April 8th, 2007 - Easter

Sermons can be powerful, inspirational or thought provoking. They can confirm deep set beliefs or challenge your faith. During Sunday's sermon Pastor Dayle declared we were Easter people, people of the resurrection.

Her proclamation both confirmed our beliefs and challenged us. The sermon was one of the highlights of my experiences, readings and disciplines during the Easter week. This was the response to aspire to while experiencing the Easter highs and the Good Friday darkness that we have all shared at various times in our lives.

Before writing in detail about my response to the sermon, however, I want to address other parts of the service and the day.

The weather was a perfect, pastel-colored cloud day arriving at the church. It moved to brilliant sunshine for the services and Easter egg hunt. Later in the day the weather shifted again to clouds and rain but the morning could not have been better.

By the time I arrived Pastor Dayle was already busy getting the sanctuary ready with the last-minute-the guests-are-coming type details. A patch of candle wax from Easter Vigil the night before needed to be removed from the carpet, the banners and their stands needed to be placed. Pastor Mark and I helped. As Sara and crew for making breakfast arrived, people paying that kind of attention to detail multiplied.

Alot of multi-tasking went on to make the service special. I was impressed by Greg and his family during the first service and Shirley and her family for the second service. Both Greg and Shirley sang in the choir and were also readers during those respective services.

The Easter services overflowed with music. The choir started with Now, O Death Where Is Thy Sting. I must admit it took time in practice for this music to become meaningful for me. It was meaningful during these services. The lines Jesus Christ is risen moving from soft incredulity to loud affirmation dramatized in music something beautiful about Easter.

Now back to the sermon, Pastor Dayle asked us to ponder how we, as Easter people, live in a Good Friday world. The Good Friday world is our world of fear and darkness. It is where we can feel overwhelmed by public and personal problems. Pastor Dayle continued:

We live in a Good Friday world. There’s no doubt. But Good Friday isn’t the last word.

How do people of God, Easter people live in this Good Friday world? Easter people see light in the midst of darkness. Easter people see Jesus as a source of light and a resource for life. As resurrection people we look for the glimmer of light and focus our energies there.

How do we do that? We open our eyes to the pain in the world and we find the light.

Yes, yes, yes. Also we are there to help each other do both these things when it is most difficult.

We sang many old and familiar hymns during this service. We felt the spirit of the people who have done these things in the past, who helped us do these things until we were strong enough to find the light ourselves.

We sang Hallelujah! We Sing Your Praises as we did during the Easter Vigil service. A mad joy crept into this performance and propelled the musicians and the congregation forward as the orchestra set up for the finale of the worship.

The orchestra and choir together performed Thine is the Glory with the congregation. Immediately afterwards came Handel's Hallelujah Chorus.

Kelly led David, the orchestra and choir in this unique, musical expression of praise and faith. Musical faith may not always be obvious but this performance testified. It was faith as commitment knowing the time invested in rehearsal would be a musical gift during the performances. It was faith in the talent and vision of a choir director like Kelly, that he chose the right material and understood the capabilities and limitations of individuals and the group.

It was faith to be moved by the music in performance. That part is always amazing to me. The choir rehearsed at one level and the day of the performance we sang and the musicians played differently. Today this piece wraps around the musicians, the choir and the congregation and leaves all of us elated. We marveled and felt firm in our faith once again.

Christ is risen. He has risen indeed! Alleluia!