[Propertalk] Sermons.com - Lenten sermon: Romans 5:12-19 - "Like" by Leonard Sweet

[Joe Parrish]

Romans 5:12-19 - "Like" by Leonard Sweet 
 
Happy Lent! 
 
Oops! No such thing. Of course not. Lent is a solemn season, full of serious stuff. We run special educational courses during Lent. Baptismal candidates are on their "cram course" during Lent. Practicing Christians are supposed to be more intentionally focused on one's prayer life during Lent. We "give up" things for Lent - chocolates, meat, sweets, smoking, bad TV shows. 
 
Forty days is long enough to learn something new, miss something old, and change some habits. Unfortunately, it is not so long that we cannot get through it. Truth be told, even as the Easter eggs are turned into deviled eggs, so a lot of our good Lenten habits can get "deviled" as well.
 
Yet Lent should not be colored as an Ash Wednesday grey grind. What if instead of thinking about "getting through" Lent we look at these next forty days as a journey towards a miraculous destination - Easter Sunday. Doesn't everybody "like" to go on a road trip now and then?  What do you "like" about your annual journey to Jerusalem? What makes the Lenten trip to that empty tomb so awesome?
 
It might be difficult to come up with a "like list" at first. Our culture doesn't normally do "like." This is one of the great things about Facebook. There is seldom a day goes by that I am not asked to speak out against something, or take a stand against something, or support a cause that attacks something. But Facebook is against against. It only has a "like" tab. You can't dislike something, only like it. 
 
But the rest of this culture had not said "No" to negativity like Facebook has. All you have to do is listen to the news or surf a few websites to discover that commenting on what you "like" is not part of our twenty-first century communication culture. Instead it is all too easy to find thousands of "hate sites." There are sites dedicated to hating political parties, to hating politicians, to hating religious preferences, to hating religious leaders, to hating racial groups, to hating the rich, to hating the poor. There are sites devoted to hating a certain individual, and sites devoted to hating whole countries. 
 
Hate is an easy sell. Vitriol is a vital and sustainable substance. No wonder being told to "list your likes" sounds foreign to our ears and hearts. That is a great tragedy of our world.... 
 
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