an excerpt from my sermon for this first Sunday of Lent
Each year in the sanctuaries throughout the world, we repeatedly trace the path of Christ’s life, walking each Sunday from the tears and blood and sweat of fragile human flesh in His annunciation and birth, to the weeping and blood and sweat of fragile human flesh in His crucifixion in front of the roaring crowd. We accompany Christ as we endure the pain, the trials, the betrayal; we steel ourselves with bated breath as we step closer and closer to the violence at the hands of those in power, the blood of the innocent, the death of the undeserving, We walk these footsteps again and again and again and again each journey through the liturgical cycle, just as we witness cycles of violence and oppression repeat each day.
But you see, what we often allow ourselves to forget is this: we walk this path knowing how it ends.
Hope.
It ends in hope, not as a naive, far-off dream, but as a promise and as a certainty.
“If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.”
Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.
We do not say this together each Sunday as an ask of plea, but as a renewal and re-commitment to that certainty. It is promise made to us that the violence of Empire, whether that of Rome or of those who seek to rebuild it today, two thousand years later, will not have the last word.
Beloved, the veil is torn.
The hope that awaits us at the end of yet another Lenten journey assures us that the brutality of Empire’s oppression is not strong enough to hold us to the cross forever. The resurrection of Christ is promise that the best is yet to come ahead.
Our call to follow in Christ’s own path, worn down by the feet of Christ and so many who have followed Him before us, tells us that things will get better, because we will make it so, building the foundations of the Kingdom that is to come with our own hands together in the solidarity of God’s justice, brick by loving brick.
