Delayed Easter Sermon Ending

Sometimes sermons don't end until well after the Sunday they have been preached. In this case, the conclusion of my Easter sermon, "In Search of an Ending" from Sunday, March 23 appears in this post. The main point of the sermon was that the Easter celebration doesn't end with the empty tomb, but continues on through our faithfulness in living out our Easter faith in our communities and world. My focus was on the Easter account from the Gospel of Mark and how this gospel offers an abrupt ending to the Easter story leaving us wondering, "well, what happened next????"

Here's the original (cliff hanger) ending of the sermon which left a lot of my parishioners asking, "Well, did she or didn't she???" (Note: I dedicated this sermon to the glory of God in memory of Ginger Schmaus, my former church secretary.)

March 23 Sermon Ending:
"This past October, I received a call that a close staff member from my previous church had died unexpectedly. When I served that church, our children were in grade school at the time, and if I would be out visiting someone or be away from the church for some reason…this was before cell phones were popular…she would take it upon herself to cover for me.
I can’t tell you the number of times Ginger picked up our kids at school when they were sick or gave me a ride to the car dealer when my car needed to be fixed. She was part of our family.

When I got home later that day, I called her husband, Don to offer my deepest sympathy, and to my surprise, Ginger’s son-in-law answered the phone. I had gotten to know him pretty well when I was at the church and I told him how sorry I was to hear of the news of Ginger’s sudden death.

And I said to him, “You know Ryan. What’s really strange about all of this is that Ginger had called me down here in Xenia just two weeks ago. In fact, the reason she called, was to ask me to pray for you and for Jenny that the artificial insemination would be successful. I know how much the two of you have been wanting to have a baby.”

And then I said, “She told me that day on the phone that she was calling everybody she knew to pray that Jenny would be able to conceive.” So I asked him, “Do you have any news? Did it work?”

And he said…

Well…now that I think about it…this is a great place to end the sermon.

Since it's been about four months since that Easter sermon and everyone has been so patient, here's the final ending part of the sermon:

YES!

(Just got a picture in the mail of Abby Alexis, 7lbs., 4 oz., 20 inches, born May 27)

The Easter celebration never ends...Alleluia!