Sermon Tone Analysis

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*Prelude*

*Welcome*

*Call to Worship*

/Let them praise the Lord for his great love and for the wonderful things he has done for them./

*For he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.*[1]

*~*Praise                # 546         *When We All Get to Heaven

*~*Invocation        (Lord’s Prayer)       *God, we come today as members of your family, the family of faith, each person joined to one another and to you.

Though we seek you in the world of life, we seek you now in this time of solitude.

Take us not from the world but make us ready for life in the world.

May our worship today prepare us to be instruments of your love.

*~*Gloria Patri       # 575*

*Our Offering to God     *For all the animals of the forest are mine, and I own the cattle on a thousand hills.

11I know every bird on the mountains, and all the animals of the field are mine.

14Make thankfulness your sacrifice to God, and keep the vows you made to the Most High.

15Then call on me when you are in trouble,

and I will rescue you, and you will give me glory.”[2]

*         *

*~*Doxology          #572*

*~*Prayer of Dedication         *Eternal God, may these gifts represent our inner commitment to love you above all else in the world, and to love all the people in your world—all those in every age and in every place, for whom your dear Son died.

*Scripture Reading                 **Luke 9:28-36* /(NRSV)/

/The Transfiguration/

28 Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray.

29 And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.

30 Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him.

31 They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.

32 Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.

33 Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said.

34 While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud.

35 Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” 36 When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone.

And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

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*~*Hymn of Prayer         # 564         *Now Thank We All Our God*   *

*Pastoral Prayer  *

/I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in earnest prayer to God on my behalf,             //Romans 15:30 /     

 

*P*raise God for... Johnny’s gratitude for sobriety, emotional prosperity, and vocational fulfillment.

*A*sk God for... strength, loving endurance, patience, and compassion for Mary as she deals with her husband’s poor health.

*T*hank God for... the continuing improvement of Gracelynn, a young girl recovering from open heart surgery.

*H*ealing for... Geri’s brother who had surgery this week to remove a mass.

We express today thanksgiving for the children, young people, and adults in our church and for the varieties of ways they serve you now and the possibilities that are within them for future service.

We thank you for the yearnings we have to know you and your way better.

Help us as a church to grow in our faith and serve you better.

Give us, as adults, youth, and children, the strength to love and serve you more faithfully.

May the joy, wonder, grace, and mystery of our faith be real to us.

In this time of prayer, may we be open, honest, and real.

We know you see us as we really are.

Thank you for loving us and accepting us, even as you know us.

Thank you, O God, for opening your loving arms to us.

Teach us how to open our arms and love others who are hurting.

Through Christ, who gave his life out of love for us, we pray.—William

Powell Tuck

*~*Hymn of Praise          # 402         *He Hideth My Soul*        *

*Scripture Reading       *1 Cor.

15:51–58*  (NRSV)*

51 Listen, I will tell you a mystery!

We will not all die,m but we will all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.

For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.

53 For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality.

54 When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:

“Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

55“Where, O death, is your victory?

Where, O death, is your sting?” 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

58 Therefore, my beloved,n be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.[3]

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*Message                       *The Victory Is Ours!

Paul confronts a radically skeptical congregation.

They question his integrity.

They mock his faith.

They wonder if he can really call himself an apostle.

And amid all this skepticism, they, of course, radically doubt Paul’s message.

To put it bluntly, they assert, “Dead men don’t rise.

Dead women don’t rise—Jesus, maybe, but nobody else.

We either rot in our graves, or our souls leave our bodies and go merge with the universal soul.

But dead people don’t rise!”

That stance by his beloved Corinthian church threatens and infuriates Paul.

He loves that congregation.

He sees in their radical doubt the church’s collapse and dissolution.

And he’s right.

~/~/ “Dead people don’t rise?” he asks.

“If that’s true, then Jesus is not raised.

And if Jesus is not raised, then everything we do and stand for hinges on smoke and mirrors.”

Do you see what Paul tells us?

If Christ is not raised, our faith rests on the decomposing corpse of a Galilean carpenter.

If Christ is not raised we meet here every Sunday morning to simply tell lies about God; we’re trapped in a world where hostility, war, decay, and death really do have the last word, and the courage and suffering of generations to make this a better world proves a sick joke.

If Christ is not raised, the death of a loved one means obliteration.

If we share any hope at all, it consists of optimism, making us, as Paul says, “the most pitiable of human beings” in the face of the stark realities of life and death.

I. “But,” Paul writes (one of the so-called “great Buts” of the Christian faith), “God has raised Christ from the dead.”

Did you hear that?

Paul does not say, “Jesus rose.”

Paul says, “God raised Jesus from the dead.”

Let’s be clear.

Paul does not affirm what some called the flying up to the sky out of the grave, “body, boots, and britches.”

Not on your life.

By asserting that “God raised Christ from the dead,” Paul affirms the power of God triumphant over all those things threatening to subvert, destroy, and deny human life, the most vivid of these life-denying, love-threatening, hope-subverting forces being death itself.

Paul sees death not simply as a biological incident in Nature’s incessant course, though he recognizes that as a fact.

But more.

Paul sees death as a metaphor signifying the radical overthrow of God’s creation itself—a dark and oppressive blanket yielding moral chaos and futility.

~/ Satan seemed to be victorious in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3) and at the cross of Jesus.

But God turned Satan’s apparent victory into defeat when Jesus Christ rose from the dead (Colossians 2:15; Hebrews 2:14, 15).

Thus, death is no longer a source of dread or fear.

Christ overcame it, and one day we will also.

The law will no longer make sinners out of us who cannot keep it(the law).

Death has been defeated, and we have hope beyond the grave.