Easter Sunday Service
- Apr 4
- 10 min read
Easter Day
5/4/26
Call to worship
Hymn 30(MP): Alleluia, alleluia
Time for all
Hymn 1072(MP): In Christ alone.
Matthew 26:31-35
Hymn 162(MP): From heaven you came
Luke 23: 32-43
Hymn 296(MP): I stand amazed.
Luke 24: 36-49
Hymn 357(MP): Jesus Christ is risen today
Benediction
Because Our Lord is risen: you are loved
Because the Father is speaking: you have purpose
Because the Spirit is working: you have strength
So leave this place, knowing that God is already out in the world before you, working away, and all he asks, is that you join him in his work.
His work within you, and his work is in the world, this day and forever.
Matthew 26:31-35
Here is what you need to understand.
Our healing doesn’t start with the resurrection. Our healing starts with honestly facing our life.
Jesus had talked many times about how he would be arrested and killed and rise again.
But there was nothing to reference these statements.
No one had ever resurrected themselves before.
There were prophesies about the ‘Suffering Servant’ but they were thought to be metaphors or analogies for maybe a single king of the past or maybe the people of Israel as a whole.
There was nothing to imply that the ‘Messiah’ would also be ‘the suffering servant’.
So when Jesus talked about these things maybe it was a parable, or a simile, or a metaphor, or an analogy...who could tell.
And then, on the brink of success, they had entered the capital city unopposed by the Roman occupation, the people had recognised Jesus as the rightful leader of Israel...
at this most glorious point, Jesus speaks of betrayal.
Jesus speaks of death and resurrection.
But what does that mean?
Will he be killed and someone else take up the mantle?
Will his death be the spark that makes the people rise up?
More than anything else...it just didn’t make sense that at the peak of their power,
when the dream was within their grasp, that one of them would undermine it.
The problem was that the disciples were like us, they may not see themselves as the heroes of the story, they are not that arrogant,
but they didn’t see themselves as the bad guys.
They didn’t see the potential within themselves to just make a mess of it.
And that was a real problem for them, as it is for us.
How can we accept that Jesus loves us as we are, when WE don’t admit who we really are, what we can really do?
Let us pray
Heavenly Father,
Betrayal seems a hard word.
We may fail you at times because of our indifference or apathy,
we may ignore the people that are struggling...pretend that we don’t see them, or worse live lives that make sure that we can’t see them,
we may go out of our way to make sure that our life isn’t messy and avoid all those that might make it messy,
but is that betrayal?
Remind us that you have created us to have a purpose and meaning, that our lives and our decisions are significant.
And that to live a life not following the path you set for us is to deny the path you want us to follow.
That the world is full of opportunities that we deny,
not only at the cost of our character,
but also at the cost of all of those who we could have helped, should have helped.
But what can we do?
The past is the past and we cannot rewind it and try again.
What do we do when we face the world as it is, instead of what it could have been?
What can we do when we face the person in the mirror that we are, and not the person that we could have been?
Help us to seek the answer and find the redemption that we need.
This we ask in Jesus name.
Amen
Luke 23: 32-43
In this passage we see the real work of Christ.
The real work of Christ is to see us as we are, and to forgive us.
Every parent knows that at some point their children will disobey them.
It may be out of ignorance,
it may be out of anger,
it may be out of testing boundaries,
it may be because the child is just tired and wants to lash out.
But at some point their child will disobey them.
And the parent has to decide how they will respond.
We are Gods creation, we are his children.
And at some point we disobey our Heavenly Father.
The Bible is full of disobedience.
Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Abraham being told to go to the place where God is directing him, and then the first thing he does is leave there to go to Egypt.
While Moses is getting the Ten Commandments the people at the bottom of the mountain are breaking the first commandment.
The Israelite people choosing a king to rule them over God.
The religious people ignoring the plight of the poor and the downtrodden while they try to bribe off God with sacrifices in the temple.
The rulers trusting in alliances with foreign powers rather than trusting in God.
The whole of the Old Testament is a catalogue, a history of the peoples disobedience to God.
They then try to understand God’s response.
But humans trying to understand God would be like ants trying to understand humans. From the ants perspective things might look very different than the reality of what we do and why we do it.
Equally the Jewish people looking at what was happening and trying to understand it from God’s perspective was always going to be prone to misinterpretation.
So it was...that they felt God was angry with them, God was punishing them, God was rejecting them.
And the only way to change those misunderstandings was for God to come down as a human being and tell us himself in a language that we could understand.
In the New Testament we see the cycle in the Old Testament was followed in the new.
God made himself known, God blessed the people, God healed and guided the people. and God was betrayed, his children were disobedient.
They wanted to do their own thing in their own way, they did not want to follow God’s path for them, they rejected God.
All that disobedience showed itself in the ultimate rejection of God in our lives, trying to kill him off, get rid of him forever from our lives.
And for the first time we could hear God’s response to our disobedience in our own words, words that we could understand.
‘Forgive them Father! They don’t know what they are doing.’
That single sentence changes everything we may think about God, and our relationship with God.
‘Forgive them Father! They don’t know what they are doing.’
Let us pray (adapted from Eddie Askew in Breaking the Rules)
Lord
I sometimes wonder why you don’t give up on us.
Guiding us should never be this hard.
We take the freedom that you’ve given us, that you have nurtured so lovingly, and we use it to rebel.
We forget so easily the times you have supported us in our plight,
the nights you have sat with us when we couldn’t sleep,
the inspirational guidance when we have been lost,
the times of comfort when we have felt alone,
all the moments of your divine help and presence,
and we ignore them running blindly into trouble caused by our own self interest and ego.
‘Not my fault,’ we say, ‘the other guy began it all. The battles not of my choosing, but I’ll finish it.’
It is so easy to ignore what we have done, or not done, to create the discontent in the world, provoke the anger in others, that inspire petty hatreds which in turn inspire thoughts of violence.
And then to rub salt into the wound...when we spoil life’s image in ourselves and others, and see no way out, we lay the blame on you.
We ask, ‘Why does God let this happen?’
It must be hard Lord to see your loving kindness thrown back at you in glib hypocrisy.
And yet the wonder is that you don’t give up.
Your love goes on through every heart that tried to make the world a better place.
Your Spirit’s compassion nudging us nearer to understanding the possibility of joy and reconciliation.
And it all begins with your Son’s words to us...
Father forgive them. They do not know what they are doing.
May we hear those words, may we understand those words are for us, may we respond as you would want us to.
Amen.
Luke 24: 36-49
And so we come to the real offering of Easter.
These words coming from Christ to the disciples, ‘Peace be with you.’
Those words aren’t given to the women.
I checked. The angels tell the women not to be afraid, because they are faced with angels and who knows what they look like.
To Mary when she is faced with Jesus and thinks he is the gardeners, Jesus just calls out her name, ‘Mary.’
To the two men going to Emmaus Jesus asks a question, ‘What are you talking about to each other as you walk along?’
But to the disciples he says, Peace be with you.’
Why?
Because they know in their hearts what it is like to be disobedient, to betray everything that matters.
They have heard that Jesus spoke of forgiveness from the cross.
But do they believe it, can they believe it?
And then they are faced with the consequences of their actions, Jesus is in front of them.
You know how hard it is to believe in forgiveness?
It is nearly impossible.
I would estimate that 99% of criminal drams, horror movies, westerns, science fiction films, war movies, pirate movies...are based on the idea that there is no forgiveness.
The criminal that does something bad and thinks that they have got away with it, but the detective that hunts them down and makes them face the consequence.
The action movie where the evil guy is trying to take over the world and does monstrous things to get his way, but the hero wipes out all his body guards before fighting the bad guy in some spectacular way and killing the bad guy and saving the world.
The towns folk who kill off someone who may be evil or they may have mistaken to be evil, and the ghost or the spirit of the evil comes back to haunt them all, killing them all off one by one.
The evil cattle rustler, or cattle baron who thinks that they are above the law, and does what they want, then the stranger comes in to town and shoots all the bad guys and then rides off into the sunset.
Bad is done to the good guy, and revenge is sought and viciously executed.
And here we have eleven disciples, who have betrayed the most innocent man ever born.
Now that man has returned, and now he is face to face with them.
In a locked room.
They thought they were safe from the dangers of the Roman Empire in that locked room,
and now they find themselves trapped with the person they betrayed,
the one person who has the power of life and death in his hands.
They have every right to be scared.
They are scared that they will get what they deserve.
They are scared that Jesus will react the way they would react if what happened to Jesus had happened to them.
And what Jesus does is change the narrative.
‘Peace be with you.’
And this is what is really important for all of us.
Jesus isn’t just offering them forgiveness. Jesus is offering them the forgiven life.
Jesus can offer them forgiveness, but it means nothing if they don’t live a life that has been forgiven.
That was what changed the disciples.
No longer was their life shackled by shame.
No longer was their life hindered by chains of fear.
No longer was their life burdened by regrets and lost chances.
They could go forward in hope,
they could go forward with confidence in a relationship that was eternal,
they could go forward in belief in a God who walked beside them.
That is the life lived forgiven.
And that is what God offers us today, and every day.
Each day is a day that we can hear the only words that matter...
Father forgive them, they know not what they do.
and
Peace be with you.
We can live a life...
No longer shackled by shame.
No longer hindered by chains of fear.
No longer burdened by regrets and lost chances.
The reason this day is so special, is that we are offered a life forgiven.
And with Christ’s love and guidance, that life can start now.
Let us pray
Heavenly Father
What do we do with a life forgiven?
Do we waste it, just carrying on doing what we always do?
Do we keep it to ourselves, just hoping that nothing changes that blots our copy book again?
That first Easter was a new beginning for everyone.
No one excepted that day to turn out the way it did.
Roman soldiers were confused, High Priests were uncertain, and most of the population just carried on doing their daily grind of getting on with life.
But your disciples, they were changed.
They followed your vision rather than their own.
They sought to spread the kingdom of heaven rather than any political or nationalist agenda.
They offered community rather than individualism.
They saw that what they had in life was gifts to be shared rather than treasures to be horded.
They had a heart that was full of love, compassion, kindness, generosity.
In truth, they became more Christ-like.
And so we come today realising that that is still what you offer your disciples, a life forgiven.
And this day, in this moment, you ask us if we want to accept it, not as a contract, not as an emotional response, but as a life to be lived.
In our silence we give you our response...
Lead us where you would have us go.
Teach us what you would have us learn.
Inspire us what you would have us do.
Amen
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