My hope for all of us this Lent is that we may find our faith renewed and find ourselves growing in the love of God. Yet, I am aware that even in my own spiritual life that Lent can have an opposite effect. I can feel burdened by a fast or other discipline I have undertaken. If I break the fast or am inconsistent in keeping to a discipline I can feel like Lent was awash. This is a temptation of Lent and of the spiritual disciplines in general. An other temptation can be to be quite proud of our being able to keep our fast or other discipline through out Lent. I think there are in these temptations a positive and negative impulses. In the positive both can be born out of a desire to follow in the way of Christ perfectly, For we know as our closing hymn on Sunday says "Forty Days and forty night thou was fasting in the wild; forty day and forty nights tempted, and yet undefiled." (#150 Hymnal 1982, Episcopal Church). We want to be "undefiled", yet this desire turns into a work that we feel we must do. We then become burdened and either stumble under this burden or become prideful that we have carried this burden.
So Lent can become quite distressing and especially so, as our Lenten discipline brings to light sins or failings we have and we then encounter them in stark relief, which is suited to a time of repentance and self-examination. However, if we have succumbed thus seeing Lent as a time of Spiritual accomplishment and perfection, finding our dark selves rising to the surface can lead to confusion and distress. The closing hymn from this past Sunday offers us the solution to these attitudes: "Then if Satan on us press, Jesus, Savior, hear our call! Victor in the wilderness, grant we may not faint or fall!" We are not the victors in this wilderness, nor is it upon our own resources that we are to rely in Lent or the Spiritual life, but upon Christ who is the Victor and who has fulfilled the Law and all the requirements of the Spiritual life. If we are to find ourselves perfected it is in reliance on and faith in Christ. We are to rely on Christs strength having faith that Christ has already overcome and is victorious.
So in a sense Lent is nothing special, in our life of faith. What applies to Lent always applies. We keep Lent because it can help us refocus and return to our call and to that reliance on Christ, which is our faith. We undertake these disciplines and we fast, we take this time to focus intently on our Spiritual life and our selves so that we may open ourselves ever more to the tranforming power of the Resurrection. We enter a desert and intensify our struggles with ourselves and sin and temptation, not to make ourselves perfect but to be perfected by God, as we are formed ever more into the image of Christ. A subtle distinction but one essential for a Holy Lent and for our entire spiritual journey in this life.
Showing posts with label Trust. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trust. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 11
Monday, November 19
Sermon Proper 28 (33) Year C 2007
Church of Jesus Christ, Reconciler
November 8, 2007
Rev. Tripp Hudgins, preacher
Isaiah 65:17-25
Luke 21:5-19
The Call Remains the Same
You will hear rumors.
You will hear rumors of things coming to an end.
They are not lies. Wars and rumors of wars...
The ending you see before you is real. Make no mistake.
But it might not be what you think it is.
It might not be the ending you fear.
What we are encountering tonight is the fulfillment of God's blessing. It's that kind of ending.
Endings and Blessings...Sometimes the fulfillment of a blessing such as an ending begs our endurance. A blessing may be difficult to receive.
Once, early in our tenure here at Immanuel, I stood in the pulpit and preached as if the place were full. We had been worshiping in the front part of the chapel. We would leave the tables for Bible Study set up thinking that there was no point to taking them down. There were only three of four of us worshiping together...seven or so if all clergy and the congregation were present. It was cozy and comforting to be gathered together up front.
But then it occurred to us that this was not hopeful....cozy and comforting, but not hopeful. Somehow we were not evoking hope in the way we used the space. We needed to open our minds, our imaginations and hearts. It wasn't easy. We had to open up the space. And that's a recipe for vulnerability. Vulnerability can be frightening.
Well, that's what I remember. All history is revisionist after all, right? Ask someone else who was here then for their version of the story. It's a good idea.
I remember that I stood in the pulpit and gave voice to the thoughts of the Pastoral Team and shared a vision of the space filled, of children playing in the back of the space, of the preacher needing to stand in the pulpit because it was the best way to be seen and heard by everyone. It was a lovely vision to share...a lovely vision to imagine.
Within weeks, it seems to me, people came. We were hopeful. We made room for people who we did not know would even come...people we had not met. And it was a wise thing to do. It was a hopeful thing to do. God works through our hopefulness. It's not magic. It's not easy. It takes endurance...tremendous endurance. But I learned something important during that time in our history.
Our own acts of hopefulness are preparation for God's acts of Grace.
Now, look at us. There are nights when we fill this space. We are constantly seeking ways to be open to visitors, to seek new people, to share God's Gospel. We want to provide a safe place to be challenged and upheld by it. We proclaim hope. We proclaim God's enduring presence.
Tonight, however, we also mark a change. Maybe it's more significant than I imagine.
Maybe it's less. Only time will tell.
I'm leaving. It is the hardest thing I've had to do in quite some time. And it does break my heart. But I want you to know...as difficult as this is, as saddened as I am...my leaving is an act of hope, an act of trust in God, and a way perhaps to make room for someone we have not yet met.
I want you all to know that I am as hopeful tonight about the future of Reconciler as I was the night we set up all the chairs for the very first time for people who had not yet arrived...for many of you. We opened up the space and we opened up our hearts. This is Christian hope. This is a way to offer the Kingdom of God.
Offering the Kingdom of God is tricky business. Isaiah struggles with it. Jesus, too, wrestles with those around him. It is as if the Kingdom were somehow ephemeral or slippery. Has there ever been so powerful a thing as the Kingdom of Heaven? And yet...and yet...It is hard to see, hard to imagine, and hard to share. But share it we must.
We have a vocation here at Reconciler, a call. The call upon Reconciler is the same tonight as it was that night almost two years ago.
We are called to have enduring hope. You shall proclaim to all:
Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid,
for the LORD GOD is my strength and my might;
he has become my salvation.
With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.
And you will say in that day: Give thanks to the LORD, call on his name;
make known his deeds among the nations; proclaim that his name is exalted.
Sing praises to the LORD, for he has done gloriously;
let this be known in all the earth.
Shout aloud and sing for joy...for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.
Yes, things are different now. I am always shocked at how mercurial a church like this can be. One day it's a project. The next day it's a congregation. One day there are four of us. The next day there are 25 of us and some of them are from the Salvation Army. Astounding! God bless the Salvation Army and their children.
The community will shift and grow. No church is static. Every church is organic. It shifts and moves, grows and shrinks. But the vision, the basic call upon us does not change.
The call remains.
Proclaim the Kingdom of God, the Peaceable Kingdom. It is always new...it is always becoming. It is never static. It is always organic, free and uncontrollable. Show it to people in how you live together...how you welcome the stranger and how you send out disciples.
Proclaim Christ...crucified, died and resurrected. Proclaim him when you encounter him in the world. Proclaim him in the persecuted and abandoned. Love Christ. Clothe, feed and heal.
Proclaim the end that Isaiah and Jesus proclaim in all that you do.
Proclaim God's loving judgment to all the world.
Praise God with the Psalmist.
Hold one another accountable with Paul.
Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.
It takes time. You'll have to pace yourself. It's a marathon and not a sprint....Life in Christ is an endurance event. It will seldom be easy. But it will bring blessing upon blessing into your own lives and into the lives of others. You will be a blessing to those whom you have not yet met, to numbers you have not yet imagined.
You have blessed my life. My time with you has been a blessing. It now comes to an end...a blessing fulfilled that will, I pray, continue to bear fruit for all of us.
And for this I thank you. I praise God for you.
May God's peace and all good things be yours.
Amen.
Monday, February 12
Sermon Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
Jeremiah 17:5-10
Psalm 1
Corinthians 15:12-20
Luke 6:17-26
Entrusting Ourselves to the Living Stream
Jeremiah is writing in difficult times. His prophesies come from a time of turmoil, and ultimately the end of Israel, of Judah as a sovereign nation. These words from God through Jeremiah come at a time of intense political debate, a time of politicking, a time in which using force of arms or diplomacy is being argued and disputed. It is a time in which doing more is seen as the solution to the problems Judah faces. If only we could do more, have more cohesion, more weapons etc. Sound familiar? 1 Corinthians is written to a church in turmoil. Paul is addressing a church that has split into factions; there are disputes over apostolic authority, disputes over what is or is not a sin and what is acceptable sexual conduct, and theological disputes over what is essential for the faith. Sound familiar? Luke writes his Gospel in a time when the world is dominated by a world power, that is mostly peaceful at its centers of power but on the fringes there is violence, skirmishes and war. At this time these wars at the edges of the empire don’t quite touches the citizens of the great empire. There is a peace of sort, but at a price, Palestine in particular is in turmoil, Rebellions, insurgencies, and ultimately the desolation of Jerusalem. Luke’s Jesus is speaking to an oppressed people on the edge of an empire, people who have been impoverished by the empires political and economic system, while others are made wealthy by that same system. Sound familiar? These are three thumbnail sketches of the context of our three texts for today. I mention these contexts because we have a tendency when we find our Scriptures and the tradition of the Church difficult to accept to claim that everything is so different these days. After all back then 2000 years ago or more, those were different times, believing in God was easier then. Sure there are differences: our science and our technology is different, and we may know more about certain things, like molecules and atoms and electrons and protons, and our conception of the cosmos is vastly different,. However, as I have done, I can also list to you the ways in which things are much the same. We haven’t transcended our humanity, our creatureliness, or our sinfulness. Things are still much the same, we are no more prone to doubt than those of the past, and we are no less gullible and credulous. We still believe our hope is in ourselves, in our ingenuity, our weapons, our politics, or our economics. We still put our trust in the wrong place in the wrong people and wrong things. Our texts remind us there is only one place of refuge, of hope; there is only one place that deserves our ultimate trust.
Listen again to Jeremiah: Jeremiah 17:5-10
17:5 Thus says the LORD: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the LORD.
17:6 They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.
17:7 Blessed are those who trust in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD.
17:8 They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.
17:9 The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse-- who can understand it?
17:10 I the LORD test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings.
Do we not still do these things, whether we are Democrats, Republicans, radical activists, anarchists, socialists, or communists, or however we might identify. Do we not put our trust in ourselves? We, human flesh, can solve everything if only we have the right economic system, if only we have the right reforms, if only we have the right worldview, if only we have the right weapons, enough troupes, or enough money (either from taxes or from capitalist enterprise). Jeremiah tells us that when we choose to trust in ourselves whether we are reformists or for the status quo, whether we are anarchists or democratic capitalists, we chose to live in a desert. We choose to live on the edge of death if we solely rely on our own human effort and ingenuity. Jeremiah in a time of turmoil when it seems more is demanded to fix the world around us tells us to let go of our trust in ourselves, and to be willing to be planted next to that living stream that is God. Are we tired of death, and suffering and injustice and war, then stop trusting in human effort, seek to live in God’s care for only next to that spring is there true life, every where else is on the edge of death desert a slat plain where little if anything can grow. The trouble is when I say this I am sure we hear a call to be passive, to do nothing! The kings of Judah and the citizens of Jerusalem heard this as well, and were convinced Jeremiah was mad or worse had it in for the chosen people of God. But the issue isn’t action or inaction, but rather in whom or what do we put our trust. To whom do we look for the ultimate solution, is it science, is it democracy, is it in money and economy, is it America, the President, the Presidency, in war, in peace, or in activism? Jeremiah says if we put our trust in any of those things we live in a desert. It is all the same, and it is simply not trusting in God. Jeremiah says we have a choice: God, the source of all life, or ourselves, life or death.
The Resurrection is also about life and death. In some sense accepting or rejecting the reality of the Resurrection is the same choice that Jeremiah prophesied, or at least that is what Paul is saying to us in this portion of Corinthians. Paul is not saying that he can prove the historicity of the Resurrection, or that the science and/or popular belief of the day find it an acceptable and believable doctrine. Rather he is saying that if there is no Resurrection then we are on our own, and Christianity is false, or more to the point Christians are hopeless (literally) romantics. Let us be clear the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is not a nice story or metaphor for Paul, it happened, it is inexplicable and it is the fulcrum of the faith! But why is Paul so adamant that Jesus Christ must have been raised? Isn’t it enough that it symbolizes our life in God? After all it’s not like Christ’s resurrection was simply resuscitation of a body, right? Sure that is so, the Resurrection is more than that so much more. Resurrection is the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s hope in God as the source of life. Paul is clear that without Christ’s resurrection there is no life, if the story simply ends with Jesus in the grave and some enlightenment on the other side, death still wins in the end. Death, that is a desolate world of survival, is all we have, and then the message of the Gospel is a joke. If the love shown us in the life Jesus just leads only to death, if God has not overcome the last enemy death, then love has no power, and there is no life. We then are hopeless romantics. We have a nice fable that might comfort us but has no power, it will not change the world, everything is the same, and death sin and injustice are the final word. This is the world without Resurrection with out a God in whom we can trust for our life. Resurrection is the fulfillment of the promise of Jeremiah 17. If we have encountered life in Jesus Christ, if we have found life in the trust of gathering here together then there is Resurrection.
In the final analysis, Jesus’ beatitudes and woes in Luke depend on the Resurrection for their truth. There is nothing blessed about the poor if God doesn’t bring to life, if God has not overcome that which is the ultimate source of poverty in the world. There is nothing blessed about mourning unless there is the possibility of being comforted in the reality that there is more than the power of the death squad, and the survival of the fittest. If Jesus just suffered we have no hope. If there is no Resurrection there is no danger, no curse or woe in looking after ones own wealth at the cost of others, there is no danger in taking headless comfort and enjoyment in a world of pain and death. This is so because the Resurrection says there is more than simple survival. Through the Resurrection of Christ we know that death, sin and the devil do not have the last word. This is why Paul says that our sins remain if there is no resurrection, because if this is the truth then Jesus Christ died and nothing changed. And if that is so then love is not the answer, love is just a game, a fable we comfort ourselves with. If there is no resurrection then love does not ground the universe, no resurrection and the universe is a cold heartless place, where justice is a pipe dream, and survival of the fittest, and “the Will to power” are the ultimate reality. Chose this day what you will follow, life or death.
So in whom or what do you trust? Do you trust that God raised him who was crucified to life again? Can you accept this thing that is beyond human explanation comprehension and control? This is what the Resurrection asks of us and has always asked. My reading of Corinthians and other passages of the New Testament belie current belief that it was easier 2000 years ago to believe in the Resurrection and a myriad of other doctrines we find hard to swallow. People were naïve then, it is said, Resurrection was a commonplace belief. This Corinthians passage, Thessalonians, Paul in Athens all show that Resurrection (probably for different reasons) was as difficult for people to believe then as it is now. Paul isn’t saying he can prove historically that Jesus rose from the dead, nor that it is explicable according to biology or the laws of physics, Rather he argues it is a matter of true verses false hope. If we are too hope in life that is beyond this desolate world and can also bring this desolate world to life, then the Resurrection is necessary. There is no other way for us to know life for the Resurrection is the ultimate defeat of the enemy of life and love.
If there is no resurrection than we only can hope in our own resources are own small attempts to solve the worlds problems, we can only hope in those who will die, in systems and nations that will pass like every other one before it. Without the Resurrection there is no life, or at least nothing beyond our own attempts to scrape out a life for ourselves. But if you are here I trust some part of you has tasted true life, you have tasted the Resurrection, you have experienced Love as that which grounds all things even though the world witnesses to the reality of death and suffering. The world is being transformed, Jesus has been raised, can you take the risk to really trust in this, in God, who asks you to let go of all our human attempts to control, and can say blessed are you who are poor, in a world that says blessed are you when you are successful and wealthy and can buy everything your heart desires. God says woe to you who are successful and wealthy and can buy everything your heart desires, for that is death, as you trust in only human things. My sisters and brothers there is only one way to truly live, it is in the reality of the Resurrection, trusting in God even when it is unbelievable and improvable, even when your world seems to be crumbling around you. ‘Christ has Died, Christ is Risen, Christ will come again” is no fairy tale, it is not a nice metaphor rather it is what gives life to the world; everything else is always already in the grip of death. If you want life you will rest and be nurtured in the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Only in God and the one who has been crucified and raised can we find the nurture sustenance and care we need to act in this world dominated by death, sin and injustice. I urge us, echoing Jeremiah, to only hope and trust in God who is life and love, all else is desolation.
Psalm 1
Corinthians 15:12-20
Luke 6:17-26
Entrusting Ourselves to the Living Stream
Jeremiah is writing in difficult times. His prophesies come from a time of turmoil, and ultimately the end of Israel, of Judah as a sovereign nation. These words from God through Jeremiah come at a time of intense political debate, a time of politicking, a time in which using force of arms or diplomacy is being argued and disputed. It is a time in which doing more is seen as the solution to the problems Judah faces. If only we could do more, have more cohesion, more weapons etc. Sound familiar? 1 Corinthians is written to a church in turmoil. Paul is addressing a church that has split into factions; there are disputes over apostolic authority, disputes over what is or is not a sin and what is acceptable sexual conduct, and theological disputes over what is essential for the faith. Sound familiar? Luke writes his Gospel in a time when the world is dominated by a world power, that is mostly peaceful at its centers of power but on the fringes there is violence, skirmishes and war. At this time these wars at the edges of the empire don’t quite touches the citizens of the great empire. There is a peace of sort, but at a price, Palestine in particular is in turmoil, Rebellions, insurgencies, and ultimately the desolation of Jerusalem. Luke’s Jesus is speaking to an oppressed people on the edge of an empire, people who have been impoverished by the empires political and economic system, while others are made wealthy by that same system. Sound familiar? These are three thumbnail sketches of the context of our three texts for today. I mention these contexts because we have a tendency when we find our Scriptures and the tradition of the Church difficult to accept to claim that everything is so different these days. After all back then 2000 years ago or more, those were different times, believing in God was easier then. Sure there are differences: our science and our technology is different, and we may know more about certain things, like molecules and atoms and electrons and protons, and our conception of the cosmos is vastly different,. However, as I have done, I can also list to you the ways in which things are much the same. We haven’t transcended our humanity, our creatureliness, or our sinfulness. Things are still much the same, we are no more prone to doubt than those of the past, and we are no less gullible and credulous. We still believe our hope is in ourselves, in our ingenuity, our weapons, our politics, or our economics. We still put our trust in the wrong place in the wrong people and wrong things. Our texts remind us there is only one place of refuge, of hope; there is only one place that deserves our ultimate trust.
Listen again to Jeremiah: Jeremiah 17:5-10
17:5 Thus says the LORD: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the LORD.
17:6 They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.
17:7 Blessed are those who trust in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD.
17:8 They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.
17:9 The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse-- who can understand it?
17:10 I the LORD test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings.
Do we not still do these things, whether we are Democrats, Republicans, radical activists, anarchists, socialists, or communists, or however we might identify. Do we not put our trust in ourselves? We, human flesh, can solve everything if only we have the right economic system, if only we have the right reforms, if only we have the right worldview, if only we have the right weapons, enough troupes, or enough money (either from taxes or from capitalist enterprise). Jeremiah tells us that when we choose to trust in ourselves whether we are reformists or for the status quo, whether we are anarchists or democratic capitalists, we chose to live in a desert. We choose to live on the edge of death if we solely rely on our own human effort and ingenuity. Jeremiah in a time of turmoil when it seems more is demanded to fix the world around us tells us to let go of our trust in ourselves, and to be willing to be planted next to that living stream that is God. Are we tired of death, and suffering and injustice and war, then stop trusting in human effort, seek to live in God’s care for only next to that spring is there true life, every where else is on the edge of death desert a slat plain where little if anything can grow. The trouble is when I say this I am sure we hear a call to be passive, to do nothing! The kings of Judah and the citizens of Jerusalem heard this as well, and were convinced Jeremiah was mad or worse had it in for the chosen people of God. But the issue isn’t action or inaction, but rather in whom or what do we put our trust. To whom do we look for the ultimate solution, is it science, is it democracy, is it in money and economy, is it America, the President, the Presidency, in war, in peace, or in activism? Jeremiah says if we put our trust in any of those things we live in a desert. It is all the same, and it is simply not trusting in God. Jeremiah says we have a choice: God, the source of all life, or ourselves, life or death.
The Resurrection is also about life and death. In some sense accepting or rejecting the reality of the Resurrection is the same choice that Jeremiah prophesied, or at least that is what Paul is saying to us in this portion of Corinthians. Paul is not saying that he can prove the historicity of the Resurrection, or that the science and/or popular belief of the day find it an acceptable and believable doctrine. Rather he is saying that if there is no Resurrection then we are on our own, and Christianity is false, or more to the point Christians are hopeless (literally) romantics. Let us be clear the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is not a nice story or metaphor for Paul, it happened, it is inexplicable and it is the fulcrum of the faith! But why is Paul so adamant that Jesus Christ must have been raised? Isn’t it enough that it symbolizes our life in God? After all it’s not like Christ’s resurrection was simply resuscitation of a body, right? Sure that is so, the Resurrection is more than that so much more. Resurrection is the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s hope in God as the source of life. Paul is clear that without Christ’s resurrection there is no life, if the story simply ends with Jesus in the grave and some enlightenment on the other side, death still wins in the end. Death, that is a desolate world of survival, is all we have, and then the message of the Gospel is a joke. If the love shown us in the life Jesus just leads only to death, if God has not overcome the last enemy death, then love has no power, and there is no life. We then are hopeless romantics. We have a nice fable that might comfort us but has no power, it will not change the world, everything is the same, and death sin and injustice are the final word. This is the world without Resurrection with out a God in whom we can trust for our life. Resurrection is the fulfillment of the promise of Jeremiah 17. If we have encountered life in Jesus Christ, if we have found life in the trust of gathering here together then there is Resurrection.
In the final analysis, Jesus’ beatitudes and woes in Luke depend on the Resurrection for their truth. There is nothing blessed about the poor if God doesn’t bring to life, if God has not overcome that which is the ultimate source of poverty in the world. There is nothing blessed about mourning unless there is the possibility of being comforted in the reality that there is more than the power of the death squad, and the survival of the fittest. If Jesus just suffered we have no hope. If there is no Resurrection there is no danger, no curse or woe in looking after ones own wealth at the cost of others, there is no danger in taking headless comfort and enjoyment in a world of pain and death. This is so because the Resurrection says there is more than simple survival. Through the Resurrection of Christ we know that death, sin and the devil do not have the last word. This is why Paul says that our sins remain if there is no resurrection, because if this is the truth then Jesus Christ died and nothing changed. And if that is so then love is not the answer, love is just a game, a fable we comfort ourselves with. If there is no resurrection then love does not ground the universe, no resurrection and the universe is a cold heartless place, where justice is a pipe dream, and survival of the fittest, and “the Will to power” are the ultimate reality. Chose this day what you will follow, life or death.
So in whom or what do you trust? Do you trust that God raised him who was crucified to life again? Can you accept this thing that is beyond human explanation comprehension and control? This is what the Resurrection asks of us and has always asked. My reading of Corinthians and other passages of the New Testament belie current belief that it was easier 2000 years ago to believe in the Resurrection and a myriad of other doctrines we find hard to swallow. People were naïve then, it is said, Resurrection was a commonplace belief. This Corinthians passage, Thessalonians, Paul in Athens all show that Resurrection (probably for different reasons) was as difficult for people to believe then as it is now. Paul isn’t saying he can prove historically that Jesus rose from the dead, nor that it is explicable according to biology or the laws of physics, Rather he argues it is a matter of true verses false hope. If we are too hope in life that is beyond this desolate world and can also bring this desolate world to life, then the Resurrection is necessary. There is no other way for us to know life for the Resurrection is the ultimate defeat of the enemy of life and love.
If there is no resurrection than we only can hope in our own resources are own small attempts to solve the worlds problems, we can only hope in those who will die, in systems and nations that will pass like every other one before it. Without the Resurrection there is no life, or at least nothing beyond our own attempts to scrape out a life for ourselves. But if you are here I trust some part of you has tasted true life, you have tasted the Resurrection, you have experienced Love as that which grounds all things even though the world witnesses to the reality of death and suffering. The world is being transformed, Jesus has been raised, can you take the risk to really trust in this, in God, who asks you to let go of all our human attempts to control, and can say blessed are you who are poor, in a world that says blessed are you when you are successful and wealthy and can buy everything your heart desires. God says woe to you who are successful and wealthy and can buy everything your heart desires, for that is death, as you trust in only human things. My sisters and brothers there is only one way to truly live, it is in the reality of the Resurrection, trusting in God even when it is unbelievable and improvable, even when your world seems to be crumbling around you. ‘Christ has Died, Christ is Risen, Christ will come again” is no fairy tale, it is not a nice metaphor rather it is what gives life to the world; everything else is always already in the grip of death. If you want life you will rest and be nurtured in the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Only in God and the one who has been crucified and raised can we find the nurture sustenance and care we need to act in this world dominated by death, sin and injustice. I urge us, echoing Jeremiah, to only hope and trust in God who is life and love, all else is desolation.
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