Call to worship:
When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him.2 And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3 And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” 4 And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back—it was very large. 5 And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. 6 And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.”8 And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
Mark 16:1-8
Gathering Video
Questions for reflection:
What evidence of the resurrection is most compelling to you?
How does the resurrection bring real life ramifications for today?
Corporate Prayer:
Our Father in heaven,
We are grateful for Your story and the grace we find in the gospel. We confess our only hope, joy, peace, and life is in our risen Savior Jesus. We ask you to empower us by the Holy Spirit to love You with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
In the name of Christ we pray, Amen
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Notes//Quotes//Slides:
Galatians 1:1-5
“Jesus never wrote a book, raised an army, or ruled a realm. And yet he has become, by any measure, the most influential person who has ever lived.” Rebecca McLaughlin
“It is hard today to understand just how offensive the idea of a crucified messiah would have been to most first-century Jews. Since no one would have made up the idea of a crucified messiah, Jesus must really have existed, must really have raised messianic expectations, and must really have been crucified.” - Bart Ehrman
“One could simply dismiss the resurrection as a lie, and declare belief in the risen Jesus to be the product of a deludable mind. However, there is this nagging fact to consider: one after another of those who claimed to have witnessed the risen Jesus went to their own gruesome deaths refusing to recant their testimony. That is not, in itself, unusual. Many zealous Jews died horribly for refusing to deny their beliefs. But these first followers of Jesus were not being asked to reject matters of faith based on events that took place centuries, if not millennia, before. They were being asked to deny something they themselves personally, directly encountered.” - Reza Aslan
“This event is psychologically surprising. It would have been as unexpected as Richard Dawkins, the vocal Oxford atheist, suddenly announcing that Jesus appeared to him in his study and that he was now a Christian. While we might think he was crazy, it would be hard to deny that something extraordinary had taken place to bring about such a complete reversal. In fact, the conversion of Paul is even more surprising than the hypothetical conversion of Dawkins, given that Paul embraced not a world religion with billions of followers but a despised, persecuted religious sect with no power and few adherents. Therefore, anyone who doubts the resurrection must provide a plausible account of why Paul underwent such a dramatic conversion in such a short period of time.” Neil Shenvi
“The complaint of the depressive individual, “Nothing is possible,” can only occur in a society that thinks, “Nothing is impossible.” The depressive has been wounded by internalized war. Depression is the sickness of a society that suffers from excessive positivity. It reflects a humanity waging war on itself. The exhausted, depressive achievement-subject grinds itself down, so to speak. It is tired, exhausted by itself, and at war with itself. Entirely incapable of stepping outward, of standing outside itself, of relying on the Other, on the world, it locks its jaws on itself; paradoxically, this leads the self to hollow and empty out. It wears itself out in a rat race it runs against itself.” - Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society
“Paul's point (in writing) is not simply that God is now my Father and I am now His son. God, in Jesus' great work of redemption, was not establishing a series of isolated personal relationships with His individual followers. He was creating a family of sons and daughters—siblings—who are now "all one in Christ Jesus.” The saving work of Christ therefore has a corporate, as well as an individual, dimension. For Paul, the church is a family.” - Joseph Hellerman, When the Church Was A Family
"Grace means there is nothing I can do to make God love me more, and nothing I can do to make God love me less. It means that I, even I who deserve the opposite, am invited to take my place at the table in God’s family.” - Philip Yancey
“This isn’t about “going to heaven.” It is about the launch of God’s “age to come” here and now, in the midst of the messy “present evil age.” For Paul the “new age” began, when Jesus of Nazareth came out of the tomb on the first Easter morning. The gospel message is all about something that has happened in Jesus, as a result of which the world is a different place. Jesus-followers are summoned to recognize that they now live in that different world and are to order their lives accordingly.” - N.T. Wright
Our true Good Shepherd
Holds dirty feet in his
God-hands and asks us
To let him love us
Down to the dirt
Under our toenails
KJ Ramsey
Lord,
You are the Shepherd who is always more ready
To serve than we are to be served.
Wash us with the water of your welcome.
Wipe our imaginations clean
Of the assumption that we are too dirty to love.
May we let you love us down to the dirt under our toenails
And the darkness in the crevices of our souls
And so learn the direction of love is down.
For you are the God who gets on the ground.
KJ Ramsey