Marsden Road Uniting Church Carlingford
------------------------------------------------------------
Look Again,
Easter Day - year of Mark 9.30am
Gathering God’s People
Acknowledgement of First Peoples
We
acknowledge the first people who have cared for this Land, where we worship,
the Wallumedgal.
May our worship join with the voices of the First Peoples of this Land.
A LIT CANDLE IS PROCESSED IN:
The candle is placed on the table with these words:
Alleluia!
Christ is risen!
Christ is
risen indeed!
This is the
day that that the Lord has made
Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Call to Worship
-
(Abingdon 2013)
When grief holds sway and you feel lost and abandoned... join Mary and the women in the garden, as they cast aside their funeral spices to rejoice in awe and wonder. Fear is healed by hope this day. Death is swallowed up in victory.
Hear the good news:
Christ is Risen!
But we watched him die.
Sing the good news:
Christ is alive!
But we saw him buried in the tomb.
Share the good news.
Death has lost its sting!
We will sing with the angels and laugh with the saints of God.
Hymn TIS 368: This
is the day the Lord has made.
(tune – Arlington)
Opening prayer
God of mystery and might, when we dread the dawn of grief and pain, surprise us with the light of your wondrous love. We come to the tomb expecting death but find life instead. As we behold the glory of our salvation, take us back to that moment of faith when fear was healed by hope and death was swallowed up by life. In the holy awe of Easter morning, may our hearts rest in silent gratitude before they shout that Christ is alive and has called us by name. Amen
A Prayer of Confession
During the week of his passion and death, we
turned away from your Son, O God.
Even after Christ shared table with us,
offering us the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation, we shrank into the
shadows and drank the dregs of our regret.
Even after Christ urged us to keep the faith,
lest we succumb to temptation in the time of trial, we fell asleep while he
prayed in the garden and ran when the soldiers arrived.
But we are here now, Merciful One. As we profess the depth of our gratitude for being called as your disciples, may our living help heal the pain of Christ’s dying. Amen.
Declaration of Forgiveness
God, who raised Jesus from the dead, offers us
life with Christ and forgiveness in his name.
Thanks, be to God!
The
Peace
The peace of Christ be with you.
The peace of Christ be with you always.
(You may like to exchange a sign of peace with those around you.)
A Word with The Young People –
Theme: The Resurrection of Jesus Christ
Object: A small juice glass half-filled with juice.
As you can see, I have a glass with some juice in it. There are two ways
of looking at this glass of juice. Some people would look at the glass and say
it is half empty. There are others who would look at the glass and say it is
half full. (Drink all of the juice in the glass.)
Well, we solved that problem, didn't we? Now everyone who looks at this
glass would say that it is empty, but guess what? Everyone still wouldn't
look at the glass in the same way. Some would look at the glass and grumble and
complain because it empty. Others would look at the glass and see it as a glass
just waiting to be filled with good things to drink. I guess there are always
different ways to look at any situation.
On the Sunday morning after Jesus was crucified, a woman named Mary went
to visit the grave where the body of Jesus had been laid. When she got there,
she found that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb. She ran to find
someone to tell them what she had seen. She found two of the disciples, Peter
and John, and she said to them, "They have taken our Lord out of the tomb
and we don't know where they have put him."
The three of them immediately ran to the tomb. When they got there, they
all saw the same thing, but they didn't all look at it in the same way.
Peter looked and was curious. The Bible says Peter went in the empty
tomb and looked around. He saw strips of linen laying around and the cloth that
Jesus had been buried in folded neatly and placed where the body had been.
"Hmmm, very interesting," Peter might have said to himself.
Mary looked and was sad. The Bible tells us that Mary didn't even go
inside the empty tomb. She just stood outside the tomb and wept because she
feared that someone had stolen the body of Jesus.
John looked and believed. The bible says that John went inside the tomb
and he saw and believed. Now, I don't know exactly how much John understood,
but I think he believed that Jesus had risen from the grave just as he said he
would.
Three people -- they all saw the same thing -- one was curious, one was sad, and one believed. I think that is pretty much the same way people react to the story of Jesus today. Some people hear the story, and they are curious, others hear it and think it is sad, others hear it and believe. How do you look at it?
Offering Prayer
Hymn TIS 362: Jesus Christ is risen today.
(tune – Easter Hymn)
The Service of Holy Communion
The Great Thanksgiving
The Lord be with you.
And
also, with you.
Lift up your hearts.
We
lift them to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give our thanks and praise.
Living God, on this
most joyous day we offer our thanks and praise to you, creator
of heaven and earth, creator and lover of all humanity. Even when we turned
away from you, you never rejected us. You spoke words of mercy and love through
the prophets; promising to swallow up death forever and to host a banquet for
all people; a feast of life-giving sustenance. And so, with your people on earth and all
the company of heaven we praise your name and join their unending hymn:
Holy,
holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, Heaven and earth are full of your
glory. Hosanna in the highest!
Blessed
is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest!
Holy
God, this meal which we share today is indeed the celebration that death has
been defeated forever. We celebrate also how
the language of your love became audible through the Word made flesh, Jesus
Christ, your beloved Son, our beloved Lord; and how the nature of your love
became visible through his life and sacrificial love. He graced lives with
healing and hope, with compassion and power and as if that were not enough, he
gave his very life for us. On the night of his betrayal, as he sat at the table
and broke bread with his friends, he said:
'Take and eat; this is my body which is broken for
you. Remember me each time you do this.'
After they had eaten, he took the cup, and said:
Christ has died.
Christ is risen.
Christ will come again!
Blessing and honour and glory and power are yours for ever and ever. Amen.
The
Breaking of the Bread
We break this bread and take this cup so that we can all share in the life of Christ. God's gifts for God's people. Thanks, be to God.
Lamb of God
Lamb of God you take away the sins of the
world,
have mercy on us.
Lamb of God you take away the sins of the
world,
have mercy on us.
Lamb of God you take away the sins of the
world,
grant us peace.
Invitation to Communion
Jesus says: ‘The bread
that God gives is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’
(Thanks be to God.)
Come, everything is ready.
Prayer
after Communion
The Service of the Word
The Gospel Reading: Mark 16:1-8
After the final
reading the reader will say For the Word of the Lord
Please respond by saying Thanks be to God.
Readings: NRSV Translation
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
1 Now I should remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, 2 through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you—unless you have come to believe in vain. 3 For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4 and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to someone untimely born, he appeared also to me. 9 For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace towards me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them—though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. 11 Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.
Mark 16:1-8
1 When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and 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 They had been saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?’4 When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. 5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. 6 But he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.’ 8 So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
Preaching
of the Word - Look Again,
In the darkness on the
third day after their rabbi’s execution, three women check one last time to
make sure they have everything they need. Followers of Jesus in his lifetime,
they want to be faithful to their teacher in death. Jesus had been robbed of a
proper Jewish burial as his death came right on the verge of the Sabbath. The
women intend to make this one thing right in a universe turned hopelessly away
from God. The Twelve are hiding in a locked room with other disciples for fear
they will be found out as followers of Jesus. Meanwhile, the women prepare to
be at the tomb as dawn breaks.
In purely human terms,
the story of the would-be Messiah from Nazareth in Galilee has come to a brutal
end. For the Roman colonial government, Jesus is a minor statistic, yet another
Jewish revolutionary crucified in Rome’s ongoing efforts to preserve the peace
in Palestine. The ringleader, Jesus, has been publicly and cruelly killed. His
disciples have vanished for fear of a similar fate. For the keepers of the
status quo, this has been a successful Passover festival. Jesus’ movement is
buried with its leader.
The women arrive at the
tomb and looming large is an insurmountable obstacle between them and their
task. The women know they don’t have the strength to budge the great stone
blocking the entrance to the tomb. As they walk to the garden, they wonder,
“Who will roll the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?”
Our Gospel reading for
this morning tells us that the women then looked up. The original Greek text
[anablepo] for this can also mean the women looked again. The women come upon
the tomb and as they expected, the stone is rolled in front of the entrance. They
don’t stand a chance of getting near Jesus on their own. Then they look again,
or perhaps do a double take, and realise that the stone has been rolled away.
Our writer of Mark has
already prepared us for this need to do a double take. It works something like
bi-focal vision in this Gospel. Twice in the Gospel, Jesus has healed blind men
and allowed them to see again. The word used to describe the two blind men
seeing again is the same one used here, to look again [anablepo]. Already in
those stories of healing the blind, there was a sense in which spiritual
healing allowed the men to see again with physical sight.
In Mark’s Gospel, faith
gives us the ability to see the world as God sees it. We gain bifocal vision.
When we look with the eyes of the world, we see the obstacles and problems. The
stone blocks our path, and it is too large for us to even budge. We look with
the eyes of faith and a different picture comes into focus. God has already
removed the obstacles that we could not remove by our own power.
This is seen most clearly
in the Easter story. The three women are blocked by an obstacle, which they
stood no chance of removing on their own. They ask one another, “Who will roll
away the stone?” Yet, when they look again through the eyes of faith, they see
that the stone has already been rolled away. The Greek here is in the perfect
tense. The stone that blocks their way is already long gone when they do the
Easter double take and see the world as God sees it.
What are the stones that
need to be rolled away in our lives? Is the obstacle one of relationships that
can’t be made right? Or is our path blocked by an addiction to alcohol, drugs,
or some other destructive cycle from which we don’t have the power to break
free? All of us can find our way blocked by obstacles too big to budge. The
story of Easter tells us that God offers the ultimate leverage to remove the
obstacles in our way.
If you rely on your own
might, your own abilities, your own wisdom, the stone in your way will be more
than you can face. Full Stop. But, when you have the courage to admit you don’t
have the power to remove the obstacle, you can turn the problem over to God.
Then with the eyes of faith, you may come in time to see that the
insurmountable obstacle has been rolled away.
Yet, that is not the end
of the Gospel reading. Scripture is if nothing else, the most realistic of
books, and today’s reading is no exception. The women enter the tomb to find an
angel, a divine messenger, with the news that Jesus has been raised from the
dead and has gone ahead of his disciples to Galilee. It would be wonderful to
report that the women were immediately filled with joy.
Instead, we are told that
Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome fled from the tomb seized
by terror and stricken with awe. Rather than spreading the joy of resurrection,
we are told, “They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
It is there that the
reading ends. The Gospel we call Mark offers the challenge of a circular story.
The Gospel begins with Jesus in Galilee challenging people to come and follow
him; at the close of the story, Jesus has once more gone ahead into Galilee
holding out the offer of discipleship to any who will come and follow him.
So, what about you? Would
you have the courage to leave the empty tomb and go back to Galilee to take up
the task of being Jesus’ disciple now that you know the way of discipleship led
to the cross and the grave? Even with the triumph of Easter, we can fearfully
retreat now that we know the cost of discipleship.
The Gospel, the Good News
offers a dual challenge this Easter. The first is to look at the very real
obstacles in your life with the eyes of faith. The things that you are powerless
to change are not obstacles to God. Through grace, you can see that God has
already removed the problems plaguing you, if you have the faith to push ahead
on the journey of life and journey through them.
But the second prong of
the challenge of the Gospel, the Good News comes when you push ahead. Just as
the women found the stone rolled away only to be struck dumb with terror and
awe at the news of Jesus’ resurrection, we too can lose our focus and stop
seeing the world as God sees it. The second challenge then is the harder one.
Once you have seen that God can remove the obstacles blocking your way, then we
are called and invited to follow where Jesus leads.
The three women that
morning did break free from fear. We know that they were all active in the
earliest Christian church. They found the courage to follow Jesus even after
they had learned the cost, they might have to one day pay for their faith in
him.
Jesus enables the removal
of the obstacles from our paths if we stop trying to remove them only by your
own might. Then he will give us the grace to continue the journey. The path is
open to each of us. Jesus is still out there beckoning, “Follow me” to those
who listen. We only need respond by faith and say yes to the invitation.
For Alleluia! Christ is
risen.
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
Hymn TIS 380: Yours be the glory.
(tune – Maccabeus)
Intercessory
Prayers
- Easter – Year B
Praise and honour to you, Jesus Christ, for
you have triumphed gloriously.
We pray for your world: for the welfare of all
your people and for your creation entrusted to our care; for all in positions
of authority; for men and women in their daily work.
Roll away the stones of hatred and greed. Transform
us with your spirit of justice and righteousness, that all your people may
share in the freedom of your risen life.
Risen God, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Praise and honour to you, Jesus Christ, for
you have cancelled the power of sin.
We pray for your worldwide church: for our
brothers and sisters in Christ, for the people of this congregation and for all
wherever they are in the world who make or renew baptismal vows today. Roll
away the stones of discord and unbelief. Transform your church with your spirit
of wisdom.
and truth, that we may be in the world a
witness to your risen life.
Risen God, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Praise and honour to you, Jesus Christ, for
you show us the mighty power of love.
We pray for the communities in which we live
and work; for our families, our friends and all whom we love; for the forgotten
and undervalued people of society. Roll away the stones of apathy and
selfishness. Transform our lives with your spirit of love and forgiveness, that
we may share in the joy of your risen life.
Risen God, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Praise and honour to you, Jesus Christ, for you
bring us hope when all seems lost.
We pray for all who suffer for the hungry and
homeless, the lonely and friendless; for the sick and the sorrowing and all who
care for them. Roll away the stones of pain and despair. Transform the Iives of
all who suffer with your comfort and balm, that they may share in the hope of
your risen life.
Risen God, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Praise and honour to you,
Jesus Christ, for you have broken the bonds of death.
We give you thanks for your
faithful people of every age; for Mary Magdalene, Peter and John and for all
who have seen you and believed. May we, following their example and yours, cast
off all that binds us in death. Transform our lives by your risen power, that
we, with all your saints, may come to share forever in the glory of your risen
life.
Risen God, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
The Lord's Prayer
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and for ever. Amen
Hymn TIS 755: You
shall go out with joy.
(tune – Trees of the Field)
Benediction
Christ is Risen! Go
forth in joy.
From
darkness and despair, we go to share Christ’s hope
and joy.
Christ
is Risen! Go forth in faith.
From
doubt and betrayal, we go to walk in faith and
fidelity.
Christ
is Risen! Go forth to live.
From
suffering and death, we go to heal a broken world.
Christ
is Risen. Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed!
This is the day that that the Lord has made.
Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Hymn TIS 778: Shalom to you.
(tune -
Somos Del Senor)
