Easter Service 1961

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peak the peak (music) peak to peak to peak as being the

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the pain the pay to play no Sing Oh Heavens and be joyful Oh Earth

for the lord hath comfort it is people sing unto the Lord for He hath done excellent things Christ the Lord is risen! He is risen indeed, Thanks be to God who give it was this that dudley at these bees who is by these bears

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aaron no no and no the The text is taken from the book of the Acts. The second chapter the 24th verse the translation that of the new English Bible it could not be that death should keep him in its grip Peter who said that had not

not always fought it nor had his fellow disciples for whom he was the spokesman. They had gone up with Jesus to Jerusalem and they had been gratified by the homage showed him by the crowds through he had spoken ominous words about his approaching death but the triumphal entry to the capital city and their own confidence in his messianic claims had left little room for foreboding. Then all at once catastrophe was upon them; he was arrested, condemned, crucified.

Their behavior in the crisis was pitiful. Judas had betrayed him; Peter denied him; the rest took to their heels and fled. In their shoes wouldn't we have done the same? for consider; They had looked to him for emancipation from Rome and Rome had put an end to Him, it had seemed to them as though God himself had endorsed the verdict of ?Caiphus? and [?violent?] (name)} and by permitting Jesus to die on the cross, had placed on Him the stigma of his own curse. For the law had said, "cursed is everyone who hangs on a

tree." And to the pious Jew the curse of the law was God's verdict from which there could be no appeal. Who were they to let their memories of the master the impression he had made on them by the purity of his life, the power of his teaching, the wonder of his works stand for one moment against the unmistakable sentence of God. Their hopes shattered. What was there for them to do but forget all that had happened? Or try to go back home and pick up again the threads of the old life. Then came the astounding experience of

Easter morning. Christ crucified, dead, buried, had risen from the grave. The tomb was empty. Death had not vanquished Him, He had vanquished it. What clinched the matter for them won't bred in them certitude was His actual appearance to Mary, to Peter, to James, to the apostles, to Thomas, to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus to five hundred disciples at once and as more and more evidence was afforded them bewilderment and bafflement gave way to assurance and exhilaration. The whole face of the world was changed for them. The fact of the resurrection took fire in their souls and they were utterly transformed.

No longer was there any talk of going back home for Jesus was not a fading memory, was not a lost leader one more unfortunate gone to his death. He was a living present real (silence, static) (silence, static) On the Day of Pentecost maintained it could not be that death should keep Him in its grip. Isn't this our conviction

also what does Easter mean to you? Surely more than the perpetuation of a great memory surely more than reverence for the noblest soul that ever breathed. Surely more than a kind of sanctified hero worship? Think about Jesus Christ. He is absolutely unprecedented, unparalleled. He is far and away the most significant person the world has ever known. [Lacke?] the historian wrote about him, he did more in three short years to regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions of the philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists.

Thou seem'st both human and divine. The highest holiest manhood -- thou! This is the Christian conviction and it is incongruous and incredible as well as incongruous to think that Christ crucified, dead buried and all was at an end with Him at the mercy of an indignity done to His body swept death into nothingness. Good Friday really black Friday, [adjebet] on Golgotha, the last, the final chapter of the story of the Galilean. Who can believe that? Who can make sense of that on this Easter

morning? Don't we say what Peter said it could not be that death should keep Him in its grip and even for those who fall short of the moral and spiritual stature of Jesus Christ we make a similar claim that death is not the end. It's an old and persistent belief, sociologists tell us, that it is more widespread even than belief in a God or gods at their best men and women find it difficult to reconcile themselves to the theory that they were made to live their life and do their work and love

and then rot in the grave. If a person in Dr. Fosdick's frieze becomes a real person, grows with the years grows in wisdom and strength character, of grace of personality, is rich and bountiful in good deeds it doesn't make sense to say that death blots him out. even though his influence lives on after he has gone it still doesn't make sense. Socrates fido. But no Socrates. Handel's Hallelujah Chorus but no Handel. Lincoln's Gettysburg speech but no Lincoln. Thomas Dooley's hospitals in Lagos but no

Thomas Dooley. George Herbert Herman needed no one to tell him that his wife's influence would live on long after she had gone still about her passing apparently a triumphant passing, he wrote: though no regrets are proper for the manner of her death, who can contemplate the fact of it and not call the world irrational? If out of deference to a few particles of disordered matter it explodes so fair a spirit. Friend, doesn't your mind work in the same way? Don't you make the same sort of instinctive demand? At Easter we

think of the finest and best souls we have known, loved long since and lost a while Do that now. Recall the gifts and graces that drew you to them. The faithful hearts, the strong intelligences that won your admiration and affection Can you resign yourself to the belief that all is over with them? That the bright spirit that burned in them has forever been extinguished? So much courage so much endurance, so much faith, so much affection so much weakness, vanished as a bubble instead don't you say the very

thing that beat us said it could not be that death should keep them in its grip. What tremendous force, then, this conviction has taken and applied to Jesus Christ the noblest life of which history has any record, could not have come to a full stop at Calvary. The crucifixion was not the last the final chapter in the Galilean's story. God raised Him from the dead yes but more is at stake here than personal survival after death. Also at issue is the question, what kind of world do we live in? Is this a spiritual universe? Is it under the sovereign control of a God

of righteousness and justice? Is it rooted, grounded on moral foundations? Or is human history merely a scramble for power and wealth? Is the story of humanity the long checkered story of an endless procession of sufferers? Through suffering there is no justification and will be no ultimate vindication. All the religions of the world not withstanding is that the fact of the matter? And are the Communists right when they deny that there is anything beyond or above or outlasting the natural process of which we form a part?

Where does the final word lie? With love goodness truth or with hate evil error? I say this is the ultimate question and the resurrection is the answer. Standing for more than the assurance of personal survival after death because it has cosmic significance if a life like the life of Jesus vanished as a bubble if all that nobility was utterly at the mercy of the wickedness of men virtue trampled on goodness mocked the last word with Ciaphas and Pilate, how is it possible to believe in God or the goodness and power of God or a kingdom of God? You have on your hands a

riddle to which there is no clue. You are shut up to the conclusion that the forces in which evil roots are stronger than the forces of goodness truth on the scaffold wrong on the throne no God within the shadows keeping watch above his own isn't it a dismal dreary conclusion we are asked to believe that we live in a world where there is air for the lungs and food for the stomach but no answer to the deepest hungers of the soul we asked to believe that we live in a world where the race is the swift, the battle to the strong, the weak driven to the wall? And where faith and hope and love disappear as though they had never been when a

person interprets life thus, when he subscribes to the dictum of Bertrand Russell that on man and all his race the slow sure doom falls pitiless and dark, all he has o sustain him is the courage of his own stoicism, well - See, by contrast, what the Easter faith affirms. Death did not keep Jesus Christ in its grip. The cause to which he devoted himself did not go down into defeat. The last word was not with Ciaphas or Pilate what a perfectly appalling thing it would be if we lived in a world where the Neros and the Napoleons, the Hitlers and the Stalins had the last word. Where lies and hatred and wickedness were

supreme our best loves and loyalties like ourselves poured through a hole at the heart of things and lost. I stand here to tell you that we do not live in such a world There are spiritual forces at work which set sharp limits to man's will to power which all violators of the moral order hit themselves in vain. Life will work out only in one way and that is God's way if a man, a nation, a civilization follows a different way, however stable it may appear for a time, however prosperous it may seem for a time, if it is not God's way, if it floats

subverts his moral order inexorably it will lead to decline, decadence, disaster Year by year Easter comes as a reminder that this is god's world there is a power at work behind the universe making for righteousness Jesus who all through his life staked everything on God not trust Him in vain on the resurrection morning it was just as if the whole order of things by one mighty act certified everything for which He stood by all means, associate Easter with personal survival after death but

remember there is a greater assurance still directs and strengthens our faith that there is an eternal order of righteousness that the universe at its heart is spiritual. Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Sunday by Sunday in this church we offer that prayer. But what significance it has on Easter morning Well, what personally does Easter mean to you? Churches are thronged at Easter. People attend then who do not put in an appearance on any other Sunday of the year ministers keep wondering why

the cynic thinks the Easter festival is a fashion parade force of habit has quite obviously a great deal it's big