These Easter Illustrations are based on John 20:1-18 or Matthew 28:1-10.
_____________________________________________

Sermon Opener - Why I Believe in the Resurrection - John 20:1-18

You probably do not remember the name Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin. During his day he was as powerful a man as there was on earth. A Russian Communist leader he took part in the Bolshevik Revolution 1917, was editor of the Soviet newspaper Pravda (which by the way means truth), and was a full member of the Politburo. His works on economics and political science are still read today. There is a story told about a journey he took from Moscow to Kiev in 1930 to address a huge assembly on the subject of atheism. Addressing the crowd he aimed his heavy artillery at Christianity hurling insult, argument, and proof against it.

An hour later he was finished. He looked out at what seemed to be the smoldering ashes of men's faith. "Are there any questions?" Bukharin demanded. Deafening silence filled the auditorium but then one man approached the platform and mounted the lectern standing near the communist leader. He surveyed the crowd first to the left then to the right. Finally he shouted the ancient greeting known well in the Russian Orthodox Church: "CHRIST IS RISEN!" En masse the crowd arose as one man and the response came crashing like the sound of thunder: "HE IS RISEN INDEED!"

I say to you this morning: CHRIST IS RISEN! I am convinced! I have faith that Christ was dead and he was buried. That I believe. But, this too I accept as true: He rose from the dead and will come again in glory.

This is Easter. And to come before you on this day and proclaim this word. . . I cannot begin to tell you how this defines all that I am.

But, you will say to me, how do you know that the resurrection is real? How do you know that it is really valid?

_________________________________

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.

________________________

Ongoing Easter

Ongoing Easter gets us finally home at last, for life is not an endless circle but life is moving to an end point. The crowning achievement of the risen Lord is to bring us finally home together with the whole family of God in that transition from time into eternity. It is a great privilege to witness that transition in the lives of people and I think of one this Easter day. Her name was Augusta. She lived 100 years, raised in the prairies of South Dakota, faced every manner of hardship and heartache, but was buoyant and lived on the resurrection side of the cross, raised a family. In the last hour of her life standing with her daughters around her in the hospital room, I heard her bless her daughters. Being a mother to the very end and with a twinkle in her eye, looked at the faces of her daughters around her and pointed to them each one and said, "Too much lipstick," and then closed her eyes in peaceful death.

That is the goal toward which the ongoing Easter draws us and transforms our dark, gloomy mornings into a shining doxology. We say with all the faithful of all of the ages, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. By His great mercy, we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, unfailing and undefiled, kept in heaven for you. Though you must go through various trials, all this is so that your faith may redound to the praise, glory and honor of Jesus Christ. Without having seen Him, we love Him, and rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy. The outcome of your faith is the salvation of your souls.

F. Dean Lueking, Ongoing Easter

________________________________

God's Not Dead

Billy Graham once responded to someone who shouted out "God is dead! God is dead!" Dr. Graham with tenderness replied, "That's strange because I just talked to Him in prayer a few minutes ago." Yes, the day you believe in the resurrection is the day you change the universe, and most importantly, you can reflect that transforming truth.

Eric S. Ritz, www.Sermons.com

_________________________

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

______________________________

Humor: The Gospel Has Been Proclaimed

A first year student in a Catholic seminary was told by the dean that he should plan to preach the sermon in chapel the following day. He had never preached a sermon before, he was nervous and afraid, and he stayed up all night, but in the morning, he didn’t have a sermon. He stood in the pulpit, looked out at his classmates and said “Do you know what I am going to say?” All of them shook their heads “no” and he said “Neither do I. The service has ended. Go in peace.”

The dean was not happy. “I’ll give you another chance tomorrow, and you had better have a sermon.” Again he stayed up all night; and again he couldn’t come up with a sermon. Next morning, he stood in the pulpit and asked “Do you know what I am going to say?” The students all nodded their heads “yes.” “Then there is no reason to tell you” he said. “The service has ended. Go in peace.”

Now the dean was angry. “I’ll give you one more chance; if you don’t have a sermon tomorrow, you will be asked to leave the seminary.” Again, no sermon came. He stood in the pulpit the next day and asked “Do you know what I am going to say?” Half of the students nodded “yes” and the other half shook their heads “no.” The student preacher then announced “Those who know, tell those who don’t know. The service has ended. Go in peace.”

The seminary dean walked over to the student, put his arm over the student’s shoulders, and said “Those who know, tell those who don’t know. Today, the gospel has been proclaimed.”

Steven Molin, Four Truths and a Lie

__________________________

Yes, There Is Hope

In the early part of World War II, a Navy submarine was stuck on the bottom of the harbor in New York City. It seemed that all was lost. There was no electricity and the oxygen was quickly running out. In one last attempt to rescue the sailors from the steel coffin, the U.S. Navy sent a ship equipped with Navy divers to the spot on the surface, directly above the wounded submarine. A Navy diver went over the side of the ship to the dangerous depths in one last rescue attempt. The trapped sailors heard the metal boots of the diver land on the exterior surface, and they moved to where they thought the rescuer would be. In the darkness they tapped in Morse code, "Is there any hope?" The diver on the outside, recognizing the message, signaled by tapping on the exterior of the sub, "Yes, there is hope."

This is the picture of our dilemma as we worship this glad Easter Day. Humankind is trapped in a dreadful situation. All around we are running low on hope, and we look for a word from beyond offering it to us. This world in which we live is plagued with war and famine, mounting debt and continual destruction. The more we try to rescue ourselves the more we seem to fall behind. We wonder: Is there any hope?

Bill Self, Is There Any Hope?

______________________________

Graveyard Wreaths

If you had been living in the Roman Empire in the first century, you would have noticed a strange custom practiced by the Christians. They would go out to their graveyards with laurel wreaths, the wreaths that had been used in Greek and Roman culture to crown the victors of athletic contests. They would take those laurel wreaths and place them on the graves. If you had asked them why, they would say, "Because we believe that in Jesus Christ we have received victory over the power of death."

Mark Trotter, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com 

_____________________

I’ve Peeked at the Back of the Book

A new pastor was visiting one of his church members who was in the hospital. The pastor was a young man, fresh out of seminary and still wet behind the ears as a minister. He was visiting this elderly man named Joe, and Joe was extremely ill. He wanted to talk to his pastor about his funeral service and the pastor wanted to talk about anything else – the weather, football, politics, or anything else he could think of.

Finally, the pastor asked, "Joe, doesn't it bother you? Aren't you frightened?" Joe smiled and said, "Preacher, I know I'm not going to make it, but I'm not afraid. I have a confession to make. I've taken a peek at the back of the book."

"What do you mean?" the minister asked.

Joe said, "You didn't know me 10 years ago when I had my first heart attack. They called it cardiac arrest. I can remember the medical team thinking I was dead. I can also remember the tremendous feeling of being surrounded by God's love. I was revived by the doctors, but ever since that day I have been unafraid to die. I've been there and it doesn't frighten me. I know that one day soon I am going to go to sleep and I believe that when I awaken, I will, once again, be surrounded by God's love."

This is the message of the first Easter and every Easter since. The tomb is empty. Christ is risen. Jesus is alive. And because of this, we too, shall live!

Robert L. Allen, His Finest Days: Ten Sermons for Holy Week and the Easter Season, CSS Publishing Company

____________________________________

An Enormous Answer

John Dunne writes of the impact of the resurrection upon humankind: "The Resurrection is an enormous answer to the problem of death. The idea is that the Christian goes with Christ through death to everlasting life. Death becomes an event, like birth, that is lived through."

What a magnificent statement of faith. Death is merely another event in the ongoing process of life--something one lives through with Christ. The resurrection of Jesus reinforces these words from The Wisdom of Solomon: "The souls of the just are in God's hand, and torment shall not touch them…they are at peace."

Frank Lyman, April Sky

_________________________________________

ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS NOT IN OUR EMAIL
_________________________________________

What If It’s True? - John 20:1‑18 or Matthew 28:1-10

Christ is Alive!

He has Risen Indeed!

He has Risen from the Dead, Hallelujah!

“I know that my Redeemer lives.”

If I were to change the end of that last statement by only two letters, a “th” for a “s” so it would be “I know that my Redeemer liveth,” you have immediately thought of a song, perhaps the most famous Easter song of all time.

What is it? . . . . Handel’s “Messiah.”

We may know nothing about George Frederic Handel, but we know the “Messiah” (1741).

Oh, we may know that next door to where Handel lived and composed for 36 years almost three centuries ago, a more recent musician called home.  George Frederic Handel lived at No.25 Brook Street, Mayfair, London (from 1723 to 1749).  His neighbor to the left, at No.23 Brook Street? Jimi Hendrix.  

Oh, we may be aware that most of the pieces Handel composed expressly for Christian worship no choir ever sings and no congregation ever hears. But we know the “Messiah.”

In the Victorian era, “Messiahs” performed at Hyde Park, London’s Crystal Palace at its three yearly Handel Festivals had 3000 performers and tens of thousands in the audience. As the English music historian (Charles Burney) wrote even earlier of Handel’s majestic “Messiah:” “It has fed the hungry, clothed the naked, fostered the orphan, and enriched succeeding managers off the oratorios, more than any single production in this or any other country.” Some say it is the best known choral work in Western music.

But as well as we think we know Handel’s defining Easter sound, “The Messiah,” do we really?...

__________________

Sermon Opener - I've Seen the Lord - John 20:1-18

You and I come here for a variety of different reasons this Easter morning. For some, you come because of a deep abiding expectation that yearns to be reminded that our Lord died, but then out of death, God granted life. And in turn you know, therefore, that nothing is impossible with our Lord.

For some you come because it is the thing you do... this Easter morning thing. Perhaps it is the response to an echo of remembrance embedded deep within from your youth that says, if nothing more, you should be here on the high holy days... whether you do so to honor your mother and father, or honor a tradition of affirming your connectedness to something you can’t really give full ascent to but yet are not fully prepared to give up. Or perhaps you come because something within, much like the salmon drawn to their birthplace, nags at you, encourages you to try this worship thing again. Perhaps you come, because, at its most common basics, this Sunday is a Sunday when you can be reasonably certain that you will encounter what you are familiar with. A story told to you since your childhood and hymns that raise you up with the certainty that God loves you no matter where you are on your journey.

Through my many stages of life, my Easter journey has varied and my expectations of it have changed. In my early years I longed to understand the mystery of it all. To have my questions answered, “can this really be?” I know of one pastor who always preached Doubting Thomas on Easter Sunday, certain that most people in the church were those not fully convinced. My only objection to his preaching was that he never moved past the “it’s okay to doubt” portion. I always thought there were answers to my questions, to my life’s questions about who this Jesus person really is. In exploring them I found myself able to affirm the complexity and simplicity of God, both distant and close, both impersonal at times and yet personal at other times. I found myself acknowledging that perhaps the greatest part of the problem of my seeing God lay not in lack of clarity on God’s part, but in my inability to open myself fully to what God was offering. In other words, my doubt was rooted more in my lack of readiness to see and hear, than it was in God’s lack of showing the way....

_________________________________________

Don't Be Afraid of the Future - Matthew 28:1-10

Occasionally I fly back to South Carolina for a trustee meeting at a wonderful Methodist institution called Wofford College. On a recent trip I had an extra hour or two, so I decided to take a sentimental journey back to the little town of Greer. My father was pastor there when I was a little boy. Right away I noticed so many things that had changed. Our old house has been torn down and replaced. The yard has shrunk. I saw the tree from which my little cowboy friends almost hung me, accidentally, and I thanked God for my mother’s quick reaction and handy kitchen knife.

The memories were fun, but thirty minutes was enough. I was ready to leave. Thomas Wolfe was right when he observed that you can’t go home again. You can’t turn back the clock.

A woman named Mary Madgalene learned that lesson early on the first Easter morning. She wanted nothing more than to go back to the good old days, to pretend that the terrible crucifixion had never happened.

When the risen Christ confronted her, she fell to her knees and clutched his feet, almost pleading with him to stop this crazy chain of events. She thought: perhaps the past few days were all a dreadful nightmare. Can we wake up now and go back to the good old days when Jesus taught by the Sea of Galilee, performed healing miracles, and fellowshipped with his friends over supper? Can’t we turn back the clock?

You and I should be able to empathize with Mary. We have lots of schemes designed to slow down or reverse the clock. We are part of a youth-glorifying, death-denying culture. After about the age of 29, we try not to get any older, or at least not to look like it. Rather than looking forward to the future, we try to fend it off.

My purpose this morning is to so fill us with the Easter Good News that we will embrace the future rather than running from it. Easter proclaims that the future is good because the risen Christ owns it and guides his followers through it. God awaits us not only in heaven…

_________________

A Reflection for Holy Week

From A Winter Night

The night is calm in our rooms,
where the echoes of all footsteps rest
like sunken leaves in a pond,
but the night outside is wild.

A darker storm stands over the world.
It puts its mouth to our soul
and blows to get a tone. We are afraid
the storm will blow us empty.

This excerpt of a poem by Tomas Transtromer brings to mind the challenges of Holy Week and the reflections of our Lenten journey.  We look out into the world and we are tested, we are pushed, we are brought to reflect on our own isolation, our own limitations and our own temptations.  But the message of Easter is to fear not!  We do not have to fear that the storm will blow us empty because we are not alone.  When the storm tries to get a tone from the soul of a Christian, it should be a song of resilient hope, comfort, joy, and love because the tone is always a duet with Christ.

Staff, www.Sermons.com, A Winter Night, from The Deleted World: Poems by Tomas Transtromer, version by Robin Robertson. Tomas Transtromer passed away on March 26, 2015.

_________________________

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

________________________

Sooner Than You Think

My mother died three years ago. I had the honor of speaking at her graveside service where we buried her next to my father. While I was standing there, I had a surreal personal experience. Perhaps it happened partly because I was a bit under the weather, perhaps it was seeing so many old friends after three decades, perhaps it was because we were burying my mother and my father side by side. It was as if there was a “wrinkle in time” and the 29 years since my father died had suddenly been swallowed up. They just disappeared for a moment. I was in my early 20s when Dad died; I’m in my early 50s now. Most of the family friends who came to the graveside service had been at my father’s funeral 29 years earlier. Most of them were in their early 50s then; most are in their late 70s or early 80s now. It seemed as if the three decades in between had just disappeared. All this passed through my mind in a flash while I was speaking. I could reach out and touch my mother’s coffin. I was standing three feet from where we buried my father. It was as if we buried my father last week, we were burying my mother this week, and next week someone would bury me. I had a tremendous sense of my own mortality, of the quickly passing years. It seemed as if the Lord whispered in my ear, “Ray, take a good look. This is where you will be someday.” And that day will probably come sooner than I think.

Ray Pritchard, Christ and the Problem of Death

_____________________________

What You Love Will Not Be Spared

In recent weeks, I have been reading a powerful book of poetry by Louise Glück, entitled Averno. The title Averno takes its name from a crater lake in southern Italy that during the time of ancient Rome was thought to be the entrance to the underworld. In one of Glück's most haunting poems in this collection, called October, she contemplates the season of autumn and the gradual, day-by-day dimming of light that goes along with that time of the year. Her poem is about cold winds and changing leaves, but is also, of course, about us, for we cannot escape the eventual fading of the light. In stark terms, she writes, "You will not be spared, nor will what you love be spared." When I first read those words, I had a physical reaction to them. A sharp pain squeezed my forehead, and I began to weep. I wept because these words are undeniably true, and I wept because I hate their truth. Sure, there are times when I grapple with the fact of my own mortality, but I don't ever want to be told that the people who I love will not be spared. Don't tell me that they won't survive this life--not one of them. I imagine that the sight of the empty tomb hit the three visiting women like that...what you love will not be spared.

Easter begins with fear. At least that's the way Mark tells it. It's not that Easter begins with wild panic--no, not that. Easter begins with the kind of fear that feels a lot like heart-break. It begins with the twist in your stomach that comes when the phone rings and you hear the voice of your sister. "Are you sitting down?" she asks--that kind of fear.

Early in the morning, three women approach the tomb bearing precious herbs and oils to wash the body of their Lord. They have come to comb out Jesus' hair, to sponge away the dried blood, to massage precious myrrh into his skin. They hope to engage in the ritual act (the act of care) that is traditionally done before sealing a body in the tomb. They have come to anoint the crucified one. Yet, even as they discuss how they will gain access to the cave (after all, it is closed by a massive boulder), they find that the stone has been rolled away. The tomb is empty--vacant, except for some young guy who is definitely not Jesus; and suddenly, they are afraid. They fear that their last chance to pour a little compassion on the broken body of Jesus has escaped. They fear that they are witnessing the final insult of this whole horrible affair. First, Jesus' life is stolen, and now, even his body has been taken. And, perhaps, they also fear... no, they simply must fear that death has won. Death, the ever-ravenous monster, has finally, and utterly, swallowed up their beloved friend.

Scott Black Johnston, Deadly Things

________________________

God Loves You

A young college co-ed walked in to her counselor's office and confessed that she didn’t believe in God anymore. Her dad was a Lutheran pastor and she had been spoon-fed the gospel all her life. But now, in college, she was smarter than all that; now she trusted science, now she believed in bright professors and thick textbooks and knowledge and reason; faith seemed to insult her intellect. When she got up to leave, the counselor said the only thing he should have said when she first sat down; “Jenny” he said, “God loves you, even when you don’t believe that God exists.”

Tears filled her eyes, and she said “I know he does.” Faith, it seems, comes in all sorts of shapes and degrees. Maybe that’s why you’re here today; you’ve come to see and hear the story once again. You aren’t certain that it’s true; like Jenny, you struggle to wrap your brain around it. But you’re here. Thank God you’re here.

Steven Molin, Four Truths and a Lie

____________________________________

Easter Fits All

In the spring of 1981, the president of national hotel chain was speaking at a conference in Atlanta Georgia, and while he was there, he decided he needed a haircut. While sitting in the chair of a neighborhood barber, he struck up a conversation. “What are you doing for a vacation this summer?” The barber’s face brightened, “My wife and I are taking a road trip, and we’re driving to Phoenix.” “Really” the hotel president asked, “and where are you going to stay while you’re on this road trip?” The barber said “Well, on the way out there, we’re going to stay at the cheapest hotels possible, so that when we get there we can afford to stay in something really nice.” And the hotel president thought to himself, “This guy is never going to stay in my hotel, because when he’s driving to Phoenix, we’re too expensive, and when he gets to Phoenix, we’re too inexpensive.” He immediately flew back to his office in Silver Spring Maryland, called his Board of Directors together and announced “One size does not fit all! We need to diversify to meet the different needs of people.” And the result was a company that began to offer four different levels of hotels; The Sleep Inn, The Comfort Inn, The Quality Inn, and The Clarion. The name of the company is “Choice Hotels.”

With that rather earthy illustration, I would suggest to you that on that first Easter Sunday, those who were the followers of Jesus had a variety of needs as well. And further, I believe that the diversity of needs remain yet today. We’re not all drawn to this place for the exact same reason today. Some of you are here because you are curious. Others have come to keep peace in the family. Still others walked in because they have worshipped on Easter every year, and they cannot imagine being anyplace else. One size does not fit all. But the story of Easter is such a gripping story that it ultimately meets the need of every person in this place.

Steven Molin, Passion, Proof, and Purpose

__________________________________

When Is Easter This Year?

In an article in The Christian Century, history professor Steve Ware asks the question, “When Is Easter this year?”

For those of you who didn’t learn this in confirmation class, the date of Easter corresponds to the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Seriously.

In his article, Ware explains how this came to be. Here’s the short version of the story: In 325 A.D., Constantine, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, convened the Council of Nicea. Among the business before the council was to establish a uniform date for Easter. Out of the discussion and debate came the “Easter Rule,” setting Easter, as I said, on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. As is often the case with church councils, the decision was not unanimous. The Eastern bishops wanted to schedule Easter in conjunction with the Jewish Festival of Passover since, after all, Jesus went to Jerusalem, in the first place, to celebrate Passover. The Western bishops preferred a date corresponding with the beginning of spring, because that was the time already established for a lot of pagan celebrations, and they figured to capitalize on the momentum. This is why, to this day, we have such things as the Easter Bunny and colored eggs associated with Easter. Well, on this, and other issues, the church eventually split. To this day, we, who are descendents of the Western line of Christendom, use a different calendar than the Eastern Orthodox churches. Sometimes our celebration of Easter falls on the same day, and sometimes it varies by as much as five weeks!

Philip W. McLarty, When Is Easter This Year?

______________________________________

Old Clothes

When I was a girl, I spent a lot of time in the woods, which were full of treasures for me. At night I lined them up on my bed: fat flakes of mica, buckeyes bigger than shooter marbles, blue jay feathers, bird bones and -- if I was lucky -- a cicada shell, one of those dry brown bug bodies you can find on tree trunks when the 17-year locusts come out of the ground. I liked them for at least two reasons.

First, because they were horrible looking, with their huge empty eye sockets and their six sharp little claws. By hanging them on my sweater or -- better yet -- in my hair, I could usually get the prettier, more popular girls at school to run screaming away from me, which somehow evened the score.

I also liked them because they were evidence that a miracle had occurred. They looked dead, but they weren’t. They were just shells. Every one of them had a neat slit down its back, where the living creature inside of it had escaped, pulling new legs, new eyes, new wings out of that dry brown body and taking flight. At night I could hear them singing their high song in the trees. If you had asked them, I’ll bet none of them could have told you where they left their old clothes.

That is all the disciples saw when they got to the tomb on that first morning --two piles of old clothes.

Barbara Brown Taylor, "Escape From the Tomb," article in The Christian Century, April 1, 1998, page 339.

_________________________________

My Soul Is Rested

Martin Luther King used to tell the story of Sister Pollard, a seventy-year-old African American woman who lived in Montgomery, Alabama during the now famous bus boycott. One day, after walking significant distances daily for several months, Sister Pollard was asked if she wanted a ride. When she answered, “No,” the person responded, “But aren’t you tired?” To which Sister Pollard answered, “My feets is tired, but my soul is rested.”

Resurrection living, moving beyond our fears and trusting that God is fashioning a way out of no way, celebrating the promise that a new world is unfolding — this leads us to affirm as well that our souls are rested. We will continue to face all kinds of challenges and struggles along the way; “our feets will be tired,” but our spirits will be strengthened through the presence of the risen Christ. This is the good news we celebrate this Easter morning: There is no tragedy that God cannot redeem, no dream — even the elusive dream of peace on earth — that the God who raised Jesus from the dead cannot energize and advance. Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed!

Joel D. Kline, Frightened Out of Our Wits

___________________________________

The Easter Formula

In April 2002, the well-respected Oxford University philosophy professor Richard Swineburne defended the truth of the Resurrection at a high-profile gathering of philosophy professors at Yale University. Swineburne used Bayes Theorem, a broadly accepted mathematical probability theory and tool to defend the truth of Christ's resurrection.

In a New York Times interview, Swineburne said, "For someone dead for 36 hours to come to life again is, according to the laws of nature, extremely improbable. But if there is a God of the traditional kind, natural laws only operate because he makes them operate." Swineburne used the Bayes Theorem to assign values to things like the probability that God is real, Jesus' behavior during his lifetime, and the quality of witness testimony after his death. Then he plugged the numbers into a probability formula and added everything up.

The results? There's a 97 percent probability that the resurrection really happened.

That's nice to know. It's one more tool in the tool kit of ministry. But the truth is that you and I don't really need that. The church doesn't really need that information. Because we have our own formula.

It's the Easter Formula: R+ET+F=LE. The Resurrection plus the Empty Tomb plus Faith equal Life Eternal. That's the Easter Formula.

Billy D. Strayhorn, From the Pulpit, CSS Publishing Company, Inc.

____________________________

Coming Back a Saint

Father Andrew W. Greeley tells the story: Once upon a time a young man, who had been reported kill in action, came home from a prisoner of war camp. His family and his buddies and even his girlfriend had mourned him as dead and then more or less got over their grief.

His sudden reappearance was disconcerting to say the least. They had all loved him, but they had in effect written him out of their lives. His girlfriend was engaged to marry someone else. Moreover, he didn't seem like the boy who had gone off to war. He was thin and haggard and haunted.

However, he was now mature, self-possessed, and, astonishingly, happy. He hadn't smiled much as a kid and rarely joked. Now he was witty and ebullient all the time. A quiet kid had become an outgoing adult man. And he didn't fit into the patterns of relationships he had left behind.

Quite the contrary, his happiness and maturity were unsettling. He congratulated his former girlfriend on her upcoming marriage and he shook hands cordially with the fiancé.

There's something wrong with him, everybody said. His family went to the priest. And the priest concurred, "There sure is something wrong with him," the priest said. "He has risen from the dead and now acts like a saint."

Billy D. Strayhorn, From the Pulpit, CSS Publishing Company, Inc.

____________________________

Christ of the Deep

In the port of Genoa there is a statue that is called the Christ of the Deep. It is in the form of those classic statues of Jesus with his arms outstretched, as if to say, "Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." The statue is placed beneath the surface of the water in the harbor, descended into the depths of the ocean, as a memorial to all of those who died at sea. But it is a wonderful symbol of the gospel message that Christ has gone into the depths of our life to give us new life.

Mark Trotter, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com

_______________________________

I Want to See Your Resurrection

Father Basil Pennington, a Roman Catholic monk, tells of an encounter he once had with a teacher of Zen. Pennington was at a retreat. As part of the retreat, each person met privately with this Zen teacher. Pennington says that at his meeting the Zen teacher sat there before him smiling from ear to ear and rocking gleefully back and forth. Finally the teacher said: “I like Christianity. But I would not like Christianity without the resurrection. I want to see your resurrection!”

Pennington notes that, “With his directness, the teacher was saying what everyone else implicitly says to Christians: You are a Christian. You are risen with Christ. Show me (what this means for you in your life) and I will believe.” That is how people know if the resurrection is true or not. Does it affect how we live?

King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com

____________________________________

The Risen Christ

Pastor Rick Calhoun writes, “The Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead was never meant to be proved but experienced. As a matter of fact it cannot be proved, as no one of us was there. We have to take the word of others who were. Those early witnesses were very passionate about their testimonies. Many were to be martyred in defense of their convictions. But ultimately the resurrection is to be experienced not proved. The most convincing evidence of the Resurrection of Christ is the transformation of the people who know Jesus and believe in Him. I decided long ago, the only proof of Easter I will ever need is memory. I remember what my life was like before I met the living Christ and I know what my life is now, as I share it with Him. I would not stand here and tell you I am always the man I should be. But thanks to the living Christ, I am not the man I used to be either. The risen Jesus Christ has made all the difference.”

King Duncan, www.Sermons.com

___________________________________

A Tickle in Our Ear

A number of years ago there appeared in The Los Angeles Times a poignant story of a four and one-half year old girl named Katie Sleeman, a patient at Children's Hospital, who was dying of cancer. "She had originally been diagnosed as a seven-week-old baby with retinoblastoma a cancerous tumor in the eye. She lost both eyes, and despite the best that medical science could do for her, a tumor appeared near her brain and it could not be removed. So Katie suffered more hardship in her brief life than most of us do in all our years. But despite her hospitalization, all of the treatments and pain she suffered, she radiated love and joy for all. She was like a light on the 4th Floor West of Children's Hospital, for she had the time of her life, even though she was fully aware that she might die anytime. As she neared the end of her life, Katie talked a lot about going to Heaven. Because she could not see, touch became one of her means of communication. One of her favorite things was to snuggle close to her mother and rub her mother's ear. Not long before she died, Katie said to her mother with a smile, "When I am in Heaven, and you feel a tickle on your ear, it will be me telling you 'I love you, Mommy.'" (Donald Shelby, "Grace-Full Humor").

Does that make you smile, or feel teary? Want to cry? Or laugh? Either is appropriate. Because Jesus is preparing a place for us in his eternal kingdom, Katie could believe what she said. And if those who have gone before us can't "tickle our ear" as Katie suggested she would do with her mother, it is enough to know that our loved ones who have died in Christ, believing in him and trusting him for salvation those who have died in Christ are waiting with Christ to welcome us when our time comes to go home.

Maxie Dunnam, quoting Donald Shelby, ‘Grace-Full Humor’, www.Sermons.com

___________________________________

A Voice to Shout

William Sangster was one of the great preachers of the 20th century. Toward the end of his life, he became quite ill. His vocal chords were paralyzed and he was unable to speak. On the Easter Sunday morning just before he died, he painfully printed a short note to his daughter. In it he wrote these poignant words: "How terrible to wake up on Easter and have no voice to shout, 'He is risen!' but it is far worse to have a voice and not want to shout."

James W. Moore, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com

________________________________

Are We Brave enough to Bet It All?

In John Updike's A Month of Sundays, there is a parable about how the Christian faith is, indeed, an improbable wager on the impossible possibility. In one episode, a group of men are playing a variation of poker. In this game, each person is dealt several cards, some of them on the table face up and the others concealed in the hand.

In one round, the main character, a man named Thomas, has been dealt a very strong hand, and he decides to bet heavily. As Thomas keeps sweetening the pot and raising the stakes, all of the other players drop out one by one, intimidated by Thomas' hand, that is, all except one player, a stutterer named Fred.

Curiously, Fred appears to have a poor hand; his cards showing on the table are "nondescript garbage." Astonishingly, though, he keeps up the betting pace, calling and raising Thomas at every opportunity. Thomas is puzzled since his own hand is a poker player's dream. It isn't absolutely perfect -- he is holding one poor card -- but other than this single little flaw his hand is virtually unbeatable. Why does Fred keep on betting against such odds? Why doesn't he fold?

When the time comes to lay down the cards, though, Thomas is shocked to discover that Fred has the winning hand. When he compares Fred's hand with his, Thomas realizes that there was only one card in the whole deck that could have made Thomas the loser, and that was the one bad card that Thomas had hidden in his hand. If Thomas had held any other card, he would have won, and won big. In other words, Fred was betting everything -- everything -- on the tiny chance that Thomas held this one losing card. Dumbfounded, Thomas thinks to himself: Fred had stayed, then, against me when only one card in the deck ... could have made my hand a loser to his. Two truths dawned upon me:

He was crazy. He had won. He had raised not on a reasonable faith but on a virtual impossibility; and he had been right. "Y-y-y-you didn't feel to me like you had it," he told me, raking it in.

Another story from Updike,

Clint Tidwell is the pastor of a church in a small Southern town, and one of his blessings -- and one of his curses -- is that the 80-year-old owner and still-active editor of the local newspaper is a member of his congregation. The blessing part is that this old journalist believes Tidwell to be one of the finest preachers around, and, wishing the whole town to benefit from this homiletical wisdom, he publishes a summary of Tidwell's Sunday sermon every Monday morning in the paper. The curse part is that this newspaperman, though well meaning, is a bit on the dotty and eccentric side, and Tidwell is often astonished to read the synopses of his sermons. The man owns the newspaper; nobody dares edit his columns, and the difference between what Tidwell thought he said and what the editor actually heard is often a source of profound amazement and embarrassment to Tidwell.

Tidwell's deepest amazement and embarrassment, however, came not when the newspaper editor misunderstood the Sunday sermon but, to the contrary, when he understood it all too sharply and clearly. It was early on the Monday morning after Easter, and Tidwell, in his bathrobe and slippers, was padding out the carport door to retrieve the Monday newspaper. The paper was lying at the end of the driveway, and, as Tidwell approached, he could see that the morning headline was in "second coming" sized type. What could it be? he wondered. Had war broken out somewhere? Had the local bank failed over the weekend? Had a cure for cancer been discovered? As he drew close enough to focus on the headline, he was startled to read the words, "Tidwell Claims Jesus Christ Rose From The Dead."

A red flush crept up Tidwell's neck. Yes, of course, he had claimed in yesterday's sermon that Christ rose from the dead, but golly, was that headline news? What would the neighbors think? I mean, you're supposed to say that on Easter, aren't you, that Christ rose from the dead, but that's not like saying that some person who died last week had risen from the grave, is it? Suddenly, as he looked at the screaming headline, what had been a routine Easter sermon had Tidwell feeling rather foolish.

Indeed, it is foolish -- the foolishness of the gospel. Those who gather on this Easter Day to sing and say that "Jesus Christ is Risen Today" do so not because we have proved anything philosophically, discerned some mystical key to the Scripture, or found some unassailable piece of historical evidence. We believe in the resurrection because the beloved disciple, the forerunner of all Easter faith, believed and passed the word along all the way into the present, prompting frail folks, like Tidwell and like us, to say what we believe: "I believe in Jesus Christ, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, dead and buried. He descended into hell, and -- dare we believe it? Dare we wager everything on it? -- rose again on the third day." John Updike, A Month Of Sundays (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), pp. 197-198.

Thomas G. Long, Whispering The Lyrics, CSS Publishing

_____________________________________

It Opens on the Dawn

Mary Magdalene came to the tomb while it was still dark. But the darkness was soon overcome with light. Maybe that's the message you need to hear this day. Perhaps for whatever reason you are in darkness right now. Family concerns. Problems at work. Anxiety about your health and your future. The loss of someone you love. Easter promises us more than the stars in our darkness. Easter promises us that in the midst of our deepest darkness the Son rises to overwhelm the darkness forever.

Victor Hugo once put it like this, "For half a century I have been writing my thoughts in prose and verse and history and philosophy . . . But I feel I have not said the thousandth part of what is in me. When I go down to the grave I can say, I have finished my day's work,' but I cannot say, I have finished my life.' My day's work will begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley; it is a thoroughfare. It closes on the twilight; it opens on the dawn." Mary Magdalene came to the tomb while it was still dark "but the darkness did not remain. The dawn broke. God's Son had risen.

King Duncan, www.Sermons.com, Victor Hugo quote from his Intellectual Autobiography

_______________________

There Is a Time

Let me start with a pair of stories from Greece. Which, if not exactly around the corner from the Holy Land, is at least in the neighborhood. Actually, the first story takes place in Chania, at an airport on the west end of the island of Crete. On the particular day in question, an Olympia Airlines 727 is deplaning a group of 100 angry passengers into a crowded terminal. Pandemonium follows. Voices are raised, followed by fists. Women and children are wailing. Someone threatens to leap over the counter to punch the agent. Police appear, billy clubs at the ready.

What has happened is this. The passengers were all destined for Heraklion at the other end of the island. Indeed, their luggage has already gone there on another plane. For reasons unclear, this Olympia Airlines 727 has landed at the wrong city and is now scheduled to fly elsewhere. What is left for the hundred passengers is a hard ride by bus, 150 miles to their destination. The passengers want blood. The hot-headed ones talk about commandeering a plane. Others make threats against the management of Olympia Airlines, complete with comments about management's ancestry on their mother's side.

Suddenly, a well-dressed German tourist who, heretofore, has been pacing in small circles on the rim of the chaos, begins to shout at no one in particular:

Why am I here? 
Where am I going? 
What must I do? 
What will become of me?

God in heaven, help me!

His cry is sufficiently frenzied so as to quiet all other chaos but his, as fellow travelers back cautiously away from him as if he were a mad dog in their midst.

Suddenly a representative of Olympia Airlines steps forward to address him. "Excuse me, sir," he says, "but you have asked some very old questions. We Greeks have been working on those questions for over two thousand years. They are not easy to answer, then or now. In the meantime, I do not know what help God in heaven may be. But we of Olympia Airlines will see to it that you get to Heraklion. So if you please, sir, get on the bus."

Moral of story: To everything there is a season, a time to fly, a time to cry, a time to shout, and a time to ask philosophical questions. But there is also a time to get on the bus.

Story number two takes place in a sidewalk café in the Greek seacoast where two young Americans are arguing about whether human beings are basically bad or basically good. The animation of the conversation becomes even more understandable when I tell you that the two Americans are law students. First year law students. Having lived with one of those, I know that young lawyers cut their academic teeth on argumentation. They will debate anything, with anybody, at any time. And should they convince you that their position is right and yours is wrong, they will then switch sides and argue yours, just for the fun of it.

In the middle of the argument, one of the students points to his glass of wine and suggests (sagely) that pondering whether human beings are basically bad or basically good is like trying to solve the riddle as to whether a wine glass is half empty or half full, in other words, a matter of perception.

His companion disagrees. "Not so," he says. "We can precisely calculate the amount of wine in a given glass at a given time, provided that proper definitions of ‘empty' and ‘full' can be agreed upon in advance." So they motion for the waiter and inquire as to whether the café as any instruments with which to measure and calculate.

The waiter, an old Greek wise in the ways of first year law students, asks the purpose of such a request, and is told that such measuring devices are needed to solve the question as to whether this particular wine glass is half empty or half full. The waiter looks at the two young men. Then he looks at the wine. Following which he smiles, picks up the glass, swirls the contents, sniffs the aroma, and (with nary a word to anyone) drinks it down with great relish and walks away.

Moral of story: Among the seasons listed earlier, there is a time to debate, and a time to drink the wine.

Which brings us back to Jesus. It is late of an evening. This evening. Supper is over. And accompanied by three very good friends, Jesus goes to a small vest pocket garden to pray. He asks his friends to wait with him, perhaps even to pray with him. But with stomachs heavy with food and eyes heavy with stress, they fall asleep. So he prays alone. There is anguish in the prayer. He is described as being greatly troubled. For he knows that everything in his life, every road he has taken, every summons he has answered, every title he has assumed, every burden he has carried, have brought him to this place.

Mark Trotter, Collected Sermons, 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

___________________________________

How Does the Resurrection Affect Your Life?

Father Basil Pennington, a Roman Catholic monk, tells of an encounter he once had with a teacher of Zen. Pennington was at a retreat. As part of the retreat, each person met privately with this Zen teacher. Pennington says that at his meeting the Zen teacher sat there before him smiling from ear to ear and rocking gleefully back and forth. Finally the teacher said: “I like Christianity. But I would not like Christianity without the resurrection. I want to see your resurrection!”

Pennington notes that, “With his directness, the teacher was saying what everyone else implicitly says to Christians: You are a Christian. You are risen with Christ. Show me (what this means for you in your life) and I will believe.” That is how people know if the resurrection is true or not. Does it affect how we live?

The amazing thing is that every one of Jesus’ disciples passed this test. Their lives were dramatically turned upside down by their encounter with Christ. How would you ever make something like this up and stick to it when stones were piercing your flesh as did Stephen, the first Christian martyr? Or as you were being crucified upside down like Simon Peter? It is hard to dispute the testimony of someone who is so convinced of what they have experienced that they are willing to suffer and die to tell the story.

Adapted by Marilyn Omernick, http://www.stjohnslaverne.org/SermonReadingArchive/OmernickEasterSundaySermon2006.rtf.

______________________

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

___________________________

The Cape of Good Hope

I can still recall a geography lesson from elementary school in which we learned that the southernmost point of Africa is a point which for centuries has experienced tremendous storms. For many years no one even knew what lay beyond that cape, for no ship attempting to round that point had ever returned to tell the tale. Among the ancients it was known as the "Cape of Storms," and for good reason. But then a Portuguese explorer in the sixteenth century, Vasco De Gama, successfully sailed around that very point and found beyond the wild raging storms, a great calm sea, and beyond that, the shores of India. The name of that cape was changed from the Cape of Storms to the Cape of Good Hope.

Until Jesus Christ rose from the dead, death had been the cape of storms on which all hopes of life beyond had been wrecked. No one knew what lay beyond that point until, on Easter morning, those ancient visions of Isaiah became the victory of Jesus over our last great enemy. Suddenly, like those ancient explorers, we can see beyond the storm to the hope of heaven and eternal life with the Father. More than that, we dare to believe that we shall experience in our own human lives exactly what the Son of God experienced in his, for the risen Christ says to us, "Because I live, you shall live also." This is the heart of the Easter faith.

Robert Beringer, Easter People, CSS Publishing Company

___________________________

It Will Not Be Dark

Charles Kingsley was a very gifted and renowned Anglican preacher. Some years ago both he and his wife lay terminally ill in different rooms of the same hospital. They communicated by writing notes. One day his wife had a message sent to him that read: “My darling, is it cowardly of me to tremble before the unseen reality of death.” He wrote back “Do not be afraid! It will not be dark, because God is light. There will be no loneliness for Christ will be there.” That is our resurrection hope.

___________________________

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

___________________________

Expecting Death

In many ways, we are like those first disciples, so it seems to me. We are like the women coming to the grave that day. They had heard the promise of Jesus that on the third day, the Son of Man would be raised from the dead by the Powers of God. They had heard his promise to the thief on the cross, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” They had heard Jesus teach, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me will never die.” Nevertheless, on that morning when they came to the grave, they came expecting death, did they not? When they came that morning to the grave, in spite of all of Jesus’ promises, they came expecting death. And I am suspicious that you and I are like those women. Even though we have heard the promises of God. Yes, we have heard the promises over and over again e.g. on the third day I will rise; today you will be with me in paradise; I am the resurrection and the life. We have heard these promises but we come to our graves, and like the women on that first Sunday morning, we are expecting death. For deep down in everyone’s soul is a pessimism that believes that this is all there is. They put you in a box; they put you in that grave; and in time the box and the vault will decay, and your body will decay like all the others.

Why do we have this inner feeling, this inner pessimism? Sigmund Freud calls it the “death instinct.” Common to all human beings and all animals, and human beings are part of the animal kingdom, we have this instinct. Deep down inside is this fear that this is all there is. And so we come to the graves of life, the graves of our mothers and fathers, and grandmas and grandpas; we come to the deathbeds of life, and we finally come to our own deathbed and we quietly pray: “I believe, help my unbelief.” And we die.

We sleep. And then…then…we awake and say…”Hooooly cow!!! It is so incredibly beautiful!!! Stunned. Breathless. And we are astonished and astounded, amazed and awestruck, dazzled and dumbfounded the beauty that God has prepared for you and me. The Apostle Paul was right when he said,“No eye can see, no ear can hear, no mind can imagine the good and wonderful things that God has prepared for us.”

Edward F. Markquart, Astonished and Astounded
____________________________________________________

Jesus Wants Followers

From time to time people ask me if the resurrection of Jesus can be proved. It can't. What's more, Jesus himself has never wanted it proved. He has always wanted followers, not detectives.

Victor Shepherd, How Do We Know He's Alive?

_____________________________________________

Sing Instead of Sorrowing

In 1932 an out-of-work jazz musician, Thomas Dorsey, almost gave up trying to eke out a living. He was on the brink of disbelief, but God's still small voice called him back to life. Dorsey decided he would sing instead of sorrowing, he would love instead of hate, he would trust instead of disbelieve. His hymn sings:

Precious Lord take my hand Lead me on, let me stand
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn Through the storm, 
through the night Lead me on to the light;
Take my hand precious Lord, Lead me home.

Charles M. Mills, From Dusk to Dawn, CSS Publishing

____________________

God Cannot Die

Martin Luther once spent three days in a black depression over something that had gone wrong. On the third day his wife came downstairs dressed in mourning clothes. "Who's dead?" he asked her. "God," she replied. Luther rebuked her, saying, "What do you mean, God is dead? God cannot die." "Well," she replied, "the way you've been acting I was sure He had!"

Many of us have been caught in that trap. This is also what had happened to Mary.

Ray C. Stedman, The Incredible Hope

_____________________

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

________________________

The Magic in Easter

Somewhere or other I heard of a Sunday School teacher who had just finished telling her third graders about how Jesus was crucified and placed in a tomb with a great stone sealing off the only way in or out. Then, wanting to share the excitement of the resurrection, and the surprise of Easter morning, she asked: "And what do you think were Jesus' first words when he came bursting out of that tomb alive."

A hand shot up into the air from the rear of the classroom. It belonged to a most excited little girl. Leaping out of her chair she shouted out excitedly, "I know, I know, I know."

"Good," said the teacher, "Tell us."

Extending her arms high in the air she sang out: "TA - DA!"

David E. Leininger, Collected Sermons, www.esermons.com

___________________________

The End of the World

There is a beautiful valley in Switzerland which is deeply hidden in that mountain  range known as the Alps. That valley is completely surrounded by steep mountain walls. If one enters this valley, that person will move along the only road until it ends at the base of a steep wall of rock.

The Swiss call this place the "End of the World." However, if one is willing to go climbing by foot, Swiss guides will show a determined hiker the path that leads up and over that mountain barrier.

Reflecting upon this natural phenomenon, Harleigh Rosenberger comments that many people believe that life is like a road that runs through the valley of time. "We cannot turn back but must continue walking onward. The days pass quickly and then comes the end of the road. We stand at the sheer rock wall we call death. It is the end of our world, for it is the end of life."

Because Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead and we have through him received the gift of eternal life, we find a way up and over that wall of rock. Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die (John 11:25)."

My friends in Christ, our hope is grounded in the gift of eternal life which we receive this day - it is our way out of the valley of darkness and despair through which all of us walk at one time or another in our lives. This gift of eternal life does not begin at death. It begins now for all who worship the risen Christ. This life eternal will then continue beyond the grave into the life to come, for our souls are eternal, and in Christ we become one with the Father who made us. This is the hope and the promise which we receive this glorious Easter Day.

Donald William Dotterer, Up and Down the Mountain, CSS Publishing Company,

________________________________________

Where Easter Leads

A friend of mine, Robert Herhold, is a west coast pastor whose brother died some time ago. Listen to his description of the ministry that went on between brothers in the final days before his brother’s death:

My brother experienced eternal life before he died. Eternity began in time for him. We laughed and kidded up to his last day in the hospital where he was also the administrator. I thought I was ministering to Wayne, but I discovered that he was ministering to me. We prayed often and in one of our last prayers, he thanked God for our being together

... God seemed to draw him closer and closer to himself, but strangely not further from us. When I would get overly religious, Wayne would puncture it with his humor. He once awoke and asked if he had said anything incriminating in his sleep. I assured him that he had. "How much did I pledge to the church?" he inquired! ... In those last days - not last but beginning days - Wayne moved gracefully from the things on earth to the things above. His humor became sharper as his perspective deepened. He suffered awhile longer, stayed around long enough to let us know, without words, that we need not fear nor sorrow overmuch because he knew the Lord who would not let go.

That, finally, is where Easter leads: to the ringing, joyous, hearty, jubilant laughter and singing and celebrating of that glorious company of heaven who surround the risen Lord and sit at his table.

Dean Lueking, From Ashes to Holy Wind, CSS Publishing Company

____________________________________

Humor – Preachers Are Funny Creatures

Somebody ought to write a book titled, "Preachers Are Funny Creatures." It makes no difference if they are pastors, priests or rabbis--people who have the wonderful privilege as I do of standing in a pulpit each week are somewhat weird. Like the Reverend Eugene Magee. Magee is an enthusiastic pastor who does not wear a robe. His sanctuary is plainer than most, adorned only by a cross and an American flag. Magee likes to wave his arms to emphasize important points in his sermons.

Unfortunately, he is so animated that he has trouble keeping his shirttails in his trousers. To solve this he has developed the habit of periodically stuffing his shirttails back into his trousers as inconspicuously as possible, even while he is preaching.

One Easter Sunday, while admonishing the faithful with great excitement, he fished around behind his back in the usual way, and found more material than usual to push out of sight. He persisted doggedly, however. On he preached and on he stuffed. At the close of his sermon he discovered that he had about half of the American flag stuffed into his pants.

He felt foolish, of course. But what would you expect? It was Easter Sunday! What pastor can help but get excited on Easter Sunday?

King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com

___________________________

Defining Moments – Easter

Did you ever play the game "Freeze" as a child? The group is running and playing as though everything were normal and then the one who is "it" yells, "Freeze!" Everyone has to freeze exactly as they are when they hear the word. The first person to stumble or move from their "frozen position" are "it" for the next round.

There are moments in all of our lives that are frozen in time and frozen in our memories. They can be good moments, or bad moments. Moments of utter joy and moments of profound grief. Whatever else they may be, these are moments that are locked in our hearts and minds because of the power they hold for our lives. You can almost relive them now.

Remember? (Give time for each to be remembered)

That first kiss.

The time she said, "Yes."

A look on the doctor's face.

The day a child was born.

The time your mortgage was approved on the first house.

The time you lost the person you loved most.

All of these are moments which are locked in place and in some sense time stops when these frozen moments are called to mind. The most dramatic of them all are those moments of life and death that make up the greatest, most wonderful and the worst, most devastating events of our living.

"Defining" moments some folks might call them. As we gather on this Easter Sunday we celebrate the single most important defining moment of our Christian faith - the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Without this moment, none of the other defining moments of our lives would ever make sense.

John Jewell, Frozen Moments and the Other Mary

___________________________

What Do You Think of The Resurrection?

Some years ago a college student came by his pastor’s office to discuss theological issues. That sort of thing does not happen often. I hope it will not disappoint you to hear that most of the pastor’s days are spent in meetings and with budgets, and staff issues and reports and not discussing theology.

Eventually the conversation came around to the subject of Easter. After all, if you take Christianity seriously, it will ultimately always lead you to Easter. “What do you think of the resurrection, he asked. The pastor replied: I believe that it happened in reality and not just in the minds of men. What is your evidence, he asked, like a professor prodding a student. The pastor presented as Exhibit A: the disciples. Twelve men are not going to give up their lives to simply perpetuate that which they know to be a hoax.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled. “I just don’t know.” There was his problem. He was seeking knowledge, not faith. You do not say: resurrected Christ, appear to me and then I will believe. It is just the opposite. The resurrected Christ appeared only to those who did believe. The angel told the men: Go to Judea and there you will find him. I would suggest that Judea represents the community of believers. Judea was to be the place where Jesus would plainly reveal to his followers that he was indeed alive. He did not reveal himself to the Caiaphas and Pilates and Herods of the world.

Brett Blair and Staff, Sermons.com

_________________

The Great Leap of Faith

The allied troops under General Wellington fought Napoleon on June 18, 1815, at the Battle of Waterloo, a village in Belgium just south of Brussels. News was transmitted by the use of lights across the channel to anxious Britishers. The words were spelled out, "Wellington defeated...." and then a fog, so typical of England, fell over the channel. England thought the battle was lost and the dreadful news was spread quickly, throwing the land into despair. But when the fog lifted, they could see the final word, "Wellington defeated Napoleon." And the mood in Great Britain changed from one of tragedy to triumph. The whole country exploded in thunderous celebration as the news was relayed. Napoleon had been defeated.

We know from the Gospel records that there was a great deal of circumstantial evidence that at first clouded the landscape for the disciples. It seemed that the Roman authorities had taken their fondest hopes and greatest dreams from them on Good Friday. They were living as victims--when God had achieved for them the victory. How tragic it is for Christian believers to continue to fight the Good Friday battle and always remain a victim when we could claim the resurrection power of Christ and be a victor. However, I understand that it does take a leap of faith to believe that Christ has won the big war when our world looks the way it does today.

Eric S. Ritz, The Ritz Collection, www.Sermons.com

_______________________________

Where the Fire Cannot Reach

Corrie Ten Boom put it like this: "In the forest fire, there is always one place where the fire cannot reach. It is the place where the fire has already burned itself out. Calvary is the place where the fire of God's judgment against sin burned itself out completely. It is there that we are safe."

__________________________________

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.

_______________________

On Redemption

The catholic priest Erasmus two centuries ago wrote these powerful words. Listen:

How much more wonderful the work of redemption is, in comparison with creation. It is more marvelous that God was made man than that He created the angels; that He wailed in a stable than that He reigns in the heavens. The creation of the world was a work of power, but the redemption of the world was a work of mercy.

Erasmus

_____________________

Our Greatest Need

“If our greatest need had been information,
God would have sent us an educator.
If our greatest need had been technology,
God would have sent us a scientist.
If our greatest need had been money,
God would have sent us an economist.
If our greatest need had been pleasure,
God would have sent us an entertainer.
But our greatest need was forgiveness,
So God sent us a Savior!”

Chuck Swindoll, The Grace Awakening

__________________________________________

The Power of Belief in a World of Lost Hope

Eric Butterworth tells about a young soldier who lost his legs in battle. Something died within this young man when he found he would never walk again. He lay in his hospital bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. He refused to talk to anyone who tried to help him. He refused to cooperate with doctors or nurses who wanted to help him to adjust.

One day another inmate of the hospital strolled in and sat down on a chair near the bed. He drew a harmonica from his pocket and began to play softly. The patient looked at him for a second, then back to the ceiling. That was all for that day. Next day the player came again. For several days he continued to come and to play quietly. One day he said, "Does my playing annoy you?" The patient said, "No, I guess I like it." They talked a little more each day.

One day the harmonica player was in a jovial mood. He played a sprightly tune and began to do a tap dance. The soldier looked on but was apparently unimpressed. "Hey, why don't you smile once and let the world know you're alive!" the dancer said with a friendly smile. But the legless soldier said, "I might as well be dead as in the fix I'm in." "Okay," answered his happy friend, "so you're dead. But you're not as dead as a fellow who was crucified two thousand years ago, and He came out of it all right." "Oh, it's easy for you to preach," replied the patient, "but if you were in my fix, you'd sing a different tune." With this the dancer stood up and said, "I know a two-thousand-year-old resurrection is pretty far in the dim past. So maybe an up-to-date example will help you to believe it can be done." With that he pulled up his trouser legs and the young man in the bed looked and saw two artificial limbs. The tap-dancing fellow with the harmonica was not simply a Pollyanna. He once lay where that young soldier now lay. He himself had known the power of a resurrection. He had learned to live life abundantly--even without his legs. Needless to say, the young soldier's own resurrection began that moment.

Easter isn't just about dying. It's about the power of belief in a world of lost hope. It is about knowing that no situation is beyond God's redeeming power.

King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com

____________________________

Ready for the Trip?

A minister was preaching and during the course of his sermon asked, "Who wants to go to heaven?" Everyone held up their hands except one young boy. "Son, don't you want to go to heaven when you die?" "Yes sir, when I die, but I thought you was gettin' up a load to go now."

That is probably the attitude of most of us. Most Christians DO figure that when we die we go to heaven to be with the Lord, even if we are not ready to make the trip tomorrow.

David E. Leininger, Collected Sermons, ChristianGlobe Networks, Inc.

___________________________

Easter Transportation

The eyes of our nation have, in recent time, twice been riveted on Antarctica and the need to rescue medical personnel from a weather station there. Happily both rescues were successful, but they were conducted in weather conditions that were exceptionally hazardous for flight. Aircrews had to wait for precisely the right time to make each rescue attempt. The rescuers knew they wanted and needed to get to the weather station, but it was all but impossible.

I am wondering whether a similar predicament obtains with regard to Easter. We see it off in the distance and desperately want to get there, but often we can't seem to quite make it. We are like Mary, as described by John, and on this text we focus this Easter sermon: "When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus" (John 20:14). So caught up was Mary in an assumed loss, that she could see nothing more. She hadn't yet gotten to Easter. Is that you? Is that me? Maybe the transportation we have selected isn't equal to the task.

Robert A. Noblett, Sermons for Sundays in Lent and Easter, CSS Publishing Company

__________________________

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

__________________

Famous Because It Is Empty!

If Easter says anything at all to us it is that Jesus will always be with us. The pyramids of Egypt are famous because they contained the mummified bodies of ancient Egyptian kings. Westminster Abbey in London is renowned, because in it rests the bodies of English nobles and notables. Mohammed's tomb is noted for the stone coffin and the bones it contains. Arlington cemetery in Washington, D.C., is revered, for it is the honored resting place of many outstanding Americans. The Garden Tomb of Jesus is famous because it is empty!

Don Emmitte

____________________

The Conversion of Chuck Colson

If you want a truly hard-bitten, secular man, then go back to the Nixon era and visit 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. Ask for the office of the Special Counsel to the President. The name on the desk reads Charles W. Colson.

They called him the “Hatchet Man” because he specialized in doing the dirty work of politics. Need to pull a dirty trick? Call Chuck Colson. Need to leak a damaging story? Call Chuck Colson. Need to find out what the Democrats are up to? Call Chuck Colson. Need someone to put the brakes on a Justice Department investigation? Call Chuck Colson.

By his own admission, he was a tough guy, a man who once boasted he would run over his grandmother if it would help re-elect Richard Nixon. Religion to him was a crutch. And Jesus Christ? He didn’t figure in.

But then 1972 came and with it came Watergate and the landslide victory and a deep inner emptiness that wouldn’t go away, a longing for something that even the White House couldn’t provide.

And that’s why he left the White House and the limousines and the limelight. He was looking for something more. At length he visited a client and friend, Tom Phillips. He was wealthy, successful, with a happy family, a huge house and a Mercedes in the driveway. Someone warned Chuck Colson that Tom Phillips had found religion.

Well, not exactly. Tom Phillips had met Jesus Christ. “This was surprising news. Tom Phillips had always been such an aggressive businessman. It was hard for me to see him teaching Sunday School. Once he had told me he was Congregational in the same way I labeled myself Episcopalian. Nothing important—just another membership.”

This is what Tom Phillips said to Chuck Colson: “I have accepted Jesus Christ. I have committed my life to Him and it has been the most marvelous experience of my whole life.”

Colson says, “My expression revealed my shock. I struggled for safe ground. ’Uh, maybe sometime you and I can discuss that, Tom.’ If I hadn’t restrained myself, I would have blurted out, ’What are you talking about? Jesus Christ lived two thousand years ago, a great moral leader, of course, and doubtless divinely inspired. But why would anyone “accept” Him or “commit one’s life to Him?” as if he were around today.’”

Tom Phillips gave Chuck Colson a book to read, a book by C.S. Lewis entitled Mere Christianity. In that book, Lewis talks about what it means to believe in Jesus Christ. Particularly, what it means to believe that Jesus Christ really is God in human flesh, who lived and died and rose again and ascended to heaven where He sits at the right hand of God. What does it mean to believe in that Jesus? Lewis says:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a great moral teacher and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this Man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up as a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that option open to us. He did not intend to. (pp. 55-56)

And Chuck Colson, Hatchet Man, made his choice. In his own words, “Early that Friday morning, while I sat alone staring at the sea I love, words I had not been certain I could understand or say fell naturally from my lips: ’Lord Jesus, I believe you. I accept you. Please come into my life. I commit it to you.’”

Ray Pritchard, Easter and the Secular Mind

_________________________________

The Longest Walk

The longest walk you’ll ever take is the walk away from the grave of
someone you love. If you have never done that, you can’t imagine how
difficult it is.

–To walk away and feel as if the world has come to an end.
–To walk away and think about what used to be and what might have been.
–To walk away and realize, “I’ll never be the same again.”
–To play over and over in your mind the good times, the laughter, the crazy stories.
–To reach out and touch a face and find it gone forever.
–To cry until you can’t cry anymore.
–To watch them bury your dreams and hopes and all that was good about life.
–To know it is over, done, finished, the end, and there is nothing you can do about it.
–To walk away to friends who cannot understand and to a world that does hardly cares.

It is the longest walk and the saddest day. Every step takes you away from the tombstone of a broken dream.

Ray Pritchard, Where Is Jesus When We Need Him?

_____________________________________

He Is Risen Indeed!

An ancient legend says that in the early church a believer was to be martyred for his faith. As they tied his hands and led him to the stake, he was asked if he had any last words. He shouted out, “He is risen.” Unknown to the authorities, in the surrounding hills, the Christians had gathered to watch the execution. When they heard the words, “He is risen” … They cried out with one voice … “He is risen indeed.”

That’s how they greeted one another in the early church.

He is risen! He is risen indeed!

Ray Pritchard, Good News From the Graveyard

________________________

Celebrate!

There is an old, historic village in Salem, North Carolina. Every Easter morning, in the early hours of this day, thousands of people, many of them tourists who have come especially for this event, make their way towards the courtyard in front of a 200-year-old church, founded by the Moravians. Before daylight, five hundred members of various brass bands echo hymns from different parts of the city. Everyone converges on Salem Square to listen to the almost mystical-sounding music. As the first hint of the rising sun begins to soften the darkness, a hush falls over the vast throng of worshipers. When the church bell tolls at 6 a. m., the Bishop emerges from the church and announces in a loud, unwavering voice, "Christ is Risen!" And the crowd thunders back, "Christ is Risen indeed!" Then the band begins to play "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today," and everyone joins in the singing there in front of the church.

Then, in total silence, they walk in faithful procession to "God’s Acre," an ancient cemetery, where all the graves, with their newly-polished gravestones, are covered with flowers. Even the oldest graves, some of them dating back three hundred years, are decorated with forsythia, jonquils, tulips, azaleas - whatever happens to be blooming at the time. The service concludes there, with more singing and remembrance of those who have died since the previous Easter. There, in the awesome silence, with the beauty of the flowers all around, it’s as if the living are united with the dead in worship. A writer who witnessed the event said, "When you are in the midst of all this majesty and beauty, you cannot fail to believe in the resurrection."

And so it is in thousands of churches of every denomination on this greatest of days, Easter. The Day of Resurrection. The day of joy and hope. The central day of our faith and witness. Christmas is nice, but it’s not Easter. Anybody can get excited about Christmas, giving and receiving presents, ooh-ing and aah-ing over the baby born in Bethlehem. But when you come right down to it Christmas would be meaningless without Easter.

Johnny Dean, www.Sermons.com

___________________________

Used Tombstone...Real Bargain!

Dr. Paul Stuckey is pastor at GraceUnitedMethodistChurch in Dayton, Ohio. He tells the story of an eye-catching ad in a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, newspaper's classified section. Big, bold letters advertised "Used Tombstone." The ad's text read as follows: "Used tombstone for sale. Real bargain to someone named ‘Dingo'. For more information call..."

The image of a used tombstone may at first seem grim and depressing. But think again: a "used" tombstone means that its previous owner no longer has any need for it. It is a castoff, an unnecessary item.

Christ's resurrection conveys the same message: the tomb is empty! The stone that closed the grave is no longer needed! Jesus Christ is Risen!

Brett Blair, ChristianGlobe Illustrations

__________________________

Humor: If He Sees His Shadow....

A Sunday School teacher asked her class on the Sunday before Easter if they knew what happened on Easter and why it was so important.

One little girl spoke up saying: "Easter is when the whole family gets together, and you eat turkey and sing about the pilgrims and all that."

"No, that's not it," said the teacher.

"I know what Easter is," a second student responded. "Easter is when you get a tree and decorate it and give gifts to everybody and sing lots of songs."

"Nope, that's not it either," replied the teacher.

Finally a third student spoke up, "Easter is when Jesus was killed, and put in a tomb and left for three days."

"Ah, thank goodness somebody knows" the teacher thought to herself.

But then the student went on: "Then everybody gathers at the tomb and waits to see if Jesus comes out, and if he sees his shadow he has to go back inside and we have six more weeks of winter."

Traditional, ChristianGlobe Illustrations

_________________________

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

______________________

Quit Worrying about that Right Now

Let me tell you a true story that happened some time ago: A young boy's father died in a car wreck when he was twelve years old. He read it in the newspaper before anyone got word to him to tell him about it. When he saw that picture of the family car smashed-up on the front page of the newspaper… and read that his dad had died in that accident, he was thrust immediately and painfully into the shocked numbness of deep grief.

Strangely, one of his very first feelings were those of guilt. He had remembered how some months before at a family picnic he was showing off with a baseball. At one point he got careless and threw wildly; it hit his dad in the hand and broke his thumb. The young boy felt horrible. He said to himself, "What a terrible son I am! I have caused my dad great pain."

It seemed that was all he could remember after his fathers death—the pain he caused his dad. Finally, the young boy went to see his pastor and told him about the deep feelings of guilt and about breaking his dad's thumb.

The young boy… well, let me tell you in the boy's own words, he said: I'll never forget how my pastor handled that. He was so great. He came around the desk with tears in his eyes. He sat down across from me and said:

"Now, Jim," that was the boy's name, "you listen to me. If your dad could come back to life for five minutes and be right here with us… and if he knew you were worried about that, what would he say to you?"

"He would tell me to quit worrying about that," Jim said.

"Well, all right," the minister said, "then you quit worrying about that right now. Do you understand me?"

"Yes sir," he said… and he did.

That minister was saying: "You are forgiven. Accept the forgiveness… and make a new start with your life." The young boy did make a new start. And many years later, he served a 9,000 member church: St Luke' s in Houston. The young Boy? James W. Moore, the author of over 30 books on Christian living.

That's Easter. The Risen Lord comes back to life… and assures the disciples that they are forgiven.

· Peter had denied his Lord three times.

· Thomas had doubted.

· All the disciples had forsaken Him.

But, Christ came back, forgave them, resurrected them. He came back to share with them… He comes today, this morning, to share with you the joy, the encouragement and the forgiveness of Easter.

adapted by James W. Moore, Collected Sermons

________________________

Humor: You Call This Living?

There is a story of two garment workers in New York City. One was a cutter and one was a stitcher. They were working side by side. They got to talking about vacations. One said he was looking forward to his vacation and the other said he was not going on a vacation this year. The question was asked, "Why?"

"I went to Africa last year. I went elephant hunting."

"Did you get any elephants?"

"No, I found an elephant. He charged me, but my gun was jammed, and I was killed."

A little stunned he looked at his friend and said, "What are you talking about, you was killed? You aren't dead. You're sitting here living."

And the other fellow looked down at his scissors, looked across at the needle and fabric in his friend's hands and replied: "You call this living?"

Many of us look around at our lives and ask: Do you call this living? I am here to tell you—Easter sounds a resounding yes. Here is resurrection and here is life. We are His family -- the saved, the people who gather to worship him. This is indeed living! We are the resurrection people and we live on this side of Easter.

Brett Blair, ChristianGlobe Illustrations

_____________________

An Empty Stage, an Empty Tomb

In his book, There I Go Again, Steven Moseley tells about Anna Pavlova, a Russian ballet superstar of the early 1900s. Ms. Pavlova has been acclaimed as the greatest ballerina of all time. Her most memorable performance, however, took place after her death.

Anna was to play the role she made famous, the Dying Swan, at the Apollo Theatre in London. Tragically, she succumbed to pneumonia and died two days before the event.

Still, on the appointed night, a crowd of her fans packed the Apollo Theatre. The orchestra began playing, the curtain rose, a spotlight flashed through the dark, and the entire audience rose to its feet. They all stood gazing at a pool of light wandering around the stage, accompanied by the orchestral theme. As the light danced and the orchestra played, they remembered Anna Pavlova. In their hearts they could see her on stage, dressed in white with flashing dark eyes. And when the music stopped at last, they gave the vanished Anna a thunderous ovation that echoed on and on in the night.

An empty stage with only a spotlight, but in their hearts she was alive.

For some, this is the experience of Easter. The Lord was crucified, he died as all of us will one day die, and he was laid in a borrowed tomb, but in the hearts of his disciples he lives forever. An empty stage, but not an empty tomb. ….

Remember Woody Allen's comic assessment? "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work," he said. "I want to achieve immortality by not dying."

Which is it? Are we immortal because there are those who remember and cherish the fact that once we walked this "vale of tears" or are we immortal because Christ has once and forever battered down the gates of death? Empty stage or empty tomb?

King Duncan, Collected Sermons

__________________________

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

________________________

Easter Without the Cross

In a certain church marketing newsletter, called the Church's Advertising Network, a campaign has been developed to attract people to church during the season of Easter. In this public relations campaign, it is suggested that the cross be removed from the altar. According to the author, a survey has revealed that the cross is one of those symbols that the new generation of church goers considered too "churchy." One pastor interviewed for the campaign gave his whole hearted endorsement. "We are going to attempt to concentrate on the resurrection, and not the death of Jesus.

Easter without the cross. Rather an interesting thought. Is it possible to have resurrection without crucifixion? No. It distorts the entire gospel if crucifixion is separated from resurrection. The road to the empty tomb will forever pass by a cross. The one who is raised from the dead is none other than the crucified Christ. Easter without a cross is a hoax.

Brett Blair, ChristianGlobe Illustrations

________________________________

Celebrate!

There is an old, historic village in Salem, North Carolina. Every Easter morning, in the early hours of this day, thousands of people, many of them tourists who have come especially for this event, make their way towards the courtyard in front of a 200-year-old church, founded by the Moravians. Before daylight, five hundred members of various brass bands echo hymns from different parts of the city. Everyone converges on Salem Square to listen to the almost mystical-sounding music. As the first hint of the rising sun begins to soften the darkness, a hush falls over the vast throng of worshipers. When the church bell tolls at 6 a. m., the Bishop emerges from the church and announces in a loud, unwavering voice, "Christ is Risen!" And the crowd thunders back, "Christ is Risen indeed!" Then the band begins to play "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today," and everyone joins in the singing there in front of the church.

Then, in total silence, they walk in faithful procession to "God’s Acre," an ancient cemetery, where all the graves, with their newly-polished gravestones, are covered with flowers. Even the oldest graves, some of them dating back three hundred years, are decorated with forsythia, jonquils, tulips, azaleas - whatever happens to be blooming at the time. The service concludes there, with more singing and remembrance of those who have died since the previous Easter. There, in the awesome silence, with the beauty of the flowers all around, it’s as if the living are united with the dead in worship. A writer who witnessed the event said, "When you are in the midst of all this majesty and beauty, you cannot fail to believe in the resurrection."

And so it is in thousands of churches of every denomination on this greatest of days, Easter. The Day of Resurrection. The day of joy and hope. The central day of our faith and witness. Christmas is nice, but it’s not Easter. Anybody can get excited about Christmas, giving and receiving presents, ooh-ing and aah-ing over the baby born in Bethlehem. But when you come right down to it Christmas would be meaningless without Easter.

Johnny Dean