“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it produces only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”John 12:23-24
“Where O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
I Corinthians 15:55
We have come this morning to rejoice in the strangest of facts. The oddest of events. In a deep inconceivability that transcends us all…yet binds us each together.
We have come, O God, to rejoice in your resurrection—a victory over death that we little understand but for which we cannot offer enough of our thanks.
We exalt you this morning with ever increasing joy for this victory over the world’s fiercest foe, knowing full well that this accomplishment was not simply a one time trick of magic, not a performance to be applauded, but the end of Death itself. It means that our lives need no longer be bound by sin, by failure, by death. That the doubts and fears and pains of life have been met in you and done away with.
Though our lives have been dry and empty, like water spilled in the midst of the vast desert that is this cruel world, your power has gathered it all back together and made us whole.
Your first creation, though marred by our mistakes—sins that continue in each our lives to this very day—has again been restored to its rightful place. Death has been turned backwards, life springs anew, and our lives have been saved from the pit of their own ruin.
Though our weeks and days and months have been cold, we seek to do nothing but bask now in the warmth of your Holy Son, the one slain from the foundations of the world to bring us freedom. A freedom announced so boldly this morning by the sign of an empty tomb.
God, do not let us this day pass over these facts too lightly. Bind them deep in our hearts. Keep them ever in our minds. Let both your love and power at work on our behalf ever encourage and lighten our steps as we join together one with another in praise to you and walk into a world that needs your new life now as it has from time immemorial.
Raise us up from our death, O God. Raise us up from our sin. Raise us up to serve you, to live in new life filled with love. Let us live with the hope we know is true. The hope of this Easter and the hope of all Easters.
We have come, O God, to rejoice in your resurrection—a victory over death that we little understand but for which we cannot offer enough of our thanks.
We exalt you this morning with ever increasing joy for this victory over the world’s fiercest foe, knowing full well that this accomplishment was not simply a one time trick of magic, not a performance to be applauded, but the end of Death itself. It means that our lives need no longer be bound by sin, by failure, by death. That the doubts and fears and pains of life have been met in you and done away with.
Though our lives have been dry and empty, like water spilled in the midst of the vast desert that is this cruel world, your power has gathered it all back together and made us whole.
Your first creation, though marred by our mistakes—sins that continue in each our lives to this very day—has again been restored to its rightful place. Death has been turned backwards, life springs anew, and our lives have been saved from the pit of their own ruin.
Though our weeks and days and months have been cold, we seek to do nothing but bask now in the warmth of your Holy Son, the one slain from the foundations of the world to bring us freedom. A freedom announced so boldly this morning by the sign of an empty tomb.
God, do not let us this day pass over these facts too lightly. Bind them deep in our hearts. Keep them ever in our minds. Let both your love and power at work on our behalf ever encourage and lighten our steps as we join together one with another in praise to you and walk into a world that needs your new life now as it has from time immemorial.
Raise us up from our death, O God. Raise us up from our sin. Raise us up to serve you, to live in new life filled with love. Let us live with the hope we know is true. The hope of this Easter and the hope of all Easters.
The hope of Jesus Christ.
This we humbly and thankfully pray in the matchless and gracious name of our Lord.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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