Dying So That We MIght Live

This post is from the defunct blog “Dying Church”

An Easter sermon:

Or as one of my favorite writers, Robert Capon says, “Jesus solves the world’s problems by dying." And unless we are willing to see our own death as the one thing necessary for our salvation, we will never be able to enjoy the resurrection, even though Jesus hands it to us on a silver platter. If we refuse to die, we will cut ourselves off from ever knowing the joy of his grace in us…

James Forbes, former pastor of Riverside Church in NYC, once spent three days at a conference trying to hammer this point home: The church can’t rise because it refuses to drop dead. The fact that it’s dying, he said, is of no use to it whatsoever: dying is simply the world’s most uncomfortable way of remaining alive. If you are to be raised from the dead, the only thing that can make you a candidate is to go all the way into death. Death, not life, is God’s recipe for fixing up the world. And we, as individuals and as church can choose to die, because we believe that Jesus specializes in bringing the dead to life again.

Will was kind enough to link back here. Lots of good stuff in this sermon.