The Easter Choice

April 12, 2020 John 20:1-18 Easter Sunday Year A The Easter Choice 9:30 Service Children’s Sermon Good morning, boys and girls. Today we are going to talk about some of the things that the followers of Jesus found when they went to the place where he was buried and found him risen from the dead. We talk a lot about that day a long time ago, but I want you to pretend that you were there the first day when it all happened. You are going to think about how sad you are to know that your very favorite person has died and was put into a grave on Friday. Today is Sunday and that means that Jesus has been dead for two days. This is already the third day since he died. You have thought about all of the good times that you had with Jesus. You remember when you went fishing with him and you caught so many fish that your nets broke. You remember the time you sat up all night with him while he told you stories about what he wanted to do and how he was going to make people happy. You remember the time that you saw a very sick friend healed by Jesus. These are the things that you were thinking about yesterday after Jesus had died on Friday. It has been a very sad time. Now this is even going to be sadder because we are going to visit the place where Jesus is buried. Maybe we are even going to see his body. Now we are at the place where they put Jesus, but things look different. His gravestone has been moved. The soldiers who were guarding him are gone. Everything is different. If we look inside the grave, we are going to be shocked by something else. Look over there. The clothes that he was buried in are kind of piled up, but there is no Jesus. And look here (Show them the napkin.), this is the napkin that was placed over the face of Jesus when he was buried. This is a special napkin that is used only when someone is buried. It is here. It was laying all by itself like someone had taken it off and put it down special. Jesus is gone. Someone may have stolen his body or something else terrible could have happened. We have the napkin that covered his face. That would have been a shock, wouldn't it? (Let them answer.) Suppose that you went to the grave instead of Peter and John and you had found that napkin lying in the grave. What would you have done? (Let them answer.) I hope that I would have done what they did. Peter and John went back to the other disciples and waited. Soon the word came from another follower. This follower was a woman and she had seen Jesus. He is alive. He is better than before he died. He is risen from the dead and he will live forever. That is what they heard and they told it so that we would know it also. Jesus is alive and he promises that the same thing will happen to us when we die. We shall also live forever. Hallelujah. Easter is here and we shall all live forever. The C.S.S. Publishing Compa, THE ONE-HANDED CLOCK, by Wesley T. Runk Prelude Greeting and welcome Christ the Lord is Risen – and you say He has Risen Indeed As we begin our holy time together, light a candle – use candle every Sunday to create a holy time. Stewardship Moment On this Easter, choose to follow God is giving of our heart. Take a collection physically – but want to remind everyone of the importance of giving to the mission of the church. Time to give – to reach out to others. Church is not closed, and Easter is not cancelled. Send in your offerings – your commitment to God. Ways to give – online, sign up for automatic giving, send it in, or drop it off. Giving to God – the world needs God more than ever. Scripture John 20:1-18 Common English Bible (CEB) Empty tomb 20 Early in the morning of the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. 2 She ran to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they’ve put him.” 3 Peter and the other disciple left to go to the tomb. 4 They were running together, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and was the first to arrive at the tomb. 5 Bending down to take a look, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he didn’t go in. 6 Following him, Simon Peter entered the tomb and saw the linen cloths lying there. 7 He also saw the face cloth that had been on Jesus’ head. It wasn’t with the other clothes but was folded up in its own place. 8 Then the other disciple, the one who arrived at the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9 They didn’t yet understand the scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead. 10 Then the disciples returned to the place where they were staying. Jesus appears to Mary 11 Mary stood outside near the tomb, crying. As she cried, she bent down to look into the tomb. 12 She saw two angels dressed in white, seated where the body of Jesus had been, one at the head and one at the foot. 13 The angels asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” She replied, “They have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they’ve put him.” 14 As soon as she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she didn’t know it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who are you looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she replied, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him and I will get him.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabbouni” (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her, “Don’t hold on to me, for I haven’t yet gone up to my Father. Go to my brothers and sisters and tell them, ‘I’m going up to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” 18 Mary Magdalene left and announced to the disciples, “I’ve seen the Lord.” Then she told them what he said to her. Common English Bible (CEB) Copyright © 2011 by Common English Bible Sermon When I think of life now, I think of 2020 before Covid19 and life after covid19. It seems that life has been a roller coaster of changes since March 13th. Everyday there is something different. As a pastor, the hardest part of all of these adjustments has been having to give up my plans for Easter. I spent all year planning and preparing, in one day all of that seemed to just go up in smoke. This has been a time when I have had to think back to the Easter’s of the past. My favorite Easter of all time, was when I was 7 years old. Not only did my mother plan a big dinner, and we colored easter eggs the day before. And on Easter morning, my mother planned this elaborate easter egg hunt throughout the house. I think she had more fun in the hunt than I did. The highlight was finding a pretty elaborate easter basket hidden in the dryer. I loved Easter as a child, but Easter was also a mystery to me. I ever quite understood what easter eggs, bunnies and getting new clothes had to do with the resurrection of Jesus. And no one has ever been able to explain that too me. Well, come to find out, eggs and bunnies and bright colors have absolutely nothing to do with the resurrection of Christ. They are all symbols of the coming of spring. Easter was a pagan goddess of spring, and people gave her offerings of eggs, bunnies, and flowers in order to have a bountiful spring. As Christianity spread to new cultures, the church felt that it was better to let people do what they always did. In a sense, they baptized those old habits and dedicated them to Christ. Truth, I love easter, but I think that there should be more biblical symbols of Easter. For instance, speaking of baptism – water is a good symbol of resurrections, because it is a good sign of life. Life conquering the forces of death. We all need water in order to live. Water is a powerful part of our lives. Water is powerful, and water can be dangerous, water can bring death if not handled with care, water not only bring life to us, but to all around us. When we are baptized, we are brought under the power of death and rise up out of it a new person living new life. Definitely a realistic symbol of new life. The second symbol of biblical resurrection – takes on new importance during these days of COVID-19. Corona virus has the power to bind our lungs and to suck the breath out of us. Breath – is given to us by God and it is very important for life. Never again can we take our ability to breath for granted. For myself not only do I check my blood sugar and blood pressure everyday to check on my health, but now also I take my temperature and oxygen levels everyday. Any room that I am going to spend any amount of time in make sure there is an air purifier and humidifier running to make breathing easier. Breath is definitely a realistic symbol of Easter. Breath is literally a sign of life, but the breath of God – not only gives us physical life, but also spiritual God. Inspiration – means the breath of God is inspired – or breathed into us. Breath is definitely a sign of life over death. The last one I want to mention today is the most important. That is the Easter Choice, our ability to choose life over death. Life and death is inside of the choices that each of us make. We can choose to continue with life as usual and do nothing and die, or choose to use social distancing, and choose life. The Easter Choice When faced with new realities, you have at least three options for how to respond (and it is nearly certain that you will opt for one of these three possibilities). First, you can stay bewildered. You can let this event knock you flat on your back and then stay there. Second, you can engage in world-class denial. You can look at the facts and ignore them. Or third, you can, slowly perhaps, assimilate this new information. You may get knocked as flat on your back as the next person by this new realization, but eventually you pick yourself up. You embrace this new truth and then go through the long, sometimes painful, process of re-assessing life in the light of this new evidence. This is the Easter choice. When faced with the incredible proclamation that Jesus rose again from the dead, you can be agnostic and cynical by saying that you don't know what to make of this but then neither are you going to try. Who cares anyway? Or you can deny it. The whole thing is fiction, fantasy, a pious wish but something that never really happened. Or you can move past the shock toward acceptance. But let me caution you: if you are going to accept the truth of the bodily resurrection, you need to let it change you totally. That's the Easter choice. The problem for most of us is that we are not surprised enough by Easter to realize we face a choice. Easter is a part of the background scenery of our lives. We've never been afraid of Easter, never been bewildered by it. Believing that Jesus rose again from the dead becomes a little like believing the earth is round and that it orbits the sun. Once upon a time people didn't know that. They thought the earth was flat and that the sun orbited the earth. It caused quite a stir when this view had to be revised. But that was a long time ago and now we accept that picture of our solar system without much thought. Sure the world is round and we orbit the sun, but what does that have to do with anything? It doesn't change what I have to do at work tomorrow, does it? Is that what Easter becomes for us? We believe it happened but then, we've always believed that. Even Easter has somehow become part of the “routines” of this world. So why would it have much of an effect on what we do tomorrow? Easter is no longer shocking for us -- it surely does not make us re-evaluate everything else we think we know. And anyway, we're not sure we want to have everything in our lives changed. Of course, if we can believe in the resurrection at all, it is a gift of faith granted to us by the prior gift of grace. But if we have received that grace and accept the truth that gets proclaimed from every Christian pulpit in the world each Easter Sunday morning, then we have to know that this truth changes everything. This is not some fact we can ponder just once every twelve months. This changes everything.... and on EVERY day. Scott Hoezee, Comments and Observations If we have learned anything from all of thise COVID-19 crisis, it is the fact that life is precious. Life is a precious gift from God that we cannot take for granted. Easter is a choice to live in the face of constant death. Now I Can Go On Living There was a young woman living in Washington, D.C. during the Second World War. Her husband, who had been stationed at a nearby Army base, was killed a year earlier during a training exercise - they had been married just four months. During that whole year, this young widow felt more dead than alive. She merely went through the motions of living. Her family and friends were worried about her and wondered if she would ever "snap out of it." Easter Sunday came along and a friend asked the young widow to go to church with her. It happened that they went to hear the legendary Peter Marshall, who preached in an historic Presbyterian church which still stands in downtown Washington, a few blocks from the White House. That morning, Peter Marshall spoke of Mary coming to the tomb and how her tears turned to joy. He described the sound of a wind rustling through the tomb as if the breath of God were blowing by. He described the sight of Jesus rising up from that cold, stone slab, swaying a bit on wounded feet and then walking out into the garden. He described the smell, "the whiff of strange scents which must have drifted back to the Man from that tomb, [the smell] of linen and bandages, spices and myrrh, close air and blood ...(Peter Marshall, The First Easter). By the time Peter Marshall finished that sermon, the people in that church felt as if they had been there in the garden to witness the first Easter themselves! When the service was over, the young widow practically walked on air as she left the church and her friend couldn't believe the change which had come over her. "What happened to you in there?" she asked. "The weight has finally been lifted," the young woman replied; "now I can go on living again." Erskine White, Together in Christ We hear this story of the resurrection in John 20 every year. 18 verses, but every year there is a different lesson to learn. This year, surprised how many references to our present situation. For instance, when Mary realizes that she is talking with her teacher and friend, she wants to run up an hug him. But he tells her not to touch him, he has not ascended yet. Mary had ventured out into the garden by herself, but the other disciples were sheltered in place. They were not only afraid to go out, they were afraid to stay out for any amount of time. When they looked out, even though the sun was shining brightly, they were afraid of what was out there. They celebrated that Jesus has been resurrected, but they still were uncertain about the future. We too live in a world of uncertainty. We know this will end, but we don’t know when. And we don’t know what till happen in the future. I don’t know about you, but I will probably not be going to any summer gatherings, not this year. When I see pictures of people hugging, or shaking hands, or getting to close to each other I still cringe. It is going to take awhile to get over all of that. But the greatest symbol of Easter is the strength to face an unknown future – with joy, and happiness, not fear and trepidation. Anticipation: What Is Going to Happen Today? In Winnie the Pooh, Pooh and Piglet take an evening walk. For a long time they walk in silence. Silence like only best friends can share. Finally Piglet breaks the silence and asks, "When you wake up in the morning, Pooh, what's the first thing you say to yourself?" "What's for breakfast?" answers Pooh and then asks. "And what do you say, Piglet?" Piglet says, "I say, I wonder what exciting thing is going to happen today?" You and I can't really plan to meet the Risen Christ because we never really know when or where He's going to show up. But you can be sure of this, He will show up. If you believe, He will show up. And the attitude you need to meet him is the attitude of Piglet, "I wonder what exciting thing is going to happen today?" Billy Strayhorn, Easter Heart Burn, www.Sermons.com Life has many exciting things in store – even in the valley of the shadow od death. But if we have Jesus Christ in our hearts and by our side – we can still chose life, and look forward to what exciting things are going to happen today and every day. Amen Intercession for Easter Day 2020 On this Easter Day marked by both sorrow and joy, our prayers for the church, the world, and all in need include both heartfelt lament and fervent praise. A brief silence. God our Sanctuary, we lament that we cannot gather today for public worship, that death stalks the church, and that our sorrows and fears blunt our songs of Alleluia. . . A brief silence. Show the church your mercy: Your mercy endures forever. And yet around the globe we praise you for the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave, for our baptismal washing in his life, for your presence come to us in the word, and for the hope the gospel brings. . . A brief silence. We praise you for the church: Alleluia! Thanks be to God! God our Creator, we lament that our life styles have harmed your creation and that our efforts to repair your earth are now postponed. . . A brief silence. Show the earth your mercy: Your mercy endures forever. And yet here in the north we praise you for the beauty of the natural world, for springtime flowers and budding trees, for the soil and rain that nourish the crops. . . A brief silence. We praise you for the earth: Alleluia! Thanks be to God! God our Governor, we lament that war and violence still rage, that countless people suffer injustice, that the plight of refugees seems beyond solution, that appropriate governmental action is delayed and inadequate. . . A brief silence. Show the world your mercy: Your mercy endures forever. And yet we praise you that there is peace on our streets, that some elected officials and many aid agencies are devoting themselves to save the people and to share our food, and that we are given connection to friends and family through technology. . . A brief silence. We praise you for community: Alleluia! Thanks be to God! God our Physician, we lament all who suffer, those we name here before you . . . but especially we lament the coronavirus and its incalculable suffering, the many thousands sick, the fear instilled, the loss of employment, the cancelation of plans, the overflow in hospitals, the scarcity of supplies, the exhaustion of medical staff. . . A brief silence. Show all the needy your mercy: Your mercy endures forever. And yet we praise you for health and well-being wherever it thrives, for the dedication of medical workers, for the goodwill of volunteers, for the generosity of benefactors, and for the comfort we receive from the power of the resurrection. . . A brief silence . We praise you for healing: Alleuia! Thanks be to God! God, our Everlasting Arms, mother us in our heartache and distress, receive now our personal laments, and help each of us to praise your name. A longer period of silence. We praise you for hearing our prayers: Alleluia! Thanks be to God! God our Life Eternal, we lament the thousands dead and the sadness of all who mourn, and we remember before you all who have died in the faith. . . A brief silence. Show to all humanity your mercy: Your mercy endures forever. And yet here we join in our Alleluias, and we praise you on this Easter Day for your promise of an endless banquet of joyous life in your presence, when diseases and sorrows will be no more. A brief silence. In life and death we praise you: Alleluia! Thanks be to God! God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who are Source of life, Word of salvation, and Power of mercy, into your hands we commend all for whom we pray, trusting in your compassionate might, for the sake of him who lived, died, and rose for us, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen. (Gail Ramshaw) Encourage you to put prayers for new day, personal for the church, community or world in the comments. Listen to this song of celebration Benediction In the midst of everything else going on, we have to find new ways to celebrate Easter. So as you go through your day – may you venture out and do something new today. After taking my regular Sunday nap, go for a walk and speak with God in nature. New day new adventure. Hoping to have some more surprises for you this week. Not allowed to make hospital visits, or home visits or funerals. Not going on vacation, but will be a week of self care – some personal things that need to be done. Back again next week – Easter is not over. After this is over, also posting a prayer for current times very good and thorough. But also posted a video this morning – death is the beginning – also speaks to worship of God encourage you to walk with God whatever you do to day Peace out! Additional Illustrations Sermon Opener - Breath of God - John 20:1-18 This year, Easter Sunday falls during the COVID-19 pandemic. A time when we are secluded in our homes and told to wrap our faces in cloth if we dare to go out for groceries or supplies. Walk into the grocery store, and you’ll see people wandering quietly through the aisles with gloved hands and masked faces. Get too close, and you’ll register a wide-eyed look of alarm on the face of that passerby. We are in hiding from an invisible beast. “The Beast” is what people are naming the virus. It attacks ferociously in the night with spiked fevers, aches, lung binding, and hallucinations. COVID-19 is a “breath-taking” virus. It steals the breath from people’s bodies in a particularly terrifying way. It strikes suddenly leaving us frightened and breathless. With no cure in sight, the only thing we can do is hide away, covering our noses and faces with cloth, hoping to keep the aggressive beast away from our lungs. COVID-19 is a death threat that has already made good on many lives. This brutal virus makes us feel that we are locked up in a dark tomb for an impossibly long duration, as though the darkness of “Good Friday” might go on forever with little hope in sight. And yet all around us, we see signs of spring, signs of awakening, signs of hope, signs of resurrection. We know life as we know it may be dampened down for now, covered in what feels like “funeral clothing.” And yet, spring blooms eternal. All around us: Birds sing, the sun bursts out from the winter clouds, trees bud, flowers unfurl, the ground thaws, and God unwraps an entirely new landscape of color and life. But for now, we wait. I wonder what it must have felt like for Jesus those “three days” in the tomb, knowing resurrection was imminent, yet waiting for dawn to come on that magnificent morning when the stone was rolled away, and the sun streamed through, when an “angel of the Lord” removed the funerary cloth from Jesus’ face, and the Holy Spirit breathed again the holy breath of life into His stricken body and made it rise like Ezekiel’s bones from the valley of the shadow of death. Three days of darkness. Then, new and restored life. Not the same life. But a restored, resurrected life.... ________________________________________ More Hope than We Can Handle Earlier this week, an old couple received a phone call from their son who lives far away. The son said he was sorry, but he wouldn’t be able to come for a visit over the holidays after all. "The grandkids say hello." They assured him that they understood, but when they hung up the phone they didn’t dare look at each other. Earlier this week, a woman was called into her supervisor’s office to hear that times are hard for the company and they had to let her go. "So sorry." She cleaned out her desk, packed away her hopes for getting ahead, and wondered what she would tell her kids. Earlier this week, someone received terrible news from a physician. Someone else heard the words, "I don't love you anymore." Earlier this week, someone’s hope was crucified. And the darkness is overwhelming. No one is ever ready to encounter Easter until he or she has spent time in the dark place where hope cannot be seen. Easter is the last thing we are expecting. And that is why it terrifies us. This day is not about bunnies, springtime and girls in cute new dresses. It’s about more hope than we can handle. Craig Barnes, Savior at Large, article in The Christian Century, March 13-20, 2002 p. 16. The Legend of the Touchstone Do you remember the Legend of the Touchstone? It's a great story to recall on Easter Sunday morning. According to that ancient legend, if you could find the touchstone on the coast of the Black Sea and hold it in your hand, everything you touched would turn to gold. You could recognize the touchstone by its warmth. The other stones would feel cold, but when you picked up the touchstone, it would turn warm in your hand. Once a man sold everything he had and went to the coast of the Black Sea in search of the touchstone. He began immediately to walk along the shoreline picking up one stone after another in his diligent and intentional search for the touchstone. He was consumed with this dream. He wanted desperately to find this miraculous stone. However, after several days had passed, he suddenly realized that he was picking up the same stones again and again. So he devised a plan... pick up a stone; if it's cold, throw it into the sea. This he did for weeks and weeks. Then one morning he went out to continue his search for the touchstone. He picked up a stone; it was cold... he threw it into the sea. He picked up another stone - cold! He threw it into the sea. He picked up another stone... it turned warm in his hand, and before he realized what he was doing... he threw it into the sea! That's a good parable for Easter, isn't it? Because that can so easily happen to us. We can come upon a miraculous moment like Easter... we can feel it turn warm in our hands... but then (so dulled by the routine) before we realize what we are doing... we throw it away. Absentmindedly, mechanically, nonchalantly... we toss it aside and miss the miracle of Easter. James W. Moore, Lenten Series on Mark, www.Sermons.com Time for Easter Dreams In a world of Good Friday nightmares, it is time for Easter Dreams. After the completion of Disney World, someone remarked, "Isn't it too bad that Walt Disney didn't live to see this!" Mike Vance, creative director of Disney Studios replied, "He did see it that's why it's here." Everything in life that we use or hold, eat or watch, wear, sit in or listen to in other words, everything that is a creation of human ingenuity started out as a dream. Before anything can become tangible, it must first become a reality in the mind of its dreamer. Only when the dream is real for one can it become real for all. Not until the dream is real for me can it become real for you. Zippers, Christmas tree lights, quadruple bypass heart surgery, combustion engines, cotton candy, x-rays, air conditioning, flush toilets, matches, eyeglasses, espresso all these things were once dreams in some person's mind. The dreams of others make our lives tasty, pleasant, sometimes even possible. So why is it that we live in a world furnished with the dreams of others, yet there are so many nightmares stalking the land? Why did we first nightmare up nuclear weaponry instead of dreaming up world peace? Why did we nightmare up high-tech security systems and gated communities instead of dreaming up communities of trust? Why did we nightmare up fast foods instead of dreaming up a way to feed every hungry child? Why did we nightmare up apartheid and slavery and Jim Crow instead of dreaming up societies of justice and equality? One member of the "buster generation" (those born between 1964 and 1983) put it this way: "I had a dream." Writing to his church's newsletter, this young man expressed the despair, cynicism and pessimism of his "buster generation" by speaking about the "death of idealism, of passion and dreaming ... of transforming vision." He spoke of an almost ubiquitous death of dreaming among his peers (as referenced by Sharon Dawn Johnson, "Vision in Mission," The Gospel and Our Culture 5 [September 1993]: 5). Because the Good Friday nightmare was transformed into the Easter Dream, the way has been opened for ending all nightmares and incarnating all dreams. The Resurrection means that Christians can expectantly: - dream of plenty in the midst of poverty; - dream of compassion in the midst of poverty; - dream of justice in the midst of inequity; - dream of holiness in the midst of hell; - dream of love in the midst of hate. Leonard Sweet, Easter Dreams, www.Sermons.com ___________________________________ We Believe You I ran across a beautiful story recently about a woman named Rosemary who works in the Alzheimer’s Unit of a nursing home. Rosemary and a colleague named Arlene brought the residents of the home together one Good Friday afternoon to view Franco Zeffirelli’s acclaimed production Jesus of Nazareth. They wondered whether these elderly Alzheimer’s patients would even know what was going on, but they thought it might be worth the effort. When they finally succeeded in getting everyone into position, they started the video. Rosemary was pleasantly surprised at the quiet attention being paid to the screen. At last came the scene where Mary Magdalene comes upon the empty tomb and sees Jesus’ body not there. An unknown man, in reality the risen Christ, asks Mary why she is looking for the living among the dead. Mary runs as fast as she can back to the disciples and tells Peter and the rest with breathless excitement, “He’s alive! I saw Him, I tell you! He’s alive.” The doubt in their eyes causes Mary to pull back. “You don’t believe me . . . You don’t believe me!” From somewhere in the crowd of Alzheimer’s patients came the clear, resolute voice of Esther, one of the patients. “WE BELIEVE YOU,” she said, “WE BELIEVE YOU!” Well, Esther, I believe it too. The evidence is overwhelming, and life makes no sense without it. Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Rosemary Kadrmas in Jeff Cavins, et.al, Amazing Grace for the Catholic Heart (West Chester, PA: Ascension Press, LLC, 2003), pp. 211-212., adapted by King Duncan Turning to God on Easter J. Wallace Hamilton, the great preacher of yesteryear, once told the story of a group of American soldiers stationed in London during the first World War. They had received orders that the next day they would be going to the front lines. The church where many of the men attended while away from home hastily gave them a dinner. It was a joyous time and the conversation was light and upbeat. Before the pastor gave the benediction, one of the soldiers was selected to share words of appreciation. He was a man of charm with the gift of speech. As he brought his speech to a close he said, "Tomorrow we are leaving for France, and the trenches, and to die." He did not mean to say that. Looking around with embarrassment, struggling for some better words to say, he said: "Can anybody tell us how to die?" And, nobody laughed or even smiled. There was an awkward pause as though he had said the wrong thing--and then a period of strange silence in which nobody said anything. Then someone walked quietly to the piano where they had been playing and singing fun songs and began to play and sing the old gospel hymns. In the quiet that followed, every man's soul was forced to deal in a serious way with the question of life and death. Without anybody planning it, a party became a prayer meeting in which they had to turn to God. Easter gives us the opportunity, without being morbid to reflect on the ultimate meaning of things. Are we mere creatures of the dust who are here only for a moment--or were we created for eternity? On the southwest coast of Scotland lies the little town of Whithorn. In its ancient cemetery can be found a tombstone with an intriguing epitaph: YOU THINK I'M FORGOT. I'M NOT. King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com No Grave Deep Enough Several years ago, The Saturday Evening Post ran a cartoon showing a man about to be rescued after he had spent a long time ship-wrecked on a tiny deserted island. The sailor in charge of the rescue team stepped onto the beach and handed the man a stack of newspapers. "Compliments of the Captain," the sailor said. "He would like you to glance at the headlines to see if you'd still like to be rescued!" Sometimes the headlines do scare us. Sometimes we feel that evil is winning, but then along comes Easter, to remind us that there is no grave deep enough, no seal imposing enough, no stone heavy enough, no evil strong enough to keep Christ in the grave. James W. Moore, Some Things Are Too Good Not To Be True, Dimensions, 1994, p. 80. No Grave Deep Enough Several years ago, The Saturday Evening Post ran a cartoon showing a man about to be rescued after he had spent a long time ship-wrecked on a tiny deserted island. The sailor in charge of the rescue team stepped onto the beach and handed the man a stack of newspapers. "Compliments of the Captain," the sailor said. "He would like you to glance at the headlines to see if you'd still like to be rescued!" Sometimes the headlines do scare us. Sometimes we feel that evil is winning, but then along comes Easter, to remind us that there is no grave deep enough, no seal imposing enough, no stone heavy enough, no evil strong enough to keep Christ in the grave. James W. Moore, Some Things Are Too Good Not To Be True, Dimensions, 1994, p. 80. _______________________ Birth into a New World In his book, Teaching Your Children about God, Rabbi David Wolpe, a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, recalls an ancient Jewish parable about twin unborn children lying together in the womb. One believes that there is a world beyond the womb "where people walk upright, where there are mountains and oceans, a sky filled with stars." The other unborn twin can barely contain his contempt for such foolish ideas. Suddenly the "believer" of the twins is forced through the birth canal leaving behind the only way of life he has known. The remaining unborn twin is saddened, convinced that a great catastrophe has befallen his companion. Outside the womb, however, the parents are rejoicing. For what the remaining brother, left behind, has just witnessed is not death but birth. This, Wolpe reminds us, is a classic view of the life beyond the grave--a birth into a world that we on Earth can only try to imagine. The Easter message is that we have an older brother who HAS traveled beyond the tomb, down the birth canal of eternity and has returned to assure us that God is love, and that there is a place prepared for any who will accept the Good News. Whether our name is Marie or Mary or Peter or even Judas, Christ came into the world to save sinners. Won't you accept his offer of a new life today? King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com Easter Sunrise Her name was Carol. She was the organist at her church. She was an outstanding musician, but she did something no organist should ever do. She overslept on Easter morning and missed the sunrise service. She was so embarrassed. Of course, the minister and the church forgave her. They teased her about it a little, but it was done lovingly and in good fun. However, the next Easter, her phone rang at 5:00 in the morning. Jolted awake by the loud ringing, she scrambled to answer it. It was the minister, and he said, "Carol, it's Easter morning! The Lord is risen! ... And I suggest you do the same!" The message is clear: We too can be resurrected. Christ shares his resurrection with us. He rises, and so can we. We too can have new life. We too can make a new start. We too can rise out of those tombs that try to imprison us! James W. Moore, Some Things Are Too Good Not to be True