Sermon given by Reverend Leah Robberts-Mosser at Community United Church of Christ (UCC) in Champaign, IL on May 16, 2010 about being a Progressive Christianity congregation. Part of the “We are an Easter People, Celebrating our Core Values” sermon series.
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A bloody cross, a cold stone grave,
A gentle man no one could save
If Jesus died for anything, he laid down his life like most social prophets and martyrs as a complete and utter refutation and relinquishment of any vestiges of earthly kingdoms. Whatever the subsequent followers of the donkey king would retrospectively make of him, he was regarded by the powers that be as nothing more than a nuisance. As more than one biblical scholar has pointed out, the real significance of Jesus’ crucifixion lay in the fact that anyone subsequently noticed and cared about the execution of a nobody. Yet it is the way of a nobody — not a somebody — that has so often altered the way of an otherwise weary world.
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“Why look for the living among the dead?” [Luke 24:5] “We live in a post-resurrection age, which in many ways is not unlike that of the first followers of a Galilean peasant sage and martyr, who was …
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Once upon a time, God was Good, and Good was born in each of us. Good took on human form to move across the face of the earth. As we let Good direct us, it taught us …
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Beatitude Nine: “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
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Beginning with the traditional opening from Charles Wesley, this moves into a progressive Christian expression of resurrection.
Christ the Lord is risen today – Alleluia!
Mortal tongues and angels say: – Alleluia!
I’m a scientific kind of guy and to tell you the truth
I find the stories of the empty tomb hard to take in
As a progressive clergy person from my first day in the pulpit, thirty years ago, I always felt that everything from Lent to Easter Sunday was the most important and exciting season for Christians. It was another opportunity to teach and even to practice the path of kenosis, to move beyond our familiar boundaries of mind and body by learning to let go and change.
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On this Easter Sunday,
Let us roll away the stone
The stone that stifles the divine spark within us
That keeps us from being our true selves
Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday… a worship service from Soul Link Faith Community, a new church plant in Mansfield PA. The pastor’s story follows the order of worship.
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Lo! Christ is with us, risen from the tomb;
Love for one another, conquers hopeless doom;
Let the church with gladness, hymns of joy now sing:
For with Christ arisen, death hath lost its sting.
JOHN MARK, the gospel novel written by Christopher Epting, came to life in Jerusalem. While on a sabbatical there at St. George’s College, he felt inspired to enter more deeply into the biblical story by focusing his mind and heart on the very first gospel ever to be written, the one attributed to St. Mark. But who was this Saint? And how did he come to create a literary masterpiece that would open the door for others, for Matthew, Luke and John, to follow?
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We proclaim and celebrate this Easter season because it links Jesus with all life, with transformation, and with possibility of life beyond our imagining. Easter offers meaning and hope to all people.
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The celebration of Easter is the acknowledgement of the power of the divine spirit working through us to transform the most negative of situations. Let us commit ourselves to overcoming hate with love.
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The Year of Luke is the first in a series of commentaries on biblical scripture found in the three-year cycle of Christian liturgical readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Instead of interpreting these readings as a precursor …
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It was carved with hand tools on a rough slab of native red rock: “Marcelito L. Baca – murio a la edad de 17 dias (died at the age of 17 days) – 1919”. It was planted …
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I’ve titled this as about the Resurrection, which is just one part of a complex of beliefs… but let’s return and end there… What similarities or differences do you see in Paul’s Resurrection statements and beliefs and those of the early Jerusalem Jesus-followers?
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