From Ashes to Son Rise

From Ashes to Son Rise is a collection of sixteen Lenten/Easter sermons with a focus on the compassion of God and new creation. The sermons presented here are based on sermons delivered in the author's parish on Sundays and at midweek services from Ash Wednesday through Easter Sunday. With the exception of the Easter Sunrise sermon, each sermon focuses on readings from the Revised Common Lectionary, Year A (2017). Sermons for the Sundays in Lent focus on the Gospel readings. Sermons for mid-week Lenten services focus on the second reading for the previous Sunday. Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, the man blind from birth, Lazarus. These are the characters of the Lenten Gospel readings in Year A of the Revised Common Lectionary. These are characters that Jesus interacts with in very significant ways. In the stories of these characters, lives are influenced, lives are changed, and lives are made new by what Jesus says or by what he does to them and for them. But these stories are actually about something above and beyond the story of what happens with each character that meets Jesus. In John chapter 3 we see that what Jesus said to Nicodemus had far greater importance and went far beyond being just a story about Jesus instructing a Pharisee about what it takes for one to see the Kingdom by "being born from above." The story in the Gospel according to John is a story about the infinite compassion of the infinite God who both created the cosmos and is the embodiment of agape love. This infinite God loves the whole God-created cosmos with the agape love that truly is God. This infinite God, who is the embodiment of agape love, sends God's only Son, who himself is the embodiment of God, in order to live and die and live again for the sake of the whole world - for the sake of the entire cosmos. That cosmos, in the New Testament Greek of the Gospel of John, is the entirety of everything that is, the entirety of everything that ever was, and the entirety of everything that ever will be. Including all of humanity. It is this cosmos-spanning, time-defying agape of God that Jesus himself embodies, lives, breathes, and acts upon for the sake of Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, the blind man, Lazarus, and for every one of us today, now, wherever we are, whoever we are. This agape is life-changing. It is a force for complete renewal. Life-giving, it is God's force for new creation, and as such, it is a force for turning around, renewing, and recreating entire congregations as much as individuals.