May I underscore the words of welcome given
by Mr Lowe.
It's a great joy to have you with
us today, especially those who are visiting with
us.
A number of our own members have had
a little respite to go away for the
for the vacation, for the short period at
any rate.
We miss them, but we rejoice to have
those of you who are joining us today.
May it be the most glorious Easter day
yet for each of us, and particularly the
Humberside Brass.
It's a joy to have you.
I wish you were here every Lord's Day.
We can't very well move Knox over to
you, but we'll be very welcome here every
Lord's Day.
Thank you very, very much to each of
you, and to all of you.
Now, contrary to our normal practice, I'm not
turning this morning to any one particular passage
of scripture, but I just want to think
of the glorious fact that we commemorate and
celebrate today.
And I want to look at one or
two aspects of it against a larger canvas
than one particular context in scripture.
The event we celebrate is the physical and
corporeal resurrection to life of the crucified, buried
Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
Now that needs repeating.
We are remembering today an event in history,
not thinking of a philosophic tenet or the
dream of a prophet, but of something that
actually happened in history.
If the resurrection is not that, then ultimately
it is nothing.
If Christ be not risen, says Paul in
writing to the Corinthians, then is our faith
vain.
You Christians are yet in your sins, and
what's more he says, we are liars, we're
false witnesses.
Because what we bear witness to is nothing
short of this, that he did rise from
the dead, that he was seen by many,
touched by many, handled.
This is the word that John uses in
one place.
It was a word that was often used
of women folk going to buy some material
on the market or in the shops.
And the way you handle your material, you
put it between your fingers and you say,
well this is silk or this is satin
or whatever.
It's that careful handling as if you didn't
have sight to see, and you're dependent upon
your sense of touch.
He was seen.
He was touched.
He was handled.
He was heard.
They sat at meal with him.
They met him in the night.
They were with him within the closed doors
of a house.
They were with him in various circumstances.
Occasionally there was just one, sometimes two, sometimes
three, sometimes ten, sometimes eleven, sometimes on one
occasion at any rate over five hundred at
once.
And they all were alive when Paul wrote
his first letter to the Corinthians to testify
to the fact that they had seen, and
they had heard, and they had touched, and
they had handled, and they were assured that
the Christ who died upon the cross was
alive again from the dead.
Now as the significance of that event gripped
men, and gripped men it did.
Let us make no bones about that.
It gripped them.
It laid hold upon them.
It mastered them.
They said to themselves something like this, if
this is true, and it is true, then
everything has changed.
Life is altogether different.
This was no ordinary person who was nailed
to the cross, buried in the tomb, and
rose again.
And who foretold the whole thing, and behind
his own foretelling lay the foretellings of the
prophets.
And this person is no ordinary person.
His rising again from the dead cast a
sheath of light upon the events of his
birth, life, and death.
And upon the promises that he had made
to men during his lifetime.
So that when we speak of the resurrection,
we do indeed without forcing the issue, often
speak of the glorious Easter tidings.
For glorious these tidings are.
Now what I want to do very simply
this morning is this.
I want to bring out three aspects of
this message.
The first is the historical resurrection of our
Lord Jesus Christ.
Everything is based on this.
On the basis of that the New Testament
speaks about the future pending resurrection of all
men.
Sinners or saints, black or white, red or
brown or yellow or whatever color, cultured or
illiterate, yesterday or today.
It says that all men will rise from
the dead, some to judgment and some to
everlasting life.
So you see, based on the historical fact
of our Lord Jesus Christ's resurrection, the New
Testament announces to men and women everywhere, you're
going to rise from the dead.
Death is not the end for you.
You may be a believer, you may be
a non-believer.
You'll go under the sod, but you'll rise
again.
To some that is the greatest, the most
joyous message.
To some it is challenging.
Now the third element I want us to
notice is this.
There is something in between these two that
makes the whole thing not only credible, but
inevitable.
And that is this.
The Christian experience is nothing other than an
experience of resurrection.
It is an experience of the spirit of
a man, the inner man, the inner you,
and the inner me, being brought again from
the dead into life.
And the cause, the cause, the mainspring that
brings that into existence is what Jesus did
on the cross and what he does now
as the risen ascended Lord.
He lives not only as the one who
died, but as the one who lives and
is alive forevermore.
And out of the abundance of his grace,
he is able to raise the spirit of
men from the dead.
We shall explain that in a few moments.
And so you see, every Christian who has
experienced this does not only have confidence in
the fact that Jesus did rise from the
dead because he is benefiting from the fruit
of that resurrection.
But he is equally confident that one day
he too will rise from the dead and
Jesus who is alive forevermore will fulfill his
promises.
I can't say everything that there is to
be said about these three things this morning.
But I want to say a few things
and may the spirit of God help us
to grasp the message that the message may
grip us.
First of all we look at the past.
The past and the historical basis of the
Easter tidings.
Jesus Christ our Lord is risen from the
dead.
The Easter message is grounded upon the Easter
event.
Now apart from that, really we have nothing
very much different from any other religion to
announce.
Unless Jesus rose from the dead you see,
it means that he was wrong in his
view of himself, because he said he would.
Unless Jesus rose from the dead, then the
Old Testament is not a reliable guide because
it said he would.
And the New Testament is not reliable because
it said he did.
And the church is not reliable because the
church is built upon the fact that Jesus
rose and is coming again and is today
Lord of all.
And you see everything, everything crumbles if Jesus
has not risen.
It's important then to ask the question, what
really do we mean by this?
And it is important too, though I can't
go into that area this morning.
It is important nevertheless to deal with the
evidences for the resurrection of our Lord.
Though I can't go in that direction.
But what do we mean by the resurrection?
What do we mean by the resurrection of
Jesus?
Let me say two or three negatives and
two or three positives.
First of all negatively, by the resurrection we
do not simply mean the reappearance of a
disembodied spirit.
Now I've been to places and a guide
has told us in certain, I have certain
places in mind at the moment, a guide
has told us that so-and-so died
here and his or her spirit returns every
now and again and haunts the place.
Now that's not what we have in the
New Testament.
It's not anything of that kind.
It's not the reappearance of a disembodied spirit
that allegedly belonged to Jesus who is dead.
Neither does the resurrection mean the mere perpetuation
of a memory until it became a legend
and in talking about the resurrection we're talking
about a legend.
That is impossible because you see a legend
takes ages to develop.
A legend only evolves over the centuries.
It takes time for any legend to crystallize
and the people further away from the alleged
event or events are those who believe it
most.
But that's not the case with the resurrection.
The very day of the resurrection it was
announced in the very streets of Jerusalem where
Jesus was murdered, he's risen.
You nailed him on the cross.
God raised him from the dead.
And the folk who were nearest to the
event were the folk who were most vocal
in affirming that it had happened.
And that's quite contrary to a legend.
Neither does it mean the mere perpetuation of
a memory.
And I've indicated that.
Neither does it, well perhaps I should, should
I go any further?
Perhaps I should add this one other thing.
Neither do we simply mean by resurrection a
mere animation of men by an ideal or
an idea.
You know people do have ideas that were
first taught shall we say in 5th century
BC in Greece.
And there are some folk who revive them
today and they become part of a new
ism or of a new philosophy or of
a new teaching.
And nobody tells you that they were taught
500, 600 years before Christ but they've been
they've been kind of raised from the dead.
And they become part and parcel of some
new theory or some new philosophy or even
a new religion, allegedly new.
That's not what we have here.
Positively by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus
Christ we mean his return from the domain
of death in order to resume his actual
life functions in the body in which he
lived before he was died.
The body and the spirit that were separated
at his death were again reunited to begin
a new phase in his ongoing ministry.
That's the first thing about the resurrection of
our Lord.
The second is this.
Involved in that resurrection was the transformation of
the physical body.
So that it was no more subject to
death any more than it was subject to
the limitations of space and of time.
And this is important.
We know that it was no longer subject
to the limitations of space and of time.
We read this morning that he could enter
into a room when the doors were closed
and the windows were barred.
So it was the same body because Thomas
could put his his finger in the wound
and his hand in his riven side.
And yet it was different.
There was a continuity but there was something
different about it what we cannot tell.
And not only that he was no longer
subject to death.
Let me illustrate what we mean.
There were others that Jesus called back into
life.
Let's just mention one Lazarus that took place
just a few days before he himself was
crucified.
Lazarus had been dead for he'd been buried
for four days or so.
He'd been in the tomb and he was
raised from the dead.
But you see Lazarus came out in the
same body unchanged and Lazarus died again.
He only came out from the grave to
live a few extra years.
I don't know how many.
But ultimately dear old Lazarus had to die
again and he had to be buried again.
But concerning our Lord Jesus Christ we affirm
something quite different.
He died and when he died he took
the sting out of death and he mastered
death.
I am he that liveth and was dead
and behold I am alive forevermore and have
the peace of death and of Hades.
What the New Testament affirms is this.
He did not only scrape out of the
domain of death to have to go back
again but he sends forth Lord of it.
His master of it.
He's the king of death.
We sing do we not?
I wonder how many of us realize what
we mean.
What we should have in mind when we
sing those great words.
Death of deaths and hell's destruction.
Land me safe on Canaan's side.
What we mean is this.
Jesus not only rose from the grave but
he mastered death.
He conquered it and he's alive never more
to go back.
They've been studying in the epistle to the
Hebrews and it makes so much of this.
Jesus is different from the ancient priests and
high priests.
One for one reason.
One reason is this.
Because he ever lives to make intercession for
us.
The other priests came and then they fell
sick and they died just as they do
here in Knox.
All your pastors will die.
All of us will die unless Jesus comes
again and in every other place and somebody
else will have to take our place.
That's what happens here upon earth but with
Jesus he has no successor.
No one follows on because he ever lives
to make intercession on the basis of his
atoning work.
He ever lives.
He has no successor.
That then is the meaning of resurrection when
we speak of our Lord Jesus as being
risen from the dead.
The personal resurrection of Jesus is announced by
the church as duly authenticated as properly corroborated
by witnesses worthy of the name.
Whatever else you may say and this is
the only thing I have the only reference
I make to them this morning.
Whatever you may wish to say about the
witnesses to the resurrection you have to say
this.
They were not bad people.
They were not people who would bear false
witness willingly.
Indeed I should add one thing to that
as I have already.
Let's not let's not minimize it.
They took note of the details and they
needed to be persuaded that the person they
saw cooking a meal by the side of
a lake for the disciples at the dawn
of day that it was the Lord himself.
Then they needed to be persuaded by their
eyes, by their ears, by the touch and
by other means that it was none other
than the one who was slain on Calvary's
cross.
Now that's what we remember.
Brothers and sisters in Christ it's not a
figment of imagination.
It's not an idea or an ideal.
It is something historical and I trust that
in your heart you know something of the
music of that today.
That's what the church celebrates on Easter day
when the church is true to herself and
to her charter.
Now that brings me to the next thing.
The New Testament now goes on to speak
of a pending universal significance of all this.
That event touches every man and every woman
here this morning.
I don't care where you sit or how
you sit, whether you're comfortable or uncomfortable.
I apologize some people say our seats are
not very comfortable.
Well but listen the fact that Jesus rose
from the dead has got something to do
with you and to say to you.
You will never be the same again because
Jesus rose from the dead.
I only want to refer to one aspect
of that, one relevant aspect of it.
When you are buried or when you were
created, cremated, you too will rise from the
dead.
Because he is risen, you'll have to rise
from the dead.
You've no argument.
You know I can do nothing about it.
He's going to call us out.
Death is not the end.
He's going to get us out and he's
going to get us back.
Some to judgment and condemnation and some to
life everlasting.
To enter into the fulfillment and the consummation
of what they have learned of God and
of heaven and of grace in this here
and now.
But you see the resurrection is not something
meaningless, not something irrelevant.
It is very relevant for you and if
you've never heard this before please allow me
to say it again.
You will die but the fact that Jesus
rose from the dead means that you'll have
to rise again too.
Against the sure background of our Lord's historical
resurrection, those who acknowledge him as Savior now
see their arch enemy disarmed and decapitated like
a smitten Goliath.
Life has lost its terror and the future
is filled with hope.
But to those who reject him still and
deny and refuse him as Lord and as
Savior and the testimony to his resurrection as
well as his birth and life and death.
To them this is a challenge, the greatest
challenge in life.
Because you're answerable to him and one day
you'll have to meet him.
Said Jesus in John chapter 5, a time
is coming when all who are in their
graves will hear his voice speaking of himself
in the third person as the son of
man.
A time is coming when all men who
are in their graves will hear his voice
and come out.
Those who have done good will rise to
live and those who have done evil will
rise to be condemned.
In a court of law where he was
on trial the apostle Paul uttered similar sentiments
to a Roman governor named Felix.
He put it thus, however he says I
admit that I worship the God of our
fathers as a follower of the way.
That's how Christianity was known earlier on.
The way, a follower of the way which
they call a sect.
I believe everything that agrees with the law
and that is written in the prophets says
Paul.
And I have the same hope in God
as these men that there will be a
resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked.
So I strive always to keep my conscience
clear before God and before man.
My dear friends, if it is true that
Jesus rose from the dead, you and I
need to be ready for that day when
he will call us out of our graves.
Now mystery, mysteries, not mystery, mysteries galore surround
that pending event.
And I cannot answer all the questions that
you would ask and I don't know of
anyone who can.
But you see we are dealing here not
with an ordinary human but with an infinitely
glorious being, the son of God.
And there are categories that relate to him
and his activities that don't, that I don't
understand as an ordinary finite being.
However clever I am, whatever my degrees from
the university, I cannot understand the infinite, neither
can you.
If I could understand everything about him, then
I would be equal to him.
I need a savior whom I can understand
as far as my reasoning can go, but
one who goes infinitely beyond my capacity to
reason.
But who acts nevertheless in a manner that
is consistent with the things that I know
of him, according to the revelation he has
given of himself.
Such is Jesus of Nazareth.
The pending resurrection of all men gives new
significance to life in the present.
Now if you become a Christian, if you
trust the living, the crucified and living Lord,
one of the things that will happen to
you is this, you'll begin to have a
sense of destiny that you cannot have otherwise.
You see, unless you know someone who can
deliver you from the grave and from death
and keep you and provide for you beyond
what we can see, then there is always
something clipping your wings.
You're just like an eagle chained to earth,
and whatever yearnings you have for something more
than we can have in the cage of
this planet, whatever yearnings you have for outer
space and beyond and beyond again, you have
no basis for your hopes, unless Jesus is
risen from the dead.
So that if you know him as the
risen Lord, you begin to know him as
such and trust him as such, it gives
you a sense of dignity and a sense
of hope and a sense of worth.
You see my friends, we've been taught to
believe that man is nothing but a grown
-up tadpole, going back one day to be
nothing much more than dust.
And if that is true, then it's no
wonder that such a large percentage of our
young people are committing suicide.
But if we've been made after the image
of God and the Son of God has
died, not only to give us life in
the here and now, but to do something
for us that abides beyond the here and
now to the there and then, then everything's
different.
You begin to see that you were made
for something big.
God has no small people, is the title
of a book by a modern writer.
God has no small people.
He's made us for eternity.
This came home to me when I was
visiting my own country, not all that long
ago.
It's a Quaint story, perhaps it's not the
best illustration, but I'm going to give it
this morning.
It's an old farmer in North Wales, rather
philosophic in his outlook, but Quaint, not very
cultured, but he had his own culture.
He had occasion to go to an office,
a government office, and there he was met
by someone whom he said was rather an
officious civil servant.
Now please, there are good civil servants, and
there are not so good, just as there
are good ministers, and there are not so
good.
So every civil servant is not a bad
person, and I'm not suggesting that.
But this civil servant was apparently terribly officious
and arrogant, and he looked into the face
of the country bumpkin who'd come in in
his country clothes, sat down in his office,
and he brought some forms out for him
to fill, and he treated him as if
he were quite an imbecile, incapable of writing,
incapable of anything.
And he, oh I can't give you all
the details, but it boiled down to this.
He came to him and he said, now
look sir, he said, I want your full
name written down there, and he pointed to
the lines as if the old man couldn't
see it.
You write your full name there, and he
said it about five times, and your full
address there on that line, he repeated that
four or five times, I want your full
name, your date of birth, and all the
rest of it, and you make sure that
you put it all there.
The old man had hardly said a word.
He went to fill in the form, and
he thought, how can I teach this man
who I am?
He wants my full address.
This is what he wrote.
John Sechred Jones, now some of you don't
know that name, Sechred, well I'm introducing it
to you today.
Plas Ablodai Farm, a palace of flowers farm,
Carnarvon, North Wales, United Kingdom, Europe, Planet
Earth, ah but wait a moment, the eternal
purposes of almighty God, the eternal purposes of
almighty God.
Where did the old country bumpkin get that
from?
I'll tell you, he tells us.
He'd been reading the story of the resurrection,
and how he had died with Christ, and
risen with Christ, and was seated in the
heavenly places, and was one of Christ's, a
limb of the body, and he saw himself
as destined for a future, as the body
of which Christ is the head.
He couldn't be cowed.
I wonder whether some of us have a
very poor view of ourselves this morning, because
we are seeing ourselves as just bits of
dust, or let me repeat, as tadpoles grown
up.
See yourself as the one for whom Christ
died, and rose again, and is alive forevermore,
and pleads your cause at God's right hand,
and the whole vast vistas of eternity have
a new significance for you.
You're something to live for, you're something to
die for.
That's the resurrection.
The pending resurrection of all men is a
fact fraught with both challenge and comfort.
Challenge for those who do not accept him,
and do not trust him, because as we've
said twice already, all men will be raised
from the dead.
But what comfort for those who trust in
him.
Christ's resurrection is the proof of the believers
pending resurrection for this reason.
If he rose from the dead as he
promised, then he is the person he said
he was.
It's the capstone upon his teaching and upon
his claims.
And if he is risen from the dead,
then he is able to fulfill his promises.
And if he is risen from the dead,
he is able to fulfill his purposes.
Nothing can stand in his way now, and
you have a place in that.
By the grace of God, if you trust
him and have repented of your sin, not
only that, but the resurrection of our Lord
Jesus is the pattern of ours.
We too shall receive a new body.
During this last year, we have buried so
many people from this congregation.
Some of our dearest, some very, very dear
people, not within our own families, beyond our
own families, have been called away from this
life.
Oh my good friends, there is something here
for all of us when we remember that
those who died in weakness of body, diseased,
will one day receive a new body like
unto his glorious body, changed yet different, suited
for their new environment and their new sphere
in the Jerusalem that is above, come down
to a rejuvenated earth and the future that
God has prepared for his own.
Now, lastly, just a word about this, the
present and the personal significance of the same
Easter tidings.
You see, you see what we've been doing.
We've been pointing far back 2,000 years
to something we say happened, and we've been
pointing I don't know how far forward because
I don't know when the end is coming,
and I don't pretend to, but it's coming.
And so here we are this morning having
the arrogance to point back so far and
forward maybe, maybe thousands of years yet, maybe
just a couple of weeks, maybe just a
couple of days.
Is there anything that brings the thing more
imminently near and more personally near to me?
Well, that's the glory of the Christian experience.
You see, what the Christian experience of forgiveness
and of becoming a child of God really
is, is nothing other than the resurrection of
the inner man.
The body is still alive, but the inner
man in all of us, the spirit in
all of us, because of sin is dead.
This is one reason why we are not
responsive to God, and we don't, we hardly
know God.
By nature, we are not sensitive to God.
We wouldn't know if he were absent this
morning.
We wouldn't know if he were present.
You don't know whether God has spoken to
you or not.
By nature, we know next to nothing about
God.
We don't have, you see, the apparatus to
receive the broadcasts of the heavenly throne, and
we can't tune in, and we don't know
our Maker's voice, and we don't receive our
Maker's power.
We are just cut off.
We are dead in trespasses and sins.
And as Jesus told Nicodemus, what we need
is to be, is to have a new
birth, not of this physical body now, but
of the inner part of us, of the
spirit, of the soul.
We need to come to new life.
That's exactly what the Christian experience is.
The Christ who died upon the cross to
bear our sins away is alive forevermore.
And what happens when a man becomes a
Christian is this, he breathes that life of
his into our hearts, into our spirits, and
we become new creatures.
So that wherever there is a man or
a woman, a boy or a girl that
becomes a Christian, he or she is in
touch with the Christ who died and is
alive again.
He is the only adequate source of the
Christian experience as biblically conceived.
The experience whereby sins are so forgiven that
we have peace with God.
The experience whereby we are so transformed that,
whereas once we thought God was the greatest
hindrance to our well-being, we now see
God as the object of our love, of
our praise, of our worship, the one that
we should serve and serve forever, and more
and more we begin to delight in God.
Now that's miracle.
That's nothing sheer of miracle.
How does that happen?
It happens because the Jesus who died on
the cross is alive again, and he breathes
his spirit upon us.
It's the miracle of the living Lord active
in the church.
And you see, that's why the church is
here today, 2,000 years after the resurrection.
Just imagine it, just imagine it.
You start a little club, you think it'll
remain 2,000 years hence?
How is the church in existence today?
It has been persecuted, its Bible has been
burnt.
There was one of the emperors who collected
all the Bibles that you could lay a
hand on, and made a pyre in Rome,
and fired them, and said, Christianity, he said,
is extinct.
Christianity has been buried many times, but it's
risen like its Lord from the dead, because
Christianity's Lord and Savior is a living Lord
and Savior.
Up from the grave he arose, and up
from the grave his people will rise again.
And that's the history of the church.
We call it revivals.
There are countries, there are nations where the
church of Jesus Christ is now thriving, and
you can't count the people that are coming
in, and you can't cope with young converts,
you don't know what to do.
And new churches are coming into existence every
day, 500 in Africa every week.
But in other parts of the world it's
going the other way.
How are these young churches coming into existence?
The answer is this, the Christ who died
is alive again, and he's about his business,
the same business as he was at before
he died.
And with the same dynamic divine power, he
persuades the mind, he illumines the conscience, he
wins the heart, he changes and transforms men,
and makes them his own.
And so you see, the Christian experience finds
its mainspring in the past, where Christ was
born of the virgin, died on the cross,
rose again, and ascended to the Father's right
hand.
It looks forward into the future, the unknown,
the unseen, and we've only got faint foreglims
of what's to come.
But it looks forward with anticipation and with
hope.
How can it do that?
Because it is now in touch with the
Christ who is, who is alive from the
dead, and is alive forevermore.
And you can live, you can talk with
him, and walk with him, and pray to
him.
And he hears your prayers, and he meets
your needs, and he comes down into your
circumstances, and right in the here and now,
the living Lord communicates with you.
That's why.
So that the present link with a living
Savior authenticates the past, and makes the unseen
future all glorious and certain, as the promises
of our Lord.
I conclude.
It's a great privilege to preach this message
today.
I wish I could preach it as it
deserves to be preached.
There is no message like it, not in
the whole wide world, nothing like this.
But what is your response to Jesus Christ?
You see, if he was still on the
cross, you might say to yourself, well, I
can leave him there, he won't hurt me,
and I won't have to answer to him
for the testimony borne to me concerning him.
But if he's alive from the dead, at
the end of every alley, every avenue, you
may take stands Christ the Lord.
You may die a lingering death that lasts
for many a month.
At the end, you will meet Christ the
Lord, the Judge.
You may be taken in a moment.
Beyond that moment, you will face the living
Lord Jesus Christ.
You may take your own life.
Beyond that, you will meet the same living
Lord Christ.
He's inescapable now.
There is no way out of it.
And not only within planet earth, but wherever
you go, wherever you are, our Lord, risen
from the dead, the Lord of life and
destiny, he cannot be evaded and ultimately avoided.
He stands to face you, and you must
face him.
What will you do with him?
Is he your Savior this morning?
I plead with you, I plead with you,
if never before in your life you've come
to face these issues, face them.
On this glad Easter day, in the year
of our Lord, 1983, Christ died for your
sins according to the scriptures.
He was buried in the tomb.
He rose from the dead.
He lives forever.
Come to God through him.
Take his promises back to him and ask
him as he promised when here upon earth
to receive you as his own and start
a new life, following in his footmarks, living
in his presence.
Let us pray.
Oh glorious Redeemer, oh infinitely glorious Lord, we
worship you.
We confess our sins of doubt, denial, sloth,
thoughtlessness, and very much, oh Lord, our sins
are very much like those of Pilate.
We don't want to be upset.
We don't want to lose what now we
have to do what we ought with Jesus,
the sinless Nazarene.
We would acknowledge our sins to you at
the close of our morning worship and we
do so asking that of your mercy you
will grant us the confidence in him that
we need to trust him as our Savior,
to obey him as our Lord, and to
honor him as our King of Kings.
So bless this day to us and through
us bless it to others that henceforth we
may live as the very hands of Christ,
uttering the very words of Christ, the living
Lord, breathing his very spirit into our troubled
world and bringing his glorious hope into a
bleak, barren, bewildered society that languishes in death.
Oh hear our cry in his holy name.
Amen.