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Apr 12, 2020

Embrace the Weirdness, Easter 2020

Embrace the Weirdness, Easter 2020

Passage: John 20:1

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: House Calls

Let us be honest with ourselves: this whole faith is inescapably weird--odd, absurd, fantastic. But in its weirdness is its glory and its beauty. In this weirdest of times, we ought not stumble over, but celebrate, the weirdness of the Gospel.

Order of Worship

CALL TO WORSHIP: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25
AFFIRMATION OF FAITH: Nicene Creed (see below)
OLD TESTAMENT READING: Isaiah 52:13, 53:10-12
CENTRAL TEXT: John 20:1-18
MESSAGE: Embrace the Weirdness
BENEDICTION: 1 Corinthians 1:26-30

Children's Lesson

Readings & Scripture

CALL TO WORSHIP: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25
LEADER: For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

PEOPLE: Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

LEADER: For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom,

PEOPLE: but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH: Nicene Creed

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth
of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten not made,
of one being with the Father;
through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
and became truly human.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.

On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge
the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son
is worshipped and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

OLD TESTAMENT READING: Isaiah 52:13, 53:10-12
Is. 52:13 Behold, my servant shall act wisely;
he shall be high and lifted up,
and shall be exalted.

Is. 53:10 Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him;
he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for guilt,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.
11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,
because he poured out his soul to death
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and makes intercession for the transgressors.

CENTRAL TEXT: John 20:1-18
John 20:1 Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. 2 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” 3 So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the tomb. 4 Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, 7 and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9 for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10 Then the disciples went back to their homes.

John 20:11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. 12 And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. 13 They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” 14 Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” 18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that he had said these things to her.

BENEDICTION: 1 Corinthians 1:26-30
LEADER: For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are,

PEOPLE: so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 30 And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. Who were the “weird” ones in your school growing up? Were you one of “them”--if so, why? What constitutes being weird in our day? What’s the attraction to, or the revulsion of, weirdness?
  2. Read the passage a few times in succession. Note everything that strikes you as weird. Go. Don’t hold back--leave nothing out. What did you list? Why did you find all that weird? Better question: does that weirdness make faith in it more difficult or more attractive? Why?
  3. What happens if you omit or ignore all the weird parts? (Think Thomas Jefferson’s version of the New Testament) What’s left? Is what’s left worth anything?
  4. If you’re Peter and you’ve had the “bad weekend” we see during Jesus’s arrest and show-trial, how are you feeling at the rumor that Jesus has in fact risen from the dead?

QUOTES:

 

  • If Christianity is not both true and weird, why believe in it (or identify with it) at all? . . .Once Christianity abandons its fundamental weirdness, then there is no reason to choose to sit in a pew for an hour or two on a Sunday rather than, say, going to SoulCycle, or practicing a more immediately beneficial form of self-care. The only Christians left, in the end, may be the Weird ones. - Tara Isabella Burton 
  • You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. - C.S. Lewis
  • ”I was not looking for God; I neither sought him nor wanted him. He reached out, loved me while I was still a sinner, broke my defenses, and decided to pour out his undeserved grace.” - Guillaume Bignon
  • I want to see my friend, and he’s gone forever. I feel like I’ve been cut in half. All I want is to hear his voice again, with that endless conviction, telling me that someday we will understand all things. All things. All things. - Freddie DeBoer
  • That’s what I go to church for, to be surprised by faith and to fall apart. Without the Resurrection, [we] would be just a wonderful club of very nice people with excellent taste in music and literature, but when it hits you what you’ve actually subscribed to, it blows the top of your head off. - Garrison Keillor
  • If you could, could you give my bonus points to whoever scores the lowest? - An Kentucky 11th grader on an history exam
  • This World is not Conclusion.
    A Species stands beyond —
    Invisible, as Music —
    But positive, as Sound. . . .
    “This World is not Conclusion,” Emily Dickinson

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