Worship
Service for March 31, 2024
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: Christ is risen!
P: He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
L: Jesus has come that we may have abundant
life. After the crucifixion, God raised
Christ from the dead, freeing Him from the agony of death, because it was
impossible for death to keep its hold on him.
P: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.
L: Christ is risen!
P: He is risen indeed!
Opening Hymn – Jesus Christ is Risen Today #123 Blue
Prayer of Confession
We know that the whole
creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the
present time. We groan today because we
have sinned and done what is wrong in the sight of the Lord. We confess that we have succumbed to the
temptations of evil in this world. We
seek to be restored in our relationship with Christ. As a community and as individuals, we reflect
on the sins that have cut us off from Christ.
(Silent prayers are offered)
AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: Therefore, there is now no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus we have been
set free from the law of sin and death.
For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the
flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of human flesh to be a
holy offering for us. Dearly Beloved, in
Jesus Christ your sins are forgiven.
P: Alleluia! Amen.
Gloria Patri
Affirmation of Faith/Apostles’
Creed
I believe in God the Father
Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord;
who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under
Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell; the
third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on
the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge
the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic Church; the
communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and
the life everlasting. AMEN
Anthem – He’s Alive! Sung by Ashley Mayersky
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
God of Awesome Joy, be with us this day
as we celebrate the resurrection of your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Let the light of your love flood into our
lives and through us to all those who have been captured by darkness, that the
light may give them healing, freedom and hope. As we witness the surprise of the women at the
tomb, the appearance of the Savior to Mary, and her good news brought to the
disciples, let us remember that this good news exists for us today. Darkness does not win. Death is not victorious. Christ is Risen, for us, for you and for me. We are raised with Christ to a new life of
hope and service. Let the joy of this
good news swirl around in our hearts. Let
excitement for service and ministry burst forth from us. Let us truly be the “Easter People” that you
have called us to be. Remind us again of
the ministry and mission of Christ, who came that we might have life. Make us ready to receive these precious gifts.
Walk with us on this pathway of service.
Help us look at the barriers that have
prevented us from following Christ and guide us through them that we may become
stronger in our faith and our service to you.
We raise up the names of those we shared
earlier this day during this time of prayer.
Hear us, O Lord. We pray for….
Now, Holy Lord, hear the words of our
hearts as we lift up to you our silent prayers.
God, we thank you for hearing us, we ask all
these things in the name of the Risen Lord, Jesus Christ who taught us to pray,
saying…Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth
as it is in heaven. Give us this day our
daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we
forgive our debtors. And lead us not
into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. AMEN.
Hymn – Thine
is the Glory #122
Blue Hymnal
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Isaiah
25:6-9
Second Scripture Reading – Mark
16:1-8
Sermon – He is
Risen! He is Risen, indeed!
There’s a quote that says, “In the end
everything will be ok, if it’s not ok, it isn’t the end.” John Lennon made this quote popular, but no
one actually knows the originator of the quote.
It was also a line from the movie, “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”. There are some who believe that the quote
came from a Brazilian writer by the name of Fernando Sabino. Although he wrote over 50 books, he is not
very well known among English speakers.
So, for us, it is John Lennon as the one who is attributed to making the
quote famous.
Who’d
have thought that I’d start an Easter Sermon with a quote by John Lennon? But listen to the words of the quote
again. “In the end everything will be
ok, if it’s not okay, it isn’t the end.”
That’s
the message about the end of all things.
“Everything will be ok.”
Yet,
that’s not the message that most of us have gotten or grown up with. With recent movies and novels, and by recent,
I’m talking about the last 20-30 years or more, maybe going all the way back to
the 1970’s with Hal Lindsey’s book, the Late Great Planet Earth and then
the Left Behind series from the late 20th Century. All of these popular Christian prophecy books
have all had an apocalyptic view of the end times as horrible with the rapture;
the few faithful people being taken from the earth amidst fire-y hail,
earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, flood waters, and utter chaos, while
the rest of us are left to fend for ourselves.
If
this is true, that’s a horrible storyline of history and not at all the message
that God lays out as a plan for humanity in the entirety of scripture. Yes, you can go ahead and site some verses in
Revelation about the end times, but to pose an entire theology on just a few
verses from one book of the Bible that aren’t really backed up in any other
part of scripture is not well reasoned theology, in my opinion. But there are a lot of people that only
believe in this understanding and even pray that the horrible events of
Armageddon come quickly. No wonder so
many people live without hope today. I
mean, seriously, if the end is going to be so awful, why bother? It’s not going to mean anything.
But the real message about Easter is
very different from this doom and gloom message that so many of us have lived
with.
Every Sunday our church reaffirms the
faith that we believe in by reciting one of the Church’s Creeds. There are a variety of confessionals and creeds
that the church has adopted over the years to better pinpoint and explain what
we believe in, to acknowledge people, ideas, an expanding theological
understanding of what we believe, etc.
There’s the Nicene Creed, The Scot’s Confession, The Heidelberg
Catechism, The Second Helvetic Catechism, The Westminster Confession of Faith,
The Shorter and the Longer Catechism, The Declaration of Barmen, The Confession
of 1967, The Confession of Belhar, and the most recent one, which was adopted
in 1991 after the two largest branches of the Presbyterian Church reunited in
1983, A Brief Statement of Faith. These
Creeds and Confessions can be found in our Book of Confessions which is 473
pages long. Most of them are not easy to
use and recite during worship. One of
the most basic and concise creeds is the Apostle’s Creed and that is why we use
it during worship.
However, in this creed there is a line
that gives some people pause. It begins,
he was crucified, dead, and buried, and then the kicker; he descended into
hell. Why? Why would Jesus go to hell? The ancient concepts of Hell, often referred
to as Hades, are far different from ours.
The words were often used interchangeably. However, Hades was the place of the
dead. Whereas, Hell was the concept of
eternal damnation.
The theological idea the Apostles
Creed wanted to convey was that Christ, after he died, went down to the place
of the dead. Why? To chat with Uncle Abraham? No. He
went down to proclaim the eternal message of God’s redemptive love, then to
bring people back from the dead to their glorious eternity. Christ’s resurrection was everyone’s
resurrection.
Early Christian painters in the
Eastern Orthodox Church celebrated this rising of the dead. There are lots of paintings in churches like
Turkey, Syria, Palestine, and Greece where Jesus’ resurrection isn’t just depicted
with a lone Resurrected Christ, but rather with Jesus bringing everyone up from
the grave.
Richard Rohr says that “What it means
to be God is to win. God doesn’t
lose. The victory announced at Easter is
total and universal for everyone.
If that is true we have a very
different message to get out into the world than the one depicted in The Late
Great Planet Earth or the Left Behind Series.
We have a message that filled with wonder and joy. We have a message that should inspire, not
just us, but everyone - to do good things for others. To be the voice of peace, to care for the
planet, to love our neighbors, to reach out to the lonely and dispossessed, to
welcome the stranger, to feed the poor, to clothe the naked, and to embrace the
widow and the orphan. They were Christ’s
directives while he was living and should be our directives, too. Even more so with the concept of Resurrected
Living.
“He is Risen!” (wait…..silence? Repeat)
“He
is Risen!” (wait….response?)
I think I might have seen some lips
moving or heard a couple of people whisper a response.
But the next time I say, “He is Risen”,
your response is, “He is Risen, indeed!”
“He is Risen!” Response: “He is risen, indeed!”
Oh no!
I’m sorry, but that’s not going to cut it. I want to hear you really say it and mean it.
“He is Risen!” Response: “He is risen, indeed!”
Ok,
one more time…and I want to hear it with gusto.
“He is Risen!” Response: “He is risen, indeed!”
That’s
better!
The
empty tomb isn’t really about Jesus being raised from the dead. We like to think it is. But it’s not.
The empty tomb is about us being raised from the dead. What point is there for Christ to have been
raised from the dead, if we don’t act like it.
The point of the empty tomb is about us being raised from the
dead, because Christ went before us.
It’s about our own response to what Christ did for us. It’s about our response to the world around
us. It’s about our response to the
tragedies and sufferings of this world.
It’s about living a life with joy and wonder, with glory and praise. It’s about living a life, raised from the
dead.
The
world doesn’t need a people of doom and gloom.
It has that enough already. The
world needs people filled with the joyful wonder of a risen Lord. The world needs people filled with the Spirit
of God. The world needs people that are
doing the Lord’s work and living a resurrected life.
I
want to hear your Easter Joy. I want to
know that you have been raised from the empty tomb. And I want the world to hear it.
“He
is Risen!” Response: “He is risen, indeed!”
Thanks
be to God. Amen.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Gracious God, joy floods over our souls this
day. Take these offerings, use them for
the work of peace and love in the world.
Open our hearts and our spirits to receive and give thanks for Your many
blessings. In the name of the Risen
Christ. AMEN.
Closing
Hymn – Crown Him with Many Crowns #45 Brown Hymnal
Benediction –
Dance,
celebrate, sing, and shout for joy!
Christ is Risen and He goes before us, into this world of fear and
pain. He has called us to bring the Good
News of healing and hope, of redemption and grace. Go in peace, and feel the presence of the
Risen Lord with you, now and forever.
AMEN.
Postlude
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