Category: Salvation

Easter 2026

There is darkness and light.
Evil and righteousness.
Injustice and justice.
Discord and harmony.
Emptiness and fullness.
Death and life.

There is light overcoming the darkness.
Righteousness displacing evil.
Justice defeating injustice.
Harmony replacing discord.
Being filling emptiness.
Resurrection to new life.

We experience darkness and death all around us and in us. Wherever there is oppression, injustice, and evil of all kinds there is death—death to compassion, humility, hope, peace and joy; death to our humanity. Wherever there is war taken up as an answer to our problems; wherever the enemy is identified as outside us, as if the enemy does not also exist within; wherever we see need and pass by as if it had nothing to do with us; wherever we refuse to love, there is darkness and death and the need for resurrection to new life.

Scriptures of various spiritual traditions call us to die in order to live. We must let go of our lives, relinquish ourselves in order to find our true selves made in the image of God. Jesus tells us to lose our lives in order to find them. Die to life lived on our own terms in order to receive our true selves which flow from our Creator.

Saint Paul views the gift of Christ as the gift of dying and rising:

“Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:4)

“So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 6:11)

The key to it all is being “in Christ,” or in other words, coming to be conformed to our true humanity in union with God.

Filed under: Hope, Humanity, Liberation, Salvation, SpiritualityTagged with: ,

Can ICE Agents Be Saved?

”Can they be saved?” is a question that could have been asked of tax collectors in Jesus’ time and place. These traitors who collected taxes in Judea for the occupying power of Rome were at the top of the list of sinners. Religious leaders certainly saw them outside of God’s mercy. They asked Jesus’ followers, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

Can tax collectors be saved? Can ICE agents be saved? Can those occupying cities in this nation, pulling people out of their homes and cars, beating them, shooting them, confining them in inhumane detention centers, deporting them to nations they are not from, separating parents from their children, racially profiling and abusing them be saved? Can White supremacists be saved? (A White pastor who had been detained by ICE was let go with the words, “Well, you’re White. You wouldn’t be fun anyway.” Clearly, White supremacists have been recruited for this activity.)

Can ICE agents be saved?

Can tax-collecting traitors who got rich off the oppression of others be saved?

Jesus was passing by a man named Zacchaeus who was a chief tax collector and was rich. Jesus said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” People grumbled at Jesus’ going “to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” But Zacchaeus demonstrated repentance, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” Jesus said, “Today salvation has come to this house…for the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

Another tax collector, Matthew, became one of Jesus’ twelve core disciples. Jesus “called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, `Follow me.’ And he got up and followed him.” And Jesus made it clear to Matthew, and to all, that following him meant that they “deny themselves and take up their cross and follow.”

Jesus’ central message was “repent and have faith for the reign of God is near.” Let go and let God reign in your lives.

Salvation is open to all. Relationship with God is open to all. The way is repentance. Turn around. Do not continue down the path you are on. Relinquish your life to God. Let God direct your steps.

The message to ICE agents is: “Do not continue to bully and terrorize others. But turn to the God who is Love and have your life turned around, so that you exist for the uplift of others and for seeing other’s needs and serving them.”

Salvation comes to the house of an ICE agent when they repent. Salvation comes to those who oversee ICE, when they repent and bear fruits of repentance. Fruits of repentance are seen when leaders in government no longer center their decisions on holding on to power, but instead take responsibility for leading our nation with compassion and care for all.

By God’s grace repentance, change of direction, and new life is available to all.

Filed under: Grace, Justice, Mercy, Repentance, Salvation, SocietyTagged with: ,