Easter 2023: April 9th

Good morning and thank you for staying for this Easter Sunrise Service.

My name is John Rains and I am Pastor of Hope House Ministries, a ministry formed in 2001 as part of the Foursquare Gospel Church. Denominationally, I am a Pentecostal – I believe in the working of the Holy spirit – but I’m not so good at speaking in tongues. This service is meant to be non-denominational.

This is a special year for the Sunrise Service. I started this in 2003, 20 years ago. I moved to St Croix in late 2001 and in the latter part of 2002, I was trying to contact anyone who claimed authority over this place, Point Udall. Federal, local – no one would take ownership. I wrote to then Governor Charles Turnbull and received a response from Ohanio Harris, special assistant to the governor. I have a letter from Harris granting use of this monument in perpetuity for the Easter Sunrise Service. So here I am, 20 years later and blessed that you are here too. The only interruption in those 20 years was due to Covid19.

I’m now 74 years old and increasingly realize that each time I come before you might be the last time, so I want to make it special for you.

The opening music you heard was a gentleman named Lincoln Brewster. This is the first time I’ve used recorded music for the service, and I really wanted to play for you, but age, and the onset of arthritis in my left-hand limit what I can do. Doing just one song for you was to satisfy my own ego. I hope you don’t mind.

When preparing to stand before you, my goal is to make a positive change in your faith life. Whether you are just now seeking Christ, or have already known Christ, or are still in Him. 

I want to encourage you to have faith in Christ – to find His love for you and His desire for you to receive Him into your life.

When I first came to St Croix, I visited with different Pastors of different churches on island. One of them, Richard Austin of Bethel AME Church, invited me to speak at a service. I was scared to death as the only white face in the church. I survived. I asked Richard “how do you prepare a sermon”. He told me that he would sit with his morning coffee and read the days paper looking for what could be impacting people. I tried to do that for today.

In my mind, the thing that is affecting people most is that we are in a war. There is a war being waged against truth. You may not agree with me but as I go through my presentation, I believe you will understand why I say this.

What is truth? Truth is the state or quality of being in accordance with fact or reality. In other words, truth is what is factually accurate, and the pursuit of truth is the attempt to accurately understand and describe the world around us.

What is the opposite of truth? Well, lies – statements or beliefs that do NOT correspond to fact or reality. I’m sure you have heard the expression “my truth”, which the Urban Dictionary explains as “a pretentious substitute for non-negotiable personal opinion.” Opinion, not fact.

What then is Faith? I see my Faith as an adjunct to Truth, a means of understanding truth beyond what can be perceived through objective means. So, for me, a war waged against Truth is a war against my Faith.

To state the obvious, I was not born in the US, but I have lived in the US and paid taxes in the US for well over 50 years. I am a citizen of the United States and I love this country – it is my country by choice. 

My Faith is in this country, so a war waged against Truth is a war waged against my Faith and a war waged against my Faith is a war waged against my country. 

This war against my country is not new, and I am confident that I am not the only one here who feels this way. 

My faith and my religion govern how I choose to conduct my life. People who claim to have no religion are fooling themselves. Secularism, spirituality, even witchcraft are religions, but Godless.

People that we collectively elect to roles in politics govern how life in general can be lived. 

So, politics and religion are inseparably intertwined.

In August of 1984, Ronald Reagan addressed an ecumenical prayer breakfast in Dallas. I would like to read what he said back then. 

In preparing it for today, I tried to reduce its length but every time I tried to take something out, it lost meaning. So, I would like to present it in its original form. It’s about 12 minutes long but it’s worth listening to.

These past few weeks it seems that we’ve all been hearing a lot of talk about religion and its role in politics, religion and its place in the political life of the nation. And I think it’s appropriate today, at a prayer breakfast for 17,000 citizens in the State of Texas during a great political convention, that this issue be addressed.

I don’t speak as a theologian or a scholar, only as one who’s lived a little more than his threescore ten — which has been a source of annoyance to some — and as one who has been active in the political life of the nation for roughly four decades and now who’s served the past three-and-a-half years in our highest office, I speak, I think I can say, as one who has seen much, who has loved his country, and who’s seen it change in many ways.

I believe that faith and religion play a critical role in the political life of our nation, and always have, and that the Church — and by that I mean all churches, all denominations — has had a strong influence on the state, and this has worked to our benefit as a nation.

Those who created our country — the Founding Fathers and Mothers — understood that there is a divine order which transcends the human order. They saw the state, in fact, as a form of moral order and felt that the bedrock of moral order is religion.

The Mayflower Compact began with the words, “In the name of God, Amen.” The Declaration of Independence appeals to “Nature’s God” and the “Creator” and “the Supreme Judge of the world.” Congress was given a chaplain, and the oaths of office are oaths before God.

James Madison in the Federalist Papers admitted that in the creation of our Republic he perceived the hand of the Almighty. John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, warned that we must never forget the God from whom our blessings flowed.

George Washington referred to religion’s profound and unsurpassed place in the heart of our nation quite directly in his Farewell Address in 1796. Seven years earlier, France had erected a government that was intended to be purely secular. This new government would be grounded on reason rather than the law of God. By 1796 the French Revolution had known the Reign of Terror.

And Washington voiced reservations about the idea that there could be a wise policy without a firm moral and religious foundation. He said, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man call himself a patriot who would labor to subvert these finest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician and the pious man ought to respect and to cherish religion and morality.” And he added,” let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion.” I believe that George Washington knew the City of Man cannot survive without the City of God, that the Visible City will perish without the Invisible City.

Religion played not only a strong role in our national life, it played a positive role. The abolitionist movement was at heart a moral and religious movement; so was the modern civil rights struggle. And throughout this time, the state was tolerant of religious belief, expression, and practice. Society, too, was tolerant.

But in the 1960’s this began to change. We began to make great steps toward secularizing our nation and removing religion from its honored place. In 1962 the Supreme Court, in the New York prayer case, banned the compulsory saying of prayers. In 1963 the Court banned the reading of the Bible in our public schools. From that point on, the courts pushed the meaning of the ruling ever outward, so that now our children are not allowed voluntary prayer. We even had to pass a law — we passed a special law in the Congress just a few weeks ago to allow student prayer groups the same access to schoolrooms after classes that a young Marxist society, for example, would already enjoy with no opposition.

The 1962 decision opened the way to a flood of similar suits. Once religion had been made vulnerable, a series of assaults were made in one court after another, on one issue after another. Cases were started to argue against tax-exempt status for churches. Suits were brought to abolish the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance and to remove “In God We Trust” from public documents and from our currency.

Today, there are those who are fighting to make sure voluntary prayer is not returned to the classrooms. And the frustrating thing for the great majority of Americans who support and understand the special importance of religion in the national life — the frustrating thing is that those who are attacking religion claim they are doing it in the name of tolerance, freedom, and open-mindedness. Question: Isn’t the real truth that they are intolerant of religion? They refuse to tolerate its importance in our lives.

If all the children of our country studied together all of the many religions in our country, wouldn’t they learn greater tolerance of each other’s beliefs? If children prayed together, would they not understand what they have in common? And would this not, indeed, bring them closer? And is this not to be desired? So, I submit to you that those who claim to be fighting for tolerance on this issue may not be tolerant at all.

When John Kennedy was running for President in 1960, he said that his church would not dictate his Presidency any more than he would speak for his church. Just so, and proper. But John Kennedy was speaking in an America in which the role of religion — and by that I mean the role of all churches — was secure. Abortion was not a political issue. Prayer was not a political issue. The right of church schools to operate was not a political issue. And it was broadly acknowledged that religious leaders had a right and a duty to speak out on the issues of the day. They held a place of respect, and a politician who spoke to or of them with a lack of respect would not long survive in the political arena. It was acknowledged then that religion held a special place, occupied a special territory in the hearts of the citizenry. The climate has changed greatly since then. And since it has, it logically follows that religion needs defenders against those who care only for the interests of the State.

There are, these days, many questions on which religious leaders are obliged to offer their moral and theological guidance, and such guidance is a good and necessary thing. To know how a church and its members feel on a public issue expands the parameters of debate. It does not narrow the debate; it expands it.

The truth is, politics and morality are inseparable. And as morality’s foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related. We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our government needs the Church, because only those humble enough to admit they’re sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.

A state is nothing more than a reflection of its citizens: The more decent the citizens, the more decent the state. If you practice a religion, whether you’re Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or guided by some other faith, then your private life will be influenced by a sense of moral obligation, and so, too, will your public life. One affects the other. The churches of America do not exist by the grace of the State; the churches of America are not mere citizens of the State. The churches of America exist apart; they have their own vantage point, their own authority. Religion is its own realm; it makes its own claims.

We establish no religion in this country, nor will we ever. We command no worship. We mandate no belief. But we poison our society when we remove its theological underpinnings. We court corruption when we leave it bereft of belief. All are free to believe or not to believe; all are free to practice a faith or not. But those who believe must be free to speak of and act on their belief, to apply moral teaching to public questions.

I submit to you that the tolerant society is open to and encouraging of all religions. And this does not weaken us; it strengthens us; it makes us strong. You know, if we look back through history to all those great civilizations, those great nations that rose up to even world dominance and then deteriorated, declined, and fell, we find they all had one thing in common. One of the significant forerunners of their fall was their turning away from their God or gods.

Without God, there is no virtue, because there’s no prompting of the conscience. Without God, we’re mired in the material, that flat world that tells us only what the senses perceive. Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.

If I could just make a personal statement of my own: In these three-and-a-half years I have understood and known better than ever before the words of Lincoln, when he said that he would be the greatest fool on this footstool called Earth if he ever thought that for one moment he could perform the duties of that Office without help from One who is stronger than all.

Ronald Reagan, 1984

Reagan tightly coupled the survival of our country to religion, that a Godly religion provides for the survival of our country, but a secular religion, like what happened in France, leads to disaster. I tightly couple my religion to my faith in God and His Son Jesus Christ.

Knowing my Faith requires me knowing Jesus Christ, and knowing Jesus comes from reading the Bible, that is, the Christian Bible.

Some question the truth of the Bible. Is it truth? Is it in accordance with fact or reality? Well, increasingly the evidence is that it is, but it’s up to each of us to be confident of this, and that really is the basis of Faith. 

The Bible is not one book, it is an encyclopedia of many books divided into in two sections – the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament focusses more on Hebrew history and law where the New Testament focusses more on the salvation available to us through acceptance of Jesus Christ. 

When it comes to reading the Bible, the greatest mistake that people make is trying to read it from the beginning, from Genesis 1:1. Trust me, you will fail. If you are new to the Bible, I recommend starting in the New Testament with either the book of John or the book of Romans.

For example:

John 5:46-47 (Jesus says)

⁴⁶ For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. ⁴⁷ But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”

John 8:31

³¹ So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly My disciples.

John 8:51

⁵¹ Truly, truly I say to you, if anyone follows My word, he will never see death.”

John 14:23

²³ Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will follow My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our dwelling with him.

John 15:7

⁷ If you remain in Me, and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

Romans 8:11

¹¹ But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.

Romans 10:9

⁹ that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;

It is not possible to talk about Faith without talking about sin.

In Christianity, a moral sin is any deliberate violation of God’s laws, which includes both commission (doing something wrong) and omission (failing to do something right). God, through Moses gave us His ten commandments, but one of the things that separates Christians and Jews is the act of expansion. Pharisaical expansion of God’s law” refers to the practice by the Pharisees of adding extra rules and regulations to the Law. These additional rules had the effect of burdening people with additional requirements and creating a sense of legalism.

On many occasions in the Bible, Jesus has run ins with the Pharisees, the Jewish legal experts, on things like “keeping the Sabbath.” Today we would call them “control freaks”. In one encounter (Mark 2:27), Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” 

What He means by this is that the Sabbath was intended to help people, not burden them. While slaves in Egypt, the Israelites were commanded under the Mosaic Law to rest one day each week. Pharisaical law had changed the Sabbath into a burden, adding restrictions beyond what God’s law said.

Jesus took away the possibilities of falsely interpreting the law as we see in Matthew 22:37, when a lawyer asked him “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”

37 And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Upon these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets.”

So, when you want to know if something is a sin of commission, ask yourself these two questions. Would you do this to God? Would you do this to yourself?

Last week, Cash App creator Bob Lee was stabbed in San Francisco. He bled to death on the street while pleading for help from people passing by but was ignored. An egregious sin of omission. If you remember the parable of the Good Samaritan as told in Luke 10:25-37, you can draw the contrast.

The Pharisees so hated Jesus that they plotted to kill him. We read about this in Matthew 26, and in verse 63-66 we read about the accusation of Blasphemy leveled against Him.

And the high priest said to Him, “I place You under oath by the living God, to tell us whether You are the Christ, the Son of God.” Jesus said to him, “You have said it yourself. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

Then the high priest tore his robes and said, “He has blasphemed! What further need do we have of witnesses? See, you have now heard the blasphemy; what do you think?” They answered, “He deserves death!”

And they killed him.

I said earlier that the war on truth is not new. John 18:33-38 documents the dialog between Jesus and Pontius Pilate, the last of which reads: 

“For this purpose I have been born, and for this I have come into the world: to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to My voice.” Pilate said to Him, “What is truth?”

God gave us his Son as payment of the penalty for our sins. Through Jesus, we are “justified” so that we can be with Him for eternity in Heaven.

John 3:16“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.

That’s the promise that we celebrate today, Resurrection Sunday. He died on the cross and on the third day was risen from the grave as proof of His promise, as proof that His promise is Truth. It’s offered so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. The next step is yours to take – accept this gift by believing the Truth of Jesus Christ.

Please say this prayer with me.

Dear Lord Jesus, 

I know that I am a sinner, and I ask for Your forgiveness. 

I believe You died for my sins and rose from the dead. 

I turn from my sins and invite You to come into my heart and life.