Sermons

The list is long, and growing longer all the time. Indeed, it is hard to even remember all the details, and harder still to keep from simply growing numb. The litany includes Jonesboro Arkansas and Columbine Colorado and now Blacksburg Virginia. But it also includes Oklahoma City, New York and Washington DC. It includes Jonestown Guyana and Waco Texas. The list goes on to include Kent State and the countless other places where protests ended in violence and death. Pushing out beyond our borders we can add places like Soweto South Africa and Belfast Northern Ireland and Sarajevo Bosnia and Kigali Rwanda and Baghdad Iraq and Kandahar Afghanistan and Saigon Viet Nam and the Palestinian West Bank and Hiroshima Japan and on and on the list could go. Everywhere we turn we find ourselves faced with violence and death. On this day which we have designated as Earth Day we are reminded that the list also includes the polar bears and other species which are threatened with extinction. It includes the ever diminishing rain forests. It includes the air we breath, the water we drink, and the fragile condition of both. This overwhelming reality shapes our experience of life in so many ways at such a profoundly deep level that we have mostly stopped even noticing. The world turns dark and our vision grows dim as the clouds of our grief seem to block out the sun.
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"If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." (John 20:23) Wow! That is an absolutely remarkable statement. There is the promise of power and authority. It implies a level of trust. And it is spoken to a group of people whose lives have very recently been thrown into turmoil because of the "sins" of people who, even now, would probably arrest them if given half a chance. What an opportunity for paybacks.
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The darkness is real. The pain and suffering is real. The shattered dreams are real. Death is real. The stories from the Bible which we paid attention to during this past week confirm that it was all real for Jesus and his followers 2,000 years ago. And our own stories, to say nothing of the stories we hear on the news and read about in the papers, confirm that it remains real for us today. As individuals and corporately as a society, we know about suffering and pain. We know about shattered dreams and darkness. If the story of our faith were simply the story of Holy Week, we could all offer a collective shrug and then go on about our business. If Jesus' death was the last word on the matter, there would be little to capture our imaginations or to lift our eyes towards a new tomorrow. If that is all there is, then we might as well go home right now.

But the bold and even audacious claim we dare to make is that there is more. We are Easter people!
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