I invite you to take your Bible and turn with me to John chapter 20. If you’re using the Bible in the rack in front of you it’s on page 906. And as you’re turning there, I want to take one final opportunity to talk about the Mission Conference. You see the flags are still up. This is really my last opportunity to stand before you as a gathered congregation and say the flags will come down, most likely tomorrow, but the work of mission continues for the rest of the year and in the decades that will follow until the Lord Jesus returns to gather up His bride. So don’t assume that the flags come down and we’re done thinking about mission. The real work begins when the flags come down because the question we have to ask is, “How do we engage joyfully, enthusiastically, sacrificially in seeing the work of the Gospel spread across the world seeing the kingdom mission that the Lord Jesus has entrusted to His people, seeing it finished, completed?”
To that end, I wanted to say I really appreciated Cory’s reminder this morning as he talked about the mission pledge. You’ll find that there are mission pledge cards in the pew racks there in front of you. If you’ve not yet made a pledge, I’d encourage you to consider, prayerfully consider making a pledge. We have waiting applications from church planters, campus ministers, missionaries who are going to places where you and I can’t get to, especially now with restrictions in different places because of coronavirus concerns. Some of them are already there and they need support financially, they need people praying for them, standing along with them. And one of the questions our session and mission committee, church planting committee needs to consider is, “How many of these waiting applications can we say ‘Yes’ to?” You need to understand, when we support a missionary it’s not a small amount we give them. We support them very, very generously.
I got a call from Mission to the World this past week and they told us we are in the top handful of churches in terms of how much financial resource this congregation gives to missionaries all around the world through Mission to the World. And we support a lot of missionaries who don’t work through the agency, the PCA mission sending agency, Mission to the World. And so on one level, maintaining that support will take a lot of generous giving on our part. Adding more support to where we have flags representing missionaries and ministries and campus ministers encircling this whole congregation – which really, that’s our desire, not to have lots of color but to more aggressively work toward finishing the mission. That’s going to take more generous, even sacrificial giving. I would encourage you to consider that. You can use the card and turn in a pledge. Even at the end of this service you can hand it to one of our ushers. Or, you can pull out your phone; if you go to the First Presbyterian Church app, there’s a place where it says “Mission Pledge.” You can just push that button, write your name and the amount you intend to give. No one is going to call you and say, “Hey, how come you haven’t given that pledge?” but it does signal our Session – “Here’s how much freedom you have to walk by faith in trusting this congregation to support the work that you believe the Lord is calling us to invest in going forward.” That’s a big deal.
And to give you the underpinnings of that, the ground for that, I’d like us to consider John chapter 20. John chapter 20 is a passage we normally consider at Easter time. It’s the resurrection story. But I think it’s a mission story, because here you have a clear picture of Jesus sending an apostle out. It happens to be a woman apostle. Theologians, scholars will tell us she is the apostle to the apostles. And I want you to see how we get there and why that’s so significant in how we think about mission. So John chapter 20. We’ll read the first eighteen verses. Before we do, let’s pray together.
Father, we look to You this evening. We ask for Your Holy Spirit’s help. Unless Your Holy Spirit intervenes, these will be words on a page, words spoken by a man to men and women, and they will largely leave us unaffected. But if Your Holy Spirit steps in and does that miraculous work of opening our eyes that we may see wonderful things in Your Law, if He does that miraculous work of inclining our hearts toward You, if He unites our hearts, if He satisfies us with Jesus Himself, we will leave here transformed, knowing that we have encountered the living God in the reading and the proclamation of His holy Word. May we recognize His voice this evening. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
“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. 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.’ So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the tomb. Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to their homes.
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. 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.’ Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 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.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary.’ She turned and said to him in Aramaic, ‘Rabboni!’ (which means Teacher). 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.’’ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’ – and that he had said these things to her.”
This is God’s Word.
When I was in elementary school, the neighborhood I lived in was on Ann Arbor Drive; just an ordinary, residential neighborhood. The street was about a quarter-mile long with two unusual elements at either end. On the north end of our street was a section of woods about fifty acres in size. On the south end of our street was this big open field about twenty acres in size. What was really unusual was that both of those plots of land were surrounded by an eight foot tall fence with barbed wire on the very top. So picture this – one street, quarter-mile long, houses all over, a big wooden section on this end surrounded by a big fence of barbed wire, on this end a twenty acre field, just an open field that was mowed once every few weeks…big fence, barbed wire. And on all the fences at regular intervals were signs that said, “No trespassing. Danger. US Government property.” I played there! My older brother found a place where the fence had pulled away from one of the posts and we squeezed through. And all through those woods we found these unusual low, green buildings – no windows, closed up. And these weird kind of domed lids. And we thought, “What in the world is this place?” And we slipped out.
Well it was in the late 70s during one of the disarmament discussions that the fences came down and the heavy equipment moved in and low and behold – guess what we figured out? We were sitting right between two Nike missile launching sites. Nuclear tipped missiles. This was CL-59. You can find it on a map. And what we were left thinking was, “How could we have missed this? How could we not have known?” And it was concerning because not only did we have missiles launching toward Russia – and understand that that empty field was the booster recovery site, because when missiles were launched toward Russia, when the boosters punched that missiles up into the atmosphere the booster had to release and fall. And you didn’t want them falling on playgrounds or houses so there was this big, empty field where they would land. How could we have missed that, especially knowing that Russia had missiles aimed at CL-59 because their desire was to take out our missiles before we took out theirs? How could we have missed that? The signs were all around, right? We just went on our way, minding our own business, playing in the field and in the woods.
Now I tell you that story because I suspect that the disciples may have been asking the same kind of question after the resurrection – “How could we have missed that? I mean, Jesus said it over and over again, ‘The Son of Man will be betrayed, He will be killed, and on the third day He will rise again’?” But verse 9 tells us that “as of yet, they did not understand the Scripture that He must rise from the dead.” Jesus talked about it often. The signs were all around, but they missed it.
Now the indictment is this – we could “tisk, tisk” the disciples, and yet I suspect we are much like them. The signs of the resurrection are all around us. The reality of the resurrection is talked about in Scripture. We sing the resurrection hymns. In a couple of weeks, we’ll celebrate Easter all over again – a high, holy day of our faith. But I wonder, “Do we really understand?” – and there’s a bug flying right around my face! It’s not that I’m waving! “Do we really understand the significance of the resurrection? What difference does it make? How is your life different because of the resurrection?” Now on one level, we think that the cross is the center of our faith, and to a large degree it is. Because on the cross, Jesus became our sin and God treated my sin and yours the way that sin deserved to be treated. Isaiah 53:10 says it pleased God to crush His Son. Why? So that redemption could come to us. So yes, the cross is at the center of the Gospel, but it doesn’t stop there.
You understand, of course, Paul says “if Christ is not raised from the dead, we are of all men most to be pitied.” Over and over again, the Gospel writers tell us that there’s something about the resurrection that changes everything. And we have to understand the difference that it makes, not just to our own personal lives but also to mission. I’d like us to consider what difference does the resurrection make when we think about mission work going on, on campuses where RUF campus ministers and interns work, where church planters are plowing hard ground, where missionaries are learning new languages and new cultures in order to make Christ known where He’s currently not known. What difference does the resurrection make to all of that? My desire this evening is to just tell you the story, the event that you find in John chapter 20, unpack a few details, show you some things you may have missed, and then draw some conclusions and applications. Sound good?
The Story of the Resurrection
So here’s the story. We begin with Mary Magdalene. The chapter, the passage we read, begins by identifying Mary Magdalene in verse 1 and then at the end, verse 18, she’s listed – kind of bookending the chapter with her name. We really know very little about her. Most of the other Marys we read about are identified by their family connections. Mary, the mother of James and John. Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. Mary, the wife of Clopas. But this Mary is just “Magdalene,” which means she comes from this insignificant town called Magdala on the northwest edge of the Sea of Galilee. That’s all we really know about her for certain. She’s from that area, and hence she’s called Mary Magdalene. She is presented to us as a woman, at least in this passage, as alone. She’s isolated. She’s deeply troubled. She’s grieving. She’s misunderstood. She’s tormented. The gospel of Luke tells us that she was delivered by Jesus from seven demons, which either may mean literally seven demons or the number seven as indicating perfection, such that she was perfectly and completely controlled by demonic influences before Jesus delivered her. Either way, her life was a wreck and Jesus rescued her. That’s the dominant thing we know about Mary Magdalene.
We do know that Jesus meant everything to her. And you see that by the fact that at the crucifixion she’s there, at the burial she’s there, and here on resurrection morning she’s there again. There’s three time stamps in verse 1 that I think are significant. We’re told that it’s the first day of the week. Interesting, verse 19 reiterates that, of this chapter; that it’s the first day of the week. It’s as if John is going back to the first part of his gospel – “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God;” it was the beginning. This is signaling it was a new beginning. Nothing will ever again be the same because of what happened that morning on the first day of the week. We’re told also that it’s early. My suspicion is that after the trauma of what Mary and the other disciples observed, I don’t think anyone slept Friday night, Saturday night. Now it’s early Sunday morning; I suspect that after tossing and turning in bed, trying to sleep, she finally said, “What’s the use? I’m getting up. I’m going to the tomb.”
And we’re also told that it’s still dark. This is the one gospel that tells us it was still dark when she arrived. It’s not just the pre-dawn gloom of the absence of sunlight. I suspect that the “still dark” part points to the condition of her heart. Imagine what a dark place it must have been when all of her hopes, all of her future comes grinding to a screeching halt. Jesus, the Rescuer, is dead. We couldn’t stop the execution. He couldn’t escape. He’s dead. It’s over. And Mary arrives at the tomb believing that the best she could hope for is to find the badly disfigured, decomposing body of her Rescuer, still lifeless in the tomb. That’s what she’s hoping for. That’s as good as it gets that morning. Only she discovers that it’s far worse than she could imagine. The tomb is empty. Something’s happened. Either grave robbers have come in to steal the spices, which were very valuable and could have been resold, or some political enemies came in and they’re going to add insult to injury, and maybe they’re going to display the corpse somewhere for everyone to see and say, “Look, this is what happens to enemies of Rome! You mess with the synagogue – this is what you get!” And so she realizes, “It’s worse than I thought when I got up this morning.”
So she runs to tell the disciples, Peter and John – she picks them out in verse 2. And we’re told in John 19 that from the time of the crucifixion, John took Mary the mother of Jesus, who is there at the crucifixion, he took her into his home, so that when Mary Magdalene ran to tell Peter and John, who were unlikely to be in the same place that early in the morning, it’s a good chance that Mary the mother of Jesus heard this new that morning as well. And so in verses 3 through 10, Peter and John go to investigate. They run. There’s a lot of running in this passage in a culture where adults don’t run. And yet everybody’s running back and forth. And yet though they investigated – and we could talk about what they saw and how they observed – the Greek uses different verbs to talk about the difference between John’s seeing and Peter’s seeing and what that might have meant, in either case, no matter what it mean to them, they went back home in verse 10, they went back to their houses not really understanding what had taken place.
But Mary Magdalene stays and she’s there at the tomb weeping, verse 11. And the word for “weeping” there is not just a stoic warm tear gliding down the cheek. It’s loud sobbing. It’s the ugly crying of, “I don’t care what this looks like. I’m just sobbing. It’s awful. My life is falling apart!” In verse 12, she looks into the tomb which is empty, except it’s not empty. Instead of a corpse there’s two angels, whom she recognizes, we think, as angels; at least that’s what John writes. And in verse 13 they ask her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” And it’s interesting the contrast between what she told Peter and John and now what she tells the angels. In the message to Peter and John, verse 2, she says, “They have taken the Lord away and we don’t know where they have put Him.” But to the angels she says, “They have taken my Lord away and I don’t know where they have put Him.”
In verse 14 she turns – maybe she saw a movement; we’re not told why she turns, but she sees a man standing there. It’s Jesus, John tells us, but she doesn’t recognize Him as Jesus. Maybe it’s because it’s His resurrection body that is different enough that she doesn’t recognize Him. Maybe it’s that her eyes are so filled with tears that she doesn’t see clearly, just that there is this man and she assumes he is the gardener. And this presumed gardener says, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” And she doesn’t really answer his question. She’s still sticking with her understanding of what’s taken place there. She says, “Sir, if you’ve taken His body away, tell me and I will get Him and I will take Him away for you.” And this supposed gardener pauses and He says one word and everything changes.
I have sat with this passage for hours this week and I have thought, “What did that word sound like when He said her name?” Was it like what He said to Martha? “Martha, Martha, you are upset and bothered by so many things. Mary, Mary, why are you crying?” I doubt it. Or was it a surprise, “Mary!” I doubt that. I suspect that He said her name in such a way that she immediately knew how precious she was to Him. “Mary.” And she exclaims with the word, “Rabboni,” which in Aramaic is translated as “Teacher” the text tells us. Actually, it’s a little more complex than that. In the ancient near eastern world, the word “rab” stood for “teacher” or “master.” It was the opposite of a slave or a pupil. There were a lot of “rabs” who would gather followers around them and they would be the disciples, he was the “rab” and they would become like him. But there were very, very few “rabbons.” These were the great masters; the ones that everyone understood, “This man is worth following.” Everyone agreed he is a “rabbon.” But that little letter “i” at the end, “Rabboni,” that letter “i” is the personal, possessive pronoun in Aramaic. It’s “my great Lord and Master.” “My Lord.”
And she says, “Rabboni” in verse 16. In verse 17 Jesus says, “Do not cling to Me,” and you realize something is missing. There is something that happens in the story that John doesn’t write about. And it might actually be too precious to write about. I have had tears sliding down my face as I have thought about this passage and what that must have been like because when Mary assumed He was the gardener and said, “If you tell me what you’ve done with the body, I’ll take Him and I’ll haul Him off somewhere” – the body – and Jesus says, “Mary,” and she says, “Rabboni!” and He says, “Don’t cling to Me,” there’s a moment in there, and it might have been a long moment, where Mary, with tear-filled eyes, hears her name and while she doesn’t recognize the resurrected body of Jesus she immediately recognizes her name in His voice.
And don’t you know she flew into His arms! Can you picture her hands as she flings her arms around His back? I see her knuckles are bony, she’s grasping Him so tightly. I see her fingernails are white; she’s holding on. She cannot believe He is alive. “This one was dead, I saw Him dead! I watched His corpse get wrapped up and buried. He’s here!” I wonder how long Jesus let her hang on to Him. I wonder how long He held her while she sobbed. “He’s back! He’s really alive! How is this possible? He’s here!” And it’s to that woman who is clinging to Him that Jesus says, “Don’t cling to Me. Don’t hang on to Me. I’ve not yet ascended to My Father. You and I can’t stay here forever. But I have a job for you. I have a mission for you, Mary. I have a mission.” And then He gives her the gift of family. He says to this woman who was just moments ago was alone, isolated, deeply disturbed, misunderstood, wrecked, she was wrecked, and He gives her the gift of family. He says, “Go to My brothers, the disciples, and tell them I am going to My God and their God, My Father and your Father.” Jesus says, “Mary, you have family. They are your brothers and I’m going to My Father and y’alls Father. My God and y’alls God. We’re family. We’re together. Everything is new. Nothing will ever again be the same.” And Mary goes and she becomes the apostle to the apostles. She evangelizes the apostles. She brings them the good news – “Jesus is alive! He really, really is alive!”
What Difference Does the Resurrection Make?
So that takes us back to the question at the beginning, “What difference does the resurrection make?” I mean on one level, from this point on, nothing again will ever be the same for Mary, for the disciples, or for any follower of Jesus. And nothing will ever again be the same for the peoples of the world because now, unlike every other religious leader who taught, who did some interesting things, who brought disciples along, but then he died and you can go to their tombs and see where they’re buried, Jesus – not at all. Our Redeemer, our Rabboni, our Rescuer died, yes, was buried, but He was resurrected and He ascended and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. What difference does the resurrection make to you personally today? When you wake up tomorrow morning, what will you have because of the resurrection? Yes, you have redemption through the cross. Your sins are forgiven because Jesus paid the penalty of your sin in you place, in my place. But what do you have because of the resurrection? How will your thinking be different tomorrow because Jesus really rose from the dead?
A New Hope
The answer is a whole series of sermons. There have been whole books written on that. Tom Wright has written several books on the resurrection and mission. They’re thick books and they’re brilliant in their thinking, but I want to give you four places of newness, briefly, where everything is new because of the resurrection. Briefly. First, there is a new hope and a certain future that grows out of the new hope. First Peter 1 verse 3, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade.” All of that is yours and mine because of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. The apostle Paul in Romans 10 when he says, “Here’s the target of your faith,” he says in Romans 10:9, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and if you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.” You have a new hope, you have a new future, all of which is secured by the resurrection; all of which is yours by faith.
A New Motivation
Not only do you have a new hope, but secondly, you have a new motivation. You go to 1 Corinthians 15 and the whole chapter is about resurrection – Christ’s resurrection and ours – and how in union with Christ, His resurrection becomes our resurrection. And it’s in that chapter, Paul says in verse 52, in the twinkling of an eye, in a moment, the last trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable and we shall be changed, for this perishable body must put on the imperishable and this mortal body must put on immortality. Paul is saying Christ’s resurrection is the guarantee of yours. And when that becomes firmly fixed in your mind there’s a whole new motivation. That motivation is articulated in verse 58 of 1 Corinthians 15, when after talking all about resurrection he says, “Therefore, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in your labor, in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” Here’s his argument – because of the resurrection, our service, our sacrifice, our generosity will always matter for all eternity. Do you understand that? None of it is wasted. There is a new hope. There is a new motivation.
A New Power
Third, there is a new power. Paul says in Philippians 3:10, “I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection.” We love that language, right? We love power. We don’t like the idea or the experience of being weak; we love power. But the very next verse says, “Not only do I want to know the power of the resurrection, but I also want to share in His sufferings.” You see, the power, which Paul prays we would know, the power of the resurrection is power to enter into places that we would never go willingly, that on our own we would never want to go. It’s the power to love people who are unloveable. It’s the power to rejoice in our suffering. It’s the power to endure. It’s the power to welcome the stranger, to lay down our lives. It’s the power to repent when we’re convinced we are right. It’s the power to forgive even when no one asks us to forgive. Paul says, “I pray that you would know the power of the resurrection that becomes ours in the fellowship of His suffering.” There’s a new hope. There’s a new motivation. There’s a new power.
A New Authority
And finally, there’s a new authority. There’s so much more connected to the resurrection but I do want to stop at the authority, because the authority language connected to the resurrection is huge. In Ephesians 2 verse 6 Paul says, “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” When Christ rose from the grave and He ascended into heaven, He is now seated at the right hand of the Father. And Paul tells us in the book of Ephesians that He is seated above all – let me correct this and read this correctly – “I pray that God would open the eyes of your heart to know the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe, a power that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.”
Listen, the missile launching site that was right at both ends of our street and our missing what was so clear connects directly with the authority that’s ours in the resurrection. We as 21st century Christians rarely, if ever, talk about authority – the authority that is ours through the resurrection that is unmistakably clear in the New Testament, but we’re reluctant to talk about that authority. Paul says Christ was raised, He’s seated above all power, authority and dominion; that is, He is above all spiritual forces of evil. And then he says He has raised us up with Him and He has seated us – you understand the language is “now.” It’s happened. Not “will one day happen,” but “He has seated us with Christ in the heavenly places,” in that position of authority. And then he talks about spiritual battle. In Ephesians 6, he says our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but “against rulers and authority and spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms,” meaning the real battle is one of who has the authority. And if we are seated with Christ already, if we are raised with Him already by virtue of our union with Christ, then His authority becomes our authority.
It’s a lot like our four kids who, when they were much younger, they would play upstairs and Emily would fix dinner and she would have everything ready on the table and I would look over and Daniel who is our youngest and say, “Daniel, go upstairs and tell your brother and sisters it’s time to come down for supper.” And he would go upstairs and he would, “Time to come down for supper! Let’s go!” And everyone would keep doing what they were doing – playing their Wii or reading their books – and no one would move. How different it was when I said to Daniel, “Go upstairs and tell your brother and sisters Dad said come down to supper now.” Suddenly, his words have real authority. Not his authority; he’s the youngest. But he comes in the authority of his dad who said, “Come to supper now.” Everybody dropped what they were doing and they would come downstairs right away.
Now that’s a dim picture of the far greater reality that is ours in union with Christ. Because of the resurrection, we have a new hope, we have a new motivation, we have a new power, and we have a new authority. Let me point at it from a different angle. Richard Lovelace, about forty years ago, wrote a pivotal book that for many of our current leaders, theologians, thinkers who work with church renewal and church planting, they all point to this book as pivotal in their thinking. The book is called, Dynamics of the Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal. And Lovelace says that in order for an individual or for a church to experience renewal, reformation, revival – whatever you want to call it; that being made new that we long for and pray for – in order for that to happen, four things have to be present.
Number one, there has to be a new understanding of justification that says you’re accepted. No surprise there, right? There has to be a new understanding of sanctification which says you are free from bondage to sin. You don’t have to keep on sinning. God wants to change you and He is changing you. So a new understanding of justification, a new understanding of sanctification; a new understanding of the power of the Holy Spirit at work in your life – you are not alone. The Spirit is working in you and through you. And fourth – here’s the surprise – the fourth dimension, the fourth dynamic that has to be present is a new understanding of spiritual authority. You have authority in spiritual conflict. When that settles deep into our hearts and we realize this is all because of the resurrection, suddenly there is a whole new understanding of mission. The Lord Jesus has said, “The fields are white unto harvest. Go!” And notice the language He uses – Matthew 28 – “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Therefore, go in My authority.” It’s like sending His children out into places where He says, “I’m sending you as sheep among wolves, but I’m sending you with My authority. My children, My sheep – they will listen to My voice as you go, as you pray, as you send others to go to places where you cannot go, at least not now.”
There is a new hope. There is a new motivation. There is a new power. There is a new authority. All because of the resurrection. That will be true of you tomorrow morning. My question to you is, “Will you go forward in that authority, resurrection authority that’s yours already because of union with Christ?” Or will you, like my neighbors and me, surrounded by all the signs, live oblivious to a really powerful reality all around us? Rick Warren wrote the book, The Purpose-Driven Life, popularly read. I think the real book that you and I ought to read is the resurrection-driven life. Or maybe we ought to write it by the way we live our lives.
Let’s pray together.
Our Father we look to You. We ask You for grace to live resurrection-driven lives. Help us to know the hope, the motivation, the power, and the authority that the resurrection brings to our lives. And may we, like Mary, cling to the One who is alive and lives in us and through us by His Spirit, now and forevermore. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.