There’ll Be Sunshine in the Morning – Jim and Jean Strathdee
Canticle of the Turning – Princeton Seminary Choir
How Can I Keep from Singing – Little Windows
Precious Lord – Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Come On Children, Let’s Sing – Mahalia Jackson
Love, Love Love – Clarence Fountain & The Blind Boys of Alabama
That’s the Way God Planned It – Ivan Kelley, Jr. & Our Lady of Perpetual Tears Choir
Jesus Christ Is Risen Today – Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, Daniel Hyde & Donal McCann
I Know That My Redeemer Liveth – Tevin Campbell
Lift Up Your Heads, O Ye Gates – Commissioned & The Clark Sisters
No. 44 – Chorus “Hallelujah” – Sutherland/Bumbry/Mckellar/Ward/Sir Adrian Boult
Resurrection Hallelujah – Naruwan Indigenous Choir of Taiwan
Jesus Is All – Sweet Honey in the Rock
Easter Alleluia – Theresa Donohoo, Gary Daigle & Rory Cooney
Sing Hallelujah to the Lord – ICE (The Island Choral Experience) & Friends
Halleluya (Zimbabwe) – A Choral Scholar
Christ Is Risen, Shout Hosanna – First-Plymouth Congregational Church, Tom Trenney & Jeremy Bankson
Category Archives: Easter
Easter
Tonight We Remember
An Ash Wednesday sermon – February 17, 2021
preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone, Queens
Beloved people of God,
every year at Easter
we celebrate the new possibilities
God provides through the life, the death,
and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
During Lent, we prepare for this celebration
and the renewal it brings to our lives.
For many years we have begun
Our Lenten journey with ashes,
often made by burning the palms from the year before.
Mixed with a little oil,
the ashes are traced on our foreheads
in the sign of a cross.
This year we physically distance
while we spiritually gather one Christ,
I, as the pastor, will not impose ashes.
If you have received ashes
in the congregation’s Lenten worship bag or
if you have gathered “loose dust” from in or around your home,
and you would like to use the dust or ash
to make the sign of the cross
on your head or hand,
we will pause to allow you to do that.
We will take a minute of silence,
which my friend the Rev. Dr. Claudio Carvalhaes reminds us
is an eternity of silence for Presbyterians.
You may also decide to impose the sign of the cross
later in the service – when the sermon gets boring, for example.
Whether we impose the sign of the cross or not,
dust and ashes will play a role in our service.
I invite you to take the ashes you received
or the loose dust you have gathered.
If you have neither, image ashes and dust you have seen.
Look at them.
Consider them.
Think about one of their functions
in Ash Wednesday services.
Ashes, loose dust
jog our memories.
They help us remember what is;
they help us remember what will be.
Tonight we remember.
We remember our mortality.
From dust God makes us.
In the marvelous words of James Weldon Johnson:
“Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
God kneeled down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth;
This Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till God shaped it in God’s own image;
Then into it God blew the breath of life,
And the human became a living soul.“
We come from dust.
To dust we will return.
We are mortal. Limited. Finite.
One day our time on earth will end
our race will finish,
our part in God’s great story will close,
the final curtain will fall
and God will welcome us.
Tonight we remember.
We remember our need for repentance.
We remember how we fall short.
How we hurt one another.
How we tolerate social injustice.
How we wound God’s good creation.
How by our actions
and by our failures to act,
we break the heart of God.
We remember our need to turn and follow Jesus Christ
more faithfully this and every day.
Tonight we remember.
We remember those who have gone before us.
We remember people we knew and loved fiercely.
We remember people we never met but whose stories we have learned.
We remember people whose stories have never been told.
In this age of COVID-19, we remember countless people,
who have died from this pandemic.
We remember people killed by the state and racism.
People whose God-given breath was taken from them.
Whether we remember names or not,
we remember each person was and is a beloved child of God,
Tonight we remember.
the unending mercy of God,
the unbreakable grace of God,
the unflagging patience of God.
We remember the incredible love of God
who refuses to give up on us,
and who persistently awaits our return
eager to pour the Holy Spirit afresh upon us
that we might make a fresh start.
Tonight we remember.
that Lent is a time to give up.
Perhaps, like my friend the Rev. Gradye Parsons,
we make a supreme spiritual sacrifice
and give up kale.
More realistically, we seek to give up
that which truly separates and distracts us from God.
Tonight we remember.
that Lent is a time to stand up.
A time to
remove all yokes of injustice,
disrupt prejudice and systems of oppression,
feed the hungry,
clothe the naked,
visit the sick and the imprisoned
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted.
A time to:
raise the foundations of many generations
repair breaches
restore the streets.
Following Jesus, we stand up in Lent.
We stand up to love.
Tonight, my friend the Rev. Shawna Bowman reminds me,
that as we begin the Lenten journey
of repenting and turning back to God
of prayer and fasting
of commemorating Jesus’ journey to death – and beyond,
we remember.
We “are all made from the same dust
That busted forth at the birthplace of creation,
And [we] belong, In life and in death,
to the one who calls [us] beloved.
[We] belong to God.”
And whatever challenges life brings
and however we may fall short,
God, who raises Jesus from the dead,
will have the final word.
And God’s word will be a word of
love and
life and
hope and
joy.
Tonight we remember.
Thanks be to God.
Filed under Easter, First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone, Lent
A prayer for Easter, 2020
God of the empty tomb,
God of the temporarily empty building,
God of our lives,
We thank you for
the resurrection of Jesus.
May this day remind us
that you will have the final word.
Always you will have the final word.
And your word will be a word of
hope and
grace and
faith and
love.
Christ is risen.
We thank you Christ is risen.
In his name we pray.
Amen.
The Rev. W. Mark Koenig
Empty
John 20:1-10
Easter Sunday
April 12, 2020
First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone
Christ is risen.
We gather at the end of a Holy Week different from any other on an Easter Sunday different from any other.
Every year has unique features. Christians have observed Holy Week and Easter in periods of persecution, during armed conflict and war, and while plague ravaged the land.
Still Easter 2020; Easter in the age of COVID-19 differs widely and wildly from any Easter we and most followers of Jesus have celebrated.
No egg hunts. No visits with family. No trips to restaurants. No crowded gatherings around a table straining under the weight of a feast. No new clothes or bonnets for many of us.
We gather in separate places today. Our church building stands empty for the moment. It does so not out of fear. As such buildings do across our country and around the world, that temporarily empty building on the corner of 149th and 15th offers a profound witness to our faith. It proclaims that we are a people of life even as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. It represents an incredible act of revolutionary love, amazing grace, and spiritual solidarity. Thanks be to God.
Dr. William Brown of Columbia Theological Seminary points out that this year’s Easter celebration with a temporarily empty building may be among the most biblical Easters we have experienced.[i] The Easter proclamation of resurrection begins with the discovery of the empty tomb.
After the crucifixion, early on the first day of the week, in the darkness, John’s Gospel tells us that Mary Madgalene went to the tomb. Heart broken, soul sick, spirit sore, she made a lonely, courageous journey.
She went to see where they had placed her teacher, her friend. She went to pay her respects even after her death. She went because nothing else made sense.
At the tomb, she found the stone rolled aside. What more indignity can there be, she must have wondered? She went to get others. “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Peter and the disciple “whom Jesus loved,” return to the tomb with her. Entering they find emptiness. No body of Jesus; only the cloths from his burial.
Each Gospel tells a slightly different version of the encounter with the empty tomb. They all share two common features. Women first. Women went to the tomb first. Women become the first to tell the good news. While the number varies from gospel to gospel, it is always small. Large numbers of followers did not cram together as close as they could on that day of resurrection. It began with a tomb emptied of death and women.
We know not how the resurrection of Jesus happened. No one witnessed God raising Jesus.
The resurrection of the followers of Jesus proved something more of a process. It did not happen in an instant. As the Rev. Denise Anderson notes, the “women who were first at the tomb to find it empty were rocked to their core. But even when they shared the news, the ones with whom they shared it weren’t instantly changed for hearing it. They hardly even believed it.”[ii]
The Rev. Anderson goes on: for the first followers of Jesus on that day of resurrection, “there was still grief. There was still despair. There was still anxiety. There was still waiting. Wondering. Worrying.”[iii] But. God had raised Jesus. God’s work had been accomplished. Christ was risen. Christ is risen.
Perhaps more starkly than have other Easters, this day reminds us that we live in the tension of believing in resurrection even as we feel keenly the impact of suffering and death. Much of what gave us balance and equilibrium in life has been smashed off kilter. We grieve. Uncertainty grips us. We find ourselves in a similar position to the women and the first followers of Jesus.
And yet, we have the witness not only of Mary and the other women who went to the tomb. We have the witness of women through the ages … and some men, too. People who lived as Jesus calls us to live; people who loved who as Jesus called us to love. People who though stricken with grief and filled with fear, lived and loved. And in the living and in the loving, they encountered the risen Christ. As we live and as we love following Jesus, we too have encountered the risen Christ. We encounter the risen Christ now. We will encounter the risen Christ in the future.
Grief and doubt and fear do not deny the resurrection. They cannot.
Grief and doubt and fear do not indicate the absence of hope and faith and love; they are fellow travelers. They go together, as the Rev. Ben Perry notes.[iv]
Christ is risen, and we mourn for those who have died and we ache for those who are ill and we endure heartbreak for those who are abused, neglected, and forgotten.
Christ is risen, and COVID-19 grips our city and God’s world.
Christ is risen, and we can love one another.
Christ is risen, and there is work to do to ensure that all people in our society have access to safe homes, meaningful and safe work, health care, good food, and the necessities of living.
Christ is risen, and the Matthew 25 vision invites us to make sure that the least of the human family, the people pushed to the margins, receive our attention and our care.
Christ is risen, and the resurrection reminds us that the worst things are never the last things.[v]
Though we tremble at the tomb, though alleluias quaver on our lips, Christ is risen. This Easter day and every day may we know the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu:
Goodness is stronger than evil;
Love is stronger than hate;
Light is stronger than darkness;
Life is stronger than death;
Victory is ours through Him who loves us.[vi]
Christ is risen.
People of the empty tomb, people of the temporarily empty building,
Christ is risen!
Alleluia.
[i] https://www.ctsnet.edu/the-life-giving-emptiness-of-this-easter/
[ii] This comes from a Facebook by the Rev. Tawnya Denise Anderson, coordinator for Racial and Intercultural Justice, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), on April 12, 2020.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] This and the next several paragraphs are inspired by words written by the Rev. Ben Perry and posted on Facebook.
[v] Thanks to the Rev. Dr. Michael Granzen for this image.
[vi] Desmond Tutu, “Victory Is Ours” in An African Prayer Book (London: Hodder and Stoughton Ltd, 1995), p. 80.
25 June 2019
Walking. Morningside Gardens.
Massage. NK Body Philosophy (OK – I did not listen to any of these songs then.)
Lakota Song – Oglala Lakota Nation
Little Bighorn Song – Paul Plume
Crazy Horse Honor Song – Wilmer Mesteth
Wash Your Spirit Clean – Walela
Sitting Bull’s Medicine Song – Kevin Locke
Firedancer – Brule
It Is a Good Day to Die – Robbie Robertson & The Red Road Ensemble
Akua Tuta – Kashtin
The Little Bighorn March – Bill Miller
Bobtail Horse – Fire Crow
Got to Tell You – Indigenous
Tatanka – Luis Cachiguango
Garryowen & Valley of the Little Bighorn – Jack Gladstone
Filed under Antiracism, Easter, Human Rights, Music, New York, playlist
Easter 2017
“Brokenness, disunity, and hatred are evident all over the planet. The world needs the witness Belhar calls the church to live out in the world. The church’s primary responsibility is to love God so fully that God’s saving presence shines through her like light in the midst of darkness. The church then becomes a beacon of hope, a lighthouse on the shore of a storm-tossed sea. By confessing, internalizing, and living out the principles of Belhar in her own experience, the church positions herself to become what Henri Nouwen calls, ‘a wounded healer.'”
Mark Lomax
Lenten Reflections on the Confession of Belhar
Christ is risen! Christ’s proclamation that God loves us and Christ’s call to love God and one another provide words of hope in this broken and fearful world.
This Lenten season have used a new resource to explore the Belhar Confession: Lenten Reflections on the Confession of Belhar, edited by Kerri N. Allen and Donald K. McKim. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), in which I serve as a teaching elder (pastor), added the Confession of Belhar to our Book of Confessions in 2016. This confession came from the Dutch Reformed Mission Church during its historic struggle against apartheid in South Africa. I am grateful to Kerri and Donald and all the authors.
See you along the Trail.
Filed under Antiracism, Books, Easter, Lent, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
The Until We Meet Again Tour – 14 August 2016
The Until We Meet Again Tour hopped a 1 Train, which some riders claim are hotter than the infernal regions although I have no frame of reference to judge that, and went to Good Shepherd-Faith Presbyterian Church to preach.
As with all the congregations visited on the tour, Good Shepherd-Faith holds a special place in my heart. Good Shepherd-Faith was one of the first congregations to invite me to preach in New York. It may have been the first. It definitely was the first congregation where I preached on Easter Sunday.
On this day that came a day after the killings of Imam Maulama Akonjee and Thara Uddin near the Al-Furqan Jame Masjid mosque in the Ozone Park neighborhood in Queens; and day after the killing of Sylville K. Smith by a police officer in Milwaukee and the protests that followed, it was a challenge and an honor to preach and search for words of hope in a time of profound grief.
This was the last Sunday I will preach in New York – until we meet again.
Thanks to Elder Michael Nelson for taking the photo that includes me.
Filed under Current Events, Easter, New York, Photo, Worship
Easter, 2015
The world looks much the same;
horror, hatred, evil still remain.
Yet somehow, somehow all has changed.
Christ is risen!
May we experience and live
the Easter message
today and all days.
5 April 2015
Louisville, Kentucky
Along the Graybeard Trail 