(As a reference, this passage is repeated at the end of this section.)
NOTE TO GROUP LEADER: This is the final week on Insights for Easter. It is a time for personal reflection and to share our overall sense of the impact of Easter… to allow the group to consider if this event and this discussion have impacted our lives and how we live from day to day. Allow the discussion to flow freely so that the individuals in the group feel that they have been heard. Try to ensure that all members of the group have had an opportunity to share their thoughts. Do not insist that a person share but offer him or her the opportunity. The closing reflection and prayer may be read by the Group Leader or one or two members of the group may be asked to read aloud. (Items needed: Closing Reflection, Discussion Questions, Lyrics to “The Easter Song” and access on youtube to the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSbcYzgy8ao)
Closing Reflection and Prayer:
Who am I? Why am I alive? What will happen to me when I die?
These are questions we all have had some time during our lives. The Passion and Resurrection of Christ may answer these questions for us.
When we celebrate the Resurrection of Christ on Easter, we embrace it as a personal and revealing message from Christ. He is telling us that, because of His death and resurrection, we too are renewed and refreshed. Like that first bloom, we see and feel the world with a new sense of hope. Jesus, with this one act of love, changed the way we see the world. When He destroyed death, He told us that death no longer has control over our lives. Death is not an end, it should not frighten us, especially if we live our lives with the same love with which Christ lived His life – loving God and our neighbors as ourselves. Death is simply a point of transition into the kingdom. It allows us to be resurrected as Christ did – beautiful in mind, body and spirit.
Because of the Resurrection we can enjoy a true sense of freedom as we anticipate a life after death in heaven. If we reject the resurrection we become slaves to the present, and may feel that we have no real hope, purpose or meaning in this life.
Let us pray:
Dearest Lord,
Thank you for giving your life on the cross.
Thank you for showing us how to die … with dignity and forgiveness even considering the cruelty with which you were treated.
Thank you for giving us the hope and comfort of the resurrection which gives us the reason for looking at our lives in a new way because all we do actually counts.
Everything we say, counts.
How we suffer pain, counts.
Our kindness means something.
Our attention to others means something.
When we die, we leave our love, our thoughts, our words and deeds behind to impact others.
But we also carry them with us into the kingdom of God. They do not die.
They, like the spring blossom, bloom again to a new life with our heavenly Father.
This life is not all that there is. We were made for eternity.
This is our Hallelujah moment as we journey together into the kingdom. Amen.
Closing song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSbcYzgy8ao
(Tiffany Coburn – The Easter Song OFFICIAL Lyric Video)
The Easter Song – Lyrics
Songwriter: Anne Ward Herring
Hear the bells ringing, they’re singing
That You can be born again
Here the bells ringing, they’re singing
Christ is risen from the dead
The angel up on the tombstone
Said, “He has risen, just as He said
Quickly now, go tell His disciples
That Jesus Christ is no longer dead
Joy to the world
He has risen, Hallelujah
He’s risen, Hallelujah
He’s risen, Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hear the bells ringing, they’re singing
That You can be healed right now
Hear the bells ringing, they’re singing
Christ, He will reveal it now
The angels, they all surround us
And they are ministering Jesus’s power
Quickly now, reach out and receive it
For this could be your glorious hour
Joy to the world
He has risen, Hallelujah
He’s risen, Hallelujah
He’s risen, Hallelujah, Hallelujah
The angel up on the tombstone
Said, “He has risen,” just as He said
Quickly now, go tell His disciples
That Jesus Christ is no longer dead
Joy to the world
He has risen, Hallelujah
He’s risen, Hallelujah
He’s risen, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Source: Musixmatch
Closing discussion questions:
- What thoughts did you have as you read the final reflection?
- What thoughts did you have as you heard the closing song? Why should this event be “joyful” for the world?
- How might you answer the questions: Who am I? Why am I here? Why am I alive now? What will happen to me after I die?
- As the lyrics say: “We can be born again.” What does that mean for you? How can we be “born again”?
- Is the Resurrection personal for you? Why? Why not?
- How is Jesus’ Resurrection our hallelujah moment?
- Closing Question for “Insights on Easter”: Have these three weeks of Bible Study given you any sense of wellness? If so, how? If not, why not?
NOTE TO GROUP LEADER: At the end of the session, you may want to allow the group to have a few moments for open commentary and thoughts about the session. And what it may have meant for them.
The Empty Tomb
20 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2 So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”
3 So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4 Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7 as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. 8 Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9 (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) 10 Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.
Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene
11 Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
13 They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” 14 At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
15 He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.”
She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!”(which means “Teacher”).
17 Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
18 Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.
Jesus Appears to His Disciples
19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.
21 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”