Unlikely Endings

April 23, 2019

Rev. Jason Gaskin

We have all at some point bowed down to the voice of our critics and enemies. The people who don't believe in us or what we do. Their voices are the ones we often remember and never forget. And we've all made our share of mistakes in our lives. Mistakes in our relationships and careers that held us back. All of us have our share of failures to go along with our mistakes. We had an idea, we tried it, and it failed. We sat there with our palm in our face thinking that maybe our critics are right. And it could be at some point we gave up. We quit a job. We quit a friendship. We distanced ourselves from others. All of us collectively come to Easter Sunday with a sense of our dignity has been stolen from us. We have trailing behind us a tremendous amount of shame that we bowed down to our critics and failed. The beauty of this celebratory season of Easter (yes... Easter isn't just a day... it is a season... if Lent gets a season... I think Easter should as well!) is that although life can have some deep valley's... we celebrate together that those valleys aren't the end of us. And they aren't the end of you. Every one of us... including Jesus... has critics... has enemies... has failures (yes Jesus had some failures...) but the narrative we tell is a narrative that has an unlikely ending. An ending that doesn't end in defeat but in victory. And oddly enough we have to tell ourselves when we are in the thick of the valley that it isn't the end of our story. Just like Jesus' story... and our story... has a beautiful, unlikely ending. Looking forward to lifting our heads up from Holy Week and celebrating the ways in which God's resurrection power is at work in our own lives.