Weekly "Call To Worship" Encouragement

For Easter Sunday, we participated in a responsive reading, as follows, with the congregation's response in italics:

He is risen

He is risen indeed

We all, like sheep, have gone astray,

Each of us has turned to our own way;

and the Lord has laid on him 

the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and afflicted;

yet he did not open his mouth;

he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,

and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

By oppression and judgement he was taken away.

Yet who of his generation protested?

For he was cut off from the land of the living;

for the transgression of my people he was punished.

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,

that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,

Because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.

He is risen

He is risen indeed!