Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
(1 Peter 1.3) Amen.
It is Easter again in the small little church
Sitting in the midst of the pine trees;
And all of the folk, woman, child, and bloke,
Have survived the winter’s deep freeze.
It is time once again to tell the long tale
Of the risen Lord once more,
And in their Easter best they all take their rest
In their favorite pew by the door.
But when the pastor begins to proclaim the word,
There was something that isn’t quite right:
Though the words are all there and spoken with care,
They all rhyme to the people’s delight.
For each Eastertide when the story is told
Of the miraculous first Easter dawn,
The pastor knows well that it’s right hard to tell
The good news without seeing a yawn.
And so you’ll forgive this small little quirk
Of spreading the good Easter story
In our brief little time I’ll tell it rhyme
The message of God’s greatest glory.
It’s been two thousand years since that dark day
When the Romans sent Jesus to death;
And before their own eyes he suffers and dies
Forgiving with his last dying breath.
He was left all alone as the Sabbath drew nigh
And he slowly bleeds and dies;
For his disciples all knew that that unless they flew,
They might meet the same sad demise.
But there was one righteous man who did not flee
But asked Pilate for the corpse of the king;
So the governor agrees to Joseph’s small pleas,
And to him the body did bring.
T’was in his own tomb that Joseph did lay
The body of the most blessed one;
Though he persevered, the Sabbath had neared
And the tomb was sealed with a stone.
But after the day of rest has soon passed
It was the women who knew Jesus well
That came with spices and all the devises
For a body to decay without smell.
But when they arrived they saw such a sight
That made them tremble with fear;
For stone was unsealed and the tomb soon revealed
That the body was nowhere near.
As they stooped in to look in at the terrible sight
That was present before their sad eyes,
The shroud was still there but the slab was all bare,
Could it be that he really did rise?
When all of sudden two men did appear,
Dressed in bedazzling white;
So with a great scare the women fell there
and they bowed with a trembling fright.
“Why do you look for the living here
In the place where the dead all decay?
He is not dead but is risen instead,”
To the women the men did say.
“Can’t you remember what he did teach
That he would suffer and die with great doom,
But in three short days with glory and praise
He would rise again from the tomb?”
And women remembered the words of their Lord
How he seemed to know what was ahead;
And no longer worried they got up and hurried
To tell all the others what was said.
But when the good women did find the eleven
Panicked with worries and fears,
The story they told though daring and bold
Did not fall on receptive ears.
“T’is an idle tale” they said with dismay
As the women begged and pleaded;
But then in the end good ol’ Peter did bend
And to the tomb they proceeded.
When they arrived to that splendid sight
Of the empty tomb in the garden,
Peter then heeded and soon he conceded
And asked for the women’s good pardon.
And it was from that day onward
That the story of Jesus was spread,
And how he appeared and everyone cheered
That Jesus is risen from the dead.
But no doubt you’ll wonder why this still matters
Two thousand years after the fact,
While here in our day with our post-modern way
The whole thing seems mighty abstract.
For we all know that the dead to not rise
From the grave in this or any other day,
And though we might try to not suffer or die,
It’s ashes to ashes anyway.
But nevertheless there is a bold story
Of God’s own blessed Son,
Who did rise from the dead though beaten and bled
And victory for us he has won.
For in Jesus’ death we all die, too,
A death to sin and sorrow;
And with Jesus we rise with hope and surprise,
To a glorious and eternal tomorrow.
And so it is when the spring thaw begins
That we tell the good story again.
And here at St Stephen, we too can even
Cry ‘Jesus is risen!’ Amen!’