Debra K. Brazzel - Easter Sunrise Service 6:30 (April 11, 1993)
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| - | When Jesus encountered Mary at the empty tomb, | 0:17 |
| he asked her, woman, why are you weeping? | 0:21 | |
| Whom are you looking for? | 0:25 | |
| Each one of you has come | 0:29 | |
| to the garden this morning looking for something. | 0:30 | |
| I mean it's 6:30 in the morning, for heaven's sake. | 0:34 | |
| Something special had to get you out of bed this early. | 0:38 | |
| Unlike Mary, however, you aren't weeping | 0:42 | |
| because you know how the story ends. | 0:46 | |
| There's nothing new in the story. | 0:49 | |
| You've heard it all before. | 0:52 | |
| Yet here you are again. | 0:54 | |
| Easter morning, looking for something. | 0:58 | |
| I think Jesus's question to each of us would be | 1:03 | |
| whom or what are you looking for? | 1:07 | |
| Some of us are here looking for signs of renewal. | 1:12 | |
| Easter sunrise service is part of our annual | 1:16 | |
| rites of spring. | 1:19 | |
| We enjoy the beauty of the gardens. | 1:21 | |
| The freshness in the air. | 1:24 | |
| The signs of the renewal of life. | 1:26 | |
| Some of us are here looking for the Easter bunny. | 1:29 | |
| We're here to pay tribute to a god | 1:33 | |
| who dispenses favors for worship. | 1:35 | |
| To fulfill our annual obligation | 1:39 | |
| so that we may be blessed with prosperity and health | 1:41 | |
| in the coming year. | 1:45 | |
| Some of us are here because we were taught | 1:48 | |
| to pay our respects to Jesus, | 1:50 | |
| at least once a year. | 1:52 | |
| It's nothing personal, really. | 1:54 | |
| More a part of our heritage. | 1:55 | |
| Like visiting the grave of a loved one we hardly knew. | 1:58 | |
| They tell us He was a good man. | 2:02 | |
| And some of us are here looking for signs of hope | 2:05 | |
| in a world gone crazy. | 2:08 | |
| Whom are you looking for? | 2:12 | |
| When Jesus asked this of Mary, | 2:15 | |
| she gave Him a strange reply. | 2:18 | |
| Sir, if you've taken Him away, | 2:20 | |
| tell me where you've laid Him, | 2:22 | |
| and I will take Him away. | 2:24 | |
| Mary, with a single-minded focus was looking for the body | 2:27 | |
| of Jesus to pay her last respects, | 2:32 | |
| and to make sure He was properly buried. | 2:36 | |
| She didn't recognize Him when He spoke to her, | 2:39 | |
| because she was looking into the tomb, | 2:42 | |
| looking for a dead Jesus. | 2:45 | |
| What we see is so often limited by what we expect to see. | 2:49 | |
| How many opportunities have we missed to see | 2:54 | |
| the risen Christ because we expected something less? | 2:58 | |
| We talk about Jesus, | 3:02 | |
| remember His life and deeds, | 3:04 | |
| even try to emulate Him, | 3:06 | |
| but do we really expect to encounter Him? | 3:08 | |
| John had been fighting a cocaine addiction for 10 years. | 3:14 | |
| He'd lost his job, his family, his home, his friends. | 3:19 | |
| He looked like a shadow of himself, | 3:24 | |
| and he couldn't stand to look in the mirror anymore, | 3:28 | |
| for the shame that was there. | 3:31 | |
| The next high was all he looked forward to. | 3:35 | |
| One night when he had nothing to lose, | 3:40 | |
| he got down on his knees and prayed, | 3:44 | |
| Lord help me. | 3:47 | |
| And he can't exactly explain what happened, | 3:50 | |
| but he knew that from that moment his life was changed. | 3:53 | |
| The horrible grasp that cocaine had on his life was broken. | 3:58 | |
| He'd gotten a job recently, started attending NA meetings, | 4:05 | |
| and for the first time in years, | 4:10 | |
| he felt that he had something worth living for. | 4:12 | |
| Mary had come to the tomb to pay her last respects to Jesus, | 4:18 | |
| to remember what had been, | 4:22 | |
| and grieve for what might have been. | 4:24 | |
| She focused on the past | 4:26 | |
| with no thought or hope for the future. | 4:28 | |
| But our God is a living God and a God who is never content | 4:32 | |
| to live in the past. | 4:36 | |
| Jesus confronted Mary with her expectations. | 4:39 | |
| She was expecting to pay tribute to a dead teacher. | 4:43 | |
| Mary came to grieve for her lost hopes and dreams. | 4:47 | |
| But God had other plans for Jesus and for Mary. | 4:51 | |
| All of us have come to the garden this morning | 4:57 | |
| looking for something. | 5:00 | |
| But I need to warn you. | 5:02 | |
| Your expectations may not be met. | 5:04 | |
| You may be looking for a God of nature, | 5:07 | |
| awe-inspiring, but impersonal. | 5:10 | |
| Or you may be looking for a teacher | 5:14 | |
| from among whose teachings you can pick and choose | 5:16 | |
| as you desire. | 5:19 | |
| Or maybe you're seeking a tit for tat gumball type God | 5:21 | |
| who dispenses favors. | 5:25 | |
| Put your money in and the favors pour out. | 5:27 | |
| Or you could even be expecting a dead God | 5:31 | |
| who once did great things but who no longer | 5:34 | |
| has any power over life. | 5:37 | |
| Whom are you looking for? | 5:42 | |
| When Jesus called Mary by name, | 5:45 | |
| she heard the unmistakable power and authority | 5:49 | |
| of God and knew that she was facing the resurrected Lord. | 5:53 | |
| Whenever any of us hears Jesus call our name, | 5:59 | |
| whether it happens in the dark of the night, | 6:05 | |
| or a hospital room, or a garden or a graveyard, | 6:07 | |
| it is unmistakable. | 6:11 | |
| We know in that moment that we are dealing | 6:14 | |
| with nothing less than the living God. | 6:16 | |
| A God who is intimately loving, mysterious, | 6:20 | |
| and very much alive. | 6:25 | |
| After Mary's encounter with the resurrected Christ, | 6:29 | |
| she was changed from a woman weeping in despair | 6:33 | |
| to a woman proclaiming with joy, | 6:36 | |
| I have seen the Lord! | 6:39 | |
| She and all who experienced the risen Lord | 6:42 | |
| were transformed from a small group of frightened | 6:45 | |
| men and women hiding in their homes, | 6:49 | |
| to the most courageous band of witnesses | 6:52 | |
| the world has ever known. | 6:54 | |
| Whom are you looking for? | 6:58 | |
| An encounter with the risen Lord confronts each one of us | 7:01 | |
| with a passionately loving God | 7:06 | |
| who pursued you and me through death into life. | 7:09 | |
| A God who calls us forth from the dead and dried out places | 7:15 | |
| in our lives. | 7:20 | |
| From resentment and anger to forgiveness and peace. | 7:21 | |
| From despair to hope. | 7:26 | |
| From fear to courage. | 7:28 | |
| From failure to new possibilities. | 7:31 | |
| We can never be touched by the living God | 7:36 | |
| without having our entire world disrupted. | 7:39 | |
| In Christ we encounter both the gift and the demand | 7:44 | |
| of God's love. | 7:49 | |
| He confronts us with a decision | 7:52 | |
| about whether we will recognize | 7:54 | |
| Him as Lord over our lives | 7:55 | |
| or whether we'll turn away. | 7:59 | |
| He confronts us with a decision about whether we're willing | 8:02 | |
| to die to self in order that we might be raised with Him. | 8:05 | |
| It's one thing to believe | 8:11 | |
| and confess that Christ was raised. | 8:13 | |
| Quite another to accept that | 8:16 | |
| when we acknowledge Christ as Lord, | 8:19 | |
| we turn our lives over to Him in loving obedience | 8:22 | |
| in order that we might share in His death | 8:26 | |
| and in His resurrection. | 8:30 | |
| The resurrection of the Lord was not a one-time event | 8:34 | |
| distant and irrelevant from this time and place in history. | 8:37 | |
| The resurrection is once and for all, | 8:42 | |
| an ongoing event that incorporates all believers | 8:46 | |
| into the body of Christ. | 8:50 | |
| Thomas Merton once said, a true encounter with Christ | 8:54 | |
| liberates something in us. | 8:58 | |
| A power that we didn't know we had. | 9:01 | |
| A hope, a capacity for life, a resilience, | 9:04 | |
| an ability to bounce back when we thought | 9:09 | |
| we were completely defeated. | 9:11 | |
| A capacity to grow and change. | 9:14 | |
| A power of creative transformation. | 9:17 | |
| Are we willing to allow God to bring forth new life in us? | 9:22 | |
| To infuse love into our relationships with family, | 9:29 | |
| patience with coworkers, forgiveness of the friend | 9:34 | |
| we've harbored a grudge toward, | 9:37 | |
| kindness toward our lonely neighbor, | 9:41 | |
| compassion toward those who suffer. | 9:44 | |
| Bob found out about two years ago | 9:50 | |
| that he had tested positive for HIV. | 9:54 | |
| Slowly his support systems began to slip away. | 9:58 | |
| It became increasingly difficult to work. | 10:02 | |
| He was cut off from his family. | 10:05 | |
| Several of his friends had already died. | 10:08 | |
| What he feared most was dying alone. | 10:11 | |
| Janet met Bob through a program called Caring Friends. | 10:16 | |
| She meets with him once a week or so, | 10:21 | |
| and they talk often on the telephone. | 10:23 | |
| She said she's gotten so much more | 10:26 | |
| out of the relationship than what she's put into it. | 10:28 | |
| And when asked why she got involved with him, | 10:32 | |
| she said, well I'm a Christian, | 10:34 | |
| and I think that's what Jesus | 10:38 | |
| would have wanted me to do. | 10:40 | |
| She said, our friendship has been a blessing to me. | 10:44 | |
| And Bob said he's no longer afraid to die. | 10:50 | |
| Each of us came to the garden | 10:59 | |
| this morning seeking something. | 11:02 | |
| Only you know whom or what you were looking for. | 11:07 | |
| But you may be surprised to discover | 11:12 | |
| that the risen Christ is here looking for you. | 11:15 | |
| Will you allow Him to be raised and to live in you? | 11:20 | |
| Whom are you looking for? | 11:27 | |
| Rejoice, I have seen the risen Lord. | 11:29 |