Easter Sunday - Words not said

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A beginning of a sermon that I will not use:
For Easter Sunday

I know a young man
– really, at heart only a boy still –
who should be here.

He won’t be, but he should be.
He doesn’t think this place, this occasion,
has anything to say to him.

He thinks his life is such a
– loss, perhaps
– that nothing can touch him.

He has made his choices
– to live a life just under the radar
- of landlord and employer, police and taxes.

He lives by a spiral code
– move away from the center,
slowly but surely,
always taking one step sideways for each one forward.

This path is a losing way, a loosing way,
a way to get lost, be lost, stay lost,
stray far away from the center, centering story.

He needs to be here today
– to hear this story
– this story of the One so lost, so abandoned,
so alone, so far from the center,
the one who sent to hell,
who hung around in hell,
who knew hell,
and who has returned, and promised

no more hell.

No more hell
– not of our own making,
not of God’s making,
not of others' making –

There is an eternity, and it is not hell.
There is an eternity and it is joy.
There is an eternity and it starts now.

The young man needs to know
there is a place for him here.
A home, a seat, a bed.
An end to wandering.

Come and rest, come and be.
The path is not a spiral
– but direct – come home.
Jesus has gone to hell for you – to bring you back. Welcome.
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