CREDIT: U.S. Forest Service on FLICKR

Dear Saints and Sinners,

My wife and I have often traveled to one of God’s great creations – Yellowstone National Park … the Park. It’s a truly beautiful place. But the first time she took me there was after a massive forest fire. I’d heard how beautiful the Park was. I didn’t see it. All I saw were hideous blackened stumps and charred grass. Until … I went on my first hike. And there it was, new life among the ashes. Small, delicate, beautiful flowers. New, green shoots of grass. Surely, the black stumps were repulsive to look at, but at the same time beauty abounded in the new life bursting forth following the first rains after the fires ravaged the Park.

As we live in this world, the closest thing to a black stump I can think of is death. Its effects are emotionally and physically repulsive – the result of the fire of sin that has swept through humanity unabated since sin first came into the world. We have inherited sin and its effects. We are sinners.

And the penalty of sin is … death. (Romans 6:23a) Thanks be to God we have been united to His Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ in our baptism. (Romans 6:3) “We were buried with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead … we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:4) This means, we are also saints!

Our sin causes us to resemble the cold, black, dead stumps after a forest fire. But the waters of baptism, at the same time, nurture new life within us. Are we still sinners? Yes, we are. But “we are now dead to sin and alive in Christ,” (Romans 6:11) meaning sin doesn’t drive us or entice us. Do we sin, yes, but when we do, we don’t revel in it. We are remorseful. And God forgives us. Therefore, sin and death are not the last word, death no longer rules over us! We are both saints and forgiven sinners.

                                                             Your Fellow Saint and Sinner,

                                                              Pastor Jim