The Fierce Urgency Of Easter from The Rev. Chuck Currie on Vimeo.

The people of Sunnyside Church and University Park Church gathered this morning for Easter in Portland.  This was my final joint service with the two congregations before I step down in June and begin my duties full time at Pacific University as the new Director of the Center for Peace and Spirituality and University Chaplain.  This morning was a joyful occasion with diverse people celebrating the life and ministry of Jesus.

Each Easter we are given the opportunity to decide whether or not we will walk in a world of darkness or embrace the light of God which offers a path toward salvation for all people, regardless of faith tradition. We must embrace our calling as people of faith with the same fierce sense of urgency (a phrase often used by Martin Luther King, Jr.) that Jesus embraced his. As Christians, we believe that Jesus is the “the way, and the truth, and the life (John 14),” as told in the Gospel of John. Unlike our early Christian brothers and sisters, however, we recognize that God speaks to all of creation and that there are different paths to truth and the divine. But all truth paths point the same direction Jesus did.

We have inherited, and sometimes help create, a world in peril. In sin, we have participated in cycles of living and commerce that have created a global climate crisis. Too many people each die in war and far too many die and suffer from hunger and poverty. God has called us to work towards the building up of the Kingdom – a place without war, poverty, or bigotry. This message was such a threat to the Roman Empire, which thrived on war and economic systems that benefited the few, that they put Jesus to death. It is a mistake to say that Jesus died for our sins. Jesus died to show us a new world was possible.

My prayer this Easter is that we embrace the way that Jesus showed us – and that we find new opportunities in concert with one another to see in Jesus’ death and resurrection those million fragments of light that Walter Wink talked about (and which I mention in the sermon video) and bring them to dark places, even sometimes our own hearts, so that Creation will know God’s light, love and peace forever more.