Service Sheet (pdf)
Welcome
Welcome to our Easter Sunday worship in the Bradford North Circuit, led by the ministers.Alleluia! Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
In the half-light of the morning;
In the space between the graves;
In the questions without answers;
In the calling of our names;
All we thought we knew has changed:
Saviour, come to us again!
Song
StF 305/HP 202 Low in the grave he lay
It’s been a heavy weekend.
We have eaten and drunk with you, and you have talked about things we didn’t understand.
We have lost you to crucifixion and death;
we have grieved for you;
we have waited during the Sabbath;
and now we have received you again.
And we’re not sure we understand any more than we did,
but we rejoice.
Everything has changed.
Everything is new.
Tell us more, Lord, as we spend this time with you.
Open our ears to hear and our hearts to respond to your love.
Amen.
by whose glory Christ was raised from the dead,
strengthen us
to walk with him in his risen life;
and may Almighty God bless us,
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Alleluia!
Go in joy and peace to love and serve the Lord.
In the name of Christ. Alleluia!
Prayer
It’s early in the morning, Lord, and we aren’t quite awake.It’s been a heavy weekend.
We have eaten and drunk with you, and you have talked about things we didn’t understand.
We have lost you to crucifixion and death;
we have grieved for you;
we have waited during the Sabbath;
and now we have received you again.
And we’re not sure we understand any more than we did,
but we rejoice.
Everything has changed.
Everything is new.
Tell us more, Lord, as we spend this time with you.
Open our ears to hear and our hearts to respond to your love.
Amen.
Reading:
John 20:1-9
Reflection:
‘Those who know me well know I am an owl and not a lark! For me the early morning is really still the night before. Over the last years I have impressed myself by being a regular participant at the weekly Shipley ministers’ prayers, beginning at the unearthly hour of 7.45am, but I know for many of you 7.45 is mid-morning!
Our story begins today with the word ‘early’, and specifies further ‘while it was still dark’. Bleary eyes and a lack of light, that odd time when you can’t quite make things out, work things out. Feels a little like our experience over the last year of covid?
With perhaps bleary and teary eyes Mary Magdalene saw the stone removed – out of place, unexpected, just plain wrong! Brain saying it shouldn’t be like this, heart racing with alarm, eyes looking everywhere trying to find sense. Feels a little like our experience over the last year? shop and church doors closed, nursing home residents behind glass, hospital patients unvisited, funerals silent of song and short of guests.
Run! Mary scampers off to find the others, and shares the confusion, ‘They’ have taken… we don’t know….where they have put…’ Here is both uncertainty, and a need to blame – ‘They’, ‘we don’t know’. Feels a little like our experience over the last year? Deep uncertainty about what’s happening, and what might happen, and a tendency to blame – the stranger, the different, the young, the politician, the neighbour…
More running, men’s feet now – action, but confused, arriving and not entering, catching up and bursting in, breathing heavily, looking but not seeing, seeing but not understanding. Feels a little like our experience over the last year?
And in this open empty tomb, amid all this angst and uncertainty, this worrying and wondering, lying there silently, seemingly neatly placed, carefully laid, deliberately detailed, are the linen strips that had wrapped him, with the cloth that had covered his head folded by itself. Might these carefully curated pieces of fabric suggest the possibility of order in the midst of chaos, purpose in spite of the pain, light, even in a place of great darkness? Might they hint at hope not being foolish, even in the context of our experience over the last year?
Death’s cave is empty, save linen cloth as calling card for love.
Let us pray. Begin with grief and duty, seasoned with spices, a little courage, and much confusion. Take away a stone, fold a cloth, add an angel or two, hear a name spoken in a voice that is recognized, and know that everything is changed. Amen.
Our story begins today with the word ‘early’, and specifies further ‘while it was still dark’. Bleary eyes and a lack of light, that odd time when you can’t quite make things out, work things out. Feels a little like our experience over the last year of covid?
With perhaps bleary and teary eyes Mary Magdalene saw the stone removed – out of place, unexpected, just plain wrong! Brain saying it shouldn’t be like this, heart racing with alarm, eyes looking everywhere trying to find sense. Feels a little like our experience over the last year? shop and church doors closed, nursing home residents behind glass, hospital patients unvisited, funerals silent of song and short of guests.
Run! Mary scampers off to find the others, and shares the confusion, ‘They’ have taken… we don’t know….where they have put…’ Here is both uncertainty, and a need to blame – ‘They’, ‘we don’t know’. Feels a little like our experience over the last year? Deep uncertainty about what’s happening, and what might happen, and a tendency to blame – the stranger, the different, the young, the politician, the neighbour…
More running, men’s feet now – action, but confused, arriving and not entering, catching up and bursting in, breathing heavily, looking but not seeing, seeing but not understanding. Feels a little like our experience over the last year?
And in this open empty tomb, amid all this angst and uncertainty, this worrying and wondering, lying there silently, seemingly neatly placed, carefully laid, deliberately detailed, are the linen strips that had wrapped him, with the cloth that had covered his head folded by itself. Might these carefully curated pieces of fabric suggest the possibility of order in the midst of chaos, purpose in spite of the pain, light, even in a place of great darkness? Might they hint at hope not being foolish, even in the context of our experience over the last year?
Death’s cave is empty, save linen cloth as calling card for love.
Let us pray. Begin with grief and duty, seasoned with spices, a little courage, and much confusion. Take away a stone, fold a cloth, add an angel or two, hear a name spoken in a voice that is recognized, and know that everything is changed. Amen.
Song
StF 306/HP 204 Now the green blade rises
On the basis of these accounts, it is very clear that the risen Christ is not recognised at first, even by his intimate companions. From this we can adduce that Jesus is not the same as before, that he has changed, that he is transformed, that his resurrection appearance is not the same as his appearance when he was alive. We have heard how his physical body is not to be found in the tomb, but what the disciples see as his resurrected body is not the same as that physical body that they had known during the years they had walked and talked and lived with him. This is not a body that has been brought back to life: that would be recognisable. This Jesus is not recognisable. Jesus, after his death, appears to them, but he is changed. Although the gospels tell us this was definitely Jesus, they do not tell us clearly that the Jesus they see now has a physical body. If it was physical, they would recognise him. However, the stories do suggest that there is some type of physical aspect to his appearing. Jesus invites Thomas to inspect his wounds; Jesus eats a piece of fish; Jesus has a breakfast cooking on the beach when he appears to the disciples on the sea shore. This physicality, though, is contrasted with the fact of his appearing and disappearing in a distinctly ‘non-physical’ way: suddenly; rapidly disappearing from one place and appearing in another some distance away; and in and out of a locked room. There is no explanation possible. It is as though he were a ghost and yet not a ghost. Dealing with the Biblical material, it’s as though in life Jesus had a physical body and clearly had immense spiritual qualities too, and after death Jesus is clearly Spirit, but his spirit has physical qualities too. There’s a reversal. The living Jesus appears more physical than spiritual, and the resurrected Jesus appears more spiritual than physical. Perhaps we could say that both have a body, and if the disciples somehow experience the resurrected Jesus with a body (which is how the gospel writers seem to present it) then, perhaps, we might call it a Spiritual body.
The last appearance of Jesus (Acts 1.9) finishes with him ascending into a cloud and angels telling the disciples that he has been taken into heaven and will come again from heaven in the same way he was taken. This is not how physical things behave. However, it is how spiritual things behave. From this moment on the ‘appearances’ of Jesus in the Bible no longer seem to have physical presence to them. (Look at Saul’s conversion vision, and John’s visions in Revelations.) The Ascended Jesus becomes a spiritual Jesus only; still real, still present, but the physicality has dropped away. The experience of Christians and the Church from this point on is that Jesus encounters us spiritually. We encounter him in our spirits, in our souls, in the inward parts of our nature, in prayer, in contemplation, in dreams, in visions. Just as the Resurrected Jesus appears to be different to the physical Jesus, so the Ascended Jesus appears to be different to the resurrected Jesus. All three are real, but each reality is experienced in different ways.
Today, on Easter day, we begin to see the transition of the Jesus of history who walked the roads of Nazareth, and Galilee, and Jerusalem- into the Universal Jesus, the Jesus who changes Saul into Paul, Augustine the sinner into Augustine the theologian, Francis the playboy into Francis the Friar Saint, John Newton the slave trader into John Newton the hymnwriter, and you and me into faithful, if faltering, followers of the Jesus Way.
If you ever worry about what to believe about the Easter story, about whether Jesus was actually (physically) resurrected or not, then step back a moment and try and hold your questions or doubts in check. Think of the resurrection appearances as moments in Jesus’s transition, from a limited human presence in history, to a limitless Godly presence available to everyone. Take the image of the Easter song, Now the green blade rises, and imagine Jesus -once the seed buried, now the shoots rising, then becoming a large field ready for harvest or even a mighty forest which goes on and on and on. The green shoots are the Easter Resurrection appearances, transitional and soon over, but they give way to something much, much greater- the Jesus we, and everyone, can know now and always.
Reading:
Reflection:
After the discovery of the empty tomb there are several accounts of encounter with the risen Christ. Mary Magdalene is the first to meet him, ‘…but mistakes him for the gardener’. He appeared to the eleven disciples on a mountain in Galilee ‘…but some doubted’ (Mat 28: 16-17). Two disciples meet him on the road to Emmaus, ‘…but their eyes were kept from recognising him’ (Luke 24: 13-16). He appeared again to the eleven in Luke 24: 36, ‘…but they were startled and terrified, and supposed that they were seeing a ghost’. And again, he appeared to the disciples fishing in the sea of Tiberius, Jesus was standing on the shore, ‘…but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus’ (John 21.4).On the basis of these accounts, it is very clear that the risen Christ is not recognised at first, even by his intimate companions. From this we can adduce that Jesus is not the same as before, that he has changed, that he is transformed, that his resurrection appearance is not the same as his appearance when he was alive. We have heard how his physical body is not to be found in the tomb, but what the disciples see as his resurrected body is not the same as that physical body that they had known during the years they had walked and talked and lived with him. This is not a body that has been brought back to life: that would be recognisable. This Jesus is not recognisable. Jesus, after his death, appears to them, but he is changed. Although the gospels tell us this was definitely Jesus, they do not tell us clearly that the Jesus they see now has a physical body. If it was physical, they would recognise him. However, the stories do suggest that there is some type of physical aspect to his appearing. Jesus invites Thomas to inspect his wounds; Jesus eats a piece of fish; Jesus has a breakfast cooking on the beach when he appears to the disciples on the sea shore. This physicality, though, is contrasted with the fact of his appearing and disappearing in a distinctly ‘non-physical’ way: suddenly; rapidly disappearing from one place and appearing in another some distance away; and in and out of a locked room. There is no explanation possible. It is as though he were a ghost and yet not a ghost. Dealing with the Biblical material, it’s as though in life Jesus had a physical body and clearly had immense spiritual qualities too, and after death Jesus is clearly Spirit, but his spirit has physical qualities too. There’s a reversal. The living Jesus appears more physical than spiritual, and the resurrected Jesus appears more spiritual than physical. Perhaps we could say that both have a body, and if the disciples somehow experience the resurrected Jesus with a body (which is how the gospel writers seem to present it) then, perhaps, we might call it a Spiritual body.
The last appearance of Jesus (Acts 1.9) finishes with him ascending into a cloud and angels telling the disciples that he has been taken into heaven and will come again from heaven in the same way he was taken. This is not how physical things behave. However, it is how spiritual things behave. From this moment on the ‘appearances’ of Jesus in the Bible no longer seem to have physical presence to them. (Look at Saul’s conversion vision, and John’s visions in Revelations.) The Ascended Jesus becomes a spiritual Jesus only; still real, still present, but the physicality has dropped away. The experience of Christians and the Church from this point on is that Jesus encounters us spiritually. We encounter him in our spirits, in our souls, in the inward parts of our nature, in prayer, in contemplation, in dreams, in visions. Just as the Resurrected Jesus appears to be different to the physical Jesus, so the Ascended Jesus appears to be different to the resurrected Jesus. All three are real, but each reality is experienced in different ways.
Today, on Easter day, we begin to see the transition of the Jesus of history who walked the roads of Nazareth, and Galilee, and Jerusalem- into the Universal Jesus, the Jesus who changes Saul into Paul, Augustine the sinner into Augustine the theologian, Francis the playboy into Francis the Friar Saint, John Newton the slave trader into John Newton the hymnwriter, and you and me into faithful, if faltering, followers of the Jesus Way.
If you ever worry about what to believe about the Easter story, about whether Jesus was actually (physically) resurrected or not, then step back a moment and try and hold your questions or doubts in check. Think of the resurrection appearances as moments in Jesus’s transition, from a limited human presence in history, to a limitless Godly presence available to everyone. Take the image of the Easter song, Now the green blade rises, and imagine Jesus -once the seed buried, now the shoots rising, then becoming a large field ready for harvest or even a mighty forest which goes on and on and on. The green shoots are the Easter Resurrection appearances, transitional and soon over, but they give way to something much, much greater- the Jesus we, and everyone, can know now and always.
Song
STF 296: Christ has risen while earth slumbers
The cross that took your life stood empty over Saturday and now is filled with flowers.
There is colour and light, and hope and joy.
There is peace and reconciliation, and new beginnings.
Bring your new life into our homes as we worship, and may our homes be places of encounter, where we can bring others to meet you.
Bring your joy into our church families as we meet together, now and in the future, and help us to see where you want to lead us.
Bring your light into our communities, the places we work and the places we meet, and help us to channel your light and make it visible.
Bring your hope into places of suffering, of sickness, of dying, that all concerned might be filled with your hope.
Bring your light into the darkness of anger, of hatred, of violence, that these might be swept away on the tide of your love.
Bring your hope into our hearts that we might see how you want to use us to answer these prayers in the hope of the resurrection.
Bring your light into our present; shed it on our past; shine it into our future, that we might walk with you.
And with all your people everywhere we join with the words of the Lord’s Prayer.
Prayers of intercession
Lord, you’re alive!The cross that took your life stood empty over Saturday and now is filled with flowers.
There is colour and light, and hope and joy.
There is peace and reconciliation, and new beginnings.
Bring your new life into our homes as we worship, and may our homes be places of encounter, where we can bring others to meet you.
Bring your joy into our church families as we meet together, now and in the future, and help us to see where you want to lead us.
Bring your light into our communities, the places we work and the places we meet, and help us to channel your light and make it visible.
Bring your hope into places of suffering, of sickness, of dying, that all concerned might be filled with your hope.
Bring your light into the darkness of anger, of hatred, of violence, that these might be swept away on the tide of your love.
Bring your hope into our hearts that we might see how you want to use us to answer these prayers in the hope of the resurrection.
Bring your light into our present; shed it on our past; shine it into our future, that we might walk with you.
And with all your people everywhere we join with the words of the Lord’s Prayer.
Song
StF 313 Thine be the glory - Watch the Worldwide Virtual Easter Choir! (Thine Be the Glory)
Blessing
God the Father,by whose glory Christ was raised from the dead,
strengthen us
to walk with him in his risen life;
and may Almighty God bless us,
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Alleluia!
Go in joy and peace to love and serve the Lord.
In the name of Christ. Alleluia!
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