Call to Worship for Pentecost based on Acts 2:1-21 & John 7:37-39

Leader: As we begin worship today, we cry out:
People: Come, Holy Spirit, Come!
L: Within us, we ask the Spirit to touch us with holy fire.
P: Come, Holy Spirit, Come!
L: For those who are thirsty, in the pews and outside the walls, we pray:
P: Come, Holy Spirit, Come!
L: Holy Spirit, fill us with fire and make living water flow from our hearts.
P: Come, Holy Spirit, Come!
All: Amen.

Call to Worship based on "Blessed Assurance"

Leader: Our God is a God of Yesterdays, Today, and Tomorrow.
People: Blessed Assurance! Jesus is Mine!
L: In our past we sang:
P: This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long.
L: Today we sing:
P: This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long.
L: Tomorrow we will sing:
P: This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long.
L: In all times and places, the work of God continues and so we will never cease in our praise:
All: This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long. Amen.

Call to Worship based on hymn, "I Love You, Lord"

Leader: We come together today to proclaim:
People: We love you, Lord!
L: We lift our voices in worship.
People: Rejoice, O My Soul!
L: King of all, take joy in our worship and praise.
P: May it be a sweet, sweet sound in your ear.
All: Amen.

“The Good News is…Alive in the World” an Easter sermon on Matthew 28:1-10

Matthew 28:1-10
“The Good News is…Alive in the World”
Preached Sunday, April 5, 2026 (Easter)

I love proclaiming the Good News of Easter. I love when I say, “Christ is Risen” and I hear over a hundred voices echoing back “Christ is Risen, Indeed!” So let’s proclaim the Good, Good News of the Gospel together this Easter morning:

Christ is Risen!
Christ is Risen, Indeed!

This is the Good News of the Gospel! Christ is risen! Jesus is alive! Death does not have the final say! God offers us all an abundant, joyful, and Good News filled life!

We live in a world that is desperate for Good News. In the pews and in the world, we are a people parched, starving, in need of good news. There is a lot of bad news out there - even as I was writing this sermon, I saw multiple headlines that broke my heart - or would break my heart if I didn’t construct a wall around it to protect it from the endless awfulness of the world. Which is also not what God wants for us. I don’t need to belabor the bad news today - you all know what it is. Wars rage. Disasters happen. Children - and adults - die much too soon. People are mean to one another. We treat one another as less than the beloved children of God that each of us was created as. This is not the Good News of the Gospel.

We also need to acknowledge that sometimes what is packaged and sold as the Good News of Christ Jesus often fails to actually be “good” news - a “Gospel” that is exclusive, limiting, controlling, shaming, hateful is not the Good News of Jesus Christ.

And so over the past six weeks, during the course of the season of Lent, as a church we have been focusing on the Good, Good News of the Gospel. The word “Gospel” literally means “Good News” and it is as the angels proclaimed at the birth of Jesus, “Good News of Great Joy for all People!” If it’s not that, it ain’t the Gospel.

And so we have been focusing on the core of the Gospel message, to satiate our desperate thirst for Good News in our world. And today. Today is the day of ultimate Good News. Good, Good News of Great Joy for all people:

Jesus is alive!
Easter is here!
The Resurrection is real!

And so today as we proclaim the Good News of the Resurrection we should not just proclaim it but live it as well. And so we ask: How do we let this Good, Good News be alive in us? Alive in the world? Especially in a world that constantly tries to drown out, diminish, and obscure Good News with all the pain and hurt of the world?

Jenny Lawson is an author who writes and speaks very openly about her mental health struggles. She does so in a way that is often irreverent, hilarious, and relatable. In her newest book, “How To Be Okay When Nothing is Okay” she gives tips and tricks that she has found to function, be human, and stay alive when she is at her low points.

One of those tips and tricks is curating a joy list. She writes this:

“When depression creeps up on me, I am unable to find joy in things, but sometimes that’s because my depression makes me forget the things that bring me joy, and eventually I find myself stuck on the couch, unable to think about what I could do to help break out of it. So I’ve created a list of things that bring me joy or comfort that I continuously add to, and when I’m struggling, I go back to that list to remind myself of things that I can reintroduce to my life that made me happy. Sometimes a simple reminder that I’ve found joy before can be enough to convince me that I’ll soon find joy again.”

Her joy list in the book includes dressing her cat up, reading, singing loudly in the shower, microwavable kettle corn, and sitting in the sun. It made me think, what would be on my joy list? So I made one:

The sound of my children’s laughter
When the cherry trees are flowering
Marking off a book as finished on my reading app
The first sip of a matcha latte
A hug from a friend I haven’t seen in awhile
When I step outside after a long winter, and for the first time in months, I realize the birds are singing and that which was dormant inside of me comes to life again

That last one feels a lot like the Good News of Resurrection for me.

What would be on your joy list? What on that list feels like the Good News of Resurrection to you? Take just a moment and let a couple things come to your mind.

The next step as Christians, taking this from a great tool for mental health to a spiritual discipline of keeping the Good News of the Resurrection alive inside of us, is seeing the “things” on our joy lists not just as “things” but as gifts of joy from God in order to bring the Good News to our everyday lives.

Being a Christian means seeing all things through the lens of the Resurrection. The line between sacred and secular, the line between everyday and holy, disappears when we see all things that are life-giving as gifts from the God who is Life itself. Gifts from the God who broke the powers of sin and Death over us. Gifts from God who wishes abundant life for us.

Because we do live in a world where Death still sits on the throne and has power over us. We live in a world where there is grief, loss, tears, pain, bad news. And the Good News of the Gospel is that all the bad news won’t have the final say. Because of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Death was defeated, and death is dying. We look to that day when Christ will return again to create a new heaven and a new earth, when Death will die the final death, Christ will reign, and we will share in eternal life. We look towards that day - and God offers us a foretaste of it now, whenever the Good, Good News is shared, whenever life flourishes, whenever we experience joy.

The Rev. Lizzie McManus-Dial puts it like this: “How can we trust resurrection when death is on the world’s throne? Because Jesus knows what we will always need to be reminded of: the good news is greater than any tyrant. The good news of God is more alive than anything that tries to kill God, more alive than anything that tries to kill the imago dei in all of us. Kings come and kings go, and we may tremble still—but God? God shakes the earth with power and might so tender and so fresh it can make a tomb bloom with new life.”

And so - let us make joy lists. Let’s also make Good News lists. Lists that proclaim the Good, Good News of the Gospel, Good News of Great Joy for all people! Perhaps our lists would look something like this:

“The Good News is…All Are Invited”
“The Good News is…So Good it Catches Us By Surprise"
“The Good News is… Great Love for God & Neighbor”
“The Good News is…Together, the Impossible is Possible”
“The Good News is…Protection & Care for the Vulnerable”
“The Good News is…Rooted in Justice, Mercy, and Faithfulness”
“The Good News is…Even Judas Gets His Feet Washed”
“The Good News…Revealed through Nonviolence”
“The Good News is…Alive in the World”

If you didn’t pick up on my little sermon Easter egg - those were all our Good News sermon titles in the season of Lent. We’ve been working on our Good, Good News lists all along.

And so, root yourself, ground yourself in the Good, Good News. Make the joy list. Make the Good News list.

The Gospel in Matthew is the “loudest” of all the Resurrection narratives - an earthquake, an angel descending from heaven before their eyes, his appearance like lightning, the guards shake and faint, there is great fear - and great joy - and running, and then…there is Jesus, alive and standing before them.

Let the Good News of Easter be loud in your life. Let the Good, Good News of Great Joy be alive in your life and in the world. Cultivate joy. Cultivate Good, Good News. In a world that so desperately needs the Good, Good News of the Gospel - be its amplifier. Offer a deep drink of life-giving joy to a world that is parched. Let your life be like birdsong after a long winter.

And with that, I want to leave you this morning with a poem by The Rev. Sarah Speed entitled, “Birdsong.”

“Every morning the sun rises,
majestic and steady.
She is greeted
in all her strength
with the joyous cacophony of birdsong.
I like to believe
this holy chorus
is the birds telling each other—
I’m here.
We made it through the night.
You’re not alone.
What good, good news.
I think the resurrection is a bit like that.
God is here.
We made it through the night.
We are not alone.
What good, good news.”

Christ is Risen!
Christ is Risen, Indeed!

Amen.

“The Good News Is…Even Judas Got His Feet Washed” a Maundy Thursday Sermon on John 13:1-35

John 13:1-35
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
“The Good News Is…Even Judas Got His Feet Washed”
Preached Thursday, April 2, 2026 (Maundy Thursday)

“Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”

This is the Good News of this night - a night of love. A night of service. A night of water and towels. A night of bread and wine. A night of Good News.

And the part of the Good News we are focusing on tonight in our Maundy Thursday meditation, is that Jesus’s love, Jesus’s service of foot washing, and Jesus’s invitation to the first Lord’s Supper - included Judas. He was present for the foot washing. He was present for the institution of Holy Communion. And he was one of Jesus’s own - loved until the end.

Yes, even Judas. And that also allows us to say, “Yes, even him.” “Yes, even her.” “Yes, even the one I despise.” And, perhaps, “Yes, even me.”

I think, at our core, as humans, all we ever really want to know is that we are loved. Loved by the people who gave birth to us. Loved by our caretakers. Loved by friends. Loved by significant others. Loved by God. For most people, there is never enough assurance that we are loved enough. We are always seeking love and seeking proof and assurance of the love we have.

And the world warps our own self-image as one created in the image of God and called “very good” by that God, to a mess. To someone full of faults and mistakes. Even when we say, “I’m only human” - this is what we mean. We are sinful people prone to follow our worst natures, inklings, and desires. Even if we “aren’t that bad” - even if we are generally good people, we can still have low self-esteem, be our own worst critics, and see only the bad parts when we look at ourselves.

In the Poem, “Even Now,” The Rev. Sarah Speed, gets to the gist of this human desire to know we are loved:

We ask the question a million different times
over the course of lives.
Do you love me even now?
As children we ask this question
with eyes the size of saucers
and a quivering bottom lip.
In our teenage years,
we ask the question by pushing people away
and paying attention to who comes back.
As adults we ask the question by
extending the first invitation
and seeing who returns the kindness.
Over and over again we ask the world,
Do you love me even now?
The thing I’ve learned about God
is that, no matter what comes before “even now,”
the answer will always be yes.

End quote.

“Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”

Judas betrayed Jesus, ultimately setting up the dominoes to fall - for his death to his resurrection. In the Gospel tellings of this last night with his disciples, we see Jesus address Judas’s betrayal in various ways - and yet, he doesn’t say “this is my body, broken for you. My blood, shed for you. Except for you, Judas, you are beyond the pale - not worthy of grace and forgiveness.” And even as Jesus says, “Not all of you are clean” in tonight’s reading from John - Jesus had not yet named Judas a betrayer. He got down on his hands and knees before Judas, washed his feet, and showed him a service of love - yes, even him.

Ultimately, it was up to Judas as to whether he would accept the love, grace, forgiveness that Jesus was offering him. After all, Peter betrayed Jesus that very night as well. Denying him three times. - and yet, after his resurrection, Jesus meets Peter on the beach and allows him to accept forgiveness of himself, asking him three times, “Do you love me?” and allowing Peter to answer three times, “Yes, Lord, you know I love you.” Three declarations of love to counter act three denials of Jesus - opening room in Peter’s heart to accept the love and forgiveness that Jesus was offering him.

If we used our Biblical imaginations, we might imagine a future where, after his death and resurrection, Jesus met Judas and offered him the chance to repent. What would it have looked like to repent for Judas?

Unfortunately, we don’t know because Judas could not accept God’s forgiveness for him in this life. Perhaps, his thoughts mirror our thoughts in our darkest moment: “I am not worthy of love. I am not worthy of forgiveness.”

But. And. The Good News of the Gospel is that…Jesus was still offering that grace and forgiveness to Judas. He was offering him love and service through the washing of feet. He was offering him a place of belonging and participation in the salvific act of forgiveness through Holy Communion. It is as we say in our Communion liturgy, “When we turned away, and our love failed, your love remained steadfast.”

Jesus’s love for Judas was steadfast. God’s love for you is steadfast.

There is nothing you can do to change God’s invitation to you to come to Jesus, to accept grace and love, and to be forgiven. The only thing keeping us from God’s love is ourselves. It is as CS Lewis said, the gates of hell are locked from the inside - or even that there are no gates, the only thing that could ever keep us from God is just…ourselves.

And this is hard news. For us. And it is also very very Good News for us. The invitation is here to accept God’s love. It’s wide open. It always will be - tonight and for forever.

I am going to end with one more poem by the Rev. Sarah Speed because it’s so good. It’s called “If You Hear Nothing Else, Then Hear This.”

You can make a fool of yourself.
You can bet on the wrong thing,
lose it all, unravel people’s trust.
You can laugh at a funeral,
curse in a church, say the wrong thing
at the wrong time, every time.
You can lose yourself in a bottle,
a relationship, a false sense of security.
You can uncover prejudice
and wrestle with the shame of it all.
You can withhold an apology,
blame it on someone else,
tell yourself it’s not your fault.
You can trade in love
for a bag of coins.
And even then,
even still,
even now,
Jesus will love you enough to
wash your feet.
If you hear nothing else in the gospel,
hear this.

End quote.

If you hear nothing else in the Gospel tonight hear this Good News: God’s love for you is steadfast.

Amen.