AfterThoughts
April 12, 2020, Easter Sunday
Sermon Title: Hope Gets The Last Word
Scripture: Mark 16:1–8
This week, Pastor David shared a message of hope from the Gospel of Mark and reminded us of these two truths: 1) hope gets the last word about our sin, and 2) hope gets the last word about our future.
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How does the loss, grief, and hopelessness of our current situation mirror what Mary and the others felt as they made their way to the tomb to anoint Christ's body?
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Pastor David shared that Jesus' resurrection means that we don't have to be imprisoned by sin. Have you accepted the freedom that Christ offers you from your sin? Describe.
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Think about a time when you or someone you know has experienced deep, earthly sorrow. What hope does Jesus' victory over death give in those situations?
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Pastor David shared that knowing the certainty of our final future gives us faith to face the uncertainty of our today. How does this truth give you hope in our current circumstances?
To learn more about knowing Christ as Savior and Lord, please visit dawsonchurch.org/becoming-a-christian.
PRAYER PROMPTS DURING THESE UNUSUAL DAYS
1. Pray for our leaders as they make decisions and recommendations.
2. Pray for scientists and health care professionals as they work with those that are ill and as they seek ways to treat the virus.
3. Pray for the sick and vulnerable.
4. Pray for missionaries in areas of the world where the virus is already very widespread.
5. Pray for ways to help those in your area that are vulnerable.
ADDITIONAL DISCOVERY:
And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
~ 1 Corinthians 15:17–20
“And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
~ C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle
Seven Stanzas at Easter – by John Updike
Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.
The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.
And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta*, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.
Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.
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