Easter Should Make Rebels of Us All - a sermon link

Over a late lunch today I listened to a podcast of a sermon from a minister whose page I found through another blog, and I want to share it with you. Andy Croel, over at The Pulpiteer, preached a good sermon this past Easter on the notion that death is NOT part of God's plan, that Easter shows it, and how we ought to respond. I recommend it. Here is a quick excerpt:

In the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we see God's plan for dealing with death...In the resurrection, mothers are not told why their children died: mothers are given their children back. In the resurrection, we are not told why disease is secretly good: we are healed. In the resurrection the effects of evil and death are undone. Death is shown to have no ultimate effects at all, because God can undo it in the blink of an eye...

Easter should make rebels of us all...when we see evil and injustice, when we see death and destruction, when we see natural disasters that wipe out villages and leave hundreds dead, we are not to be a people that try to come in and explain some ultimate meaning and purpose behind horrible tragedy and death. Instead, we are to speak of a God of salvation who came back to rescue his good creation: A God who doesn't explain the tragic death of innocents, but rather raises them back to life.

He then goes on to challenge us to feed the hungry and minister to the suffering and dying, precisely because their hunger and suffering and death are the work of our enemy...death...defeated though it is by Jesus' resurrection. If I may paraphrase, working for justice, in Jesus' name, is an act of war.

The full sermon is here.