REFLECTION QUOTES

“The country’s idols are being exposed.”

~Ekemini Uwan, writer, speaker and public theologian

“There is no equality. The only thing people all have in common is that they are all going to die.”

~Bob Dylan, legendary singer-songwriter

“…a Christian is not so much a person who has solved the problem of pain, suffering and the coronavirus, but one who has come to love and trust a God who has himself suffered.”

~John Lennox, professor at the University of Oxford

Surround me with your boundless love
Confound me with your boundless love
I was drowning in the sea, lost as I could be
When you found me with your boundless love
You dumbfound me with your boundless love
You surround me with your boundless love

~John Prine (1946-2020), singer-songwriter

“This non-event, this thing that nobody noticed except his friends and family turned out to have the power to transform the entire Roman Empire and the course of human history more profoundly than any other single event over the past 2,000 years.”

~Henry Louis Gates Jr., author and Harvard professor, speaking of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ

“…the majority of New Testament scholars today, not conservatives, not fundamentalists, concur with the facts of Jesus’ honorable burial, his empty tomb, his postmortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples’ belief in his resurrection. This is a surprising truth, not widely appreciated by non-specialists.”

~Dr. William Lane Craig, American philosopher and professor

“If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen—nothing else matters.”

~Jaroslav Pelikan (1923-2006), Yale professor and scholar

SERMON PASSAGE

Romans 8:31-39 (ESV)

31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.