Easter 2018

St. John Chrysostum (died 407) penned these words in an Easter Sermon:

"Hell is angered because it has been frustrated, it is frustrated because it has been mocked, it is angered because it has been destroyed, it is angered because it has been reduced to nothing, it is angered because it it now captive. It seized a body, and lo! it discovered God; it sei9zed earth, and behold! it encountered heaven; it seized the visible, and was overcome by the invisible. O death, where is your sting! O hell, where is your victory? Christ is risen and life is freed, Christ is risen and the tomb is empty."

Trevor Hudson writing in Pauses For Lent "The breathtaking message of Good Friday and Easter Sunday is that life comes out of death. The big question facing us as we journey into the events of the cross and the resurrection is this: What do we need to die to this Easter in order to enter more fully into the new life Christ wants to give us?"

The Spiritual Formation Bible commenting on John 19:38 - 20:18;

"Joseph of Arimathea offers a tomb for Jesus' body. Nicodemus says his good-bye to Jesus with a generous gift of burial spices. Peter and John (the other disciple) see an empty tomb with the linen burial cloths 'rolled up.' Mary weeps before the gardener - until he says her name! Jesus the risen one knows your name too. So be very still for a moment, clear your mind of any distraction and listen as Jesus says your name."

I find it thrilling and comforting to hear Jesus speak my name.

Earlier in John's gospel Jesus taught, "He calls his own sheep by name... and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice." (John 10:3-4)

"Easter reminds us that the risen Christ is always able to bring light and life where there seems to be only darkness and death. What wonderful good news this is. We are inded Easter people living in a Good Friday world.

Trygve Johnson, chaplain at Hope College offered this "Resurrection Prayer" in our worship folder today:

"In you Christ, we see the sufferings of this present moment, but, in you, we are awake also to the glory that is revealed, as your resurrection life breaks into our life; where the reign of a slain King, rises to inaugurate the new hope for all of his kingdom!

In you, Christ, hope awakens the faith that stirs and quickens the soul, and gives us the breath that keeps our love alive! It is love - your love - that awakens us to discover the truth that we were never forsaken; that though you were silent, you were never absent!

For in rising from the dead you showed us how divine love, reaches into the grave we dig for ourselves and pulls us out, so that we may once again enter with you into new life, in ways both dramatic and ordinary, in ways foreign and familiar, in ways that awaken reason to imagine how new life with you sets us free to experience who we were always created to be; Your beloved daughters and sons, who are at last, awake, to be one with you again! Amen."

Philippians 3:10 "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like Him in his death."

Christ is risen!... He is risen indeed!