Resurrection Sunday

Isaiah 26:19, Job 19:25-26

Resurrection: The Marrow of Christianity

Christ's resurrection is our resurrection. The woman went to help with the embalming process. The more spices and embalming spices, the more respected and lifted up the person. A previous elder was said to have 40 pounds of the spices and yet, Nicodemus was said to have given 100 pounds himself alone. His death was not a pretty one. The blood and humanity of his death is essential to see the glorious resurrection. Now we have women going to give more spices. They will be the first witnesses. Women back then were not seen as reliable witnesses. At the birth of Christ, God uses shepherds to witness...shepherds were not seen as reliable witnesses. And now He uses women as witnesses. This is a large deal why the women were not believed. It was a garden where God first brought about life and now God uses a garden to bring about a new life. Death came by the first garden but life is brought by the second Adam in this second garden. In the resurrection man has peace finally with God. It is only because if the resurrection that we can look around and see the good, the true, and the beautiful left in this world.

(At this point I got so engrossed in the sermon that I stopped taking notes. I apologize!)

"Make no mistake: if He rose at all it was as His body;

If the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules

Reknit, the amino acids rekindle, the Church will fall. 

It was not as the flowers, each soft Spring recurrent;

It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled

Eyes of the eleven apostles; it was as His Flesh: ours. 

The same hinged thumbs and toes, the same valves heart

That -- pierced -- died, withered, paused, and then

Regathered out of enduring Might new strength to enclose. 

Let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, sidestepping

Transcendence; making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the

Faded credulity of earlier ages; let us walk through the door. 

....and I lost the rest of the poem, I'm sorry!