Friday, March 30, 2018

Good Friday 2018 - Why Do We Call Today Good?

John 18:1-19:42

Now we are in darkness. We began our journey yesterday, with God forgiving us, washing us, serving us, and feeding us. We were reminded that God knows the darkness we are walking into, and that God will bring us into the light. But today, we are face-to-face with Christ’s death, confronted with the implication that we, too, have participated in the dark deeds that have brought us all to this moment. In the prayers we will soon utter, and in the solemn reproaches, we will hear the myriad of ways in which we have not followed Jesus’ command to love one another, we have not taken up our cross, and we have not given our lives for others. And we will hear that because of things we have done and left undone, we “have prepared a cross for our Savior.” We will be like this sanctuary, and like Jesus on the cross––stripped bare before our God, with nothing to hide behind. We stare our own death in the face.

But today is not the end of our journey. We do not end in tragedy. Today, as final as it feels, as final as death feels, is only the middle. The end is still to come, and we do not pretend we don’t know what it is. We do know. And because of the end that is coming, we call this day Good.

We call Christ’s death, and all death, good because in death, in the darkness caused by us, we see that God’s power to create new life is stronger than our power to bring about death. The story of Creation itself is a story that moves from life and celebration to death and tragedy and onwards, by the power of God, to new life and new celebration. And we call today Good because God is present now, too. In the “now”of the disobedience in the Garden of Eden, in the “now” of Golgotha two thousand years ago, and in the “now” of 2018, God is not overcome by the death we bring. Rather, God takes it, and transforms death itself into new life, and uses it to bring about goodness and light.
In the English language, “Good” used to be synonymous with “God,” although they don’t actually have the same root. Good-bye is the shortened version of “God-be-with-ye.” Today, Good Friday, is God’s Friday. It is not our Friday, though we have brought it about. It belongs to God, and so we turn to God in the midst of it. We call Christ’s death good because God is in the midst of it, and is present in it, and shows God’s power in it. 

Because this day is good, because it is God’s, we, too, can be present in it, in Christ’s death and our own, in the darkness of this day and in the darkness in our lives. We can be present in suffering, because God’s presence is healing. We can be present in guilt, because God’s power is forgiveness. We can be present in grief, because God’s power is the new life of Christ, shared with us. We lean on God to bring us through this good day, and all the days to come. We entrust ourselves, our lives, and those we love to the goodness of God, until God brings us to Easter.


And so we call today Good. We call today God’s. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Thursday, March 29, 2018

Maundy Thursday - How We Begin

I noted in my sermon on Sunday that in the Palm Sunday service, in less than twenty minutes, we moved from the celebration of Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem to the tragedy of his betrayal and crucifixion and death. This evening and tomorrow morning, we walk through the story of how it happened that way and we see how it all went wrong. 

Already we have begun our journey through the same shifts that the twelve disciples went through in their last night and day with Jesus, starting with forgiveness and then to being served and being called to serve in return to being united over a meal to betrayal and flight. Today and tomorrow force us to witness how the twelve, who so fervently loved Jesus, who obeyed him, who called him Lord, participated in the darkness in which his life ended. Today and tomorrow force us to reflect on the ways in which we, who also love Jesus, do not love others as our Lord commands, turn away from serving those in need, and participate in darkness. At the end of tonight’s service, after we celebrate Holy Communion together, after we remember that we are one body in the one body of Christ, we will then strip away everything that matters from this space. We will, through the actions of removing the Communion vessels, the paraments, the light of Christ in the Paschal Candle, and through our silence in the face of approaching death, re-enact the flight of the disciples after Jesus’ arrest, not as if we are play-acting the events of Jesus’ Last Supper, but as a reminder to ourselves that every time we fail to love another, every time we betray someone we love, every time we are silent in the face of someone else’s persecution, every time we run away from someone else’s pain, we are doing all these things to Christ, as well.

As I said, we participate in darkness. Which is a nice way of saying that we participate in death. At every moment, we, as the human species, as a country, as a community, as a congregation, are culpable in the death of others, which means we are culpable in the death of Christ. It was because of us and our actions and inactions––because we did not love, because we did not serve, because we did not give up what we have for others––that Jesus Christ, fully human and fully divine, ended up on the cross. It is because of us that darkness came into the world as he died. We are how it all went wrong. This is where we will end this evening, and what we will face again tomorrow morning.

This is where we end, but this is not where we begin. And while I said on Sunday that where we ultimately end is of critical importance, where we begin is, too.

We begin with God’s forgiveness. This evening begins with forgiveness. The very first thing we did this evening was to confess our sins and to hear that God forgives us. You heard that you, even though you have sinned through what you have done and what you have left undone, even though you have not loved your neighbours as yourselves, even though you have participated in the darkness that brings death, you receive the forgiveness of all your sins. And, if you came forward, the sign of the cross that represents your forgiveness was inscribed on your forehead, right over the cross of ashes that you received on Ash Wednesday that represented death, which itself was inscribed over the cross that you received in baptism.

Which means that this evening actually begins with our baptism. Which in turn means that all of the darkness we have participated in, and will participate in, has already been washed away and forgiven. Because it is not just we who begin in baptism, but God who begins with baptism. God sees you only through the lens of your baptism, which is why God forgives you for all of your sins. That is not to say that God does not see what you have done and left undone, but to say that God, knowing exactly what betrayals and darknesses you have perpetrated and will perpetrate, made an unbreakable commitment to you from the very beginning to always be there for you and to always welcome you into the light.

It is this relationship that God has with us in Christ that is at the heart of every ritual we participate in this evening, and that gets us through the coming darkness. This relationship in which God reaches out to us first; God does for us first what we then are called to do for others. God models for us what we are to do, so that we might be strengthened to do likewise. God doesn’t ask us to face our darkness and to acknowledge our wrongs and to love and serve one another without first equipping us. Without first forgiving us and serving us and loving us.

And so, this evening, when we wash one another’s hands, you will first be washed so that you can wash others in return. The hands that we have turned into fists, that have grabbed, that have withheld, that have been used to send words that hurt––these hands will be washed in the waters of our baptismal font, so that they can become hands that touch gently, that offer to others, that share, that are open in love, that serve. Jesus begins the commandment that we should serve one another by serving us first.

And then we will be fed. We will come to the table with all of our cares and sorrows, weighed down by what we have done and what we are about to do, knowing that the darkness approaches, and Christ will offer us his life, just as he offered his life to Peter who denied him, Judas who betrayed him, and all the other disciples who abandoned him. You will be given food for the journey, to sustain you so that you can endure what is coming.


So come. Be served, be fed, and know that God pours love and forgiveness into us this night so that we can acknowledge our own guilt in the darkness that approaches. And so that we can begin, once again, to move towards the light. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Sunday, March 25, 2018

Palm Sunday - From Celebration to Tragedy (to Celebration)

Mark 11:1-11; Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Mark 15:1-47

Celebration and tragedy back-to-back. That’s what today is, wouldn’t you say? From Hosannas and a parade and triumph to crucifixion and darkness and death in just under half an hour. I would say that it’s surreal, but it’s not. This move from celebration to tragedy is a familiar experience for many of us. The celebration of the birth of a baby, immediately followed by a grandparent’s diagnosis of cancer. A tenth wedding anniversary, immediately followed by the revelation of a series of affairs. A high-school graduation, followed by a fatal car accident on the way to the graduation party.  Our lives are made up of these back-to-back experiences of transcendent joy and sudden loss.

The diagnoses, the betrayals, the deaths––the unexpectedness of these and other tragedies, and their arrival in the face of celebration––can overwhelm us. It’s no wonder our psalmist for today writes, “Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye wastes away from grief, my soul and body also.” To endure these things seems impossible. It explains why, during times of crises or tragedy, the average person’s consumption of alcohol goes up. This isn’t a judgement, merely an observation, that we are not well-equipped to handle that sudden transition from joy to despair on our own. We need something to hold on to as the ground shifts beneath us. Even Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” right before he died. These experiences can suck all the light out of our lives until we feel that we are alone in the darkness, unable to go on.

If you are struggling with this shift from celebration to tragedy in your life right now, God has a word for you this morning: You are not alone in this. To paraphrase Paul, you “can do all things through God who strengthens” you. Which is to say that God has not forsaken you, but is with you and remains with you to give you the strength to endure whatever it is you’re going through. And I know you may not feel that way. Just because God is with us in times of adversity doesn’t mean that we go through life always feeling warm and fuzzy and filled with light, even as our world is crumbling. You will still experience doubts, and fear, and the very strong desire not to have to go through whatever it is you’re going through. But God is with you, just as God was with Noah in the flood, with the Israelites in their slavery, with the prophets in exile, with Jesus on the cross. At every step of the way, in the stories of the Bible and in the stories of our lives, God is with us, giving us God’s own strength to endure.

It is the strength of God that carries the writer of our first reading, a prophet exiled from Jerusalem and struggling under the Persian Empire, through his struggles. “The Lord GOD helps me;” he says. “Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me.” It’s almost as if, realizing that God has carried him through everything that he has gone through before, he is daring the world to come at him again. “He who vindicates me is near. ... It is the Lord God who helps me.” Isaiah looks death in the face––his own death and that of his people––and proclaims that God is with them, that God is their deliverance, that God is their shield, their rock, their ground that can not be shaken.

This strength of God has carried others, as well. In our Gospel reading, we recognize, of course, that God was with Jesus, but we often overlook the ones who stayed with Jesus during his crucifixion––the ones who also were experiencing tragedy at the heels of celebration: Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome. These women, along with many other women, had been with Jesus from the beginning of his ministry. They had seen him perform miracles, speak the word of God, and show them what the kingdom of God looked like. They had walked with him through Jerusalem as the Hosannas rang out and the branches waved. And then they stayed with Jesus as he was suddenly convicted and sentenced, suffered on the cross, died, and was buried. From celebration to tragedy. But the strength of God was with these women, helping them to endure that unimaginable turmoil and to be present in it.

More than endure, actually. What we see in Scripture is that God gives God’s people the strength not just to endure the tragedy, but to be present through it to the very end. You see, today is not the entirety of the story. On Palm Sunday we move from celebration to tragedy, but the story doesn’t end here. This is not actually a cliffhanger. We know how it ends. It ends on Easter, with celebration again. With resurrection. With new life. We know that the exiled people of Israel, who were given the strength to worship God in foreign lands, were returned to Jerusalem and they celebrated the rebuilding of the Temple. We know that the women who were given the strength to watch Jesus die were the first to see him risen from the tomb. They were the first to celebrate the new life he had been given.

From celebration to tragedy to new celebration. All of our stories end this way. That is to say, all of our stories end in the resurrection. This is why God gives us the strength to endure. To be patient. To get through the death facing us. So that we might arrive once again at celebration and new life. God does not wish us to be overcome by the events in our lives, or to feel overwhelmed, or to feel forsaken. Tragedies happen, they are part of the life we live here and now, but God does not desire that they should be the end of us. God desires for us to make it through. To face death, to endure death even, and in the end, to experience new life.


The last verse of our Psalm today, which we didn’t read, says, “Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord.” You may find yourself right now echoing the earlier words of the psalm, “my strength fails because of my misery,” but let your heart take courage. God is with you. God is with you in the sudden shifts in your life from celebration to tragedy. God is with you for you to turn to and lean on. You are not in this alone. God is with you, filling you with God’s own strength to endure, even if you don’t feel it quite yet. God is with you through today and all the way to the resurrection. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Sunday, March 18, 2018

Lent 5 - To See Jesus in Death

John 12:20-33

I imagine that the Greeks who came to Jesus’ disciple, Philip, and said, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus,” were somewhat baffled by Jesus’ response to them. They had heard of all his miracles, and his triumphal entrance into Jerusalem would have been the talk of the city, and his raising of Lazarus from death was a undeniable display of God’s power, and so they wanted to see Jesus for themselves. Who was this person whom God was working through, who seemed to be a channel for the glory of God? Would Jesus perform some of these miracles for them? Would they get a chance to see God’s glory firsthand? They were clearly already awed, and didn’t dare address Jesus directly, yet they wanted to see him.

And Jesus’ response was, as I said, baffling. In essence, Jesus responded by saying, “If you want to see how glorious God is, and how glorified God will make me, if you want to see the power of God over life and death, if you want to be with me and follow me to God... you need to watch me die. No more miracles, no more healings, no more water into wine, no more making the crippled walk, no more feeding the five thousand or walking on water, no more raising the dead. Just death itself. That is the final act of power, the final show of glory. You want to see what God is like? See me die.” Jesus completely rejected any expectations that God’s glory would ultimately be shown in acts of triumph and victory. 

But we shouldn’t be too hard on those Greeks, because we do the same thing. We don’t necessarily look for miracles of water turning into wine, but we do equate success and power and victory with God’s glory. We say we are “blessed” when church membership grows or church giving exceeds the budget. We say, “God sure is with us,” when we pay off a church mortgage, or see the Sunday school outgrowing its capacity, or when visitors to church come more than one week in a row. We like to go to churches that are filled with people on Sunday morning, where it looks like a lot is going on, and the church is thriving. We seek out these places because we expect that we will see and experience God’s glory and Christ’s presence in these lively encounters. We look to these things because we, too, wish to see Jesus.

But this morning I want to share with you a story of when I saw Jesus, and experienced the glory of God, exactly where Jesus said we would––in the humiliation of death. It’s the story of St. John, the Lutheran congregation here in Calgary that closed nine months ago. And I admit that I debated with myself whether to talk about this, because it’s considered bad form to talk about a congregation one has served previously, kind of like talking about a former girlfriend or boyfriend when dating someone new, but I do believe that this story shows us that Jesus is truly seen in those who fall into the earth and die, and that God’s glory is experienced among those who lose their life for others.

So. St. John was, during its heyday, a congregation that we lift up as the epitome of what a church should look like. Sunday mornings, the worship space that holds 300 was packed without any empty seats, for multiple services. The Sunday school, also with hundreds of children, was overflowing. People walked to church, it was a significant presence in the community, there were programs every night, several choirs, and confirmation classes graduated at least 50 students a year. Easter Sunday was everything Easter should be - full of glory - choirs and packed seats and everyone in their absolute Sunday best. When the congregation sang the Easter hymn, the voices fairly lifted the roof right off the building and you could almost touch heaven. The glory of God, the presence of Christ, were there - impossible to miss.

Decades later, that glory had faded. By 2014, the hundreds had reduced to tens, the Sunday school had evaporated, along with the confirmation class. There were no evening programs, no neighbourhood presence, 40 people on a Sunday morning was a good turn-out, and the budget wasn’t being met. To the outside eye, it was clear that this was a church that was dying.

And it was. St. John was dying. The once great church had come to the end of its life. There really was no more energy to start new programs or to engage with the community. There truly was no more money to keep going. After more than 115 years, it was all coming to an end.

It was an awful time, to be honest. Nobody likes to think that they’re dying, least of all a congregation. The people of St. John felt ashamed, they felt that they had somehow failed but didn’t even know how, they certainly wondered where God was in the midst of all this. Sunday mornings were subdued, Council meetings were a chore, annual meetings were depressing. It was a time when it was very, very difficult to see the presence of Christ. They could see where Jesus had been with them in the past, but they couldn’t see where Jesus was with them in this.

But then a ray of hope began to shine. No, they weren’t gifted with a million dollars in someone’s will. Nor were they blessed with a pastor with a fool-proof outreach plan that drew in visitors by the hundreds. There were no miracles. There were no resurrections from the dead. Instead, there was the simple acknowledgement that all things die. This was the ray of hope - that all things die. It is part of the order of our world that nothing created by God lives forever. (It is, incidentally, the reason that in the Nicene Creed we say that the Son of God is begotten, not made. Nothing made lives forever, but the Son of God does, therefore he can’t be made, only begotten.) Humans die. Animals die. Relationships die. Congregations die. Even denominations die. Certainly something or someone may die before we are ready for it, and that death may come in ways far more painful than we would wish for, but, in the end, death comes to all. At St. John, their death was not a sign of failure, it was not a sign of God’s absence, it was not a punishment. It was, in its own way, as natural as life. As natural as seeds dropping from plants in the fall, right before the plant itself dies. 

“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” This was the hope, that in their own natural death, the people of St. John might bear glorious witness to Christ. And so they began asking, How might others, and particularly the church-at-large, receive new life from St John’s death?

It was in this acceptance of death and the questions that arose that the glory of God began to shine, and the presence of Jesus was so powerfully felt. Moved by the Holy Spirit to trust in God’s promise of life after death, the people of St. John made two momentous decisions. The first was to sell their building. Under their care, the building itself was dying. It needed major repairs, and even the minor repairs, like changing lightbulbs, were beyond their capacity. So they decided to sell it. Not for the most money they could get, which would have meant selling to a developer for upwards of $2.5 million. Instead, they decided to sell to another congregation. To a congregation that could in no way afford to buy or build a church in downtown Calgary, on prime land. Which meant selling for much less. But which also meant enabling a new group of Christians to build up their own congregation, so that their children and grandchildren and one-day great-grandchildren could come to love Christ in that space. The glory of God would continue to be shown in that space, albeit no longer amongst the people of St. John.

The second decision was that they would close. They would not take the money from the sale of the building and use it to keep going indefinitely. They would not use it to put death off for another 10 or 20 years. They would accept that their death was happening now, and they would embrace that death as the means to give new life to others. And so they gave all that money away. They gave it to CLWR, to the Seminary, to Campus Ministry, to the Mustard Seed, to Meals on Wheels, to you. They gave it to groups that would directly benefit from their death, around the world, within the Synod, and here in the city.

And God’s glory shone, and the people saw Jesus. You would think that after such decisions as these, that Sundays would be even grimmer, and the people even sadder. But that’s not what happened. In fact, it was the opposite. Sunday mornings became joyous, heart-felt experiences of thanking God for all the life they had been given, and the life they were giving in return. Council meetings were a blast - how often do you get to talk about how to get rid of money instead of how to get it? The recipients of the money came every week in the Easter season to share the ways in which the money they were receiving was bringing new life - providing job opportunities, spreading the healing message of God’s love to new people, giving new life to programs. The fruit borne from the single grain of St. John’s death was tremendous, and the people of St. John were blessed to see the growth of that new life. The glory of God was shown in their willingness to die so that others might have new life, and they saw Jesus. 

Tellingly, though, when the people of St. John would talk to others about their decision, those others, including other Christians, would make that sad, I’m-so-sorry face that we all make when we hear someone is dying. And they expected St. John’s people to be sad too. Even in the church, we have a hard time truly relying on Christ’s promise of new life after death, or seeing God’s glory and Christ’s presence in the cross. But those who came to worship at St. John in those last days, they saw Jesus and they experienced God, and they understood. One of the things that astounded me was that there were at least two people who started attending just a few months before St. John was scheduled to close. They knew the church was dying, and yet, for some reason, they kept coming. Sunday after Sunday until the very end. And I can only explain it by saying that they must have experienced the glory of God in this death, and they must have seen Jesus. I have no other explanation, and I don’t look for any other explanation, because I experienced that glory and I saw Jesus in those last days as well. As the congregation made their choices about who to give money to, and as they sang their favourite hymns for the last time, as they celebrated Easter together for the last time as a congregation, Christ was there, in a powerful way I have not experienced anywhere else. As odd as it sounds, I wish that every Christian could have the experience of being in a congregation that handles its death so faithfully, so that every Christian could see Christ in death.


The Greeks came saying, “We wish to see Jesus,” and Jesus responded with, “And what should I say––‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.” Jesus knew that the new life his death would bring would cause others to see and glorify God far more than his continued life would. He would truly be seen in that death. It seems baffling to think that a congregation exists in order to one day die and give new life, and that this is what most clearly shows the Son of God to the world, and yet this is the story of St. John. Whoever serves Jesus must follow him, to the cross, and to death, and, in return, he is with them. Jesus was with the congregation of St. John as they followed him, and through the story of their death, we see Jesus. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Sunday, March 11, 2018

Lent 4 - The Dark Deeds of Christianity

John 3:16-21

God brings life to death. I need to start by proclaiming this, as obvious as it might be, because if we don’t cling to this truth, the next ten minutes of this sermon are going to crush us. God brings life to death. Hold on to this.
So, Lent is a time when we are particularly called to be honest and brave in facing the reality of the world we have created, so that we might truly understand the glory of what God has shown us in Easter. And today our Gospel prompts us to face the reality of the death and darkness in the world that is caused by us. By Christians. By followers of God. And I wish that I didn’t have to preach about this. I know that sometimes you come to church to get away from all of the darkness in the world, and to receive comfort, and the last thing you want to hear is a depressing sermon. But last week’s Gospel lesson, and this week’s reading from John and the readings that are coming for Holy Week––readings that we hear every three years––weigh on me. They give me a guilty conscience, actually, and I feel called to drag them into the light.

So here’s the reality we as Christians have to face. On the one hand, we have the Christian proclamation, “For God so loved the world.” We have this thorough conviction that God loves the world, and that Jesus loves the world, and that we are called to follow Christ by loving the world: To love our enemy, and pray for those who persecute us, not to repay evil with evil, but with blessing. Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, to walk the second mile, to lay down our lives as he did, not just for our friends but for our enemies. We believe that Jesus responded to violence with peace, that he responded to hate with love, and that he would rather give his life than take another. And that he calls his followers - Christians - to do the same.

So there’s that. And then there’s today’s reading from John. It starts out okay - “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son .... in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already.” Whoa - what just happened here? All of a sudden, the reading gets very harsh. Hostile, even. And yet, if you read the Gospel of John, you’ll find this logic is pretty typical. In John, the world is divided between those who believe in Jesus, who are saved, who are children of the light, and good, and those who do not believe in Jesus, who are condemned, who are children of the darkness, and evil. This Gospel reduces the world to black and white, good guys and bad guys, and if you’re not with us, you’re against us. 

And here’s the thing. Here’s the part that I really would rather not preach about, and the part that I’m sure you would really rather not hear about, and the reason I’m glad the little kids are in Sunday School right now. These texts of division between us and them have had a profound influence on the actions of Christians in the world. This idea that Christians are children of the light sent out to conquer children of the darkness, the idea that we are good and others are evil, the idea that it is our job as Christians to confront and overcome those who do not follow Christ is what we need to repent of in this season of Lent because of its devastating––its truly dark––consequences. 

For example, in the Gospel of John, the bad guys, the children of darkness and evil whom God condemns, are always called “the Jews.” The writer of the Gospel of John only uses the phrase “the Jews” when he wants to talk about bad guys. As we will hear in the readings during Holy Week, “the Jews” killed Jesus by calling for his crucifixion (never mind that all of Jesus’ disciples were actually Jewish), the ones who doubt and challenge Jesus are always “the Jews.”  Those who follow Jesus are never described that way, even though they were Jews. Instead, because they follow Jesus, the Gospel describes them as truth-followers. Children of the light. The Gospel of John is extremely hostile to those who don’t follow Jesus, and to the Jews in particular, and we will hear it over and over again this year as we listen to the texts approaching Easter. And this idea became formative for Christian living, with incredibly violent results. In Toulouse, France, during the middle ages, it was the custom on Easter to find a Jew, drag him to the front steps of the cathedral, and strike a blow to his head. Sometimes this blow was so severe as to kill him. But nobody got upset, because Christians are children of light, and Jews are children of darkness. During the First Crusades, a Christian war to rid the world of evil infidels, in the year 1096, Christians in German cities by the Rhine killed 12,000 Jews in a three-month period. In those same Crusades, Christian soldiers besieged Jerusalem, and despite offers by the Fatamid Muslims to share the Holy City, the Crusaders slaughtered 50,000 Jews and Muslims. A document from that time by a Crusader says the soldiers were standing in blood up to their ankles. 

And the darkness expands. Using the Gospel of John’s logic that God condemns those who do not follow Christ, and that somehow we should too, from the 14th to the 18th century, Christians killed between 40,000 and 75,000 women because they were accused of being witches. John Calvin had an opponent burned at the stake for heresy. In the early 16th century, in Germany, the Christian aristocracy killed between 100,000 and 300,000 peasants, inspired by words from Martin Luther. In the late 17th century, an American Puritan pastor, a pastor rejoiced when he found out that 600 Native Americans had been burned alive. Our Christian history is an appalling two thousand-year-long legacy of Christians condemning and killing our enemies. Not praying for them. Not turning the other cheek. Not loving them. Killing them. Participating in evil deeds that we hide in the darkness.

“But that wasn’t us,” you might be thinking. “That wasn’t me.” “I can’t be held accountable for what happened in the past!” “I wouldn’t do that!” Or “We didn’t start it - we were persecuted first!” You know, these are the excuses my children make when they get caught doing something wrong. Let’s be adults here. This is Lent, and this is a time of repentance. Lent is a time not just for individual repentance, but for corporate repentance. There’s a reason we say confession together at the beginning of the service. There are some sins that are so huge they involve everybody, and some sins so staggering that we must repent of them for generations. And we should be ashamed of trying to wriggle out of these accusations. As Christians who follow Jesus, who told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us - not punish them, pray for them - as Christians who are about to celebrate that Jesus gave his life to bring light into the world - as Christians who claim that God exposes the evil done in darkness, we need to confess that we, as a Church, as a community of Christ-followers, have done terrible, violent, murderous things. We, who are supposed to love, have killed. We, who call ourselves children of the light, have pushed others into darkness. We, who call ourselves good, have committed evil. And, lest we think that this is all in the past, I only need to say: in 1990, in the former Yugoslavia - 100,000 people, mostly Bosnian Muslims and Croatians, were killed, and women raped, by Serbian soldiers who operated under the explicit blessing of the Serbian Orthodox Church; in 1994 in Rwanda - almost 1 million Rwandans were killed - in April of that year, a priest offered shelter in his church to over 4,000 Rwandans, and then this “priest” removed the communion elements and ordered a bulldozer to take down the building with the people inside and then invited militia in to finish the job. This wasn’t the only time this happened in Rwanda and we knew about this. The western media knew about this. But what did we, as Christians, do? Did we publicly condemn these atrocities committed by people of our faith? Did we as Christians denounce our fellow Christians who were killing their enemies? Did we remind them that Jesus told us to love our enemies?  Who are the children of the light and who are the children of the dark? Who are the ones who love good and who are the ones who love evil? “For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.” Who exactly is Jesus talking about here?

Do you remember what I said at the beginning of this sermon? God brings life to death. All of this history I have just recounted is too much, it is too overwhelming, and it should crush us under our own guilt if we do not remember that God brings life to death. The guilt of Christian violence, if we acknowledge and confess it, should and does kill us. But we are on a path towards Easter. And in Easter, death has met its match. Death has been overcome. Not by confrontation or hatred or violence. Death has been overcome by love, and by light, and by the grace of God in Christ. The Easter message that we so desperately need to hear at this moment is that God brings new life wherever there is death. God brings new life wherever we bring death. 

Easter means that those whom we have killed, God has gathered up into God’s embrace and given new life. Easter means that God’s kingdom is packed full of our enemies, those whom we did not love and those for whom we did not pray. Easter means what the Gospel of John actually does to get right - that the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. God does not allow ours sins to win. God overcomes our evil and our darkness with God’s own good and God’s own light. God overcomes our hatred with the love of Jesus. God overcomes our killing with the new life we see in the resurrected Christ.


And, although we do not deserve it, God shares Easter with us, too. Indeed, God calls us to recognize that we are standing in darkness and invites us to step forward into the light and to claim that new life. We heard it earlier, from Paul in his letter to the Ephesians. Chapter 2, verse 4. “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved - and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” This is what God does for us, through Lent and to Easter, and beyond. For God so loved the world that God raises us up out of our darkness and turns us into children of light. And God calls us to expose deeds of evil, ours and others, not so that we might execute judgement, but so that God might shine that light that brings healing and new life. This is the great love shown to us in Christ. This is the great love that saves the world. This is the great love that brings life to death. Thanks be to God. Amen.