A Resurrection Stand for Life and Hope

John 20:1-18

Easter Sunday, Year A

This is the day. This is the day that God has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. This is the day that for me is the day is essential to Christianity. This is Easter day. Resurrection Day. Years ago I was in discussion with a friend who wasn’t sure it mattered whether the resurrection really happened. She said "It doesn’t affect my faith one way or the other if it was a historical event." I disagreed.  

I believed then as I do today that without the resurrection, there would be no Christian faith. Without Easter, there is no reason for Jesus to have been anything other than a preacher, a prophet, a rabble-rouser who was crucified by the Romans. Without Easter, there is no reason for Paul and Peter to take the message of Jesus Christ the world outside Jerusalem and Israel. Without Easter, there is no reason for the church.

Enough Dreams

It's been a long time since I posted anything here. Maybe this is a start. This is the sermon I preached at the Annual Meeting of the Northwest Wisconsin Association of the United Church of Christ, the last for which I will serve as Association Minister.

Exodus 16:10-20, 2 Corinthians 9:6-12

I've been feeling a little like Job lately. As I look back on it, I’ve had a heck of a three or four months. It started at Thanksgiving when I cooked for my family at my house for the first time in years, leaving the Saturday after that for a week in Cancun with friends, coming back from that to assist at a three-day workshop and then to go down immediately to De Forest for a staff meeting from which I came back to find that Rhonda, our wonderful secretary and my good friend had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. We barely had time to get used to her diagnosis before we found that she would have not the four to six months that the doctors originally thought, but a mere couple of weeks left to live. Rhonda died on January 15, and her funeral was on January 21. It was a very difficult month for her family, for everyone in the Association, and for me. February 3, we welcomed our new secretary, Mimi. February 5, I learned that my uncle had died, and I flew to Ohio on the 16th to visit with my family and to preach at his memorial service. I flew home on the 20th.

Except I didn't get to come home.