Fish and Tips

Happy Easter!

Easter isn’t a day; Easter is a season. We have several more weeks of Easter Season to celebrate the Risen Christ.

He is Risen. He is Risen. He is Risen Indeed!

In ancient times, ghosts and spirits were known to be real. We have mostly forgotten this truth as our minds have closed to ideas which cannot be explained by the scientific method. In I Samuel 28, King Saul had already upset God and God refused to speak with Saul. So Saul visited a medium in the town of Endor, a woman who could consult the dead. At Saul’s strong request, she brought up the spirit of Samuel the recently dead high priest of Israel. For this evil action, Saul was killed in battle the next day. And this event was buried deep in the memory of all the people of Israel, a story told by grandparents to grandchildren for ten centuries. It was remembered by the disciples of a rabbi, a teacher named Jesus a thousand years after King Saul died.

It was Sunday evening. They had seen Him die on Friday afternoon, buried Him before sunset. They separated to mourn on Saturday. Sunday morning the women and then Peter and John reported the tomb was empty – Mary said she’d seen Him alive, but who could believe her? So that evening, they returned to a safe house, to come together in fear. Peter reported that Jesus had appeared to him; two men came running in, telling them all that they’d seen Him on the road to Emmaus.

Luke 24:36-48

They closed the door. They were hidden away, hiding from the world who might want to kill them for His name’s sake. And suddenly, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”

Was the man in front of them a spirit? Had He come back like Samuel the prophet from the dead? What did this mean for them – would they soon die? Was the spirit in front of them about to curse them for all time? It was frightening and scary. For it was known that an evil spirit could assume a false shape – and then that spirit could lead people to their destruction. They wanted to be sure this man really was Jesus and not a false Jesus, insubstantial without any real power.

The man spoke.  “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? ³⁹ Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”

A spirit, a ghost. The Greek word pneuma is used in the original manuscripts. It means spirit, ghost, wind, breath. Something with a thin substance, somewhere between living and not living – no body, yet you can feel it – barely, like you can feel the wind or a strong breath from your neighbor. Something unearthly – not quiet real, yet not quiet imaginary. A spirit is from another realm, the realm of God or the afterlife. Yet this person said to touch him and see.

And he showed them his hands and feet, punctured with holes from the huge nails that had been driven through the wrists and ankles, torturing him as they connected with the nerve bundles. Tearing with the weight of his body on the cross. Yet the holes were healing, indeed the skin had healed, the bleeding stopped, the scabs washed away. The scars would remain forever, but the damage had been done. Anyone who had seen Jesus on the cross or being carried to the tomb knew it was Him, and so they were joyful and they were amazed, but how? How could it be true? They had seen Him die! They had seen and heard Him forgive His executioners, and then they had seen Him die. They had even seen the Roman guard stick a spear into His side and they had seen the water and the blood pour out as that spear had punctured His lungs full of fluid from the torture and then the spear had punctured his heart and the last of his blood came out, draining out like a priest drains the blood from a sacrificial lamb.

And they had seen Him taken down, His blood clotted upon him. They had seen Him carried to the tomb, mummy wrapped with over forty pounds of spices and left there while the huge stone was dropped in the trench in front of the entrance. Like reasonable men, they had never expected to see Him again.

And yet… here He was talking to them, looking fresh, active, even more alive than He had been during the days walking on the highways of Galilee. He spoke again: “Do you have anything here to eat?” And so they fumbled around, and one of them gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence. No one had ever heard of a spirit being hungry and eating fish! And so they began to believe.

They began to believe that this was actually Jesus, not just a spirit, but Jesus in the flesh, recovered and healed and stronger than ever before, standing in front of them eating that bit of tilapia from the Jordan River. But how had this happened? How could He be alive again? They knew He was dead – but He was alive! Their brains spun around in circles while their hearts leaped with joy!

Like most men, the disciples had not stopped to consider what His presence meant to them during the days on the road over the previous three years. He was a good – no, a great teacher, a great man – but they had not realized how much they had grown to love Him, to rely upon His steadiness, His strong, quiet power that was like a stallion under His perfect control. He had spoken with each of them many times and His gaze was soft – and yet piercing. You knew He loved you, you knew He cared for you, and yet, you knew He expected and demanded great things of you. And so as His disciples, we had grown to depend upon His strength and love and guidance. And so, when He had been taken away from us, we were lost.

And then, that evening, He was back again with us and we were filled with joy and amazement as we watched Him eat that little piece of broiled fish. It was so ordinary – things were once again right, the world was normal again, our fear was gone.

He said to us, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” And then in our minds, we began to connect all sorts of things we had read about and heard in the old scriptures with Jesus. We saw the Angel of the Lord standing before Joshua and Jericho with the face of Jesus. We saw the leader of the three men who came to visit Abraham before Sodom was destroyed with the face of Jesus. We saw the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 with the face of Jesus on the cross. We saw the Son of Man of Daniel standing before us. Our minds had been opened to the true meaning of the scriptures. And we knew Jesus was the Messiah, come back from the dead!

He told us, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”

And so we began to tell others of what we had seen and heard, what we had simply witnessed. We began with our brother Thomas who was missing that night – and the next Sunday, Thomas saw and believed.

Many people over the centuries have missed the point of the fish-eating of Jesus. Many people have walked away with a complete misunderstanding of what will happen after a Christian’s death. Let’s take a look at what this episode teaches us.

First, Jesus did not come back to visit the disciples as a spirit, or a ghost. Jesus came back among them in his new, glorified body – a body which was basically repaired from the ravages of the cross – yet still had at least the scars, with pierced wrists and ankles as larger versions of pierced ears. Healed, yet not fully repaired. Jesus was strong and healthy – he had just walked the six miles to Emmaus that afternoon.

Later, in Revelation, John sees Jesus as a strong warrior with the white hair of wisdom and age.

And so, theologians speak of the full resurrection of the body, a repaired body which does not breakdown over time like our current body does – an immortal body which is still a physical body. It is like having a body which has a perfect healing and immune system.

In our letter from I John 3, John writes: “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

Our resurrected bodies will be just like Jesus’ resurrected body. It will be repaired, with perfect healing and immune system, a body that will not wear out, a body that will not require knee replacements, artificial heart valves, and similar repairs.

You know, I used to think, “Wow, I’ll have a new 20-year old body in the resurrection.” Now, I’d be happy with a forty-year old body.

Our body will be like the body Jesus had.

Do not be taken in by the lies that have dominated Hollywood movies and their portrayal of life after death. We do not become spirits in the Resurrection. We do not acquire wings. We don’t become angels – after all, angels are the created servants of God – As John tells us in our reading from I John, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” Angels are the servants – we are God’s children.

The disciples were tempted to fall prey to the lie that Jesus had come back in the spirit or perhaps as an idea in their minds, a hypnosis, a suggestion. They were tempted to declare that they had seen the Spirit of Christ. But a little piece of fish changed all that. That little bit of fish proved to them that Jesus had been truly resurrected, that His body had come alive once more. And that little bit of fish convinced them that there was hope for them and their bodies in the future.

I mentioned last week that many people actually have two different views of the afterlife, depending on when you ask them the question. First, there is the happy view, the view that everyone goes to Heaven and flits about on wings as angels, playing harps. The only way we don’t make it to Heaven is if we are a serial murderer or an evil Hitler-type Nazi. And we aren’t. We know in our minds that we have sinned some, but we’re not as bad as Charles Manson. After all, all that we’ve done is to borrow a few paperclips from the office. We’ve said a few nasty things to people in our life. We’ve lusted after a couple of television stars. But who hasn’t? So we’ll end up in Heaven with the rest of the good people.

And, of course, this view is wrong, for Jesus taught that lusting is the same as committing adultery and hating is the same as committing murder. All have sinned – and the wages of sin is death. By justice is when we get what we deserve, and what we deserve is death.

The other view people commonly have is that there is no hope. We are aware of our sin or sins – the one big sin or the repeating smaller sins. We recognize that we can’t break free by ourselves. We are addicted to doing wrong. So when we understand this, we often resign ourselves to either a real death or an eternity in Hell because we are hopeless.

John, in his first epistle, explains this. He writes that “⁴ Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. ⁵ But you know that he [Jesus] appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. ⁶ No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.”

Jesus takes away the sin of people who live in him. Now I want you to notice something – “living in him” is a much stronger statement than “believing in him”. You may believe that Jesus is the Son of God, you may believe He died for you, you may even believe that He died to remove your sins. But John tells us that we need to “live” in Jesus to stop sinning. What does this mean?

You’ve probably heard about “abiding” in Jesus – which means living in Jesus as though He were a house or a home. We are to be surrounded by Jesus, we are to spend our lives with boundaries set by Jesus, we are to move as though He is beside and around us like a tent that we carry with us as we move.

Too often, we say, “Jesus, we’re on your team”, and then we continue to live our lives the same way we used to live our lives – we might make a couple of minor changes, watching our language, cutting back from 5 or 6 beers to at most a couple of beers – and those are positive changes, no doubt.

But John is telling us to live in Jesus. We need to put on Jesus as a skin, presenting Jesus to the world! And this is where we need to be extraordinarily careful, for we can put on a false Jesus if we’re not careful. We want to show people the real Jesus, a caring, loving, wise individual with real flesh and bones – not a false Jesus who leads people to their destruction by speaking things without any real power, by lying about what is true and important. We don’t want to mislead any new disciples.

So what’s the difference?

• A false Jesus tells people not to sin. The real Jesus forgave sins.
• A false Jesus hates people who break moral and ethical laws. The real Jesus loves people who are failing, pities them, and helps them succeed in life.
• A false Jesus is arrogant about how good he is. The real Jesus is humble, yet strong, suggesting gently and guiding others toward good.
• A false Jesus wants to destroy evil people. The real Jesus knows that people are the victims of evil who need to be led to a better way.
• A false Jesus has little patience with people who repeatedly sin. The real Jesus forgives people at least seven times seventy times.

We need to put on the real Jesus skin and live within him. And the only way to really begin to do this is to get to know Jesus closely, intimately. There are four things we can do today which will help us know Jesus closely.

First, we must read the stories about Him, particularly the New Testament. Have you read entirely through the New Testament? It is about 185,000 words long, about the length of an average novel. Reading it aloud, as though you were standing in the pulpit reading to a congregation, will take about 18 to 20 hours – or less than a month if you read for an hour a day. You may read much faster. But reading is the way we become familiar with His character.

Second, we should practice two-way prayer. Speak to Jesus and listen for the reply deep in your mind from the Holy Spirit. Take time in the shower, when driving, when sitting on your porch in the cool of the morning. Begin holding conversations with Him. This will help you become familiar with how you respond to Him.

Third, out of gratitude, begin serving Jesus and the body of Christ, which is the assembly of believers. Do things for other Christians – and non-Christians – on behalf of Jesus. At first, do what comes easily to you – call up homebound people, make or deliver meals, pick up people and bring them to church, repair porches, build handicapped ramps, repair cars, mow lawns. sing in the musical groups, organize the church, teach children or adults.

Fourth, learn to lead others to Jesus. Nothing will bring you closer to Jesus than trying to lead others to Jesus. Just strive diligently to put on a true Jesus skin rather than a false Jesus skin. If you are asked questions you can’t answer – study or ask wiser Christians for the answers. Being the teacher will always teach yourself faster and better than being the student – as long as you are trying to be the best teacher you can. And teaching can begin with just simply talking to your friend, neighbor, or relative about what you learned today in church.

You know, when the disciples gathered together in that room and Jesus walked in that Sunday evening in the early spring, it began a forty day period of the final teachings of Jesus to that group of disciples. It is like a dandelion that flowers for a while, then tightens up into a little cluster while the seeds are maturing. And then, the dandelion turns into the white ball phase, the wind blows, and the dandelion seeds are blown everywhere by the wind to begin new dandelion plants.

The disciples had walked with Jesus for three years. Now, over forty days, they received their final teaching, maturing. And soon, they would be scattered by the wind of the Holy Spirit around the world to plant new groups of disciples. Much the same can happen here with us.

We can each teach our own group of a dozen or so people, leading them from no knowledge of Christ to baptism and becoming strong disciples. And then, as jobs and college and life moves us around, we can each begin again to teach about Jesus to the people the Spirit puts into our lives.

It is not important how educated or how good a speaker we are. It is not important how well we read or how many friends we have. What is important is that we each try to put on the real Jesus skin, to avoid the false Jesus, to step forward and teach what is true and godly and faithful to the Jesus who gave His life upon the cross, so that we might each be free from the slavery of sin and have eternal life.

Did you notice that the disciples had great joy? They had joy because they realized that their leader had claimed to be able to die and come back from the dead – and then He did so. He also claimed that He could and would give eternal life to all who followed Him. He had previously raised Lazarus – surely He could now raise His loyal followers. Like the men and women there in that room that evening so long ago. Like us today. Have joy! Share the joy of Christ!

And so, let us remind each other of the core parts of our faith that we have kept over the centuries:

Let us join together in reciting what we believe, as expressed in the ancient Apostles Creed (UMH #881)

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth;

And in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord;
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead, and buried;
the third day he rose from the dead;
he ascended into heaven,
and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic** church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.

** catholic means universal

Let us sing,

Closing Song: Softly and Tenderly Jesus is calling.

Benediction: May you find the real Jesus and live within Him, listening to the Holy Spirit and speaking of the love of God to everyone you meet!

A Practical Man

Happy Easter!

Easter isn’t a day; Easter is a season. We have several more weeks of Easter Season to celebrate the Risen Christ.

He is Risen. He is Risen. He is Risen Indeed!

The disciples all celebrated!

They had seen Him die on Friday after. They had seen Him buried. The women went to the tomb early Sunday morning to clean His body and cover it with spices before reburying Him. Mary came to the disciples and told them that Jesus wasn’t at the tomb. Peter and John raced to the tomb – and He wasn’t there. They went back to where they were staying. Two men walking to Emmaus were joined by a third man, a man who joined them for an early supper – and turned out to be Jesus. The two raced back to Jerusalem to spread the news. Jesus had appeared to Peter. Ten of the disciples and some others gathered in a locked room – and Jesus appeared to them. He gave them the Holy Spirit and the power to forgive people’s sins.

Notice that Jesus breathes on the disciples and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” They have received the holy breath of God Himself, Jesus. As I’ve mentioned before, the Greek word Pneuma means breath, wind, or Spirit. They receive the Holy Spirit through Jesus’ Holy Breath.

And then Jesus gives them great power. He says “If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” Such power passed onto the disciples. Such power that passes down to us, 2000 years later.

Have you considered that, as a representative of Jesus and God on earth, you have great power to do good – and power to do harm? So many times a person comes to us wanting to unburden their souls of some sin, great or small. We need to listen to them, for healing begins when we listen to the injured person.

And the person who is talking to you will tell you about some argument or fight they are having with another person, or they will tell you of something they have done that they feel guilty about. Now in the case of hearing one side of a fight or argument, you can’t forgive the person that is not there. But you can help the person who is talking to you understand what they’ve done wrong – possibly it is just their reaction to a great provocation – someone injured their pride and they fought back, like the man who was slapped on his cheek and punched back, when Jesus clearly tells us to simply turn the other cheek. And then, if they are sorry for whatever they’ve done, forgive them. Assure them that God will also forgive them if they ask God to be forgiven. Say, “I forgive you – and I know God also forgives you, or will forgive you.” And they begin to heal – and a step is taken for healing in the future because your friend will be less likely to respond in anger in the future. Simply saying “You are forgiven” is powerful healing.

But when might you say, “You are not forgiven.”? Perhaps when the Holy Spirit tells you that your friend is not the least bit sorry. For the whole purpose here is for people to recognize that they must be humble in front of God, recognizing that God has the right to set the rules and the power to enforce those rules, and the first and greatest rule and commandment is to love the Lord your God. And that requires a recognition that God is more powerful and worthy of respect than I am. We must bow down in Spirit, if not with our physical bodies.

Why does God care that we bow down to Him and His Son?

Because God knows and understands that a soul who will not humble himself or herself will grow more and more distorted by that pride over the centuries. If we will accept that God is wiser and more powerful than we are, we can be taught. No matter how messed up we are, over the centuries, God can teach us how to live well and how to be a pleasant soul to be around. But if we will not bow to God, God cannot teach us, and, left to our own devices, our soul will grow more twisted over the centuries.

Imagine the kind old lady who has practiced being kind for 70 years. Imagine how kind she will be after a thousand years of practice! Now imagine the gruff old man who has practiced causing trouble for 70 years. Imagine how evil he will be after a thousand years of practice!

God wants to guide us onto a better way. He wants us to be pleasant to be around in eternity. And we must bow down to Him and Jesus to be teachable.

That evening, those disciples who were there received the Holy Spirit and began to become men who would start the healing of the world through forgiveness.

But Thomas wasn’t there. Why not?

Thomas, the surviving twin, had shown himself to be a practical young man, a bit sarcastic. When Jesus said He was going to return to the Jerusalem area where he had almost been killed a few months before, returning because Lazarus was dead, Thomas had said, “We might as well go with Him to die also.” Thomas was loyal, yet practical. He knew what was likely to happen when Jesus showed up in Jerusalem.

On Thursday night, When Jesus started to talk about going to His Father’s house, and told the disciples, “You know the way to the place where I am going”, Thomas said to him “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

Practical, loyal, sensible. Thomas wasn’t into miracles; He didn’t care about visions or dreams. He cared about what he could touch and feel and see himself. He was practical. If he were living today, he would probably have made a good auto mechanic, a good chemical operator, a truck driver. Thomas wasn’t a dreamer, a visionary, a man who would write novels or motion pictures. He might write a book on “How to repair a Ford 460 V8 Engine” or “Build your own household solar energy system.” Thomas was a practical man.

And so, when Jesus died on the cross, Thomas was no where around. Thomas wasn’t hanging around the foot of the cross like John. When Jesus had been arrested late Thursday night, Thomas skedaddled. He knew he wasn’t going to fight a bunch of Temple guards. He left the area and hid out. Friday, he watched Jesus nailed to the cross, die on the cross, and be stabbed in the side by a Roman spear. But he watched from a distance where no one would see him or talk with him. He wasn’t going to get crucified by the Romans, too. He was practical about such things.

And so he was missing in action on Easter Sunday and nobody saw him when Jesus came back from the grave. For Thomas had never seen anyone else come back from the grave – except Lazarus. But that was special. You see, Jesus had the power to raise Lazarus. But if Jesus were dead, who could raise Jesus? It had been a great run, three years together on the road, wonderful times together, but it was over. It was time to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. Would he find a girl and settle down on a few acres of farmland up in Galilee? Or would he travel, maybe going down to Egypt to study under a different rabbi. Whatever it was, the Jesus part of his life was over. His hopes had been raised and then dashed. You can almost see Thomas sitting somewhere with a bottle – no, a large jug of wine.

And then, the other guys, they met him in the streets that week and they all said the same thing, “We have seen the Lord!” But you know how young men are together. They tease, they play jokes, they prank each other. It wasn’t funny, them all telling Thomas that Jesus was alive. He didn’t believe them. He was practical – Jesus was dead. He told them, each time a new disciple met him in the street, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” Thomas was very practical. But he did agree to join them the next Sunday evening for prayer.

And so that next Sunday, the disciples were there, all except Judas who was dead. Even Thomas was with them. They locked the doors – and Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” And then Jesus turned to Thomas and said, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

Thomas, the practical man, did the practical thing. He said to Jesus: “My Lord and my God!” You see, Thomas bowed to Jesus and accepted that Jesus was God – and Thomas’ Lord, the one he must follow forever.

And then Jesus gently, so gently chewed him out as He accepted Thomas back: “Because you have seen me, you have believed; Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed.”

The disciples stayed together several months before the persecution began with Stephen’s death. It appears that even after this persecution began, at least a core group of disciples remained in the Jerusalem area for several years, perhaps a decade or so, for they were still together when Paul and Barnabas come to Jerusalem to get a ruling on how difficult it would be to accept Gentiles as Christians. During these years, the assembled Apostles settled much of what is today Christian doctrine. Although they did not make the Apostles Creed – it was first written around 381 – they largely settled the ideas that it is based upon.

We don’t hear about Thomas, though, after the second chapter of the Book of Acts. He might have stayed with the others, or he might have moved on.

Early Christian tradition has it that eventually the Apostles cast lots and then dispersed to evangelize their areas. Thomas is said to have received Parthia, which is the part of Iran near Tehran in the north. He traveled with Bartholomew, and then traveled into what is today Pakistan and northwest India. Here, after a while he was attacked. He got onto a boat and according to the people of southwestern India, Kerala state, in A.D. 52 Thomas stepped off the boat and began establishing churches in southern India.

When we lived in Atlanta, a couple from Kerala, India moved into the house next to us. After some discussion, we found that they were believing Christians, from the church of St Thomas the Apostle, to whom they looked back to the founding of their churches. These Christians call themselves, “Nasranis”, which is derived from Nazareth.

Thomas may have taken a trip to Indonesia and also to China, but he returned to south India. He was martyred in the town now known as Chennai, formerly Madras, on the southeastern coast, around the year 72. His churches today have about 5 million members of the Churches of St Thomas.

But what does the story of Thomas the Apostle have to do with us today?

There has long been a tendency for us to separate two realms – there is the world of God and the world of humans, Heaven and earth. Thomas effectively believed this. Jesus had been on earth for awhile and now Jesus had returned to God’s world, to Heaven, and the door between Heaven and earth had slammed shut, just as it always did when someone died.

Thomas was very much a man of earth. He did not even expect Heaven one day – few did, for that was one of the ideas that Christ brought to us. In Thomas’ day, when you died, you were dead.

The Greeks believed in an underworld where you lived a terrible life, tortured like the guy who was sentenced to trying roll a huge boulder up a hill which always came crashing down on him just as he got to the top, or like the other man who had to fill a huge pool with water carried in a bucket with hundreds of holes in it. And to a certain extent, the popular Jewish imagination of the day had somewhat bought into this idea. But officially, when you died, you were dead. Life was over.

Thomas believed this, no matter what Jesus had said about a resurrection. And, you know, today people have a strange mixture of beliefs.

On the one hand, many people believe that everyone actually goes to Heaven except a few very evil types. If you aren’t a serial murder or Adolph Hitler type, you’ll go to Heaven. This is what most people believe when they are healthy and happy. This is what Thomas believed when Jesus preached it on the roads while they walked around the Holy Land.

On the other hand, when sickness comes, when they are lonely, when they are lying awake in the middle of the night listening to the clock tick away and sirens in the distance, most people believe and worry that when you die, you’re just dead. That’s the end. That is what I see with many people in that time between the death of a loved one – and the funeral itself. There is a tremendous hopelessness that many people have when faced with death – their death or the death of a loved one. And this is what Thomas believed when Jesus died on the cross. Dead meant dead.

Yet when we hear the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection – and his promise that His followers will rise again, we can begin to have more hope. We want to believe, we want to be joyful, we want to say, like Thomas, “My Lord and My God!”

So often we, like Thomas, are practical. We also have to see some sort of proof. We have to see the miracle, to touch the miracle, to feel Jesus’ hands and put our fingers in Jesus side where the spear thrust into Him. We want to believe, but there is doubt with us simply because – we are practical men and women.

And so the story of Thomas is our story. How can we get that assurance that we can truly live again?

C.S.Lewis, a powerful Christian mind, wrote “The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe”, a delightful book that is simple enough for children to understand and deep enough for adults to love. There are four British children who have been sent from London into the countryside during World War II to stay at an old professor’s house. Edmond and Lucy are the two youngest children. Edmond is always lying and playing tricks and generally can’t be trusted; On the other hand, Lucy is honest, sweet, never causes trouble, and generally is a great kid.

Lucy finds something miraculous, Edmond joins her and also sees the miracle. So they go back and Lucy tells the older children. Edmond says it didn’t happen, that Lucy is lying. And indeed, the miraculous thing sounds pretty far-fetched. So they take it to the old professor, who asks, “Who usually tells the truth?“ The older children answer: “Lucy.” The professor continues, “Who usually lies?” They respond, “Edmond”. The professor concludes, “Then why don’t you believe Lucy?”

Do you want assurance that miracles can happen? Ask people you know and trust, who always tell the truth as they know it. Ask them what they have seen of Jesus, of God, and of miracles. Join us here and listen to the stories of the miracles we’ve witnessed. Listen to their stories and our stories, trust them and store them up in the cupboard of your mind. Eventually, those stories will burst out of that cupboard because you’ve tucked away so many of those stories and late one night you will get out of bed, get on your knees, bow your head and say, “My Lord and My God!” And your healing will begin.

And if you already have seen miracles – be ready to tell others about those miracles. Don’t exaggerate, don’t go overboard. Just tell people what you have seen and heard, what you felt and what you smelt when the miracle happened. Tell of the day when you were delayed just enough that you missed the wreck. Tell of the time when the tumor was diagnosed, the church prayed and the tumor went away even before chemo started. Tell of the day the money arrived just in time to keep the checks from bouncing. Tell of the day when God spared your friend. Let your testimony become the reason your friend, your relative, your neighbor, even your enemy bows to Jesus and says, “My Lord and My God.”

For Thomas did not believe when the first apostle spoke to him. Thomas did not believe when the second apostle spoke to him. Thomas did not even believe when he walked into that room and the doors were locked behind him that Sunday evening. But then Thomas saw a miracle – and practical Thomas believed!

So what do we believe?

Let us join together in reciting what we believe, as expressed in the ancient Apostles Creed (UMH #881)

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth;
And in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord;
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead, and buried;*
the third day he rose from the dead;
he ascended into heaven,
and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic** church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.

The Core Message

He is Risen! He is Risen! He is Risen!

Today is Easter, the day we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And through that Resurrection, we who believe know that we will also have a resurrection and eternal life with Jesus and the Father, forever and ever.

Today, I’m going to stick to basics. I’m not going into any detailed teaching. But I’m going to focus upon the core message of Christianity, the center of what we believe, the part of the Christian message that is most important.

If you are a believer already, perhaps today’s talk will help you lead a friend, a relative, or a neighbor to Christ. If you are not a believer, I hope this talk will lead you to begin to believe – or at least to investigate further. And if you’ve just stumbled on this talk because a friend, a relative, or a neighbor has shared it with you, I hope you’ll take a few minutes to watch or listen, because your friend cares deeply about you and wants to share something deeply personal with you.

First, let me tell you about myself. I grew up in St. Marys, the son of a chemical plant worker who was the safety manager at his plant and a bookkeeper. I learned from their examples that facts are facts – and facts are important. When I went to college, I majored in physics – the most mathematical of the sciences. Once again, opinion had little place in my life – what were the facts and where was the logic? If you call yourself an engineer, a scientist, a medical professional, I think you understand. If you make your living with numbers or mechanical things or chemicals, you know that facts matter – is that cloud of vapor steam or a poisonous gas? Is the lug-nut tightened enough – or not? Does the patient have COVID or not? Is there enough money in the checking account to cover next week’s bills? Is there enough fuel in the tank to get to Charleston?

After college, I worked fifteen years in the factory automation business, helping companies improve quality, reduce waste, or make things faster. Once again, only the facts mattered. My wife and I started an internet-based business. Every day, the question was whether or not we had money to make payroll or not. Later I taught math and physics at Parkersburg Catholic high school and similar classes at both WVU-Parkersburg and Ohio Valley University. What are the facts?

Here are the facts about Christianity:

Around the year 30, almost 2000 years ago, a man named Jesus of Nazareth began to walk around the Holy Land that is now Israel and the West Bank, teaching. He taught many things, but the most important – and the most controversial thing Jesus taught was that He was God’s Son – God walking on earth.

He said, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” He also said, “I and the Father are one.” He repeatedly said and did things that led the crowd around him to believe He was claiming to be God Himself – and they often picked up stones to throw at him because they considered these claims to be blasphemy, an outrageous insult to God. Yet Jesus persisted in these claims, and based His credibility largely upon these claims being true.

Eight men for whom we have names – Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, James, and Jude and one unknown writer, the writer of the Book of Hebrews – they all wrote separate books about Jesus and His teachings. All of these books were written within 75 years of Jesus death by men who mostly had known Jesus personally. One – Luke – did not meet Jesus, but he specifically spoke with Paul, several of Jesus’ students, and Jesus’ mother to write his detailed account of Jesus’ life.

One thing which these nine writers all agreed upon was that Jesus died, most likely on Friday, April 3rd, of the year 33 and then, miraculously, on Sunday morning, the 5th of April, Jesus rose from the dead and began appearing to, speaking to and teaching, eating food and even cooking breakfast for groups of his students. He was seen alive after his death by over 500 people in at least eleven different appearances at different places to different people in different situations. And this is of utmost importance, for if these reports of the resurrection of Jesus Christ are true, then His claim to be God’s Son is true and every word He said is of extreme importance for our lives!

But how do we know these are the facts? How do we know this happened? After all, have you ever seen anyone resurrected? – And notice – we are not talking about a temporary heart stoppage that can be restarted by any Emergency Room physician with a charged up defibrillator. No, we’re talking about a man beaten, losing much blood, hanging on a cross for hours, and being stabbed in the side by a Roman guard, just to make sure he was dead. We’re talking about a man being taken down from the cross and put in a tomb for between 36 and 42 hours. We are talking about true death here. And yet the nine writers all insist that he rose from the dead.

Finding out the facts about a past event is difficult, even today. Even today, with all of our cell phones and television cameras, with our huge investigations, many people are not sure what happened at recent events. Even going back just 60 years, we aren’t sure how many gunmen there were the day John F. Kennedy was shot. So investigating events almost 2000 years ago is difficult, very difficult. How would you investigate?

But this much we know:

After writing their accounts of Jesus Christ separately, some accounts within ten years of the events, some as much as 70 years later, these nine writers traveled and spoke to many people about what they had seen and heard from Jesus. These 27 scrolls and letters were then gathered together about 100 years later, after circulating and being copied and recopied by the young churches in the Roman world. It was only then that these 27 different documents written by at least nine men became know as a single book, the New Testament of the Bible.

Other documents were considered, but rejected, usually because the documents could not be traced to a close associate of Jesus or a friend of an associate. Many were rejected because they claimed special, secret knowledge of Jesus – a man who famously said that he did nothing in secret. (Some of these documents are like the book that claims to have been written by an anonymous former CIA agent who claims to have once seen a file that had a secret source who said extraterrestrial aliens actually shot Kennedy. Sure!)

Each of the nine writers appears to have been Jewish, except possibly Luke. Each of the nine writers definitely believed that Jesus was the Son of God. John claimed to be his best friend; Paul was for a time His follower’s worst enemy, chasing them down and throwing them into prison – until Paul had an encounter with Jesus. One may have been Jesus’ brother; another was a fishing boat captain before he met Jesus. Several were Jesus’ students.

And there was another man, a man named Josephus. When the great Jewish revolt happened in the late 60’s that resulted in the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, Josephus was for a time a general for the Jewish armies in the north, but after his capture, wrote a detailed history of the Jewish nation for the Romans. Josephus was not a Christian – but mentions the Christians as a particular group that began in the 30’s.

Another man, Pliny the Younger was a governor of part of Greek-speaking Turkey in the early 100’s, and wrote letters which we have to the Emperor describing Christians and asking for advice on how to handle them.

A hundred years ago, we had great missing pieces of evidence when we looked at the archeology. Where, for example, was Nazareth? Where was a particular road which the documents say Jesus traveled upon? Where was any evidence outside the Bible documents that a man named Pontus Pilate even existed, the man who condemned Jesus to death? Where was the Pool of Siloam, a bath in Jerusalem where Jesus sends a blind man to wash and recover his sight? None of these could be found.

But the particular road was found during WWII when aerial photography found it, exactly as the Bible said. Nazareth was found and excavated around 1960. Also, about the same time, a plaque was found with the right dates, indicating that Pontius Pilate had donated money for a particular building in Israel. And in 2004, the Pool of Siloam was found by Israeli archeologists. Many other places, people, and items mentioned in the Bible documents have been confirmed over the past hundred years by archeologists. In fact, the New Testament documents have been confirmed to be extremely accurate. The men who wrote these documents were precise recorders of where they traveled, what they saw, and apparently who said what. As near as we can tell from all the evidence, they understood that what they were recording was extremely important – and so they tried to be equally precise, doing an excellent job by the standards of the time.

But how do we know the Bible documents haven’t changed over the centuries?

In the 1920’s, a fragment of parchment was found with a group of scrolls found in southern Egypt, apparently buried in the desert for safe-keeping. That fragment, known today as the Ryland fragment, contains part of the Gospel of John document that, based upon the shape of the letters, was written in western Turkey around the year 110, possible about 30 years from the original document.

For the New Testament documents were so important that they were hand-copied time and again by professional writers, known as scribes. These highly paid professionals used a number of tricks to keep from making errors, such as counting the total number of letters, figuring out which letter was the middle letter in a document, double and triple checking the copy, and similar devices. They were not in a hurry – they were professionals with reputations to uphold.

We have today over 5000 hand written copies of New Testament documents from ancient times. They are regularly compared against each other. There are also over 20,000 copies of sermons from ancient times – it has been estimated that the entire New Testament could be reconstructed just from the quotations found in the sermons. And, although differences are sometimes found and controversies arise over the precise translation of a particular word or phrase – the core idea that Jesus was Son of God, claimed this, died and then rose from the dead is not in dispute.

And this is why over 2 Billion people worldwide claim to be Christians. This is why scientists such as Isaac Newton, Gregor Mendel, Louis Pasteur, politicians such as Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, performers such as Fred Rogers, Bono, Tom Hanks; writers such as Dorothy Sayers, Harper Lee, Daniel Defoe, C.S. Lewis, JRR Tolkien all claimed Christianity.

For Christianity’s central message, the core message of Christianity of a part of God who came to earth, taught us that God loves us and died to show us how much God loves us, and then returned from the dead to show us that death does not have to be the end; this message changes people for the better.

When we realize that Jesus claimed to be God on the earth, died specifically because of that claim, and came back to life, we begin to study his other teachings much more closely, recognizing that these teachings are very important simply because of who the teacher is.

And Jesus taught that the Father, God, loves us very much, as His children. Jesus taught us to not return insult for insult, to not fight our enemies, but rather to accept insults, to pray for our enemies, to do good things for all people. And we do this because it makes us stronger. We do this because Jesus asked us to do these things. We do this because it is what is meant by following Jesus.

And Jesus told us that all who follow Him will receive the gift of eternal life with Him and the Father. We will not be alone, we will not be left to struggle through death by ourselves, we will be loved and have companionship.

If understanding the facts about Christianity is difficult, now we come to the second barrier in our lives. It is hard to accept that miracles happen, especially if we have never seen a miracle. It is hard to accept that a good, loving God exists, especially if we have been taught that gods and miracles cannot exist. It is particularly hard for men and women who have always been strong and self-sufficient to accept that there are some things that we cannot do by ourselves.

Yet the smartest, the wisest, the most open-minded of people recognize that they cannot defeat death. Even the billionaire men of Silicon Valley who plan to freeze their bodies or put their consciousness into machines know deep down, that they can only delay death for, at best, a few years. You, my friend, know that you do not have the knowledge or the wisdom to keep your soul alive an hour after your brain dies.

And so, accept that there is solid evidence, as solid knowledge as we can hope to have, that almost 2000 years ago a man claimed to be the Son of God, taught us how to treat each other, was tried and convicted of claiming to be the Son of God, God Himself on the earth, was brutally beaten and nailed to a cross for this claim, and died there on a Friday afternoon. And also believe that on Sunday morning, the day we celebrate today, Jesus of Nazareth came back to life, appeared to many people, spoke to them, taught them, ate with them, prepared breakfast for them, and eventually was seen by over 500 people, of which eight or nine wrote down on very expensive parchment what they thought was valuable for us to know.

For if Jesus is the Son of God, what He says defines good and bad, life and death, living eternally or suffering eternally. If Jesus is Son of God, He must be listened to and followed!

Jesus is alive. He is Risen from the dead. Hallelujah!

He is Risen! He is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

I ask that you share this far and wide to all your friends, your relatives, and your neighbors. For Christ has risen from the dead and we are to tell the world!

Amen!

The Crowd Cheers

It was early on the 9th day of Nisan in the Jewish year 3793 – the day that we would call March 29, A.D. 33, when the crowd began to stream down the road from the Mount of Olives toward the eastern gate of Jerusalem.

The evening before had been remarkable. That evening, after sunset had cleared away the Sabbath laws, Jesus of Nazareth and his disciples had come to the house of Simon the Leper in Bethany on the eastern side of the Mount of Olives. There, Jesus was the guest of honor at a feast catered by Martha, probably this time with some enthusiastic help by her sister Mary. Their brother Lazarus was also honored, lying beside Jesus beside the low table on the cushions that were common at the time as they ate the feast. Lazarus was honored for having come back from the dead – he had been dead four days! Jesus was honored for having brought Lazarus back from the dead.

These were just two of the remarkable things. The others?

The feast, honoring a Jewish rabbi, was held in the home of a leper! What a remarkable location! Jesus had come to home of an untouchable man!

And then, there was the point in the evening where Mary took a pint jar of pure oil of spikenard, very expensive perfume worth an entire year’s wages – how much do you make in a year? – and she poured it over Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair, an amazingly intimate act that set tongues wagging. The house was filled with the smell of the perfume! Judas Iscariot, the disciple who held the money bag, was outraged – the perfume should have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor. They could have raised a year’s wages - $30,000 in 21st Century money! But Jesus simply said that the poor would always be with us, but that He would not be around much longer. And everybody wondered what He meant. Was He leaving town?

And since Bethany is only a couple miles from Jerusalem, many people had gone out to see Lazarus and Jesus, wanting to see with their own eyes that Lazarus was truly back from the dead, raised about ten days earlier by Jesus. And both of them were there. Alive. Laughing together.

So that morning, when the crowd began to walk back to town, everyone had someone they wanted to tell about Lazarus and Jesus and the miraculous story. And everyone wondered if the teacher from Galilee, the man from the rural north could actually be the Messiah, the savior figure who would kick the Romans out of Jerusalem and Judea, and restore the kingdom of David to its rightful place in the world. Was this the man who would make Jerusalem great again?

As Jesus and his closest disciples approached the crest of the hill, He sent two of them to get a donkey’s colt. Once again, Jesus knew exactly what the disciples needed to say to borrow the animal without trouble. He climbed on the animal and then He, His disciples, and the rest of the crowd walked down the hill toward Jerusalem, waving palm branches they pulled from the trees on the side of the road.

The road from the East that crosses the Mount of Olives is visible from much of Jerusalem as it crests the hill and comes down toward the Eastern Gate. And so, the group of people began to attract attention. In fact, they sang and chanted as they approached with words from Psalm 118:

“Hosanna”

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Blessed is the king of Israel!”

The Temple of God was just the other side of the wall. In fact, there was a gate that opened directly into the Temple area. So it is likely that the leaders of the Temple heard and saw this victory parade coming. In fact, the Gospel writers say that the parade was upsetting to those very leaders, and so they decided to remove Jesus at that point. But the crowd was so supportive of Jesus that they could not make a move on Him.

Why was the crowd so excited? Why were the leaders so upset? Why did things change so drastically that week?

Human beings, throughout history, have demonstrated time and again that we are mostly timid, lazy creatures who want other people to think for us – and do all the difficult things for us. In I Samuel Chapter 8, the elders of Israel gathered together and went to Samuel, the High Priest. They asked for a king to rule them. They were tired of being ruled by God through the High Priest, or through temporary judges. They wanted a king like everyone else had.

Samuel prayed to the Lord. The Lord told him that the people had not rejected Samuel, but they had rejected the Lord as their king – just as people throughout time have rejected God as their king, preferring to keep God at a distance, as far away from them as possible, safely in Heaven on a throne that they never plan to see until after they die. God makes people uncomfortable, for encountering God and bowing to God means that we are NOT God, we are not truly in control of anything, we are not the masters of our own lives. We prefer our rulers to be kings who can die, presidents who can lose their re-election, men and women like us whom we can remove from office when we don’t get our own way. We don’t really want God to rule us, because we can’t get rid of God if we accept Him as our Lord. WE have to change. WE have to do what God asks. WE lose our ability to micromanage our ruler when we accept that God is our ruler.

Kings have rights, you know. They can announce taxes. They can draft young men into the army. They can draft young women to be household servants. They can take your land, your livestock, your cash. And it doesn’t really matter if you call your king a governor, a mayor, a president, or an emperor. The man or woman who rules on earth has all those same rights. And that ruler may be strong, that ruler may be wise or stupid, that ruler may be concerned about the people or about the ruler’s legacy. Kings have rights.

God told Samuel to warn the people about the rights of a king, how he would have taxes and take young men and women to fight in his army and work for him. But the people refused to listen. Their response is instructive: “No. We must have a king over us. Then we’ll be like all the other nations: our king will judge us, go out before us, and fight out battles.”

They wanted to the king to “go out before “ them and “fight” their “battles”. They thought that they would have a champion to do their fighting for them. Somehow, they forgot that they would still have to be in the battles, standing shoulder to shoulder with their friends. They thought that the king would handle it. And in ancient Israel, God led Samuel to anoint the very tall, strong, man Saul, who became the first king.

Even today, we want a political leader who will “take it” to our enemies. We want political leaders that will show the other side of the political battleground the truth by showing up the hypocrites on the other side, by finding the cutting insults, by taking away the industries and jobs which support the other side financially and by providing new jobs at higher pay for “us.” And the wise among us realize that this happens on both sides of the political divide. The wise realize that this is gradually splitting the nation. The wise realize that treating politics like high school football rivalries is bad in the long term. The wise realize that no government is much worse than bad government by the other side. The wise realize that a much worse other side exists who loves nothing more than to see people who should be working together falling into fighting amongst themselves instead.

In ancient Israel, it wasn’t long before King Saul came up against the leader of the other side, a 9 ft tall man named Goliath who had chosen the side of the Philistines. And Saul, a brave man, wasn’t an idiot – Saul knew that in hand-to-hand combat Goliath would beat him. So Saul kept the entire Israelite army camped on one side of a ravine, daring the Philistines led by Goliath to cross the ravine where the Israelites could take them as they climbed up the steep slope toward the Israelite army. You see, it took the entire Israelite army playing defense to hold back Goliath and the Philistines. Saul was concerned because he feared Goliath.

Today, we have formed political armies we call “political parties”. And we still look for the Goliath for our side who will lead the attack on the other side, whichever side we’re on. And we fear the Goliath of the other side who will lead the attack on us.

In ancient Israel, though, a young boy, David, realized that God fought on Israel’s side – if Israel would remember this. And so, young David attacked Goliath and destroyed him with God’s help. David, you see, did not rely upon an earthly king to fight his battles – He relied upon God. And after some time, David became the most successful of Israel’s kings.

At the time of Jesus, the crowd once again wanted a king to fight their battles, this time against the Roman army. And they believed that Jesus was the man who would become the king, the king of Israel in the sense of becoming a military leader. And so they cheered for Him as they marched down from the Mount of Olives. Here was the man who would destroy the Romans for them. Here was their new Goliath – although they called Jesus the King of Israel.

The leaders of the Temple and the religious council were concerned because they feared the Romans. They were afraid that a riot would break out, an insurrection. They were concerned that the palace of Pilate, the Roman governor, would be stormed by a group of rural extremists. The were concerned that, while this might defeat or kill Pilate and the local garrison, they understood that the Romans had legions upon legions with which to return to Jerusalem. They were concerned and feared that the Romans would come back, destroy the Temple, and kill those who led the Temple – themselves. They were not stupid or evil or fools. They had legitimate concerns. But they did not accept that Jesus was the Son of God. They understood that He was simply a charismatic man, a popular leader of the ordinary people. And so they determined that the best way to stop an insurrection was to kill Jesus. Quickly.

Throughout history, the story has repeated itself. A man – or sometimes a woman – rises in popularity. A political group chooses this person to be their king or queen, to fight their battles for them. The Emperor Napoleon fought the battles of the democracy-and-liberty-focused French against the kings of Europe – until he lost. Geronimo fought the battles of the free-living Apache against the American army – until he lost. Hitler fought the battles of the poverty-stricken German people against the French, the British, the Russians, the Americans – until he lost. You can undoubtedly name many other leaders who became war kings – until they lost.

Jesus was not the crowd’s puppet leader. He was not going to fight a war against the Romans until He lost. For Jesus was already born to be a king – and he was already a king. His kingdom had already begun with His core followers. He told Pilate that His kingdom was not of this world. He had plans to conquer the Roman Empire. Indeed, He had plans to conquer the entire world. But it was not going to be a conquest by the sword and the chariot. And it certainly was not going to result in the destruction of Jerusalem by Roman armies because of a revolution led by Jesus.

The conquest that Jesus planned would be by the heart and the Spirit. He would change the hearts of men and women, boys and girls, and by changing their hearts with His Spirit, he would build a huge army of people who would fight the war against evil locally with the deadliest weapons of all – their tongues, their love, their hugs, their submission to every injustice done to them by the enemy. They would win because they could not be killed – only their bodies could be destroyed.

The Spirit would guide and coordinate the attack upon the enemy. Forget trumpets, forget runners with messages, forget semaphores, radios would never be needed, codes were not necessary – the soldiers of the Spirit would communicate by asking the Father for help and the Father would send help and guidance where it was needed.

It took years and decades and a dedicated group of Christian believers for the army to grow. Meanwhile, a group of Jewish Zealots rebelled against the Romans around the year 65, defeating the Jerusalem garrison – and the Romans destroyed the city in 70 A.D. when they returned with extra legions of men. A second rebellion in 130 A.D. meant that the Jews were exiled from Jerusalem, never to return until 1967.

And through the ages, Christian men and women listened to the Spirit, followed the teachings of Jesus, and conquered, mostly without bloodshed. The Roman Empire became ruled by Christian Emperors. The Spirit conquered Europe, then America. Even now it is conquering Africa and Asia.

But people still look for a champion, a king to fight their battles for them. A king to lead them into Jerusalem. But what the people didn’t realize was that their king was always with them, and had been from the beginning. Jesus was not needed at the head of a procession riding down a hill on a donkey’s colt. For God the Father and God the Spirit were already there. No, Jesus did not plan to conquer Jerusalem and the Roman garrison by killing Romans. He planned to conquer Jerusalem and the Roman Empire and the rest of the world by dying in front of Roman soldiers on Friday afternoon – and then, by rising from the dead on that Sunday morning He would begin the counterattack as one person after another surrendered to Him, acknowledging that He had defeated the common enemy of all humans – Death was destroyed by Jesus Christ. The Romans surrendered one-by-one to follow Jesus over the centuries.

Even today, there are those who fight political and personal battles by the swords of insult and embarrassment – there are those who want to destroy their political opponents, there are those who want a king to fight their political battles for them. There are even those who fight in the name of Jesus. But they are not following Jesus. For Jesus has always taught that converting enemies into friends through gentleness, persuasion, and love is the way to win wars – not by attacking with weapons or even with words.

For Jesus always fought by healing His enemies. He fought by giving them the choice of following Him and living forever – or by continuing to fight Him and being destroyed by Death. For the true Christian realizes like David that Goliath cannot harm us, for Goliath can only destroy the body – while because we follow Jesus, we live forever. Spread the eternal Good news of Jesus – this is far more important than any politics that only affects this life.

When you and your team is doing well, it is worth remembering that the crowd loved Jesus on that Palm Sunday. They cheered for Him and told of His great deeds, His healings, His teachings, His raising of Lazarus. But the crowd was fickle. By Friday morning, the crowd was chanting “Crucify Him”. 

And hours later, Jesus was dead.

The Gong Has Sounded

Saundra and I like to watch mysteries. In particular, we like watching British mystery shows, because their plots are generally much more complex than American shows. Right now, we are watching the Touch of Frost series, about a detective inspector in a small city north of London.

One of the things we enjoy about these shows is how the clues lead one way, then another, with the tension gradually building up, narrowing down the suspects to just a couple who could each have caused the murder. Then, all of a sudden, a particular clue falls into place and the detective smiles because he has now realized that he’s got the murderer, that it is time for the arrest. It is like a gong has sounded, telling the detective and us that the story is almost over and its time for the grand finale.

Sometimes things like this happen in real life, too. We come near the end of our senior year and finish up a key test and we know that we will graduate – we just have the ceremony ahead of us. We meet the girl of our dreams and one day she asks how many children we’d like to have and we know that she will say yes when we ask her to marry us. We are looking for a home and a particular house has the garden plot that we’ve always wanted and we know that this house will be our home.

When Saundra and I were living in Atlanta about 20 years ago, we decided to move back to the Mid-Ohio Valley. But in Atlanta, everybody had a horror story to tell of the house that didn’t close. We visited this area in early March – that year there was still a foot of snow on the ground. We found a home we like near Lowell, OH, and began the process. We brought a load of stuff up on May 1, but we were still uncertain whether or not the house would close the following week. On the way up, Saundra turned to me and asked if we could have a lilac bush, which don’t grow well in Georgia because the weather is too hot. It seems that when Saundra was a little girl, she would take blossoms from a lilac bush in the early afternoon and put them on her pillow, closing up the room as she left. Then, when she came back later to go to sleep, the fragrance would have filled the room. I said, “Of course you can plant a lilac bush. We’ll own the place.”

When we arrived with that load of stuff on May 1, there in full bloom under our bedroom window was a huge lilac bush and beside the door to our warehouse building where Saundra would spend time with our business was another large lilac bush in full bloom. The gong had sounded – God had said this would be our home – and it was for ten years until we went into full-time ministry and moved to Clarksburg.

Saundra was not expected at her first church in Clarksburg for a few weeks. She was very nervous as to whether or not she was truly called to ministry. And when she went to that church – beside the door was another blooming lilac bush. BONG! Under her leadership with God’s guidance, that little church tripled in numbers over the next three years.

In our Gospel reading from John 12, Jesus is teaching at the Passover festival. This spring festival doubled or tripled the population of Jerusalem as a hundred thousand or more pilgrims came from all corners of the Roman world to sacrifice and worship at the Temple of God. While about half of the Jews in the Empire lived in the Holy Land, the other half lived scattered about the Empire from Egypt and Turkey to Italy, North Africa, even Spain and France, which the Romans called Gaul. Most of these scattered Jews spoke Greek as their primary language, dressed like Greeks, and were culturally much more Greek than the Jews who lived in the Holy Land who spoke Aramaic.

Additionally, scattered around the Holy Land were some cities with large Greek populations, both Jewish Greeks and pagan Greeks. One of these cities was Bethsaida in Galilee, the hometown of the disciple Philip, who was even named after Alexander the Great’s father, Philip of Macedon.

So while Jesus is teaching at the Passover festival, a group of Greeks who had come to worship at the festival came to Philip and said, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

They don’t merely want to look at Him. They could do that from a distance, but they would like a private discussion with Jesus. Philip goes and tells Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. Andrew also bears a Greek name which means “manly”. Why not take the Greeks straight to Jesus? There are a couple of reasons. First, there was a general idea that speaking to a non-Jew would pollute a rabbi, much the same way many people today feel that some people are not good enough or worthy to speak to a minister – and how some people don’t want their minister to be seen speaking to certain types of people. Should a minister spend time in a bar or with a group of drug addicts? Many people still believe the answer is “no”, but the example I see with Jesus is that these places are exactly where I should spend much of my time. But Philip and Andrew did not know whether or not Jesus would want to talk to pagans – or even non-Jews who were trying to worship at the Temple.

The other reason they were uncertain is because Jesus had clearly said His ministry was to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. The Greeks were not of the house of Israel – although their ancestors may have come from Israel – or they may have been from pagan ancestry, but they had come to worship at the festival. It was a difficult call for Philip and Andrew – will Jesus want to speak to these Greeks?

They both went and told Jesus. It is unclear whether or not the Greeks are tagging along or whether they stood at a distance. But the message from Andrew and Philip sounds the gong for Jesus. Three times previously in John’s Gospel, Jesus has said that it is not His time. Three times, Jesus tells people to back off because God has not completed things for Jesus. But this time, the fourth time, the gong sounds for Jesus. BONG! He announces: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” He is ready for the cross.

But why? Why does Jesus suddenly start talking about His up and coming death? To understand, we must delve a bit deeper into the mind of Jesus. And in doing so, we will find that although Jesus was far above any other man as Son of God, He often used information that was available to any person who truly wanted – or wants – to understand God’s plan for history.

Throughout His ministry, Jesus often referred to details found in Scripture – which at that time was the Old Testament. In particular, Jesus had an encyclopedic knowledge of the first five books of the Old Testament – the Pentateuch – and He also commonly referenced the Book of Isaiah the Prophet.

In this case, Jesus has in His mind Isaiah 49, particularly verses 5 and 6. He had referenced Isaiah 49:5 before:

And now the Lord says—
he who formed me in the womb to be his servant
to bring Jacob back to him
and gather Israel to himself,
for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord
and my God has been my strength—

He has been focused upon Israel. For example, He says that He has come to the lost sheep of the House of Israel to a Syro-Phoenician woman, who begs for healing as if that healing was a scrap of bread given to dogs around the family dinner table.

But now, a group of Greeks has come to listen to Him. Gentiles want to talk to Jesus and find answers. And Isaiah verse 6 comes to mind:


6 [The Lord] says:
“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”

Perhaps Jesus knew that if He died too soon, His death would be seen as just for the house of Israel – with all the pagan Gentile nations of the world left out. Perhaps Jesus knew that if He went too soon for the cross, His life would be soon forgotten. But perhaps Jesus understood and had the faith in what had been revealed 800 years before to Isaiah, that Messiah had come, not just for the good people of Israel, not just for the lost sheep of Israel, but for every man and woman and child in the entire world who chose to look up to Jesus, to believe in Jesus, to follow Jesus! Because these Greeks had stepped forward, persistently, trying to speak to Jesus, God was ensuring that through Jesus, salvation would reach the ends of the earth! IT WAS TIME FOR THE CROSS!

"Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds."

Jesus would be that kernel of wheat, buried in the ground, producing many seeds of life through His death.

"Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me."

Are you willing to give up your life for God’s plan, to serve Jesus? We think so often of the big, grand ways we can give up our life for Jesus, standing boldly in front of anti-Christian terrorists, jumping on a grenade to save our friends, conducting a suicide mission against a would-be dictator. But there are countless people who have given up their lives for God’s plan, serving Jesus. There is the woman who teaches the children’s church and gives up an hour every Saturday evening to prepare a lesson about Jesus for them. There is the man who takes his hard-earned cash every week and puts more than his share in the offering plate every Sunday, who puts not 10% of his tax return in the plate, but 25% and with it chooses to take a vacation to the local state park instead of a Floridian beach. There is the man who chooses to spend two nights a week practicing gospel music to sing at festivals. There is the teen who gets up every Sunday morning early so that the Facebook Live will be functioning at her church. There is the woman who picks up 5 other people every Sunday and takes them to her church. There is the college kid who makes short TikTok videos about Christ and posts them every week. There is the pastor who almost falls asleep driving back from the trauma hospital because she has been visiting a frightened family, and she needs to preach at three churches the next morning. That is how to give your life to serve Jesus and keep that life for eternity.

Or something even simpler, a four-step process:

1) Read a bit of your Bible every day. Just 15 minutes or so.

2) Pray everyday for the salvation of a dozen people whom you don’t think know Jesus.

3) Plan carefully something to say to these people by phone, text, or in person about something Jesus has done for you in the last week or two. It doesn’t have to be long – just a couple of sentences, like “Jesus sent me money just when I needed it”, or “God gave me just enough time for me to get to my appointment yesterday.”

4) Take time to listen to people when they want to talk about problems, or have questions about life.

Read, Pray, Plan, and Listen. That’s all. You will get closer to Jesus and help other people get closer to Jesus. That’s giving your life to serve Jesus.

Jesus, after the Greeks had arrived and the metaphorical gong had sounded, continued: “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour."

Jesus knew His destiny was upon Him. What is your destiny? Has God been calling you to do something scary, something glorious, something you have special skills for that God has developed in you years ago? Step forward and say, “This is the reason for my life!” At this point, Jesus could have turned from the cross, but He knew that it was for this very reason He came to this hour, and so He shouted:

"Father, glorify your name!”

"Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him."

"Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine."

It was another sign that Jesus was the Son of God, God on the earth, as He had repeatedly said. If you watch, God will speak to you and tell you when you are at the right place and doing the right thing. For Saundra, God spoke through lilac bushes. She settled into our home and then into her ministry. Confirmed by God booming Voice, Jesus then turned to prophecy. He first spoke of Satan.

"Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out." 

And then He spoke of Himself:  "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 

"He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die," John adds

For the cross lay before Him. And He looked past the cross to the joy that lay on the other side, for He knew that He would be the one to defeat Death, that all people could know that Death could be defeated.

How about you?

It is a pleasant thing to think of, that someone died so that we could live. For over 75 years, we have celebrated the sacrifices that our grandparents made during World War II, fighting in Europe and the Pacific to protect us, dying on battlefields we sometimes visit in movies and occasionally in person. But those people gave up their lives, and they died. Whether or not they will live again doesn’t depend upon their bravery or heroism, it doesn’t depend upon whether or not they were American or Canadian or British – or German or Italian or Japanese. It doesn’t depend upon anything they did – except whether or not they decided that they would choose to follow Jesus the Christ as a pattern for their lives.

Jesus is to be our pattern, our example, the one we are to follow, our leader.

The writer of Hebrews, in chapter 5 tells us that Jesus was appointed as our high priest, forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.

In Genesis 14, as Abraham returns from battle against a group of bandits, a puzzling man named Melchizedek, whose name means “the king of righteousness” comes out of Salem, the city that would become Jerusalem, and greets Abraham with gifts of bread and wine and blesses Abraham. Abraham gives Melchizedek a tenth of all the spoils of the battle, a tenth of all the loot. Melchizedek is also known as both the king of Salem and the priest of God Most High. We don’t know his parents – we don’t know his descendants.

And the writer of Hebrews – and King David, the author of Psalm 110, tells us that Jesus was appointed as our high priest, forever, according to the order of Melchizedek. Jesus, has become the high priest who is entitled to connect God and man together, the connection that was broken in the Fall, when we were kicked out of the Garden of Eden. And He will pray for us in John chapter 17, just outside another Garden – the Garden of Gethsemane.

If you will follow Jesus – be sure that you are truly following Jesus. For Jesus, as the gathered disciples – and the Greeks - learned the day the Greeks came to Philip and Andrew, Jesus is not just another philosopher who gives us guidance for living a good life. Jesus came to die that He might draw all people to Himself, the entire world, all people. Jesus did not intend a group of followers who rejected people of different speech or nationality. No, Jesus intended to draw to Himself good Jews and prostitutes, corrupt tax collectors and bar tenders, Greeks and Romans, Persians and Arabs, Chinese and Mexicans, British and Irish, Germans and Italians, Africans and Russians, Hindus and Pakistanis, doctors and fast food workers, business owners and the unemployed, single mothers and drug users, politicians and drug pushers, alcoholics and lawyers, and even farmers and fishermen.

The most exciting time of the Christian year is upon us. March 28 is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. Come join us at the 10:30 am service inside our sanctuary. Come meet each other. April 4th is Easter – we will have a Sunrise service in the lower parking lot at 7 AM, followed by breakfast together for the first time in two years. And then, at 10:30 Am, we will have our Easter service. Come and join us. Bring a friend! Come and find out what it means to be with joyful people in a joyful place. Wear a mask, yes! But come and join us safely as we go to the cross.

For spring is here and the seed of wheat that died and lay underground is ready to blossom here at Cedar Grove United Methodist. Jesus Christ is alive and so are we!

Sing with us, Now the Green Blade Riseth 

Lifted Up

Throughout human existence, there have been various concepts of being healed, or, as the ancient languages are more properly translated, “being made whole”, for that is the proper sense of the ancient words we often translate as “heal” or “healing”. It is a more complete sense – and I think it is fairly easy to see the connection, for a person who is healed has been “made whole” in some sense. The ancients just looked a bit broader than we do today, looking not just at physical healing, but physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual healing as necessary to make a person whole and complete.

In addition, throughout history, people have looked at various ways that healing happens. At first, healing either happened or it didn’t happen. Then, men and women arrived who developed family recipes for healing drinks, food, and lotions. Other people said that to be sick meant we had upset certain gods, goddesses, or spirits, and sacrifices had to be made to those gods, goddesses or spirits.

Then, beginning seriously about 500 years ago, people began to look for natural causes of illness and the science of medicine began. Drugs and surgery have gradually become the healing method of choice. Yet mature medical doctors will tell you that they have seen healings that they simply can’t explain by science.

For, you see, since the Israelites came out of Egypt, there has been another method used to heal – in specific circumstances and specific places. That method assumes that many illnesses have spiritual roots, and a strong belief that God will heal us will cause actual healing.

In the Book of Numbers, after several small rebellions against the leadership of Moses and Aaron, Israel begins to attempt to move toward the Holy Land from the wilderness. The country of Edom blocked them with a large army, and another man, the king of Arad in the wilderness attacked the Israelites and captured some of them. The Israelites made a vow to God and wiped this country out. And so they proceeded to try to travel around Edom through the wilderness, as described in Numbers 21.

But the people were upset with the conditions. They complained, “There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!” Complain, complain. They complained enough the Lord sent poisonous snakes among them who bit the people and many of the people died. So the people came to Moses and said, “We sinned with our complaining. Pray that the Lord will take away the snakes.” So Moses prayed and God answered.

You see, the Lord knew that the people had lost faith in Moses – and in God. So the Lord said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. And those who came by and looked up at the bronze snake lived.

And our scientific 21st Century minds want to know WHY? Why should looking at a bronze snake on a pole heal a person of snakebite? WHY? In fact, even today, the symbol of a snake on a pole is the symbol used by medical doctors.

We have to dig deeper. You see, the snake symbol wasn’t critical, the pole wasn’t critical, It didn’t even matter that it was made of bronze. What WAS critical was that the people of Israel would look UP to the symbol in hope and faith that they would be healed by God.

This isn’t commonly recognized by our scientific society, but God is sovereign. God created everything – including us – and including all the various ways that we can be injured or become ill. Germs were created by God. Even flies and mosquitoes were created by God. And God has control of our immune system and can choose to heal each of us when God chooses. But God does not heal us, God does not make us whole, just because we ask.

God is sovereign. That means that God has all the power under God’s control. Unlike those who believed in magical healing, unlike those who believed that a particular god or goddess could be bribed by an offering, unlike those who believe that a certain potion – or spell – or drug – or procedure will necessarily give a cure, Christians have always remembered that God is in control and has wisdom far beyond us.

And so, in this case of the snakebites, God wanted to teach the Israelites this lesson, that God has the power to send snakes – and to heal snakebite. But it was important for the Israelites to recognize the authority of Moses, that Moses operated under God’s authority – and that God could decide whether or not they lived or died. They could still leave the camp – but God would not protect them as God had protected them since the night they were asked to kill the lamb, put its blood on the doorposts and lintel of their front doors, and roast and eat the lamb as the Angel of Death flew over Egypt killing the first born of those who did not believe, while the Angel “passed over” the families who believed and obeyed.

The snake worked. The people came to the snake and looked up at it, implicitly accepting that God was in control and that Moses was appointed by God.

And about 1600 years later, as described in John 3, Jesus said that He, Himself, “the Son of Man” must be lifted up just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in Jesus. Looking up to Jesus means that we have faith in Him, accepting that God is in control and Jesus is the Son of God, God’s representative on earth. Eternal life means a complete healing, being made complete.

And so we turn to Jesus for healing today. Our loved one, indeed we ourselves are frightened, anticipating a possible death – and we look upon Jesus for healing, trusting that He can and will heal us. And He does – sometimes quickly, extraordinarily, in a few minutes – sometimes He uses surgery and drugs and a few days – and sometimes He gives us complete healing in the next life.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Have you looked upon the Son? Have you looked up at Him from a position where you are lower, humbled, bowed down, accepting that He is much wiser and stronger and more power that you are?

And do not forget the next verse, verse 3:17 “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.” This is the verse for all people who are frightened of God, who are scared that God will punish, all those people who have prayed for someone to live -a grandmother, a father, a wife, a child, a dog named Old Yeller – and for whom Jesus said, “I think it is better for all concerned to heal this person (or pet) in the next life.”

For God did not send his Son Jesus to condemn us, but to save the world through Him. You know, despite your hurt, it isn’t all about you and your needs. Sometimes someone else needed desperately to learn a lesson about God so they could later join grandmother in heaven. Sometimes, we need to learn some lessons about living without our wonderful puppy. Sometimes, we have leaned too much on our friend’s connections with God and not enough on our own relationship with God, like the people of Israel had relied on Moses’ relationship with God and needed to learn to look up in faith at something that represented Him on earth.

Jesus said that “Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” It is time for people to come into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. We cannot hide in the shadow of our friends, our parents, our grandmothers and grandfathers for ever. One day, we must walk out of the darkness and into the light, so that we can remember that God can see us, everything we do.

It is only then that, remembering that Jesus came to save us and not condemn us, that we can look to God and say, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. Will you take me back?” And through Jesus, through choosing to follow Jesus, God will accept us back into His arms.

For, as the Apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 2, we were dead in our transgressions and sins. All of us lived in our sins, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desire and thoughts. Just as all the people, we were by nature deserving of God’s wrath.

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.

Grace is God’s free choice to do good to us, especially when we did not deserve good, but deserved punishment.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

It is our faith that we contribute. We look upon Jesus, just as the Israelites looked upon the bronze snake and we have faith that Jesus will rescue us forever. God has said that Jesus is like the bronze snake, but instead of healing us from snakebite, Jesus heals us from death. Jesus makes us whole and give us eternal life.

You see, God’s power and love underlies all healing – sometimes by looking at a bronze snake, sometimes by drugs and surgery, sometimes by simply having faith that Jesus and God can handle it. For that is really what God wants out of us – to turn to God and God’s Son, choosing freely to follow Jesus, bowing down and accepting that God’s Son is so much wiser and more powerful that we are, that Jesus is worthy of being followed where no one else in this world is worthy of being followed.

And when we bow down and look up at Jesus, who has been lifted up – our healing begins. Every time we look up at Jesus, accepting that He is so superior to us, our healing continues. For our hearts reach their proper level – we who are arrogant become properly humble that Jesus should be followed; and we who feel worthless become properly joyful that God has thought us worthy of being saved.

Lift up Jesus. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Look up to Jesus with a deep faith that He will save your soul, healing you for eternity.

Let us sing, My Faith Looks up to Thee #452

Lord, Clean This Temple

All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name – It wasn’t always so. Today’s passage is from the early days of Jesus’ ministry, when most people, even in Jerusalem, were trying to figure out who Jesus was and most importantly, what authority He had.

Our Gospel reading from John 2 is a passage which is at least somewhat familiar to both Christians and most people who have grown up in America. Listen again as I explain this passage and its meaning.

It was almost time for the Jewish Passover. Every spring, at a time which was tied to the moon, the Jewish nation would celebrate a special meal, with special sacrifices at the great Temple of God in Jerusalem. This was not Solomon’s Temple which had been destroyed by the Babylonians when the people were taken into captivity about 800 years earlier, but this Second Temple had been built around 515 BC. The Temple had been completely renovated and vastly expanded with a program started by King Herod the Great, during a forty year period beginning about 15 years before Jesus’ birth. The Temple was the largest temple complex in the Roman world. Today, just the Western retaining wall remains, which you see on television as a place of prayer for Jews. The remainder was destroyed in 70 A.D. by the Roman army.

There was an outer court for the Gentles, non-Jewish visitors. There was a death sentence for Gentles who entered further into the Temple. The next inner court allowed Jewish women who could not pass into the next court which allowed ordinary Jewish men, the next allowed just Jewish priests, and then there was the inner area, reserved for the High Priest, who entered it once a year on Yom Kippur, the September Jewish Day of Atonement, when this man would wash, purify himself specially, and take a special offering of blood from a specially sacrificed perfect bull into the Holy of Holies. Before he entered, other priests would tie a rope securely to his leg. He would enter, and pour the blood on the Mercy Seat on the Ark of the Covenant, between the two Cherubin to cover any sins that Israel had committed that had not been covered by any other sacrifice. Why the rope? It was there in case the High Priest had done something wrong or sinful. It was there to pull his dead body out of the Holy of Holies – High Priests had been known to be killed suddenly by God if they were out of order – or had secret sin. It was a deadly serious job to make the annual sacrifice. That happened at Yom Kippur, just before the fall Festival of Booths.

But this was Passover week, the week when people from all over Israel came to make their sacrifice of their best bull, cow, lamb, or a pair of doves, depending upon their wealth. Most chose a lamb because that was what they could afford. Thousands of lambs were sacrificed that week in Jerusalem. They were remembering that night 1500 years before when the Angel of Death had flown over Egypt, the tenth of the plagues that God had decreed, the plague that killed the firstborn of the Egyptians and finally convinced Pharaoh to let Moses and the Israelites leave. But to avoid the Angel of Death, the Israelites had to sacrifice a lamb, take its blood and slap it on the doorposts and the over head lintel in the doorway of their homes, they roasted the lamb in the house that night as thousands of Egyptians – and unbelieving Israelites – died. And then, the next morning, the Israelites fled for the desert, following Moses, who was following a pillar of smoke that was God.

Jerusalem city had a normal population of about a hundred thousand people, but the city population would more than double for the festival – most people stayed about a week, crowding into the homes of relatives and guest houses. One of these visitors that Passover Week, perhaps in the spring of the year 32 was a young carpenter who had become a rabbi, a teacher. The man was named Y’shua. Joshua – or as the Romans eventually called Him – Jesus of Nazareth.  

Nazareth – indeed the whole northern area around the Sea of Galilee – was considered by the urban people of Jerusalem to be a place where hicks lived. The men of Galilee had a different accent than the sophisticated people of Jerusalem. And so the people of Jerusalem treated Galileans as people from Atlanta treat men from Alabama, or people from Pittsburgh or Columbus or New York treat men from West Virginia – they considered them uneducated, yokels, hillbillies, rednecks, and a little bit stupid. The city versus country rivalry is nothing new – no, it dates back thousands of years. Today, a country preacher would walk into the center of the Great Temple in Jerusalem. And He would not like what He saw.

In the Temple, mainly in the outermost courts of the Gentles, it had become common and the custom for people to set up booths and pens to sell visitors the cattle, sheep, lambs, and doves they might need, for some people showed up without the proper animals to sacrifice and would need to buy an animal or two, much as someone who had come to see a Broadway play today or attend a fancy restaurant might arrive without proper clothing and need to buy a more formal jacket. Naturally, these animals cost much more than buying the animal outside the Temple area.

It was also rumored that there was a scam going on – the animals had to be “without blemish”. Animal inspectors checked your lamb, and they were very sharp eyed, finding the smallest of spots. When your lamb was rejected, you would be referred to the brother-in-law of the inspector, who ran one of the animal booths.

Actually, there were additional booths for changing money. Unlike today, where the same money is used across America, and one coinage is used across Europe, in ancient Israel, many different coins circulated. Some were brought by Jews who lived in other parts of the Empire or even outside the Empire. Other coins were just acquired during normal trade. And the Temple required a special coinage be used, supposedly so “impure” foreign coins would not pollute or desecrate the Temple. So visitors always had to get their money changed – and the moneychangers took a significant cut.

And so when Jesus arrived, Jesus saw that these men and women who ran these booths and stalls were blocking people from getting close to God, from making the sacrifices that the Law of Moses required.

Today, there are still churches who do the same. How? Do we have people selling animals and changing coins in the entranceway? No. But perhaps a church has a dress code – men must wear jackets and women must wear dresses. Just to show respect for God? But the people of the church forget that there are many people who can’t afford a hundred dollars for a jacket and another hundred dollars for a woman’s dress – especially if similar clothes are also needed for the children. That’s why we say dirty blue jeans are ok.

Another way today’s church puts up barriers to people is to pass the plate for special collections – you only need to give $10 or $20! But what if I don’t even have $5 to give – I’ll feel embarrassed and probably won’t return. And so we leave the plate at the entryway so no one is embarrassed.

What are some other ways we put up barriers like the Temple did? Maybe every week the pastor says, “Open up your bibles to such-and-such scripture.” What if I don’t have a bible? That why we used to have bibles in the pews – and we shifted to putting the scripture on the overhead screen so people who have trouble finding Amos Chapter 9 don’t have to search through their bible to find it.

We probably have other barriers today – but we try to get rid of these barriers. Why?

Because Jesus, when He saw what was happening in the Temple made a whip out of cords and attacked the sheep, cattle, and shopkeepers. He flipped over the tables of the moneychangers and chased out the sellers of doves. Let me make this clear, it wasn’t the fact things were being sold in the building, it was the way the cost of getting close to God was being run up by the merchants. Unlike what many people think who place barriers in front of people – dress well, get rid of your tats, stop drinking before you can come to church - Jesus really wants to make it easy and simple to get close to God. Jesus wants everyone to come to God – just as you are!

Well, all this commotion from Jesus attracted some attention, as you can imagine. You can just see the merchants stopping behind a row of fences and yelling back at Jesus: “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” “WHO ARE YOU?” they asked. They wanted him to say that he had come from the High Priest or from the head of the Sanhedrin, the religious council. They would have accepted it if he was from the Roman governor or King Herod.

You know, the Gospel of John was never meant to be read just once. The Gospel was designed so that the first time you read through it, you are wondering who Jesus is, just like the people in the story wonder. But after you have read through once, you can go back and, knowing the ending, our eyes are opened and we can see much clearer who Jesus is. It is like one of those movies that moves so quickly we don’t really understand it until the end – and then we have to go back and watch it again to fully understand it. Like the masterpieces The Book of Eli, or The Shawshank Redemption, there is so much that doesn’t make sense until the end – and we have to go back and look again with our eyes opened.

The people asked Jesus to prove His authority to chase the merchants out of the Temple. And Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”

The people listening thought Jesus was talking about the magnificent Second Temple in which they were standing. They pointed out it had taken 46 years to build the temple – and yet you, Jesus, will raise it again in just three days?

John tells us that the temple Jesus was speaking of was his body. The disciples remembered this after He was raised from the dead, and then believed.

You see, Jesus is filled with God the Son. His own completely human body was full of God. And this is another tricky concept about Jesus we have to understand.

Jesus was a completely human man. Jesus was also completely God on the earth. After hashing this out for decades, the assembled bishops of the ancient church decided that Jesus had two natures – God and human – and they aren’t mixed together, He isn’t part God and part human, but His two natures are both completely present in Him. 1 + 1 = 1.  One God nature plus 1 human nature = 1 Christ.

And so, the temple of which Jesus spoke is His own body. For where can God be worshipped better than when we speak directly to God on the earth who is Jesus the Christ?

And this leads us back to last week’s discussion of the Spirit. For the Holy Spirit enters each Christian, typically at baptism, and so our bodies become temples of the Holy Spirit, and should be kept pure and holy temples, clean and in excellent condition. How is your temple? Is it clean and pure? Or is it dirty and grimy, in need of repair?

If Jesus came to you and said He’d like to live in your spare room, what condition would you put that room into? Wouldn’t you sweep it, vacuum it, clean the walls, repaint it, and put only the best furniture in it?

How about your body, your mind, your brain? The Spirit is living there.

And when we go back and think about Jesus cleansing the Temple to make it simpler for people to come to God…what do we do that puts barriers in front of people and keeps us from leading people to God?

Perhaps we only want to allow perfect sheep near us. I once knew a church which had such high standards that the only people who were good enough for that church were the people who attended…and the people who had left the church. They held one outreach event each year…they sent out letters to all the former members, most of whom had left 30 years before, and invited them to a homecoming event. And one or two would come every year, and then return to their current churches. Yet they would not invite the people in the neighborhood to any events. They had fellowship luncheons every quarter – but no community dinners. Those in the neighborhood weren’t Christians, you see, so they weren’t invited. Those in the neighborhood didn’t dress well, they didn’t speak well, they used foul language, they drank, they fought. Yes, I knew this church and then a few years later I met another church just like them. And then a third church.

But here, I am delighted to say, we encourage all sheep to join us.

But back to us as individuals. Jesus said to go to all people. Have we decided to select which people we will go to? Have you thought in your mind that a particular person might not be worth inviting to hear about Jesus? Is it because they are too poor – or because they are too wealthy? When was the last time you spoke with your doctor about the things of God?

Oh, I know we find friends who are just like us. But can that be a barrier to leading someone to Jesus? How about people who are new to this country? Saundra and I found great success when we made friends of international students at Marietta College. We made some great friends – and led several of them to become baptized Christians. You can too.

For Jesus is not the only person with the authority to chase evil out of the temple. If you love God, if you want to be close to God, God will support you getting closer to God or helping others get close to God.

What are the barriers you have put in front of yourself? Do you say, “I don’t know enough about Jesus to speak to people about Him?” Or do you say “I don’t know enough about Jesus to come to church?”

Either are just barriers that need to be removed, and you have the authority to remove those barriers. Come talk with me and we will help you remove those barriers.

For the barriers are usually, “I don’t think I know enough” or “I don’t think people will want to see me” or “I’m not good enough.” Or “I’m just uncomfortable and nervous about the things of church.”

Relax. You are welcome. Church is a place to learn, to make friends, to be with a group of people who are learning how to be good enough, to be with a group of people who once were uncomfortable and nervous and now can’t wait to come back here.

For Jesus cleansed the Temple so that anyone could walk in. And we believe that here. There are people here who have spoken to Africans in Africa about Jesus, People who have spoken with Saudi Moslems about Jesus, people who have led Chinese Communist party members to Christ, and people who have changed from being outspoken atheists to becoming teachers of the Bible. There are people who have given the homeless and the poor respect and helped the wealthy become humble. There are farmers and office workers and nurses and McDonald’s workers here. Some have worked in large corporations; others have run their own businesses, still others have been teachers or engineers or dentists or lawyers. Others have not worked much outside the home. Some are married, others divorced, others have never married, some have been married more than once. And their kids attend also, while others watch online on Monday evenings because they can’t make it on Sundays due to work. For, you see, all are welcome here.

Yet, we all still put up barriers to people – yet we are all working to take down these barriers we each have to others. Have you noticed that the world encourages putting up barriers to others, by insisting we speak of politics, of national origin, of race, of so many things to make sure we decide who is “okay” and who is “not okay”?

Jesus drove out those who would put barriers between people and God. We should drive out the barriers, destroying them ourselves – and we are working on that. That is the difference between the true follower of Christ and the pretender. We are trying to remove those barriers, welcoming all.

If you are listening to us but have not yet joined us, will you try to help us by stepping over the tables we have torn down, by climbing over the fences we are dismantling, by walking past the cow patties that we are sweeping out of our lives because we found they are barriers to helping lead others to Christ. Perhaps you can join us as we sing:  

Forgive us Lord