Easter 1 2022

As I mentioned before, we are, I guess, blessedly out of service sheets.

So if someone sits next to you who doesn't have one, would you please share with them?

Hallelujah! Christ is risen.

The Lord is risen.

Hallelujah.

There is one body and one spirit.

There is one hope that God calls for us.

One Lord, one faith, one baptism.

One God and Father of all.

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Let us pray.

O God, who for our redemption gave your only begotten Son to the death of the cross.

And by his glorious resurrection delivered us from the power of our enemy.

Grant us so to die daily to sin that we may evermore live with him in the joy of his resurrection.

Through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

All the children are are welcome to come with Mr.

Alex to children's church.

All the kids.

Even if you're not a member of the church, that's fine.

Reading from Acts.

Peter began to speak to Cornelius and the other Gentiles.

I truly understand that God shows no partiality.

But in every nation, anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.

You know the message he sent to the people of Israel.

Preaching peace by Jesus Christ.

He is Lord of all.

That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee, after the baptism that John announced.

How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power.

How he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil.

For God was with him.

We are witnesses to all that he did in Judea and in Jerusalem.

They put him to death by hanging him on a tree.

But God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people, but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.

He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as a judge of the living and the dead.

All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in Jesus receives forgiveness of sins through his name.

Hear what the Spirit is saying to God's people.

Thanks be to God.

But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.

For as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.

But each in his own order.

Then comes the end when he hands over the kingdom of God to the Father.

After he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power.

For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.

The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

Hear what the Spirit is saying to God's people.

Thank you.

After all, what we celebrate on Easter is what we are all about.

Everything we do is all about the story that we tell on this day.

As Paul says, if Christ is not raised from the dead, then not in this lesson.

If Christ is not raised from the dead, then there is no resurrection of the dead.

But we know there is resurrection of the dead.

So Christ is raised from the dead.

Sort of a circular argument.

And a trained rhetorician might take him to task.

But here's the thing.

This day gives us everything we have in the nature of hope.

Christian hope.

The prayer book says that because Christ is raised, we also will be raised.

So everything we know about is hopeful.

But I gotta tell you, these days are hard on me.

They're tough on me in the hope department.

Because every time I pick up the New York Times or the Houston Chronicle, every time I turn on the news, on the television, or the radio, every single day gives me a reason to chip away at that hope a little bit.

I mean, we've been stuck in a pandemic for two years.

The kids who are in uh out in Sunday school right now, they had to go to school on an iPad.

You had to work from home.

Or maybe you got to work from home.

That's a possibility, too.

This has been for two years.

And then suddenly, a month before last, we woke up and found that there's a war on the other side of the globe.

That seems to be unjust.

And we have a difficult time justifying why that's going on.

We have a lot of things going on these days that are hard.

At the Easter Vigil this morning, which I recommend to you next year, I really do.

We read stories from the Old Testament.

That's what you do at the Vigil.

You read stories from the Old Testament about the history of God's interaction with God's people.

And I gotta tell you, I need some Old Testament.

I do.

We read the story of the creation from the first part of Genesis.

We read the story of Israel crossing the Red Sea.

We read the story of the Valley of Dry Bones.

We read Ezekiel's story about God giving the people a new heart and a new spirit.

I need that stuff today because I gotta tell you, on my own, I'm having a little bit of trouble in the hope department.

I'd love, I loved sitting here and listening to Amber read that story from Genesis about the creation.

About how God spoke the world into being.

God said, gosh, what we need around here are some lights in the heaven, and they appeared.

What we need around here is some four-footed animals, and there they were.

What we need around here is some creepy crawly things, and there they were.

What we need around here is someone made in our image.

And here we are.

I need that.

And then listening to the crossing at the Red Sea when the children of Israel are running away from the Egyptians who want to either kill them or bring them back to slavery, right?

And yet, God opens up a way in the sea for them to walk through on dry land.

I gotta tell you, as difficult as it is for me to generate some hope these days, can you imagine being one of those Israelites?

You imagine standing at the shore of the lake and the Egyptians are hard upon you and they're coming fast, chariots and chariot drivers.

Can you imagine?

And what am I going to do?

This is the definition of between a rock and a hard place, right?

They had a little difficulty generating some hope.

But God was there, opened up a way in the sea, or the valley of dry bones.

Ezekiel is transported by God to a battlefield.

There's been a battle a long, long time ago, and all of the dead were just left there.

And they've been there so long that the elements had taken away everything from the bones.

There was no skin, there was no hair, there was no toenails, there was no nothing except the bones.

And the Bible says, and behold, they were very dry.

In other words, those bones were dead, dead and dead.

God says to Ezekiel.

Ezekiel is no fool.

Ezekiel says, Sovereign Lord, you are the one that knows that.

And God says, I tell you what, you prophesy to the bones.

You prophesy to these dead bones.

Ezekiel looks around to make sure nobody's watching.

Because you know, who's going to prophesy to a bunch of dead bones?

It's easy for me to sit up here and talk to you because you're alive.

Your heads nod and you smile.

Some of you have your eyes closed back there.

You know, but but to prophesy to a bunch of dead bones, what's that all about?

But it's God that said it, and so Ezekiel prophesies to the dead bones, and the Bible says that there is a rattling sound.

And the bones start coming together, and bone is joined to its bone, and sinews come on, that's muscles, and skin and stuff all come on, but there's no breath.

And so God says to Ezekiel, Prophesy to the breath.

Well, actually, God said prophesy to the Ruach because Ezekiel didn't speak English.

Ruach is the Hebrew word for pennuma, which is the Greek word, that means moving air, like Father Mike's been talking to us about since the first part of Lent.

Talking about moving air.

It could be translated wind, it could be translated breath, it could be translated spirit.

So prophesy to the rua, says God.

Well, this time Ezekiel doesn't even look around to see if anybody's there.

Because it worked last time.

He figured why not?

So he prophesies to the breath.

And what do you know?

The breath of life comes into these formerly dead people, and God says, That is my people.

And I am their God.

Because you see, I am not the God of the dead, I am God of the living.

And he says to Ezekiel, and he says to you, and he says to me, you are to prophesy to this world.

You are the one who in the midst of pandemic are to prophesy hope and life.

You are the one who, in the midst of warfare, are to prophesy peace.

You are the one who is to prophesy that I am the God of the living, and that is all of you.

Every single one.

Whether you are sitting in church on Easter Day or not, I am the God of the living.

Because you see, I need some old, so you see, I need some Old Testament here.

I know that Jesus is raised from the dead.

I know that.

I have it down inside of me and my heart and my brain and my neck and everything.

That's all down in me, and it does provide my faith.

But faith is not a matter of just reading the stories and believing them.

Now, I wish it was.

I wish I could just read the story of the Red Sea without having to read anything else and just believe it.

See, the thing is, we don't have a corroborating story for Israel crossing the Red Sea.

We don't have a corroborating story for the narrative of the creation in Genesis.

We don't have a corroborating story for the Valley of Dry Bones.

We don't have an independent witness.

But everything else I have read in the Bible tells me that those stories are true.

The other things lend credence to these things because they tell me things that I have a witness for.

And we had no idea where we were going to get the money.

See, I have those kinds of things that tell me that God is alive, that Jesus is not a charlatan or a fake, and that my faith is worth something.

Now, so you don't mix this up.

Faith is not believing something without any proof.

That's not faith.

Faith is not belief without proof.

Faith is trust without reservation.

Let me see that again.

Faith is not belief without proof.

Faith is trust without reservation.

Faith is taking that leap, you've heard of a leap of faith, taking that leap, trusting that there will be a safe place for me to land.

Now, I do have stories in my history, my own history of brief life.

I do have stories that tell me that my faith is not misplaced.

You have those stories too.

I'm not talking to the uninitiated here.

You have those stories as well.

You know when God showed up because there isn't any other explanation for what happened.

You know that, don't you?

You can nod your heads if you want.

I see a lot of nodding heads.

You know when that messenger from God, who Father Mike told us that angel means messenger.

That's a Greek word for messenger.

You know when that angel showed up, that messenger from God.

You know, I want those things to happen now.

I want Jesus to come riding in on the great war horse called Leroy.

And I want Jesus to come all over through the U.S.

and wave his hand and say, Be gone, COVID.

And everybody is suddenly healthy.

I want that.

I want Jesus to go to Eastern Europe and say, you folks get back across the border and don't you come across again or I'll fuss at you.

I want Jesus to do that.

But Jesus didn't do it the first time, and Jesus isn't going to do it the second time.

Because when Jesus came to save the world, he did not come to save the politics.

Maybe even Jesus thought that was a fool's errand.

But what he came to do was to save you from your fear of making a fool out of yourself.

Paul calls that being a fool for Christ.

Jesus came to take away your fear of making a fool out of yourself or of dying.

You should not be afraid to make a fool out of yourself, and you should not be afraid to die.

That's what Jesus came to teach us.

Don't be afraid of dying.

Dying is not the worst thing in the world.

Because as Corinthians says, the last enemy is death.

And I know that Jesus is conquering death by death, but I gotta tell you that I don't think death is dead enough yet.

Jesus still got some more work to do because it continues to control the lives of way too many people.

Paul says to the Corinthians, if for this life only we have faith, then we are above all people to be pitied.

In other words, if all we do is read the stories and think about how God was present back then, if all we do is look at Craig sitting here, a faithful servant of God, and he's still with us today, and have faith that God is still around because of that.

If that's all we got, then we are above all people to be pitied.

Why?

Because the faith that you, that God wants you to have has to do with not just yesterday, not just today, but every day in the future.

And the faith that you and I work on having tells us that God will never abandon us.

In spite of all of the evidence to the contrary.

Something bad happened to me the other day.

I'm gonna tell you what it was, boring, but something bad happened to me.

And I might have, I could have said, well, I guess God just wasn't with me.

If you were here on Good Friday, you heard me ask that question about God.

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

God, were you there?

Did you even show up?

But the answer to that question is God was there because God did not come into the world to take away your pain or to relieve you from all your suffering.

God came into the world to sanctify that suffering and say, and to say that your suffering is part of what it means to be made in my image.

Darn the luck.

You know what I mean?

Really, your suffering is part of what it means to be made in my image.

Because as Father Mike told us during Lent, the Jesus was not God's plan B.

It was plan A.

It was the first thing that God decided to do after God made the first ones.

Come and enjoy some of this stuff.

But our enjoyment of our lives includes the fact of our death.

You know that.

Anybody in here think they're not gonna die?

Because I'm gonna preach a different sermon if you do.

Everybody knows we're gonna die.

The kids in Sunday school know they're gonna die.

They know they're gonna die, and they know that you're gonna die.

This is part of the life that is a gift from God.

So I need a little Old Testament.

I need the grace of the God that when the man and the woman in the garden ate the fruit, I need the grace of God that sews together clothes for them.

Because you know, outside the garden it gets cold.

And there's the sticker bushes out there.

And God sews together.

You know that's in there.

That's in the story.

It's one little line.

We almost don't even see it when we read the story.

Can you imagine God like that?

I imagine God like this.

Sewing clothes with a man and a woman.

I imagine God looking down on that dove that flew away from the ark and kind of petting it a little bit.

You know?

I imagine God welcoming that dove and taking that olive branch and putting it in the dove's beak and sending it back to Noah.

I needed a little bit of Old Testament.

Because those are the things that make me realize that God has appointed me and you to prophesy to it to a world that is so obsessed with death that it can't think straight.

God has ordained you and me to tell the truth.

That's why in a few minutes we're gonna renew our baptismal vows.

We're gonna talk about resisting evil.

We're gonna talk about proclaiming the good news of God in Christ.

We're gonna talk about gathering together with the faithful.

We're gonna talk about, we're gonna promise once again to treat every single person as though we recognize the Christ in them.

We're gonna talk about striving for justice and peace among all people, not just the good people, all of the people.

All of the time.

For our whole lives.

If we can do that, we can change the world.

If we can do that, we can be the people that God called us to be.

We can become the God, the the the God-decided people that we were meant to be when we were created.

If we do that, even the dry bones can live again.

Through the Paschal mystery, dear friends, we are buried with Christ by baptism into his death and raised with him to newness of life.

I call upon you, therefore, now that our Lenten observance is ended, to renew the solemn promises and vows of holy baptism by which we once renounced Satan and all his works, and promise to serve God faithfully in his holy Catholic Church.

Do you reaffirm your renunciation of evil and renew your commitment to Jesus Christ?

I do.

Do you believe in God the Father?

I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God?

I believe in Jesus Christ, the Holy Son of our Lord.

He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit.

On the third day, and I'm Father.

He will come again to judge the name of the devil.

Do you believe in God the Holy Spirit?

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of saints, the resurrection of the body, and the life of the lost.

Will you continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship in the breaking of the bread and in the prayers?

I will with God so.

Will you persevere in resisting evil?

And whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?

I will with God so.

Will you proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ?

I will with God so.

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?

I will so.

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being?

May Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has given us a new birth by water and the Holy Spirit, and bestowed upon us the forgiveness of sins, keep us in eternal life by his grace in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Hallelujah, hallelujah.

The peace of the Lord be always with you.

God's peace be with you.

God's peace be with you.

God's peace be with you.

Thank you.

May you get together with all the people that you love and have ham or turkey or whatever it is that you make on Easter.

I'm gonna be with my family, and so that's gonna be a nice thing.

Are there any announcements that I need to make?

Do you know of any more?

Any announcements I need to make?

Okay.

Well, in a discussion this morning, uh we've decided we're gonna have acolytes through the summer, at least through my part of the summer.

So uh so get ready, you who are acolyting.

Uh subject to your vacation plans, we will uh we will continue to have uh folks do the ministry of the youngsters up here, uh, which is very, very important, by the way.

And if you would like to be an acolyte, just let me know.

Walk in love as Christ loves us and gives himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.

All things come of you, O Lord.

This is the table not of the church, but of Jesus Christ.

It is made ready for those who love Him and those who want to love Him more.

So come, you who have much faith, and you who have little.

You who have been here often, and you who have not been for a long time or ever before.

You who have tried to follow Jesus and we who have failed.

Come not because the church invites you, it is Christ, and He invites you to meet Him here.

The Lord be with you.

Lift up your hearts.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

It is truly right to glorify you, Father, and to give you thanks.

For you alone are God, living and true, dwelling in light inaccessible from before time and forever.

Fountain of life and source of all goodness, you made all things and fill them with your blessing.

You created them to rejoice in the splendor of your radiance.

Countless throngs of angels stand before you night and day, and beholding the glory of your presence, they offer you unceasing praise.

Joining with them and giving voice to every creature under heaven, we acclaim you and glorify your name as we sing.

Your mighty works revealed your wisdom and love.

You formed us in your own image, giving the whole world into our care.

So that in obedience to you, our Creator, we might shepherd and serve all good people.

When our disobedience took us far from you, you did not abandon us to the power of death.

In your mercy we came to our help, so that in seeking you we might find you.

We pray you and we bless you.

We give the hand to you.

And we praise you.

Sanctifying them and showing them to be holy gifts for your holy people.

The bread of life and the cup of salvation, the body and blood of our Son Jesus Christ.

Grant that all who share this bread and cup may become one body and one spirit, a living sacrifice in Christ, to the praise of your name.

Remember Michael, our dividing bishop, and the our bishop, the priests in our community, Mike, Craig, Jim, Bill and Lillian, and all the ministry of your church.

Remember all your people and those who seek your church.

Remember Chris.

Remember all who have died in the peace of Christ, especially in Paul, and those who hated those people love.

And bring them to the place of eternal joy of life.

Grant that we may find our inheritance with all the saints who have found favor with you in the ages past.

We praise you in communion with them and give you glory for your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

Through Christ, and with Christ, and in Christ, all honor and glory of the chord, Almighty God and Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, forever and ever.

Amen.

Now as our Savior Christ has talked to you, we are all to say, our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, our heart as distance.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Thine is the keydom, the power and the glory forever and ever.

Amen.

Take your members that Christ died for you.

Eternal God, Heavenly Father, you have graciously accepted us as living members of your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ.

And you have fed us with spiritual food and the sacrament of his body and blood.

Send us now into the world in peace and grant us strength and courage to love and serve you with gladness and singleness of heart through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

The God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, the great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight.

And may the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit descend upon you all and remain with you forever.

Amen.