
How the plane crashed was a mystery quickly solved. The BEA (Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses pour la Sécurité de l'Aviation Civile) is the French authority responsible for safety investigations into accidents, their version of our NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board). Upon recovering and investigating the “black box” voice recorder from the crash site, they immediately turned the findings over to the country’s prosecutors.
Inquiries into Lubitz’s background and medical history are ongoing, but he appears to have had a history of depression and erratic behavior that he successfully hid from his employer. A former girlfriend recalls that he once said to her, “One day I will do something that will change the whole system, and then all will know my name and remember it.” Is this the “something” of which he spoke?
We may never know. In fact, what we know now may very well be all we ever learn about why. And even if there were more to know, it is highly unlikely that finding it would in any way mitigate the pain of the friends and family of the victims.
For that we must turn to the scriptures, and in particular this week, to the story of the first Easter.
In the Scriptures
Mark’s account of Easter is brief and abrupt.
Three women -- Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome -- go to the tomb to mitigate their own grief by performing the comforting funeral rites and rituals of their day. They intend to wash the body of Jesus and anoint it with spices, the purpose of which was probably to cover the smell of decomposition.
As they walk they discuss the problem that will be before them when they reach the garden. A large rock has been placed at the mouth of the tomb, and will need to be rolled back so they can get to Jesus’ body.
Such stones were usually movable in those days, as tombs were used and reused. Bones would be removed, placed in reliquaries (clay boxes), and stored at another location with other such boxes so that new bodies could be placed in the tomb. The stone was movable -- but not easily so. They would need help.
When they arrive at the tomb, however, the stone has already been moved.
They enter the tomb, and instead of finding the body of Jesus they meet a young man wearing a white robe. He doesn’t wait for them to ask the obvious question but leaps ahead: “Don’t be alarmed. You’re looking for Jesus, of course. Well, he has been raised. He is not here. See? Here’s where he was placed.”
He goes on to tell them where they can find Jesus -- but they are so amazed and frightened that they are unable to tell anyone.
That’s understandable, of course. It takes time to recover from that kind of shock. Later they will have much to say -- but for now, until they can make some kind of sense from all this, they are silent.
In the Pulpit
One of the most arresting images from this whole tragic affair is that of helicopters lowering crash investigators by cable to the crash site. So rough is the terrain, so mountainous the environment, that there is no place to land a helicopter. Indeed, there is hardly a place to put both feet together on the ground. Theirs is the grim and thankless task of searching the debris for body parts that can be used to make final identifications of the dead through DNA.
Families and friends want to go to the crash site, but governments and recovery teams are asking them to wait until they have finished their work. So the families have built some small, temporary memorials at the base of the mountains where they can come together in their grief, where they can meet and comfort each other.
Grief shared is, after all, a burden made lighter.
And lighter still that painful grief when we who are Christians can hear the promise of Easter pronounced in this most horrible of circumstances: “He is not here.” Regardless of what is found or not found on that mountainside, people of faith know this as surely as they know their own reflection in the mirror. Their loved ones are not here. They have “gone on to Galilee.” They have, even now, walked into the loving embrace of their savior and their God. Their pain is no more. And God has stooped to wash away every tear from their eyes.
They are not here. They are not here.
Those of us who are charged with delivering this Good News realize that it takes time to hear it. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not an analgesic meant to make pain instantly disappear. It is not a poultice meant to leech toxic grief from the experience of unexpected and painful loss.
It is, rather, a “nevertheless” that is pronounced about the pain we suffer. The God who loves us with grace abundant in this life continues to love us in the next. So we know that the dead do not lie on that mountainside nor in graves. They live on in the arms of God who loves them more than any singing of it.
This is the promise of resurrection. This is the song of Easter.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From team member Leah Lonsbury:
John 20:1-18; Mark 16:1-8
Not a one of us needs to see the statistics on how the mainline church (as we have always known it) is dying. The numbers are everywhere, and we’ve fretted and mourned enough already. USA Today published an article recently about the institution of Sunday school and how it no longer feels like a good fit for many congregants of all ages, but especially children. In the article, Melissa Pandika describes a scene in a Sunday school room in Oakland, California where the kids are falling asleep on the rug, no one knows the music except the teacher, and one little girl with purple-tipped hair declares that the baby Jesus is transgender. In this classroom, Sunday school feels like an ill-fitting bathing suit -- it chafes in all the wrong spots, leaves one feeling exposed, and is altogether uncomfortable.
Some churches are facing reality and learning to evolve when it comes to Sunday school. Pandika describes a church down the road from the first scene where Rev. Laurie Manning has adopted something called “The Joyful Path” that trades Bible study in a classroom for visiting families in homeless shelters and raising money to build schools in poor countries. Manning says this helps children “see the face of God.”
Whatever path we choose, even those of us who love Sunday school and the institutional church must keep in mind the words in our Easter gospel texts. In Mark 16, the “young man in a white robe” tells the women at the tomb: “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here... But go, tell...”
In John 20, Jesus himself tells Mary to stop weeping and asks her who it is she is seeking. He also sends her out to spread the Word. “Leave the tomb, Mary. You’ll find me out amongst the people.”
Perhaps it is time for us to stop looking for Jesus in what seems more and more like the tomb of the church. His resurrected presence is to be found out in the world amongst his people. We would do well to follow Mary’s example, go out in the world, and bear witness that we too “have seen the Lord.”
*****
Isaiah 25:6-9
The prophet Isaiah reminds us this week that God “will swallow up death forever” and that we will “rejoice in [God’s] salvation.” Those two prophetic pieces of our story as beloved children of God can be difficult to remember when life begins to feel like we are being “pecked to death by ducks,” like Pastor Jennifer Brownell describes. Another meeting, another fight, another dead end, another bill you can’t pay, another broken relationship, another job lost -- the world is full of pecking, cutting us down to size, stealing life piece by piece.
In a recent devotional for the United Church of Christ, Brownell describes feeling this way when she stopped by the side of a road to observe the rescue of a family of ducks. After holding one wet, tiny duckling in her hands, she remembered that just as life is full of little deaths, it is also full of little resurrections:
We think that resurrection, when it comes, will come with trumpets and earthquakes and angels perched cheekily on stones. But sometimes it’s not one big death, but a thousand small ones that bury you. You are witness, too, to the resurrection that comes as a flutter of life, so tiny you can hold in your hand. And when you stand up dripping mud and maybe tears, you will find it’s not just another life that’s been saved, it’s your own.
*****
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
When comedian Pete Holmes interviewed Richard Rohr for his podcast You Made It Weird, Holmes revealed that he has taken on a line from Rohr’s book Falling Upward as his life’s motto. “To humbly and proudly return what you’ve been given,” is what Holmes now works toward and understands as the meaning of life, thanks to Rohr.
Holmes confesses to being dark and crude but also searching, really searching. He talks about a tour he’s doing with theologian Rob Bell. Their website describes the tour this way:
There are billions of us featherless bipeds stumbling around on this blue and green ball while it hurtles through space at 67,000 mph, wondering how we got here and what it all means and whether or not these pants fit. It’s all a heartbreaking mess, isn’t it? But then there are those moments when it’s something else, something good, something that matters, something... beautiful. We’re made of soul and bone, dust and spirit, and we can’t help talk about all of it -- the mess, the questions, the haunting sense that we’re all alone in a cold, dark universe, the drumming in our hearts insisting that there’s a point to all this madness. Join Pete Holmes and Rob Bell on their Together at Last tour as they explore all this and more -- because once you’re laughing in the face of the infinite, everything else is just way more interesting...
However self-deprecating Holmes is during the interview or on the tour, his work with Bell is now being billed as “The Profound/Profane.” In this light, Holmes’ motto and his impact begin to sound like Paul’s line from his letter to the Corinthians: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and God’s grace toward me has not been in vain.”
How might we live out a similar line of thinking? How might we embrace who we are as products of God’s grace and discover the potential and purpose of that grace in us? How might God’s grace make our profane profound?
***************
From team member Mary Austin:
New Life from the Old
Before we get to Easter, the long days of the weekend loom. In the scriptures, Jesus’ friends have to wait for the end of the sabbath to go and look for his body, time which must have moved slowly for them. Surgeon Paul Kalanithi writes about the shift in time as his life changes from busy surgeon to cancer patient: “The funny thing about time in the [operating room], whether you frenetically race or steadily proceed, is that you have no sense of it passing. If boredom is, as Heidegger argued, the awareness of time passing, this is the opposite: The intense focus makes the arms of the clock seem arbitrarily placed. Two hours can feel like a minute.”
After being diagnosed with lung cancer and having chemotherapy, time took on a different quality. As Kalanithi says: “I emerged from the hospital weakened, with thin limbs and thinned hair. Now unable to work, I was left at home to convalesce. Getting up from a chair or lifting a glass of water took concentration and effort. If time dilates when one moves at high speeds, does it contract when one moves barely at all? It must: The day shortened considerably. A full day’s activity might be a medical appointment, or a visit from a friend. The rest of the time was rest.” There was no more rushing.
Cancer has taught Kalanithi what we often forget -- that life and death are twined together. “Time for me is double-edged: Every day brings me further from the low of my last cancer relapse, but every day also brings me closer to the next cancer recurrence -- and eventually, death.” (Read more here.)
*****
What We Don’t Know
The resurrection empowers our faith and shapes our connection with God, and yet we can’t claim to understand it. It remains a mystery. Steven J. Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics and other books in the series, suggests that there are three words we all need to learn to say. These three words will make all of life better, he believes. The three words: I don’t know.
As Dubner says in an interview, “there are huge quadrants of modern society, particularly in business and in government, where people are constantly pretending they know the answer to a question or the solution to a problem. And I get it. I understand the way the incentives work. I understand that reputation works. Nobody wants to be the ignoramus or the dummy.” And yet, if we can say what we don’t know, then we begin to think about what we need to know. “I don’t know” is the start of new knowledge.
*****
Pain as a Gift
When the women arrive at the tomb, they come after a sabbath day full of mourning and grief, only to find that something entirely new has happened. As Dean Feldmeyer’s article above notes, our faith does not remove pain but adds another dimension to our experience of pain. Suffering is not erased but is woven into a new story. We have to be willing to live in the new story when it comes, however. Writer Gail Brenner says that turning away from the past and toward the future is an essential part of our own participation in a new life. As Brenner says, “You will never find peace by repeating the story in your mind. Never.”
Brenner writes that “Most difficult emotions have their roots in events that happened long ago. You experienced a strong emotional reaction to a challenging situation or relationship, and you didn’t have the skills or support to feel it and let it move through you. Instead, it got stuck, lodged in your mind and body, creating layers of contraction and armoring as the years go by. Fast forward to now, and here you are, desperately wanting relief so you can be at peace. This is your invitation: to discover the treasure at the heart of pain.”
The treasure awaits, even in the most painful of times, if we can make our sorrow part of the story. (Read more here.)
***************
From team member Ron Love:
In his recent book David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell presents the concept that underdogs often have more success because their limitations force them to be creative. If David had been a tall, broad-shouldered soldier capable with the sword, he would have been defeated by Goliath. Instead, because David was small in stature he got creative -- resorting to a slingshot -- and Goliath was defeated.
Application: What appeared as defeat on Good Friday became victory on Resurrection Sunday.
*****
90 Minutes in Heaven; The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven; Heaven Is for Real. Each of these “experiential testimonies about heaven” will no longer be sold in LifeWay Christian stores. LifeWay is going to adhere to the Southern Baptist resolution that upholds “the sufficiency of scripture regarding the afterlife.”
Application: Only Jesus died and was resurrected. No one else has experienced heaven. The Southern Baptist Convention is correct in their decision to discard any other account.
*****
Presbyterian minister Benjamin Weir, in his book Hostage Bound, Hostage Free, reveals what it was like to be held hostage. Weir was captured in May 1984 on the streets of Beirut by a group of Shiite Muslim extremists, and he was imprisoned for 16 months. During those torturous months he often was chained and held in solitary confinement. Weir’s devout faith and trust in God sustained him during those perilous times. One routine in particular demonstrates Weir’s reliance on Jesus. He realized that if he dared to stand on the toilet he could look out the window. Doing so, he could see beyond the Bekaa Valley to the Lebanon Mountains. The snow-covered mountains and rays of early morning sunlight strengthened his faith. Weir confessed: “That sight, and the memory of it throughout the day, spoke to me of the grandeur of the Creator and his good intensions for the world and its people. This gave me hope and a sense of harmony.”
Application: Easter is the message of hope.
*****
Bob Keeshan entertained children for years as television’s jovial Captain Kangaroo. In his autobiography Growing Up Happy, Keeshan shared the moment when he realized life would be marvelous. Shortly after the Second World War, Keeshan, an 18-year-old Marine, was on board the troopship USS Rockbridge Ranger, sailing toward his last duty station in Hawaii. He enjoyed spending the dark nights standing in the forecastle, gazing at the starlit skies. The bow dipped into each succeeding wave, and when it raised the heavens shone gloriously overhead. Reflecting on this experience, Keeshan wrote: “There was a rhythm to life, I felt at those moments. I didn’t know what was going to happen to me when I was discharged, but I would be 19 and I was convinced that the world would be wonderful.”
Application: Easter is the message that life always has a future.
WORSHIP RESOURCES
by George Reed
Call to Worship
Leader: O give thanks to God, for God is good.
People: God’s steadfast love endures forever!
Leader: There are glad songs of victory in the tents of the righteous.
People: The right hand of God does valiantly.
Leader: This is the day that God has made.
People: Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
OR
Leader: Jesus is risen! Alleluia!
People: The Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!
Leader: Jesus goes before us to Galilee.
People: We will meet with him there.
Leader: We will find him in mission to those in need.
People: We will joyfully join in his ministry and service.
Hymns and Sacred Songs
“The Day of Resurrection”
found in:
UMH: 303
H82: 210
PH: 118
NNBH: 124
NCH: 245
CH: 228
LBW: 141
ELA: 361
W&P: 298
AMEC: 159, 160
“Hail the Day That Sees Him Rise”
found in:
UMH: 312
H82: 214
NCH: 260
W&P: 323
“Lord, Whose Love Through Humble Service”
found in:
UMH: 581
H82: 610
PH: 427
CH: 461
LBW: 423
ELA: 712
W&P: 575
Renew: 286
“O Zion, Haste”
found in:
UMH: 573
H82: 539
NNBH: 422
LBW: 397
ELA: 668
AMEC: 566
“Draw Us in the Spirit’s Tether”
found in:
UMH: 632
PH: 504
NCH: 337
CH: 392
ELA: 470
“This Is the Feast of Victory”
found in:
UMH: 638
H82: 417, 418
PH: 594
LBW: included in Holy Communion ritual
ELA: included in Holy Communion ritual
W&P: 315
Renew: 199
“We Will Glorify”
found in:
CCB: 19
Renew: 33
“We Are His Hands”
found in:
CCB: 85
Music Resources Key:
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
H82: The Hymnal 1982 (The Episcopal Church)
PH: Presbyterian Hymnal
NNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
NCH: The New Century Hymnal
CH: Chalice Hymnal
LBW: Lutheran Book of Worship
ELA: Evangelical Lutheran Worship
W&P: Worship & Praise
AMEC: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal
STLT: Singing the Living Tradition
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
Renew: Renew! Songs & Hymns for Blended Worship
Prayer for the Day / Collect
O God who came to us in Jesus of Nazareth: Grant us the grace to follow him into the Galilee of our lives, that we might join him in his mission to reclaim your world; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
OR
We praise and honor your name, O God, for you are the one who sent Jesus to us. He taught us how to serve you by being in service to others. As we offer you our praises, help us to enter into his ministry and mission as we follow him into the Galilee that surrounds us. Amen.
Prayer of Confession
Leader: Let us confess to God and before one another our sins, and especially our tendency to want to be served rather than to serve.
People: We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We often think that being a Christian makes us special and better than others. Because Jesus was victorious over death, we think we will be victorious over our enemies as well. We forget the lesson he taught us about being servants and taking the last place rather than the first. We forget that when he rose from the dead he returned to Galilee to continue his mission. We forget that we are called to follow him there and join his work. Forgive us, and renew us as disciples who serve as Jesus served. Amen.
Leader: Jesus still calls us and invites us to enter into the joy of bringing the reign of God as we serve others.
Prayers of the People (and the Lord’s Prayer)
We worship and praise you, O God, for your presence among us. We praise you, for you bring us from death into a new life.
(The following paragraph may be used if a separate prayer of confession has not been used.)
We confess to you, O God, and before one another that we have sinned. We often think that being a Christian makes us special and better than others. Because Jesus was victorious over death, we think we will be victorious over our enemies as well. We forget the lesson he taught us about being servants and taking the last place rather than the first. We forget that when he rose from the dead he returned to Galilee to continue his mission. We forget that we are called to follow him there and join his work. Forgive us, and renew us as disciples who serve as Jesus served.
We thank you for all the ways in which you have touched our lives with your grace and love. We thank you for Jesus, who died our death and rose for us. We thank you that he has taught us how to serve you by serving others.
(Other thanksgivings may be offered.)
We pray for all those who are in need of your healing presence. We pray for those who find it difficult to hope in the midst of the despair of their lives. Help us to go to them in the name of Jesus and continue his work of healing.
(Other intercessions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the Name of our Savior Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray together, saying:
Our Father . . . Amen.
(or if the Lord’s Prayer is not used at this point in the service)
All this we ask in the Name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. Amen.
Children’s Sermon Starter
Would you go to a music teacher to learn how to hammer a nail? Would you go to an art teacher to learn how to skateboard? You go to a teacher who can teach you to do what they do. When we follow Jesus, he will teach us how to love others and serve them.
CHILDREN’S SERMON
He Is Alive!
by Robert Lantz
John 20:1-18; Mark 16:1-8
Object: cards or stickers depicting angels, an open tomb, or a lily
He is alive! He is alive! He is alive! That was the message of the angels who greeted Jesus’ friends at the empty tomb on Easter morning! Can you imagine how shocked and surprised and excited and scared those people were when they saw angels and an empty grave?
After Jesus died on the cross and was buried in a borrowed tomb, all of his followers were sad and broken-hearted. Their friend and teacher had been taken away from them. And even though he had told them of his death and that he would rise from the dead, they had trouble believing that it really had happened.
Today there are jubilant people all over the world who are crying out “He is alive!” Over 600 million people who claim the name “Christian” are excited about the good news that Jesus is alive. But often, like the early followers, they don’t really understand what that means.
I want you to try to understand what the story of Easter really means to you and me today.
If Jesus is really alive, as we believe he is, then he cares for us today. We can talk to him and know his presence with us no matter where we are or what we are doing. If he is alive, he is able to hear our prayers and send his Holy Spirit to us to confirm our faith. And most importantly, the Bible tells us that he can come to be alive in us.
There is a great Easter hymn that we sing titled “He Lives,” and it ends with the words “You ask me how I know he lives; he lives within my heart.” I hope every one of us knows this morning that he lives because we have invited him to live in our hearts.
(Conclude with a prayer of rejoicing and praise for the living Savior, alive in the world both now and forever, then give the children their Easter reminder.)
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The Immediate Word, April 5, 2015, issue.
Copyright 2015 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
