Not to say that the traditional nuclear family isn’t good, 

but there shouldn’t be a hierarchy, 

but an equality amongst different forms of family. 

All kinds of family have their good, their bad and their ugly.

Perhaps we can imagine ourselves today like the exiled people of Judah and Jerusalem, 

as the pandemic dry bones.

We are dried up, sick and tired of these restrictions, 

these fears of this tiny virus spreading, locked down and fed up. 

Our bones are tired, and parched.

The Church’s traditional focus on the subordination of women, 

as well as its insistence on male power and privilege, 

and its perversion of Christian ideals of love, 

Means that the Church is behind in addressing issues of abuse against women.

So beloved, since God loved us so much, 

we also ought to love one another,

In word and deed.

In the Creeds, we don’t say, that we believe in the resurrection of the soul,

We say, we believe in the resurrection of the body.

That is, Christians shouldn’t be saying that the soul separates from the body and all we have left is this immortal soul, 

and the body is completely cast off like a useless banana peel.

It’s almost impossible not to come to a Good Friday service 

and feel sorry for your imperfections, 

and assume that the sermon will have as its title: 

“Jesus died for your sins.” 

And no doubt there will be a majority of preachers today preaching a sermon on precisely that theme.

In our year of living with COVID-19, 

many of us have felt like we’re under siege as well.

We’ve been fearful these past 12 months.

Whoever now visits this coastline, and drives along the coastal highway, will notice an impressive row of exclusive clubhouses.

The coastline is still as dangerous as ever, 

but most of the shipwrecked people drown.

We need to repent and lament these texts that have been taken for over the centuries to abuse Black people.

What authority can we muster to destroy racism and prejudice?

What authority can we claim to search out the white supremacy culture in our own hearts, in our own institutions?

What power can we summon to call out the evils of consumer capitalism that enrich the Wall Street gamblers 

and the top 0.01% 

while the have-nots and Black, Indigenous and People of Colour continue to be disproportionately affected by COVID?