April 4th at 10:45 AM

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Sunday, April 4, Easter Sunday

Scripture: Mark 11:12-16:8

Sermon Title: Telling the Story

“If Christ has not been raised, our faith is futile.” I Corinthians 15:17

Friends and family,

We have almost made it through our Lenten journey to Easter, to resurrection Sunday, to the day that celebrates the foundation of our Christian faith.  As the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, “if Christ has not been raised, our faith is futile.”  But thanks be to God, Jesus was raised on that first Easter morning.  When the women went to the tomb to anoint his body with spices, they found the stone to the tomb rolled away and Jesus’ body was not there.

While believing in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead requires a leap of faith, that leap of faith is solidly grounded in the fact that something happened that first Easter Sunday Morning, which transformed the disciples from being filled with fear to being filled with faith.  I believe that what happened was Jesus rose from the dead just as he said he would.

In Mark 16, when the women encountered the empty tomb, they were told to go and tell Jesus’ disciples and Peter that he was going ahead of them to Galilee, where they would see him, just as he told them.  But instead of immediately going to tell the disciples, we’re told they said nothing to anyone.  The irony of course is that throughout Mark’s Gospel people are told not to share, but they share.  Then here on Easter, the women are told to “go and tell” but they do not go and tell the story.  Their reaction is understandable.  They had never encountered anything like that before.  And yet, eventually they must have told their story or else we would not be here celebrating Easter this weekend.

How do we tell the story of Easter?  How do we talk about events that changed not only the world, but have also changed our own lives?  How do we make God known in word and deed, just as Jesus made God known in word in deed?  There are many ways to tell the story, but at the heart of each of those ways is “the trustful letting go into a love that is completely surprising and works completely by its own rules.”

Pastor David