May 4 ~ What Does Resurrection Really Mean?

Click above to hear Pastor's Sermon read.

Third Sunday of Easter

Acts 9:1-6 [7-20]

Psalm 30

Revelation 5:11-14

John 21:1-19

Sermon by Pastor Nelson

Jesus said “How much do you love me?”

I mentioned the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. last Sunday. Sixty-two years ago, two years before I came to Canada, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the “Letter from Birmingham jail.”  Responding to criticism by local clergy, he explained that he had led a peaceful demonstration in Birmingham, Alabama, because theirs was the most segregated city in the nation.  He told them that,

“we will have to repent…not merely for the hateful words and actions… but for the appalling silence of the good people.” Yes we will need much metanoia.  King added, ”human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability, it comes through the tireless efforts of people willing to be co-workers with God.”  Could those words ever be more meaningful than they are now after our election?  Well King was not a fortune teller for our election but he could have been echoing Peter and others who told the powers to be,

“we must obey God rather than human beings.”  In the New York times edition of April 20, 2025, there was quite an article about people trying but failing to replace religion with something else.  In spite of how bad we humans want to replace God we have found that we cannot.

In the tragedy in Vancouver this last week, we hear so many people saying, “my thoughts and prayers are with you.”  In spite of such a common saying, what else can we say? Way back in 1963, King explained that he intended to “create a crisis,” dramatizing the evils of segregation so that they could no longer be ignored. By risking their lives for others, the disciples of Jesus and others, through the years, have dramatized their lives so that people could/can see concrete evidence of the freedom and new life available in that freedom.  We might use Christ as our example but others only know that they have to do it for humankind.  Bonhoeffer, Bishop Romero, and King are just a few of many examples we have in history; who laid down their lives for a cause, and who found that religion gave them a cause. 

We hear today of many who say they will lay down their lives for this place we call Canada.  Will we?  Our Easter Gospels explain what happens when we encounter love and a mission in our lives.  We have the message again in our lessons today. John’s Gospel describes each detail of the story to reflect events of Jesus’ life and/or the current situation of his Christian community.  Please remember the Gospel of John was written in about 90-100 ad, 60-70 years after the Jesus’ story.  In other words, this story today tries to sum up Jesus’ life once again. This story begins with Peter and six others deciding that the hour had come to return to their fishing trade.  Their religious venture with Jesus was over.  Their miraculous catch suggests that the fishing was good, but they were missing something.  Jesus had offered them much more.  The story of Peter jumping into the water gives us a reminder of baptism.  The fire on the shore evokes the memory of the fire in the garden at night when Peter denied knowing Jesus.  The fish that Jesus was preparing reminds us of the miraculous sharing of the bread and fish a couple of times during Jesus’ life.  And then Jesus asks Peter, “do you love me?”  This becomes both a question and a command.  The writer of John has Jesus asking and saying, “I want you to really love me for who I am, not just your idea of me or what I can do for you.”

So many today, who practice the “White House” kind of Christianity, are saying pious words so that the fringe group of our own MAGA conservatives will bow down to us and swoon over our pious pretentions.  But they forget what Jesus said, “if you really love me, you will live in me and I in you and you will care for my people with the same love and courage that I have cared for you.”  Tell me how that squares with what Trump and his gang of thugs are doing to immigrants, gays, poor and the like?  You see the miracle of Easter is not the empty grave.  It is that God comes back from death and does not condemn the unrighteous ones but loves them, loves us.  Resurrection is about justice owed to the suffering.  If you are suffering, resurrection is good news. Every time Peter repeated his denials by proclaiming his love, Jesus would again explain that loving him implied doing what he, Jesus had done; “feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep.”

Jesus knew the disciples had denied him, but the good news was/is not just that the tomb was/is empty but that Hell was/is empty also.  You see the kind of love Jesus was talking about was not friendship, not admiration, but such a profound union in love that even a Peter would share his passion for doing God’s will by giving of himself for others.

Think about this, if it was not for Good Friday, on Easter we would just make some coloured eggs and hide.  That then brings us into the Last Supper discussion when Jesus told his disciples that loving him implied living his command of universal love and his prayer that they would be one in him as he was with God.  We see this is already being argued by those cardinals who think Pope Francis went too far in loving others.  How can you be a Christian and go too far in loving others?  So today we get to contemplate our own gospel vocation.  How do we express our faith in action?  How do we express what our baptism and partaking of communion mean to us?   The bottom line is, the reign of God versus the reign of the empire will depend on our efforts to accept that we are coworkers with God.  Looking at life this way we will always be drawn into the mystery of the resurrection.  The writer of revelation cannot help himself, he sees us with myriads of myriads and thousands and thousands loving God and that God through us will be recognized by all.  Incidentally, I think a myriad was 10000 in Greek?  I did not get into the Book of Revelation this week as I thought I would but I want to say this.  Revelation unveils for us a foundational contradiction of our faith.

Once we get to the centre of God’s world, to the centre of the idea of a throne, we realize that there is no Emperor or King on the throne, there is a lamb.  We may see some trappings of royalty and adoration, but the adoration is not directed at a strong man.  Perfection and prosperity are not God’s fundamental qualities. We find vulnerability in the place of power, creativity in the place of conformity, and love in the place of loyalty.

Here in 2025, Pope Francis called us to recover the essential gospel of mercy as our message to this troubled world.  Doctrinal consolidation, warrior Popes, great cathedrals and liturgies, fortress mentality and legalism, are not what is needed by this global community on the brink of enormous challenges to its survival and future direction.  What we need more than anything else is hope and reconciliation.  Will our newly elected leaders give us that?  What we need more than anything is, metanoia.  What martin Luther King Jr was saying sixty-two years ago was we need repentance, a spiritual conversion.  Not Poilievre’s change, change, change but a change of heart.

We know that some will listen and in listening we will be transformed, and some will not.  I will quote Diana Butler Bass from a book entitled “a beautiful year,” which will be published later this year.  The older I, Ron, get, the less I am sure what the resurrection means.  But I think Diana says it as clear as anyone.  Resurrection is not resuscitation.  Resurrection is not regeneration.  And it is different from reincarnation.  It is not just renewal. Resurrection is what happens after death.  Indeed, death is necessary for resurrection to occur.  Some Christians are absolutely convinced that it is about literal bodies rising from the dead.  Others claim resurrection will entail some sort of new spiritual body or is primarily an alternative spiritual state of personhood. Still others insist that resurrection is political or social liberation.  Christians argue about whether the event was scientific fact, evidenced by history, a kind of communal visionary or mystical experience, or something else entirely.  The New Testament employs a variety of metaphors to explain it. Even Paul and the writer of Luke seemed not to agree.  But all agree on two things at the centre of the Christian story.  First, death is not the last word.  And second, whatever the resurrection was, is, or will be, it serves as the gateway to a new existence – a life of mercy, service, and love.  Like Christmas, Easter is more than a single day.  It is a season of fifty days.

As spring lengthens, as the earth awakens, this year invites us to explore the many meanings of resurrection.  It raises questions, even as it inspires hope.”  Yes, resurrection is the power of love and hope in the face of destruction and violence.  Jesus called Peter back and then sent him out again, in spite of Peter’s denial and betrayal.  For each of us life in the faith will not be without struggle, but we are called and sent to follow God in our own dying and living.  There are no conditions on our life but there is a commission.    There are sheep to feed and care for.  There is work to do now, not to earn forgiveness and acceptance that has been given, but as a way of expressing gratitude for the gift of grace, and as a way of living the new, resurrected life that we have received. 

Yes, we will hear again and again;

“Will you come and follow me

If I but call your name?

Will you go where you do not know

And never be the same?

Will you let my love be shown,

Will you let my name be known,

Will you let my life be grown

In you and you in me?”

[ELW 798 v. 1]

 Amen.

April 27, Revelation is Seeing the Work of God in the Ordinary.

Click above to hear Pastor's Sermon read.

Second Sunday of Easter

Acts 5:27-32

Psalm 118:14-29

Revelation 1:4-8

John 20:19-31

Sermon by Pastor Nelson

I had my sermon mostly finished last Monday and then we heard the news of Pope Francis’ death.  So I want to say a few words about him. I look at myself, as I hope you all do as catholic, but not Roman Catholic.

I am fortunate to have started my ministry in the time of John XXIII and now at 85 to end my ministry influenced by Francis.  Pope Francis wanted us as pastors/shepherds to be among the people, “to have the smell of the sheep.” He did not want a fur cape, nor red slippers and he rode around in a small fiat and will be buried in a pine box.

Yes he was a humble person who literally said, “he just wanted to be known as a good guy.”  How does that compare to the leader in the USA who wants to be the strongman? Pope Francis’ trip to Canada to apologize to the indigenous people was “one of a kind.”  There will be an election of a new pope, please read the book or watch the movie “conclave.” I am told it gives us a good idea of what will take place.

Now let us get to my sermon.  Last Sunday was Easter. Your pastor and you were full of vim and vigour, it was a grand day. Today, the Sunday after Easter is always, if not a downer, certainly a “low” Sunday.  Your pastor “got out of dodge,” and you are stuck with an 85-year-old “Chester,” who was delivering the times-colonist in his 11th floor apartment building at 3 am this morning, and now needs a nap, and tomorrow we have an election, one of the most important elections in our lifetime.  I wish we had John A here, even though he was a conservative, with all of his faults, because he beat back the Americans who wanted to put tariffs on us way back then.  Incidentally, at one time, he represented Victoria and he never came out to Victoria. Among other things he also got a railroad going east to west across our great country. Keeping up with the theme, for this Sunday, “a downer,” the second lesson from Revelation jumps out at me today.  Revelation will be used for six weeks and I will try to concentrate on revelation for today and next week and in my own sermons for the rest of the easter season.

It will probably drive me and you crazy but after tomorrow’s election, we may all feel a little crazy. Remember Martin Luther did not want Revelation in the Canon but he did not want James either.  But I have enjoyed James, so let us try Revelation.  The language from Revelation is as vivid as it is mysterious.  “It requires of its readers confident, steady intonation which will more than adequately convey a sense of value.” So says a guide to how to read Revelation on a Sunday morning.  Revelation is apocalyptic literature, like Daniel.  Sorry, if that ruins your Daniel in the lion’s den story.  Apocalyptic literature frequently reflects a negative view of the world and expresses the hope for salvation in a new creation or in another life. Someway, it was/is supposed to comfort faithful people in difficult times.  The word apocalyptic means, disclosure or ‘revelation.’ The book of revelation definitely should not be translated literally. But, of course, the “right wing religious nuts” do it all the time.  I am sorry but “I calls them as I sees them.”

There are several lessons that we can draw from this first chapter of revelation used in our lectionary today.

-        First, we are not the intended audience, we are not the seven churches.

-        Revelation was not written for you and me.

-        It was not written to predict our time or represent our world.

When we make it about us and about predicting our time, we not only miss the whole point of the book, but we get caught up in “paranoid fantasies.”

Elisabeth Schussler Florenza, a Krister Stendahl professor at Harvard, puts it this way, “something very strange happens when this text is appropriated by readers in a comfortable, powerful, majority community: It becomes a gold mine for paranoid fantasies and for those who want to preach revenge and destruction.”   Like I said, “right wing religious nuts.”  Florenza is Roman Catholic and Stendahl was a Swedish Lutheran.  You cannot get any better than that. The author, who we call John, wrote Revelation about 95 AD. Christians who refused to call the Emperor of Rome, “lord and god” were being killed or exiled. Thus this John was writing to them not us. We, as preachers, must write/preach to people here and now, and not to some far-off nether land.

“We must smell like our sheep.” -> Remember, “it is where you live and work and play, that is where god is.” John’s churches were made up of a persecuted minority, people who were indigenous to the area, a mix of Jewish and Gentile, all following the testimony of Jesus, while living under Roman occupation.  They were on the margins of the empire, poor and religiously persecuted by Rome. Sad to say we have the like in Victoria and Ottawa as well. I wish I could say it will change after tomorrow’s election.

John’s message to them during their time was “patient endurance,” and resist assimilation into the ideology of the empire. I wonder if any of our forefathers told this message to the indigenous people of turtle island?

What is most important as we read Revelation is, because of the historical, contextual and experiential difference between the first readers of John’s writings and us, we cannot assume to understand all of the symbolism and allegory taking place in the text. [Which many of our fellow Christians do not understand and continually misinterpret revelation.]  Many preachers love fiction mysteries, and so do I. This writing from John, surely is a mystery.  John is smuggling notes out from Patmos to those churches, using biblical language, images, and symbolism that the Roman readers would not automatically understand. This is one way to pass notes under the nose of the authorities without getting caught.  [this happened many times in the second world war.]

Marianne Maye Thompson called Revelation a kind of political cartoon, “until we are well-acquainted with the people and the events it was written for and about, the joke is lost on us.”  Basically then this writing in Revelation, is not about us. This is a letter from a pastor to people in the midst of great suffering and challenge, he was a shepherd for his sheep, shaping their imaginations by “the lamb that was slain.”  By recognizing the distance between us and these first readers/hearers, we “may,” find our own way into this text of faith today. I mentioned our indigenous brothers and sisters hearing these words. I tried to say these words to the horn honkers of a couple of years ago and I would think these words would have meaning to the Ukrainians as well, if they had time to listen. This writing from this John is not an end time prediction [as again so many preachers try to make it] but an apocalyptic unmasking. Let us then see what lies underneath the surface. Yes, I would like to make Russia the bear of revelation as many have done,  but this is not a book of prophecy. I am sure the John of Patmos was smart but not that smart. What the book of revelation is, is a prophetic book from Jesus through John, speaking as all biblical prophets do, against superpowers that oppress the most vulnerable and seek to take the place of God.   Sounds like down south, eh? The writer of revelation is trying to awaken his audience to the presence of marginalized forces otherwise unnamed and unchallenged.  The struggle against the powers for John’s congregations was in the now, and so it must be for us. John writes to those who are suffering at the hands of the powerful. His vision of Jesus is meant to unmask what is really going on so that they are able to see things in context and to understand the larger picture and how to sustain and resist. How can I not compare President Zelenskyy against Putin or Trump or even worse Canada to the USA.

But please recognize John of Patmos did not have that kind of foresight, but we can learn from him. John had connections to those churches, he was imprisoned on the Island of Patmos. John’s scathing critique of Rome would be enough to land him in trouble and just like now, his communications were continually being looked at. John was/is setting up the reader to emulate the resistance of Jesus when he says, “Jesus the Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.” This Jesus who proclaimed release to the captives, liberation for the oppressed and was himself crushed by the empire, He is the faithful one.

You see revelation sees Jesus as the firstborn of the dead, inaugurating a new creation, a new social order, a new ethic, a new way of relating not only to one another but to the imperial powers.  That is easter!

So, we have not a book that says the end of the world is near, as many preachers would like it to say, but as a letter or handbook for how the early church resisted the empire and something we can learn from. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a letter from a ‘Birmingham jail.’ He called the church to be faithful and not to assimilate with the empire. Michael Coren called this to our attention again in ‘The Globe and Mail’, April 18, 2025, when he pleaded with the ‘Christian’ administration of the USA which turns out to be the most ‘unchristian’ administration of all times.

Coren rightfully said, “they are obsessed with the end times. But they do not understand, ‘it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.’ They do not understand, ‘what must I do to obtain eternal life, sell everything and give the money to the poor.’”  Recently, they even had the Vice President lecturing the Pope. The Pope died the next day, can you imagine? Trump and his gang understand to be a Christian, means you never apologize and you slander the messenger.  What religious playbook does all that come from? That is why we are voting tomorrow.    Can we in 2025 find ways to be faithful to the message of Jesus against the empire that challenges our own comforts and the positions we may have to take tomorrow?   Can we read Revelation not as a book that has scared children for generations and the “left behind” series who turned revelation into a pop-cultural icon and cash cow, featuring eternal torture and punishment for many, while a few of God’s chosen get to experience all the luxuries of heaven? I do not know about you but it all sounds like Trump’s Christianity to me.   

May we read revelation as a book which talks to people who are oppressed by an empire and see at least some of the early church who actually understood what the liberating message of the resurrection really was/is. The Rev. Daniel berrigan wrote, “was this John of Patmos a kook? We ask the question because it seemed as though the early church was facing the same question, at least by implication. No, he was not a kook, he suffered for Jesus and thus for the faith.” The seven churches also had this same vision of John, welcomed it, and believed it. In other words, the vision is for the community and not just for john or the seven churches.” It is for us also. Thus, each year, the readings for this Sunday provide us with a literary window through which we revisit the early church, and find what should be. John the gospel writer reminds us that we belong to a community founded on the peace of Christ.

Following the John of Patmos and the John of the Gospel, we find the strength to endure every difficulty because the story of Jesus is a pledge to us. We will hear of a vine with many branches, a living member, likened to a body and again and again as a community brought together by a faith and a communion open to all. Does that always happen? No. But through it all we hear the word shalom [peace] and we receive it, and share it, forgiveness that is, ‘the peace that passes all understanding.’  I am not sure what the resurrection means but I can begin to know what peace and forgiveness mean.  For some reason, those who found Thomas on another day, were not capable of communicating the whole message to him. But they did get him to join them a week later. In reality the other disciples had not fully caught on either. Thomas grasped what none of them had grasped; we are not exempt from suffering.  But God’s forgiveness expresses a love as vulnerable as human beings and more powerful than evil. Thomas did not, does not stand back in awe. Thomas found that evil as horrendous as it was, was not omnipotent.  Thomas’ faith did not come easy, but for that reason it would become unshakeable. With Thomas we can understand that God forgives us in our freely chosen vulnerability. But with Thomas we realize that the God who suffered and still suffers in the world’s victims, invites us into a history-changing transformation. Thomas reminds us that honestly facing our doubts can open us to greater faith. Thomas allowed God to reveal god’s face in a new and fuller way. Thomas shows us that god frees us to forgive and be forgiven.

Finally let me say, it is inspiring to look at the early church, through the scriptures. Hopefully it will give us an impetus for the present and the future. Centuries from now, will our descendants in the faith be looking back at us and seeing a vision of faith, a vision of forgiveness, and above all a vision love?  This is the word of God for us today even when the symbolism of revelation baffles us.  This is the word of God for us today in a world marked by the raw exercise of political power. The shadow of the roman empire would have fallen mightily on the earliest readers of Revelation. This is the word of God for us today, not tomorrow. Revelation is a text about the present, not about the future. These stories today are about a hope in a God we can trust and an expectation for a future that god has crafted. This is a word about god for us today.

Jesus says, “he is the Alpha and the Omega, the A and the Z, the beginning  and the end, the dawn of the world and its dusk.” Revelation is not a road map to the end of the days. It is fundamentally about the character of God. It is about how we relate to God and to one another. Revelation is not about bold predictions about days yet to come. Revelation is about seeing the work of God in the ordinary, unremarkable moments that fill our lives. Revelation warns us about complacency. That has never been as true as it is today. In all of this we might just see our own struggles and successes reflected back to us. But revelation reminds God’s faithful that God is in control but god does not act alone. We need to be awake and aware of the evil that ‘The Empire’ still maintains.

AND WE SAY

OF THE FATHER’S LOVE BEGOTTEN

ERE THE WORLDS BEGAN TO BE,

HE IS ALPHA AND OMEGA,

HE THE SOURCE, THE ENDING HE,

OF THINGS THAT ARE,

THAT HAVE BEEN,

AND THAT FUTURE YEARS SHALL SEE,

EVERMORE AND EVERMORE.

[ELW 295]

AND WE HEAR

“GO, MY CHILDREN, WITH MY BLESSING,

NEVER ALONE.

GO, MY CHILDREN, WITH MY BLESSING,

YOU ARE MY OWN.”

[ELW 543]  

AMEN.

Christ Is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!

Click above to watch a recording of Sunday's Sermon

Easter Sunday

Acts 10:34-43

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

1 Corinthians 15:19-26

Luke 24:1-12

(The context of this sermon was 100% written in Canada by a human)

Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen Indeed!  Alleluia!

The sun has risen, the tomb has been cracked open, the world has been transformed. Seven days ago, Jesus entered Jerusalem to a cheering and then a jeering mob. Three days ago, the disciples ate their last meal together, not entirely knowing that the next day, nothing would be the same. On Good Friday, Jesus took his last breath on the cross, and his followers could feel only helpless, hopeless anger. And yet today, on this brilliant Easter Sunday, the world has changed entirely once again. Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen Indeed!  Alleluia!

Over our Lenten journey, we have been asked to consider what we might need to change in ourselves to make the gospel shine more brightly in our lives. What is broken that we might mend? What is neglected that requires our attention? What – and who- are lost that we can find?

If Good Friday is about sitting with all that change and wrestling with our anger at our own failings and those of humanity in general, then Easter morning – this morning – is about transformation. The sun set on one world and rose on another. The followers of Jesus had thought everything was over, but now they knew they had a new beginning. What of their grief, and anger --  did it just vanish? Let’s come back to that.

As human beings, we get so nervous about change. But why? Everything changes. Winter gives way to spring; elementary school becomes high school; work becomes retirement. It is inevitable.  I think we fear it because we assume that change will be hard, and we don’t like to risk not being happy. The disciples, after all, had been hearing Jesus preach every day about new life and God’s grace, and they still thought the death of Jesus was the end of the story. Yet everything happened just as it was meant to. The resurrection happened. Jesus rose from the dead. 

And yet, who is resurrected? A transformed Jesus – the same teacher and healer they know, but also formed into someone new, who had died and risen again. This is the gift we are also offered with Easter – the chance to experience a new beginning, a transformation, to let go of what we no longer want to hold on to, to carry forward what we do, and to rise up to a new day.  Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen Indeed!  Alleluia!

So what do we bring into this Easter Sunday? For many of you, I know, it is not all sunshine.  You cannot leave behind everything that grieves you or causes you sorrow. If your family is like mine, you are also carrying anger and worry about the future of our country and feelings of betrayal by our closest ally. We cannot leave all of it, nor should we want to do so. But on Easter, we are shown how we can transform it into something worthy, grace-centred, and hopeful.

Think of the women, in despair and angry, who found the tomb opened and, Jesus gone, thinking the worst had happened., In that moment it was true, and in the next, Jesus appeared to them, and they ran joyfully to tell the disciples what had happened. Think of the disciples fearfully making plans, angry at themselves for failing to save Jesus, and trying to flee, only to learn that Jesus had appeared outside the tomb. They hit the road, their courage renewed.

And yet, were they all suddenly no longer sad, no longer fearful, no longer angry? Did Easter erase all of the past and reset the day, or did it, in fact, reform the day with all the parts that remained true?

Think of us right now as a country, carrying around all that worry and anger. And yet, for me it keeps transforming. I watch my fellow Canadians buying ‘produced in Canada’ at the grocery store, and I feel inspired. I see the rallying of support online and I feel hope. I listen to a new conversation about what it means to be Canadians – that it means more than just being “not-American” and I feel better. But are my worry and anger gone? They ae not, but they are changed, because they dwell now with hope and inspiration and a sense of what is right.

We talk about Easter as a new beginning, and it is – for us. God is who God ever was; Jesus is who Jesus ever was. But with Easter, we are reminded, in human terms, with the most real-world examples, that even when we think we are alone, we are not. When things seem at an end, look ahead. When we think the stone is set, it is rolled away. Easter is a reminder that we don’t have to carry our mistakes around until they drag us into the ground. We have only to bring them to God to be transformed by forgiveness, and learn from them, and in that way they are changed into lessons from which we grow.  Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen Indeed!  Alleluia!

Now, there is a lot happening in the world, a lot we cannot control. We can spend our time worrying about the things we cannot change, or we can focus on what action we can take. The Resurrection is a powerful reminder of our choice. It was God’s work, and a moment over which we had no control. A gift given to us, like a brilliant sunset on a warm spring day after a long, dreary winter. We don’t make the sun rise, we don’t make the spring arrive, and we didn’t make the resurrection happen. And yet, just as Mary and the women realized, racing back from the open tomb, just as the disciples learned, slipping quietly out of Jerusalem, the choice is how we respond. We decide what to do with the day started by the sun, what kindness we will share, what compassion we will show. We decide to step optimistically into spring, looking for ways to serve. We decide whether to claim the Resurrection for the new start God offers.   

What does that mean in our modern upside-down world? We have a new identity, an upgrade on our old one. This version of us doesn’t save our own skins - for we are already saved. And we don't have to cover our own you-know-whats, because mistakes, as the gospel teaches us through the stories of the prodigal son and the tax collector, are the necessary learning moments of life. We need neither feel shame at our failures, nor boast about our achievements. The resurrection releases us from this. From the shame-mongering, and the one-up-man-ship, and the paralyzing self-doubt. Because we are forgiven—we are resurrected—we are free.  Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen Indeed!  Alleluia!

This is the joyful news of Easter.  The Resurrection represents the purest of freedoms. A gift given with no expectation, only the hope that we will accept it and put it to the best of use. The foundation has been laid, the sacrifice made, the grief transformed into hope. Our calling -- our only calling -- is to carry the gospel into the parts of life over which we have control – the people we love, the community where we live, the world we inhabit – to bring it to new life with each rising sun, again and again and again.  Because Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen Indeed!  Alleluia!