(soft piano music) ♪ Oh he has won ♪ ♪ And we give thanks ♪ ♪ And his work of heart are impressed ♪ ♪ For all this far he has brought us ♪ ♪ So merry and he to commit will his whole will ♪ ♪ So he understands us ♪ ♪ In has arose I will rejoice in ♪ ♪ As he rose me ♪ ♪ All he has done ♪ ♪ Beyond thee ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ I raise my head Agape ♪ 

- The lesson for Easter is taken first from the book of Job. The 14th chapter, selected verses. "Man that is born of a woman is a few days and full of trouble. He becomes forth like a flower and withers, he flees like a shadow and continues not, There is hope for a tree. If it be cut down that it will sprout again. And that it shoots will not cease Though, it root, grow old in the earth and it stump die in the ground, yet at the center of water it will bud and put forth branches like a young plant But man dies and is laid low, Man breathes his loss. And where is he? If a man die, shall he live again?" And in the first teaches of Paul out of the Corinthians the 15th chapter selected verses. "Now I would remind you brethren in what terms I preached, which you received. In which you stand by which you are saved. If you hold it fast, unless you believed in vain But I delivered to you as a first important but I also received, the Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried. That he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. That he appeared to save us. Then to the 12. Then he appeared to more than 500 brethren at one time. Most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, to one untimely born. He appeared also to me". Now, if Christ is preached as raised from the dead how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead then Christ does not been raised. If Christ has not been raised then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God Because we testified of God that he raised Christ. For me did not raise. If it's true that the dead are not raised, but if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised your faith is futile. And you are still in your sins. Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life we who are in Christ have only hope we are of all men, most to be pitted. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. The first fruit of those who have fallen asleep, or as by a man came death by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead or as an Adam will die. So also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order Christ the first fruit. Then it is coming. Those who belong to Christ, then comes the end. And the last enemy to be destroyed is death. And when this perishable puts on the imperishable and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written. Death is swallowed up in victory. Oh, death where is life victory? Oh, death where is life sting? Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Here end the lesson. (choir singing) 

- The Lord be with you. 

- And also be with you. let us pray. Eternal God before whom the morning stars first sang together and who hold us in thy hands, the destiny of every living thing. We worship thee. Bless it be the name of Jesus who tasted death for every man. Bless be his glorious name that he is alive forevermore and have the keys of death. Oh God, who does give us a new day and a new opportunity. We come to offer our thanks for giving us a chance to enable our lives by worshiping thee. We thank thee for all the open door which are us set before us For the great open sky above us. If our health is less than perfect, We thank thee that there are doctors, nurses, medicines, and hospitals. If our ritual health is at a low ebe, we thank thee that we have thee thy loving invitation whosoever will may come. And that thou has provided the scriptures the church, teachers, preachers, counselors, friends the great Christian seasons of the year through which we may be renewed. Oh God if we have failed thus far to establish righteousness in order, we thank thee for a new day for new resources and a new chance to try. If the great leaders which thou has sent us to preach justice and love have been assassinated. We thank thee that those of us who yet live, can pick up the torch from their fallen hands so that their cause and their voice may still be heard and may still be followed. Give us the grace and the grit to do it. We thank the oh God that spring follows winter. We bless thee for the thrill of a new day following the night or the sense of satisfaction that comes from a job well done for great music and great musicians. We are grateful for those who seek to make the gospel contemporary up to the moment in our time. We thank thee for a storehouse of learning in the library, which beckons us. For teachers who unknowingly guide us to it For parents who really care. For the response of sons and daughters who are learning to be themselves without breaking the relationships of family. For the creative relationship of love, between true lovers who unselfishly are devoted to each other. And we give thee thanks for Jesus Christ who purifies and makes noble every relationship. And now our heavenly father we intercede for the sick, for the bitter, the alcoholic the drug addict, the prejudist, and for him who believes he has gone too far to return. Oh God to whom alone is known the full meaning of suffering. We intercede on behalf of all who are afflicted in body or in spirit, or in mind, we pray for those who are bowed down in grief for those who are bewildered. May they have faith to claim the healing power of the great position. Forbid, oh God, that we should forget. Even on this day, amid our luxuries, the pains and mortal anguish that our Lord Jesus Christ endured for our salvation. Grant us this day, a true vision of all that he suffered, his betrayal, his lonely agony, his false trial, his mocking and scouring, the torture of the cross that remembering his sufferings in death, we may have a true appraisal of his mighty resurrection. Father of all mercies. We pray for ourselves as well as others. We live to thee for healing and strength every broken purpose, every broken life, everywhere. We pray for all who are beset by evil, that they may know thee as the great deliverer. We pray for those who are afraid that they may know thee is their confidence. And for lonely ones do thou show Christ as elder brother, the Holy Spirit as comforter. And may all who have been rejected by groups earth know that their acceptance by thee, is far more important. And give us grace all to accept each other in the spirit of the risen Christ. We ask this in his name remembering the words he has taught us to use. When we pray together saying, Our Father who are at in heaven Hallowed be thy name, Thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespasses against us and lead us not in the temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. 

- The peace of God be with you all. Some weeks ago, a colleague and I went sick visiting in the North Carolina hospital some miles from Durham. After chatting for a while the patient whom we had gone to see asked us to visit one of his friends. The most interesting whom he had met in the hospital. The friend was all of there. A quadriplegic of five years duration the result of a motor crash. He was just ahead on a pillow, But what ahead? Alive, alert, interested, interesting with the Irish Catholics with and amused acceptance of protestants His ears were open to the outside world The world which was scarcely aware of his existence. He asked me if I knew I belong to Glasgow. This theme song The signature tune of my native city. I assured him that I did, including the pather. He suggested that we sing it as a duet. I suggested that we do it quietly. He wanted its sang patisimo. We sang, nurses began to arrive. Then ambulatory patients while a Presbyterian divine and a Roman Catholic head on a pillow sang the praises of dear dirty wet Glasgow. And going back again soon to teach him the words of the second verse. And as we drove away from that hospital in the drags of a messy snowstorm My fellow visitor said to me, "We were not made to last". We drove in silence, for quite a few miles. We were not made to last. It's another way of saying that we were born to die. Death is the only guaranteed fact which a accompanies birth. Death is inexorable, inflexible, relentless. The old Testament knows that, listen to it. The years of our life are three score and 10 or even by reason of strength four score. Yet their span is back toil and trouble. They are soon gone and we fly way. That is Psalm 90 verse 10. "It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting. For this is the end of all men. And the living will lay it to heart." That is Ecclesiastes seven verse two. A boy says cry. And I said, "What shall I cry?" All flesh is grass. And all its beauty is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of Lord blows upon it. That is Isaiah versus six and seven. That is the message of the first part of the morning lesson Job 14 there, the emphasis is on the brevity of life and the finality of death. And Bacon in one of his essays. Put it very simple. Simply, "It is as natural to die as to be born and to a little infant. Perhaps the one is as painful as the other". And there is an Arabian proverb. "Death is a black camel, which kneels at the gates of all". Now as you're well aware, man reacts to the flat fact of death in all kinds of ways. There is the despair which leads to anxious, frustration and discordancy. There is the curl PDM attitude which suggests that today we eat, drink and be married for tomorrow or the day after or the year after we die. There is the disen chance that leads to the anger which perhaps wrote this epita for an eight months old infant. Since I have been so quickly done for I wonder what I was begun for. There is the resignation of the faithless, which accepts the inevitable and says with his like-minded companions (speaking in foreign language) we who are about to die salute thee somebody. We were not made to last. These were the kind of thoughts which began to run through my mind in the car, as we carefully drove away from that hospital and our friend and his Irish buddy. Now, as Easter approach. It came to me that Easter is the reply to the rebuttal of such a point of view. Isn't Easter the primary reason for the spread of Christianity? No, Easter, no, Christianity. And at the heart of its good news is something like this. We will are made to last. Do you remember Job's question at the end of the morning's old Testament lesson? If a man die, shall he live again? Now the book of Job goes on for 28 more chapters and never answers the question. Centuries later, Paul writing to the church at cotton replied to Job's question. The deduction that in the resurrection death had been defeated is so central to Paul's gospel that he writes one chapter of 58 verses on the subject. Listen to just two of the verses again. If Christ has not been raised Then your faith is in vain. And three verses later, if Christ has not we raise your faith is futile. The two Greek adjectives which Paul uses to describe the uselessness of the Christian faith, which is not centered on Easter are "cannot" meaning empty, purposeless, null and void. And Matthias, useless, an illusion and a delusion there's nothing to it. Christmas celebrates the birthday of our Lord Jesus Which Sunday or Pentecost celebrates the birthday of the church. Easter celebrates the birthday of our faith. Our religious point of view, our spiritual perspective therefore hymns of triumph and hallelujah and lily's and our vocal (speaking in foreign language) and a short sermon. Easter is symbolic of the confidence that in the divine economy, death is not the last word. The resurrection of Jesus is an earn, a token, a pledge that we shall live on through and after our earthly death therefore Paul ends his with a shout "Oh death where is the sting? Oh grave where is the victory? Thanks be to God who give us the victory Through our Lord Jesus Christ Proof, there is none. Any scientific sense, such an attitude to life and death is based on what we believe to be the character and will of God as declared by Jesus. This is the kind of faith which Alfred Lord tends narrate that in the prologue, which he prefix to immemorial just before it was published. He took 16 years to write immemorial. That poem drawn out of him by the death of his college friend after hell. And in the prologue which he especially wrote at the end of 14 years part of which is him 146 and our hymn, he wrote these words addressed to God "Thou will not leave us in the dust. Thou made us man." He knows now out why. He thinks he was not made to die. And thou has made him, Thou are just, I share Tenons groping confidence that we were made to last. Why does the university sponsor this service during a period of recess, here we once closed the chapel on Easter Sunday and a thousand people turned up. Why are you here? What are we trying to do at service? We are celebrating the birthday of our faith and the defeat of the fear and sting of death. You see the cloth in the gold and white That's the cloth we use for all funerals in the DCHA Signifying the defeat of the sting and the fear of death. John Don Dean of St. Paul's in the 17th century has put it into poetry for us. And many of you know the words by heart, "Death, be not proud. For those some have called the mighty and dreadful the work not so. For those whom now think is thou dust overthrow die not poor death, nor yet hence thou kill me. One short sleep pass. We wake eternally and death shall be no more death thou shall die". We were made to laugh. Thanks, be to God to give with us the victory through our Lord. Jesus Christ. Let us pray, Almighty God who did bring again from the dead, our Lord Jesus aid us now worthily to celebrate glorious resurrection that we may leave this place to live a life of joyful trust and confident hope through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (choir singing) (soft piano music) (choir singing) 

- Oh, mighty God. Before we depart from this house dedicated to the gospel to go out into the world. We stand here now, in fact, or symbolically all around thy alter. To celebrate life. Risen life, eternal life, abundant life, and to celebrate love that motivates it all. And the power of Christ. And here we dedicate these offerings and ourselves unto that life. And under thy love through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

- And now may the grace of the risen Christ be with us all always. Amen. ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ (bell ringing) (soft piano music) (indistinct conversation)