Easter Call to Worship
Written by Rev. Dr. Christie Love
Call to Worship
Put yourself in the scene of the first Easter morning with me. A group of grieving women arises early, before the sun breaks through the clouds. They meet and make their way to the tomb where only three short days ago they watched as the bloody, broken, and bruised body of Jesus of Nazareth was laid after he was killed in a violent act of capital punishment. The work that they came there to do that morning was rooted in the ancient practices of generations of women before them to prepare a body for burial anointing it with myrrh and wrapping it in cloth. Their hearts were heavy with sadness and their minds most likely was full of memories of times spent with Jesus and the graphic scenes they witnessed only a few days before. Most likely they were exhausted and had struggled to sleep peacefully since they heard his voice cry out one last time, “It is finished.”
Grief is the price of love.
When this group of exhausted and grieving women arrived at the tomb, they found the gravesite disturbed and the heavy boulder that had been put in front of the entrance was rolled away. They entered the cold, dark stillness of the tomb and found that the body was gone. Surely confusion and disbelief filled their conversation. Then scripture tells us that two dazzling beings appeared before them and asked them this question, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen.”
God’s ways are higher than our ways and holiness works in ways that we can seldom understand or explain.
We gather today to celebrate that everything changed early that morning. A journey that started in grief ended with shock and celebration. Today, thousands of years later, we still celebrate the stone that was rolled away, the tomb that was empty, the holy message of resurrection, and the divine encounter of love. Though our minds may struggle to understand and rationalize these events, our faith is born in the wrestling for the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Jesus is risen! He is risen indeed!
Prayer
God help us today to embrace the tension of our lack of human understanding and our faith in your higher, holy ways. Today, may we celebrate the vastness of your ability to do more than we could ever ask or imagine while leaving space for our wondering and our questions about the miraculous. Amen.