1 Corinthians 15: 19-26 (links validated 4/2/25a)
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Sermon Starters (Easter Sunday)(C)(2025)
Richard Price’s Lazarus Man is, in part, about Anthony. He’s rescued after being trapped for three days under the rubble of a collapsed building. Anthony later tells audiences, “’I’m not one to talk about religion but it’s like God buried me under that earth, wiped my slate clean, then brought me back up to be who I never thought I could be before … And all I want now is to be worthy of that gift … “’Sometimes I have this joy in my heart,’ palming his chest, ‘I have so much in me to offer, and all I want is to be of service … I feel like …’ And then he paused, allowing this yearning to do good continue to rise in him. ‘I feel like I have so much to say to people now. Things I’d never known or felt before and it’s all good news’.” Ironically Anthony’s “resurrection” story later collapses under the weight of its fraudulence. It turns out he actually was just standing nearby where dust covered him when the building collapsed. But people found Anthony’s hopeful message to be so compelling that he also realized that he couldn’t stop preaching it. Not all people find hope in Christ’s resurrection. But in a world and culture that despair shadows and haunts, all of us are desperately searching for hope. This offers God’s dearly beloved children countless opportunities to both live and speak of the hope we have within us (cf. 1 Peter 3:15).
Resources from 2022 to 2024
Sermon Starters (Easter Sunday)(C)(2022)
The dying Leonard Fife is one Russell Bank’s novel Forgone’s main characters. He’s telling his story to a filmmaker. Fife tells his nurse, “It’s like I’m the old Italian carpenter Geppetto, the guy who made a puppet out of wood named Pinocchio, but I’m too old and feeble to pull the strings for the puppet show … But I’m the puppet too. The wooden puppet who, thanks to the intervention by a blue-haired fairy, was resurrected as a real boy.” Fife asks his nurse, “Did you read the story of Pinocchio, Renee?” “No. But I have heard of it. It is a child’s story, is it not?” “Yes, but it’s too scary for children. It’s about lying and dying. Lying and dying, and the vanity of believing in the resurrection.”...The Resurrected Jesus: Hope, Faith and a New Beginning
In the film, “As Good as it Gets,” Jack Nicholson plays the part of Melvin Udall. Udall was a wealthy writer but a crotchety, unhappy man. He did not relate to his neighbors. He was afraid of the outside world. He was superstitious and obsessive-compulsive. He would wash his hands excessively and always took his own sterile utensils to the same restaurant. When he walked he avoided cracks in the sidewalk. When he returned to his apartment he bolted his door with five locks. His neighbor, Simon, played by Greg Kinnear, is mugged and ends up in the hospital. Meanwhile, Melvin was forced to take care of his dog. This was the same dog that Melvin threw down the laundry chute earlier in the film. Melvin begins to have a change of heart. At his favorite restaurant he paid for the medical treatment of the son of the waitress, Carol Connelly, played by Ellen Hunt. Eventually he falls in love with her. One day as Melvin left his apartment he was shocked to discover that he had left his door unlocked. By some miracle he had overcome his fear of the outside world and had become loving and generous, free of his obsessive-compulsive behavior...Easter Sunday (C)(2022)
Eugene O’Neill wrote a great play about the meaning of ongoing future in the face of despair called “Lazarus Laughed”. After Lazarus had been resuscitated and restored to full life, he couldn’t stop laughing, much to the annoyance of all his friends. Finally, they put the question to him, “What do you know, Lazarus that we do not know?” Lazarus answered, “I know that there is no death. There is only life. There is only God. There is only incredible joy.” There is something extremely affirming about a faith that allows such belief...
Resources from 2019 to 2021
Sermon Starter (Easter Sunday)(C)(2019)
Just outside of Prague lies a testimonial to both the power of death and the power of God’s gift of life. The Nazis built and operated the Terezin concentration camp. It was a somewhat unique camp. After all, the Nazis built what they called this “model ghetto” to cover up what they were really doing to Jews and Gypsies, pastors, homosexuals and people who were impaired. The Nazis even fooled the representatives of the Red Cross who inspected this camp. Tourists can, in fact, still see what the inspectors saw: spacious bathrooms, showers and sinks with mirrors. The Nazis, however, didn’t admit that Terezin was just a transit camp where inmates stayed only briefly before the Nazis shipped them off to death camps where virtually all of them were murdered. Among the things about Terezin was its disproportionately high number of children: 15,000 of them passed through its gates. Only 100 survived. Yet those children did what children do while they were in Terezin. They laughed and played, argued and fought, ran and made up games. However, Terezin’s children also drew pictures, some of which visitors can still see at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. They drew them on the walls of their crowded barracks, in notebooks and on scraps of paper. Those children drew pictures of camp life from a child’s perspective. However, they also drew pictures of flowers, birds and butterflies, lots of butterflies. Terezin’s children, condemned to die by the powerful, deadly Nazis, drew pictures that spoke of life in the midst of death...