Mark

The Text The Short Ending or the Long ending? This is not the Easter story we’re looking for. The short ending of Mark is not what we want or expect on Easter Sunday. We want celebration, big music,...

Mark did not know exactly what we would be scared of all these years later; he just knew we would be. By ending his gospel right there, right in the middle of a sentence, he also left us free to decid...

Preaching Commentary The Text The Short Ending or the Long ending? This is not the Easter story we’re looking for. The short ending of Mark is not what we want or expect on Easter Sunday. We want ...

Context As we read the opening chapters of Mark, it becomes clear that Mark is not primarily interested in telling us things about Jesus but showing Jesus to us. We see Jesus the healer, the exor...

Heavenly Father, we confess that we come to this day of resurrection as imperfect people. Although we may have faith, we also carry doubts and apprehensions. Just as Jesus’s disciples were unsure of h...

For those who first went out into the early dawn, when the sky was grey, taking spices to the tomb, there was terror, and surprise. For us, resisting the impulse to sleep in as part of a long weekend,...

The women’s response brings readers face to face with the mystery of faith. There are no heroes among Jesus’ followers. The hostility that put Jesus on the cross has reduced them all to flight and fea...

Is there anyone who is a devout lover of God? Let us enjoy this beautiful bright festival! Is there anyone who is a grateful servant? Let us rejoice and enter into the joy of our Lord! Are ther...

I grew up in a church where healing never happened. We had theology that Jesus healed, but I never saw anyone healed growing up in the church. One day, I’m a pastor, and I decide we have to move beyon...

Charles Fulton Oursler Sr. (1893–1952) was an American journalist, playwright, editor, and writer. Like many Southerners of means, he was cared for as a boy by a nurse who had been born into slavery. ...

Risen Jesus, no one saw it coming, but your march out of the tomb has changed everything. This day leaves me breathless in wonder—death is conquered, hope lives, love wins, salvation is here! Give me ...

God of holiness and light, in the mystery of dying and rising with Christ you have established a new covenant of reconciliation; cleanse our hearts and give a new spirit to all your people, that your ...

Gracious God, through that Easter morning, you changed everything. Yet we don’t change the way we live. You have freed us from sin and death, yet we daily choose to distance ourselves from you and to ...

Christ is risen: The angels of God are rejoicing. Christ is risen: The tomb is empty and still. Christ has indeed arisen from the dead. Glory and power are Christ’s for ever and ever. Amen.

O Splendor of God’s glory bright. From Light eternal bringing light, O Light of life, the living Spring, True Day, all days illumining. Dawn’s glory gilds the earth and skies; Let him, our perfect...

Our God, as we stand before the empty tomb, like Mary and the disciples we find it hard to believe that Christ rose from the dead. Forgive our unbelief. Take from our minds the shadows of doubt and he...

Risen Christ, The world despised and rejected you You responded with grace, humility, and welcome The proud questioned your power, devised your death You responded with peace, forgiveness, and new lif...

Father: You shape and form us so each is unique yet all are in Your image, when You breathe into us the breath of life. We praise You! Jesus, God the Son–Resurrection and Life: You chose to die and ri...

Gracious God, we confess that we think of Easter as the springtime holiday rather than the mystery holiday, the hope-time holiday, the now-its-up-to-us holiday. We’re more at home with bulbs and bunni...

Almighty God, who by the death of your Son has destroyed sin and death, and by his resurrection has restored innocence and everlasting life in order that, deliv­ered from the power of sin, we may live...

Jesus – You rose before we did today. You met us at the door to lift burdens, sins and hurts from our shoulders and replace them with Your strength, forgiveness and healing. The word seems so small c...

Lord, like the women at the tomb on the first Easter, we come out of our darkness and into your light We come out of emptiness to enter your fullness We come out of our hopelessness to find your joy...

This prayer incorporates texts from Christ the Lord is Risen Today by Charles Wesley as a congregational response, a choral response, or a second voice. The responses may be sung or spoken. If sung,...

One key difference between much of the early church vs. the church of today (at least in the West) was the belief in, and regular experience of, miracles. As Joel Green, the noted professor and writer...

Thus on Easter we celebrate Christ’s Resurrection as something that happened and still happens to us. For each one of us received the gift of that new life and the power to accept it and to live by it...

The story of Easter is the story of God’s wonderful window of divine surprise.

The story of Passion-Tide and Easter is the story of the winning of that freedom and of that victory over the evils of Time. The burden of the guilt is accepted (“He was made Sin”), the last agony of ...

We ask that streams of Easter light might flow into the intimacy and privacy of our hearts this morning, to heal us and encourage us and enable us to make again a new beginning.

The Easter message tells us that our enemies—sin, the curse, and death—are beaten. Ultimately they can longer start mischief. They still behave as though the game were not decided, the battle not foug...

The Greek word for Easter, pascha, means “passage.” It evokes so many different passages for us: the Israelites’ passage from slavery to freedom, our own passage from sin to forgiveness, Jesus’ passag...