PLEASE NOTE:
CHURCH SERVICES RESUMED IN THE SANCTUARY.
MASKS ARE REQUIRED AND SOCIAL DISTANCING RULES APPLIES
Easter Sunday
A Service of the Word
April 4, 2021 ª 10am
OPENING WORDS:
We open our hearts to the presence of God and worship together.
PRELUDE “Christ the Lord is Risen Today" Christ the Lord is risen today - YouTube
*CALL TO WORSHIP:
One: Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Many: The Lord has risen indeed. Alleluia!
One: Lift your heart. Lift your voices.
Celebrate the good news of God’s love.
Many: We gather in courage and peace
And we proclaim in faith:
The tomb is empty.
Death has been swallowed up in victory.
One: The spirits of evil are fallen.
The angels of heaven are rejoicing.
Let us praise God and rejoice!
God’s steadfast love endures forever!
ALL: This is the day that our God has made.
Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
WELCOME:
No matter who you are or where you are on life's journey, you're welcome here...
by our God and by our church.
PRAYER OF INVOCATION:
Good and gracious, God of grace and power, we come rejoicing in Christ’s empty tomb. We come trusting in the good news that tells us Christ is with us, for the Risen Christ is living proof that You care about our lives. The Risen Christ offers to us glimpses of hope, even in our tears. The tomb is not quiet. It speaks. It proclaims! It is a promise of eternal life! We thank you and praise you for your wondrous works.
Bless us in this time, Dear Lord, and touch us with your spirit of resurrection power, that our hearts may know your presence in this day. Instill within us ears to hear your Word of life that we may be drawn close to you and filled with gratitude for this day and for the life that you have given us. Refresh us with a cheerful and generous outlook that we may bring blessing to others. It is in the great name of Jesus, our risen Christ, that we gather and we pray. Amen.
CHILDREN'S TIME: The word of the day is "Alleluia"
PASSING OF THE PEACE
ANNOUNCEMENTS, CELEBRATIONS AND CONCERNS
-Our thanks to all who placed lilies on the altar today.
-The Thrift Shop is open again. Come by and visit.
A TIME OF PRAYER:
- Pastoral Prayer
God of our resurrection and our salvation, we thank and praise you for your grace and mercy so readily shared with us. You raise our countenance from despair to resurrection joy, always meeting us in our days to bring comfort and offer to us new hope. We open our hearts to you, hoping to be illuminated by your wisdom and filled with the confidence of always having you by our side.
God of grace, help us in our pain and in our struggles so that we are not prone to follow the path of hopelessness. Help us, to be like the Risen Christ, and rise up as a brave and holy people, living beyond all despair and fear in the steady knowledge of your steadfast love. Help us to be generous with our giving, and compassionate with our speech and actions. Help us to shine brightly with your light that brings all to see what your transforming power can bring. Bless us. Heal us. And enable us to embrace the fullness of life that can only be celebrated as you fill our very beings.
Holy One, we extend our prayers to our world in need. Into the darkness of violence and abuse we pray that you would shine your light of genuine peace and renewed understanding of your vision for us and for your world. We pray for peace, peace in our hearts, in our communities and nation, and peace throughout the world that all war and terror may cease.
Loving God, we pray for the many who feel trapped in loneliness and despair. We pray for the homeless, the hungry, the addicted and depressed. Grace them with angels in their path who bring a vision of hope and new life that their hearts can hold. Guide them in the way they should go, and lead them into genuine abundant living.
We pray, O God, for the many who struggle with health and wholeness in their days. Bless and cure, heal the sick. Grace them with the resilience and strength they need to recover and live well. We pray for the caretakers, for those who tend to the injured, who bring comfort to the suffering, and hope to the diseased. Bless the patients and staff alike, in hospitals, in nursing homes and hospice care, in all places where healing is needed, with a sense of your healing touch and compassionate love.
We pray for an end to the pandemic of our days, and for a newness of outlook and living that is truly joy-filled with Spirit. Help us to overcome the struggles of any day fraught with problems and misery that we may all know the blessing of abundant living.
Gracious God, you know the many concerns of our world, of our lives. We remember in spoken prayer and in silence those we know to be most in need of your healing touch. Bless those on our prayer list, and those whose concerns we hold in our hearts.
- Silent Prayer
- Lord's Prayer:
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 and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, now and forever. Amen.
SCRIPTURE LESSONS:
Isaiah 25:6-9; Psalm 118:1-2,14-24; Acts 10:34-43; John 20:1-18.
SERMON: “Take Hold of the Good Days”
Happy Easter. On this day, we celebrate the good days of our life, and this indeed, is a good day. It's a day of celebration and of heartening music, a day of blooming flowers and fine foods, a day of family and of love and of prayer. It's a day of Resurrection joy. Today is a good day.
I've long been a fan of Easter. As I've spent most of my days living in the northeast, Easter has long marked the end of the cold days of winter and the beginning of a wonderfully blooming garden season. It brings the more somber days of Lent to a close in a big way, as the days of open windows and open doors, of visiting and celebrating, of beaches and barbecues enter in.
This year, particularly as so many of us are finally getting our vaccines completed, our Easter season represents a fresh start and a return to less anxious days with a greater freedom of doing. This year Easter comes with an abundance of hope in a big way. It's not hard to see the good news and abundant hope in our readings. On this day, with Isaiah, we get the vision of a mountain top feast of rich foods and the day when death is swallowed up forever. On this day, with Acts, we get Peter's words of God's abundant welcome and of the gift of forgiveness to all believers.
On this day, we again hear of Mary Magdalene's arrival at the tomb. She's there with the intent to anoint the crucified body of Jesus when she finds an empty tomb where Jesus once laid. God's angels and the Risen Christ meet her in her sorrow, and speak hope into her heart. She arrives in tears but leaves rejoicing. And it's not just a good day for her, but it's a really good day for Jesus. It's certainly not every day one rises from the dead. Yes, it's a good day for the Good News of our God.
Perhaps the good days can only truly be appreciated by those who have known the bad days. I say "perhaps" because it's a hard theory to test, for I don't know anyone who hasn't had a bad day. Life is full of them, and some of us feel if bad days were a competition, we'd win that contest hands down. Well, that is as long as Jesus wasn't in the competition. Ironically enough, Jesus had a really bad on "Good" Friday. But then again, his really good day that Easter morning tops any of ours too. And I wonder, does the bad of the past really make the good of the present any more sweeter? Do I appreciate food all that more in the fullness of my days because of the hunger of my past? Do I, who was paralyzed, who spent months in the hospital, celebrate walking more than others? Do I who have known heartbreak and deep grief, rejoice any more greatly in the love on a good day? I'm not so sure.
One thing I do know is that I tend to hold onto the bad days more readily than I do the good ones. I've carried some bad around with me, like a dark cloud through many weeks, while some of the really good, like skiing in the Alps from cloudy Switzerland to having a wonderful lunch in the warm sunshine of northern Italy (now that was a good day), have faded more readily from memory. The bad has served as a weight not easily shaken, while the good has sailed quickly away like a balloon in the wind. And I doubt I'm alone in that. My hope for you, for us, is that you will genuinely take hold of the good days. Yes, bad happens, but recovery is possible for those who believe. And this day, among all days, is a day to believe in the possible, in the good.
Celebrate this day. The Resurrection narrative reveals that love is alive and moves among us. The Risen Christ reminds us that despair is not the end of our journey. Jesus speaks of God’s ever-present love and power, and gives us all resurrection hope. As an Easter people, we're called to take hold of the good, and to manifest God’s never-ending love in our world. And it is with Christ’s limitless and restorative love, that we, humbly and graciously, are even given the opportunity to offer back to God a portion of what God has given us as we share our love and our resources with others.
Be blessed by God and take hold of the good in all your days. Happy Easter. Amen and amen.
*PASTORAL BENEDICTION:
May God’s abiding love and hope give us new life.
May God’s unmerited grace and mercy keep us hope-filled.
And may God’s restorative justice bring to us all, perfect peace.
Christ is risen! Alleluia! Praise God!
POSTLUDE: "I Come to the Garden Alone" In the Garden (I Come to the Garden Alone) - YouTube
