Welcome to our morning worship for Easter Day the culmination of a week of activity.

The service is led by Rev Stephen Haward.

The hymns are all available on YouTube.

HYMN ‘This joyful Eastertide
George Woodward

Welcome and Easter Greeting, Bible Reading John 20:1-18.

Christ is risen. 
HE IS RISEN INDEED.  ALLELUIA!
Living God, who brings light out of darkness,
WE PRAISE YOU FOR YOUR EASTER GLORY.
Loving God, who meets our deepest needs,
WE PRAISE YOU FOR YOUR EASTER STORY.
Mighty God, who overcomes the power of death,
WE PRAISE YOU FOR YOUR EASTER VICTORY.
Christ is risen.
HE IS RISEN INDEED.  ALLELUIA!

HYMN Mission Praise 1105 ‘See, what a morning’
Stuart Townsend and Keith Getty ©2003 Thankyou Music

Prayer and Lord’s Prayer, Church News, Bible Reading Ezra 3:10-13

HYMN Mission Praise 76 ‘Christ the Lord is risen today’
Charles Wesley (1707-88)

Sermon and prayers followed by the Blessing – on church steps

Gracious God, remembering that Mary
reached out to her risen Lord
– and in her distress heard him speak her name –
we come to pray for those who are in need this day.

Into the light of Easter morning
we bring those in our own country
who are struggling with
despair over their lives,
with the breakdown of relationships,
with worries about jobs or money.
MAY THEY REACH OUT TO YOU AND HEAR YOUR VOICE.
LIVING LORD, SPEAK TO THEM.

Into the light of Easter morning,
we bring places where all of life is a struggle:
where harvests fail, or land is stolen,
or sickness fills the graveyards with tiny coffins.
We pray for those people in Mozambique
whose villages have been attacked by terrorists.
We pray for those people in Myanmar
who are being attacked by their own army.
Guide and strengthen those most able to change
these realities, O Lord, and those who most need that change to come.
MAY THEY REACH OUT TO YOU AND HEAR YOUR VOICE.
LIVING LORD, SPEAK TO THEM.

And into the light of Easter morning
we bring ourselves, the private struggles,
the heart’s yearnings, the hidden dreams,
the unfulfilled potential, the not-mended places.
MAY WE REACH OUT TO YOU AND HEAR YOUR VOICE.
LIVING LORD, SPEAK TO US.  AMEN.
(includes some words by Ann Siddall from the Stillpoint Spirituality Centre)

HYMN ‘I am a city on a hill’
Nick and Becky Drake, © 2014 Thankyou Music, CCL 53960

John 20:1-18

The empty tomb
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 round 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 12 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 round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realise 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 towards 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.

Ezra 3:3-10

10 When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests in their vestments and with trumpets, and the Levites (the sons of Asaph) with cymbals, took their places to praise the Lord, as prescribed by David king of Israel. 11 With praise and thanksgiving they sang to the Lord:
‘He is good;
    his love towards Israel endures for ever.’
And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. 12 But many of the older priests and Levites and family heads, who had seen the former temple, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this temple being laid, while many others shouted for joy. 13 No one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping, because the people made so much noise. And the sound was heard far away.

The Lord’s Prayer Contemporary