Our Living Guarantee—Introduction A Six Week Series for Easter (Year C)

This is part of the worship Series
Our Living Guarantee

Series Introduction 
Easter Sunday | Easter 2 | Easter 3  
Easter 4 | Easter 5 | Easter 6  

Introduction

It's easy to gear ourselves up for a big Easter celebration. We're more than happy to sing the joyous songs and fill the sanctuary with flowers on that glorious Sunday, rejoicing in our Savior's even more glorious life beyond death.

But what happens when it's over? What compels us to keep celebrating during the fifty days of the Easter season and during all the other weeks and months of the church year? What makes the resurrection part of our everyday reality instead of a past event and a future promise?

The Heidelberg Catechism offers a memorable answer to those questions: the knowledge that "Christ's resurrection is a guarantee of our own glorious resurrection" (Q&A 45). As people who believe in eternal life in the new creation, we can act with boldness, knowing that nothing in this life "can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:39).

Passages selected in the Revised Common Lectionary Year C present us with stories that can help us focus on that guarantee throughout the Easter season. They are stories from the Acts of the Apostles—Apostles who lived with the confidence that guarantee gives—along with glimpses from the Revelation to John of what has been promised. After setting the stage for the new creation with Isaiah and John on Easter morning, the Acts and Revelation readings—occasionally expanded from the lectionary—form the framework for our full season of celebration.

Each Sunday worship service in this series includes suggestions to tie this extended Easter celebration together, including elements that can be fitted into your congregation's usual order of worship—gathering sentences, prayers of confession, hymns, anthems, a declaration of faith—and possibilities for children and youth to participate in worship. There are also suggested lections and sermon starters.

The selections from Songs for LIFE, listed among the possibilities for children and youth participation, could be taught in the Christian education program as preparation for worship and then included in various places in the liturgy. Other pieces that may be sung as children's choir anthems are included among the anthem suggestions.

The bulletin cover featured here can be downloaded from the resource section below and used with the following copyright line: Design © 1997 ReformedWorship.org CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 . Banner instructions are also available in the resource section below. 

Music for the Series

If you are celebrating the Lord's Supper on Easter Sunday (or at others times during the Easter season), consider using the Kyrie and Sanctus settings by Kathleen Hart Brumm for choir, congregation, guitar, and obbligato (this part could be transposed for any solo wind instrument). The choir part could be sung by adults, children, or both; the echo character of the songs makes them easy for the congregation to learn. The music is available to download in the resource section below and can be reproduced with the following copyright: Kathleen Hart Brumm, 1992 © 1992 Brummhart Publishing Co., 22 Rifton Place, Walden, NY 12586. 

Series Outline

Revised Common Lectionary

Year C: Easter—Resurrection of the Lord
Year C: Easter—Second Sunday of Easter
Year C: Easter—Third Sunday of Easter
Year C: Easter—Fourth Sunday of Easter
Year C: Easter—Fifth Sunday of Easter
Year C: Easter—Sixth Sunday of Easter