Buried Twice

Outside Pilot Point there is a cemetery called St. John's, the oldest Black cemetery in Denton County. Around four hundred people are buried there, and only about twenty graves still have a stone. Someone working to save it said these people have been buried twice. Once in the ground, and once by being forgotten. This short homily from our early service starts on that ground and lets Paul answer it. The wages of sin is death, he writes, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Not a better wage. A gift. Left to ourselves, we are dead and forgotten, and no marker holds that back forever. But God knows every name, even the ones the stones have lost, and he does not only remember the dead. He raises them. Eternal, abundant, forever, the life of the age to come, freely given at the table. Reading: Romans 6:12-23 (Proper 6) Part of Roman Roads, a summer series through Paul's letter to the Romans, each week paired with a historical marker from the roads ...