He is risen!

As I’ve prayed about where the Lord would have us go after Lent, it seemed good to celebrate the resurrection and how it can impact our heart for just as long as we meditated on the cross and how it can impact our heart. While this is new to me, many liturgical Christians have done this for centuries. They call it Eastertide – 7 weeks from the Resurrection to the ascension of Christ and the descent of the Holy Spirit! (I know there are centuries of controversy over the word Easter — some think it is from a pagan goddess of fertility, but there is also strong evidence that it is from a Latin word meaning “dawn” or a Greek word meaning “paschal.” In any case, even if its origin is pagan, we are reforming it!) The above picture is from my window one morning at dawn. If God could create such a beautiful world in just 7 days, imagine what the new heaven and earth will be like!

 It’s wonderful when God gives me confirmation I’m on the right path, One way was from our own Bev just last week. She wrote:

God has shown up often this past week in the lessons of this Journey to the Cross speaking conviction and truth into my life. But as I started and have been re-reading Gentle and Lowly I have been greatly encouraged. I feel it has helped balance the harshness of the Cross with the purpose of the Cross and the heart behind the Cross which is God the Father’s heart lived out through Jesus. I recognize the need to let this week culminate in the passion and agony of our Lord and Savior and absorb those realities but oh how I look forward to celebrating the victory of the Cross and the Resurrection next Sunday. 

 So let’s not just celebrate today, let’s do so for seven weeks!

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God Hunt Resurrection Sunday!

God is always here, but we don’t always recognize Him, as with the two on the road to Emmaus.  You might spy Him through an answer to prayer, unusual timing, help to do His work in the world, or, during this Eastertide becoming aware of what Brennan Manning called “the risenness of Christ in your life.” The same God who rose Christ from the dead now lives in the believer and empowers him or her. Let’s be alert to be amazed. 

1. Share a way you spied God in your life this week — perhaps even “the risenness of Christ” in your life.

Monday: God’s Heart Toward the Oppressed

I’ve been reading a book on Luke by Michael Card. I did know that women were Luke’s primary sources which is why there are so many women’s stories in Luke that appear only in his gospel. I also knew Luke was a physician, but what I didn’t know is that most physicians were slaves and that a common name for a slave was Lucian. If indeed he was, it helps me understand his great sympathy for the oppressed, as women were then – -and a woman who was a demoniac — how hard her life must have been! We will look at Mary Magdalene over the next two weeks.

2. Comments on the above?

3. How does history or Hollywood often portray Mary Magdalene? How does Luke 8:2 portray her?

4. Looking at Mark 5:1-5 what do you learn about the life of a demoniac?

5. Watch the above from the Chosen. Does this seem like a possible way her deliverance might have happened? Why or why not?  In what way did the writers parallel her meeting Jesus at the tomb?

6. After my Good Friday talk, we all had a matzo cracker with horseradish — a “mini Passover meal.” With one exception in the Bible, leaven represents sin. Bitter herbs represented the bitterness of sin and slavery. We need to remember our idols are not our friends. With that in mind, what is one of the most painful things from which Jesus has delivered you?

Tuesday: I Was One Way…

The Chosen also imagines that Nicodemus had tried and failed to exorcise her demons. That is fictional, though not implausible. But she says something at the end of this clip that indeed she must have felt and probably communicated. Find it.

7. Share two ways you are completely different because of encountering Jesus.

She saw it all. She was there at the cross. She saw His suffering, the cruelty, and heard his words.

8. Read Mark 15:33-47

A. What do you think was going on in her mind when she heard Him cry: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

B. What do you learn about her from verses 40-41?

C. What do you learn about her from verses 42-47? What thoughts might she have had?

Wednesday: The Eucatastrophe

What I love the most about that first Resurrection Sunday was that NOBODY EXPECTED JESUS TO RISE FROM THE DEAD! NOBODY! It truly was, as J. R. Tolkein puts it, a “eucatastrophe.” Like “eucharist,” it has to do with grace or favor — but it’s a wonderful “catastrophe,” an ENORMOUS, GRACE-FILLED, SURPRISING turn of events.

9. Read Luke 24:1-3

       A. Why were the women going to the tomb and what did they expect to find? 

       B. What two things did they discover?

       C. What thoughts do you think they had? Why?

10. Read Luke 24:4-8 and share one thing that stands out to you and why.

11. Read Luke 24:9-11

A. Why do you think God gave names of the specific people involved?

B. Luke, the physician, uses a medical term here, translated idle tales or nonsense. It has the sense of hallucinating or the delirious talk of the very ill.  What are the reasons the men might have responded that way? 

Thursday-Friday Sermon

12. Watch the above Tim Keller video and share your thoughts? Did you learn anything new about Mary Magdalene? 

Saturday:

13. What is your take-a-way and why?