A History of Methodism Thought

We know the story of the Garden of Eden, how we were given firm instructions not to eat a particular fruit – we could eat any other fruit, but not that particular fruit, how the serpent played on Eve’s vanity, telling her that she could be like God if she ate the fruit, how she and Adam both ate the fruit and were kicked out of the beautiful garden to wander the earth, subject to becoming captive to sin and evil. Sin and evil have made people captive since then. We remember that story, right? 

Amos 6:1, 4-7; 1 Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31

A year or so ago, the news told the story of a family whose children had been raised in captivity. They were locked in the house, never allowed to go out, sometimes tied up, chained or caged. These children were prisoners in their own home. Eventually, though, one of the girls escaped and the authorities freed the children. It was only then that they began to truly live. I only hope that they learn to live free in Christ.

It reminded me of a story my wife told about a place she worked at which made made IV bags. They kept a group of test rabbits on site to inject with samples from the IV bags – nothing deadly, they just needed to make sure the liquids were safe for people, so they made sure the liquids were okay partially by taking samples and injecting the bunnies. One night, the power went out at most of the plant, so a group of workers, including Saundra went to see the bunnies.

Beautiful white bunnies in 2 foot cages. One of the men who worked in the area took a bunny out and put it on the floors. “Oh no! it’ll run away!” Saundra said, having seen many wild bunnies when she grew up in the mountains. But it didn’t run away. It hopped 2 foot, turned, hopped 2 foot more, turned, hopped 2 foot more, did it again and sat right there. It had been taken out of the cage – but it limited itself to the dimension of the cage that was there in its mind.

This is the way life is before we meet Jesus. We are slaves, prisoners, unable to truly live. Even after we are freed from our enslavement to sin, we still go through life in a cage that is in our mind. When will we learn to follow Jesus to total freedom and become the men and women that God truly planned for us to be? This is the purpose of following the path of holiness that God has designed for us.

Our reading today from Luke is less well-known than most. Jesus is telling a parable, an educational story. Jesus tells the story of two men – an unnamed wealthy man who wore purple clothes – the most expensive garments of the day – and had large feasts served to him every day. Notice that this wealthy man flaunts his wealth - and he ignores his neighbor. He doesn't harm him - he just ignores him.

The neighbor was a poor man named Lazarus who was covered in sores. Note that this is NOT the Lazarus that Jesus resurrected, the brother of Mary and Martha. This Lazarus was simply an unknown beggar who lay at the rich man’s gate, awaiting the scraps from the wealthy man’s table. Notice that the wealthy man has apparently ignored Lazarus’ condition, even though the man begs at the gate to his house. To further emphasize Lazarus’ terrible condition, Jesus says that even the dogs would come and lick Lazarus’ sores. The dogs showed more compassion on Lazarus than his wealthy neighbor.

Poor Lazarus died and was taken by the angels to be with Abraham. The wealthy man also died and was buried. Notice the difference in Jesus' wording.

The rich man finds himself in Hades, which is the name of Hell used in the Greek language. There, he looks up and he could see Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. And so the formerly wealthy man prays to Abraham to have mercy upon him and to send Lazarus to him to give him just a drop of water because the flames have him in agony. He wants Lazarus to serve him.

But Abraham tells the man, “Child” – notice he calls him “Child”, a measure of the wealthy man's immaturity. "You got your good things during your life and Lazarus got evil during life. Now things are reversed.” But even more so, there is a great chasm, a valley between the wealthy man and Abraham so no one can pass between the two.

So the rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus to the rich man’s father’s house to warn his five brothers. Once again, he wants Lazarus to serve him.

But Abraham tells him that they should listen to Moses and the prophets. The rich man says “if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent. “

And Abraham replies. “No, they won’t be convinced even if someone rises from the dead”.

Look what we see here. We have a man who is flaunting his wealth and man who is suffering. The rich man goes to a fiery hell and the poor man goes to be with Abraham, clearly in a pleasant place.

They can see each other and speak – at least in this parable – remember that it is an educational story, and doesn’t necessarily mean that those in hell can see those in Heaven. They find out their end is permanent – don’t count on someone in Heaven to rescue you if you are in Hell. In fact, Abraham shows a certain wisdom. If you won’t listen to Moses and the prophets – in essence, the Old Testament – you won’t listen even if someone comes back from the dead.

So how do we end up with Abraham and not with the wealthy man in Hell? What is necessary for us to go to the “Good Place” and not to the “Bad Place”? (And yes, I’ve watched the TV show.)

To understand salvation, I’d like us to go back in time to the early church and work our way forward.

In the Book of Acts, we see the early church growing like gangbusters. They grew rapidly, probably because they heard passionate testimony from the 120 or so people who followed Jesus the last year or so of his life on earth, the men and women who had seen Jesus die and then saw him alive. Paul tells us that over 500 people actually saw Jesus alive after that first Easter. The followers of Jesus were passionate and serious, joyful and loving. They received the Holy Spirit and tried to do what the apostles told them Jesus wanted.

Over the next decades, those original witnesses died, and so the New Testament was written to preserve what Jesus had said. Soon, simple creeds were appearing which helped people remember what was important. The earliest which had widespread usage we know as the Apostle’s Creed. Later, the Nicene Creed was adopted because it was more specific. Both Creeds are commonly used among many Christians of different backgrounds - not to replace the Bible, but because they are much shorter, easily remembered synopsis of belief.

The church grew and eventually the elders in five cities began to lead the church in different regions. Jerusalem for obvious reasons, Antioch from where Paul and Barnabas and Silas were sent on missionary journeys, Alexandria, the center of learning in Egypt became a center of Christian study and teaching, Constantinople became the capital of the eastern Empire, and, of course, Rome was the capital of the Western Empire. Eventually, Rome tried to push its weight around, and there was a split between the Eastern churches and the Western Roman Catholic church, the Roman “Universal” church, for that is what "Catholic" meant in the language of the day. "Universal". This split occurred around the year 1054.

Things continued in this way until the 1500’s, when new churches split from Rome. The Lutheran church in northern Germany and Scandanavia, the Anglican church in England – eventually known in America as the Episcopal church, the Reformed and Presbyterian churches all spun off of Rome during the 1500’s. 

Another important group were the Mennonite churches, named for Menno Simons. It is from the Mennonites that the Amish split off a hundred years later. It was the Mennonites who, for the first time, rejected the baptism of infants and insisted that only adults were candidates for baptism. For 1500 years, the various churches had held that infants not only could be baptized, but should be baptized. For 1500 years, the various churches had held that baptism was legitimate by sprinkling, by pouring, or immersion. Now, the Mennonites, the Amish, and the modern Baptists began to insist that only immersion baptism of adults was legitimate, contesting a tradition that dated to the First Century AD and had been supported by both Eastern and Western and Protestant churches.

All of the new churches saw themselves as reforming a Catholic church that had gone wrong. They all went back to the Bible to try to understand what was the right answer about how to end up with God and not go to Hell. Wars were fought, because the people of the day understood that the answer might be very important for themselves and their children, their grandchildren. They wanted to get it right. They felt they had to get it right and so were willing to die in war over this.

In the 1700’s, many new churches were formed, but for the sake of our story, I’ll focus upon two men, John and Charles Wesley. The younger man, Charles was a poet – you will see many of his 4000 hymns in our hymnal. Older brother John was an highly educated, intelligent, immensely practical man, educated at Oxford, who didn’t care about many of the traditional issues of theology – John just wanted to understand how to ensure people avoided God’s wrath. John wanted to make sure people did not go to Hell. John wanted to make sure his followers were okay with God. So he began a renewal movement for the Anglican church, the Church of England, the church that we know in America as the Episcopal church. His followers became known as Methodists.

He walked outside of the church and began to preach at mines, at factories, and in city parks. He took the people who came to him and organized them into weekly classes that met on Tuesday, Wednesdays, or Thursdays. In these classes, they studied the Bible and helped each other stay on the straight and narrow. If you had a drinking problem, the men in your class would help you stay sober. If you had a problem with cussing, they’d help you keep your mouth shut. If you grew depressed or sad, they’d cheer you up. And if you refused to follow the straight path, after warnings, they’d kick you out. If you came back, they’d put you in a backsliders class. For the Methodists that the Wesley brothers founded were serious about Heaven.

What was their Method and path? Let me compare it to competing views. And please note that I am simplifying a bit, but not much with these views.

At the time and today, the Catholic church said that salvation comes only through belonging to the Catholic Church and taking the seven sacraments beginning with baptism, for that was how you joined the church. All of the new churches rejected this view, for Martin Luther had pointed out that Paul’s letters talk about faith in Jesus Christ being the critical idea to avoid Hell, not the works performed by priests.

At the other extreme was the view of the group who became known as "Free Will" Baptists. These people believed at the time and today, that you must be in a state of grace, a state where your sins have all been confessed before you die. To this group, the man who gets the piano dropped on him must not cuss before the piano kills him, or he will go to Hell. It is like walking a tightrope over Hell.

At still another extreme was the view put forth by the group that would become known as the Southern Baptists. Here, they believed that a public profession of faith in Jesus was necessary, that baptism was only a public announcement of whose side you were on, and that “once save, always saved.” Nothing more than your original public profession of faith was ever required to avoid Hell, no matter what you believed or did later in life.

But John Wesley thought carefully about salvation and developed what is probably the deepest view of salvation going.

First, Wesley said that we are totally depraved at birth and do not want to know God. We are all born in rebellion to God. But God goes before us and puts people in our path to lead us to Him via Jesus – perhaps our parents, our schoolteachers, friends, and acquaintances. John and Charles’ mother Susanna did much of this for John and Charles. Then God leads us to the point where we are given a gift of salvation – we can accept this gift of salvation or reject it, God has put it on the table in front of us. Nothing we did brought us this gift – it has nothing to do with how good we are or how bad we've been – we are all bad in God’s eyes, but he offers us the gift for us to accept or reject. It has nothing to do with anything we've done or anything other people have done. The offer of the gift is completely because God is generous and loving.

If we accept the gift, God justifies us, declaring us not guilty of the sin of rebellion, of treason to God. We may choose to be baptized – or our parents, being older and wiser and followers of Jesus, may choose for us to be baptized in the same way they choose for us to be inoculated against deadly diseases, they may choose for us to be baptized to receive the Holy Spirit and be inoculated against death. For that is the primary purpose of baptism, it is the laying on of hands to receive the Holy Spirit, our Guide through life who changes our heart and allows us to desire good and to follow Christ. Our heart is changed through baptism and God's action upon us. Not our action: God's action.

And then, God begins to work upon us to help us become the blossoming Christian, like a tulip bulb that is beautiful when still closed, but is even more beautiful later in its life as it opens up. We learn to follow the gentle voice of the Holy Spirit, to follow the Word of God who is both Jesus Christ and the Holy Scripture, and we begin to follow the path of holiness and we blossom.

Two mistakes are often made by people.

There are those who believe that God has no further requirements other than a profession of faith and all is right for ever more. That is like saying that a baby must just be born to be alive. Yes, this is true - yet if a baby refuses to eat, to learn, to walk, to grow – it will not have a fruitful life. It must grow and learn to run! God wants us to have a fruitful Christian life, and so He asks us to learn to walk the path of holiness so that we can become fully mature Christians who can run! This is why we come to church and why we study, and why we attend Bible studies. This is why we should never settle for simply professing our faith.

The other mistake is to believe that Christianity is all about adhering to a particular set of moral laws. That is not Christianity – that is what it means to be Jewish. We learn to follow certain laws because that is how we saw Jesus doing good to others and worshiping God the Father. But the laws are not as important as learning to act as Jesus would act. Jesus broke traditional interpretations of the laws of Moses by healing on Sundays. Instead, He always did good. Focusing upon the Law, the Torah, the Mishnah is learning to be Jewish, not Christian. Following Christ’s example and being guided by the Holy Spirit to do good is what Christianity is all about.

As John Wesley came to the end of his life, his movement began to come from England to America. And so, he appointed two men to lead in America. Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury. These two men brought together the Methodist clergy in America in Baltimore at Christmas time of 1784. It is from them that the American Methodist church grew. There was another man at that conference who would be very important, Phillip William Otterbein. Otterbein and Martin Boehm founded the United Brethren church, using a German translation of the Methodist Book of Discipline for German speaking Christians in America.  Also working along the same lines in the American German population was Jacob Albright, who founded the Evangelical Church in the early 1800’s.

Eventually, the Methodist church split over the power of the bishops into the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Protestant church, and then into northern and southern branches before the Civil War over slavery. But they came back together in 1939. In 1946, the United Brethren and the Evangelical Church came together to form the Evangelical United Brethren, the EUB’s, and then combined with the Methodist church to form the United Methodist Church, for they had the same basic beliefs throughout the years since Otterbein, Coke, and Asbury had all come together in Baltimore in 1784. (By the way, the United Brethren split way back in 1875 over a constitutional question, that’s why there are still United Brethren churches around who are not part of the United Methodist Church.) And there are also Wesleyan Methodists, Free Methodists, and Evangelical Methodists, all of which trace their roots, like the Methodists and the EUB back to John Wesley’s ideas about salvation. We have to search carefully and be quite picky to find things the Methodists believed that were different from what the EUB believed, because both groups followed the Wesley’s ideas from the beginning. They merged because they were already close cousins.

Back to our shared Wesleyan view of salvation:

Imagine you are walking along and you are led down a path to a gate. This is God’s "pre-event" prevenient grace leading you to the gate, which is your declaration that you believe Jesus is the Son of God, that He died on the cross and came back to life, and that He loves you and has the power to give you eternal life. There is a Person waiting there at the gate to walk with you and guide you the rest of the way. Maybe your parents introduce you to the Person – maybe you go through the gate before you ask for the Person. The introduction to the Person is baptism. But the Person is the Holy Spirit, who will walk with you and guide you down the path for the rest of your life.

And as you walk down that path through the woods of life, sometimes the path will be clear, sometimes the path will be hard to see. You will often be on the path, you will often step off the path. But as long as you are trying to follow the path – and remember to listen to the guidance of the Holy Spirit and read the Word of God, which is the map to the path - you will eventually get back on the path and safely reach your goal. It is only when you walk off the path and no longer care about following the path that we would say you have lost your salvation. It happens, but not to people who are trying to follow Jesus. If you are worried about your salvation, you have not lost it. It is only when you tell Jesus and the Holy Spirit to get lost that you become truly lost again. It happens, but rarely. It takes another choice. As St. Augustine said, “Have hope – one of the thieves on the cross went to Heaven. But don’t presume – one of the thieves did not go to Heaven.”
Back to our story of the wealthy man in hell and poor, suffering Lazarus who is with Abraham in a pleasant place. Lazarus was a relatively common name, the name being a transformation of Eleazar, one of Aaron’s sons who became high priest. 

Yet what happens soon afterward Jesus told this parable? A real man named Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha dies from sickness, Jesus then raises him from the dead about two weeks before Jesus goes to Jerusalem, where Jesus is killed and then is raised from the dead. Yet we find few repented because of Lazarus, just as Abraham said. In fact, those who plotted to kill Jesus expanded their plot to include killing Lazarus if possible. But they were not successful in this.

Many years later, Paul wrote to Timothy, his protege about these things, the trade-off between godliness and wealth, between losing our faith and doing good:

6:6 Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment;

6:7 for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it;
I’ve never seen a U-Haul behind a hearse. Have you?

6:8 but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these.

If we truly love God, that is all we need. This was St. Francis’ rule – The Franciscan monks worked for their daily bread, clothing, and a place to sleep. But they didn’t take money, because then they would trust in their money for tomorrow instead of God.

6:9 But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

6:10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

Shall I list the famous Christians who have been snared by their love of money, of fine clothes, of large mansions, of the need to bring in constant donations for the television ministry?

6:11 But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness.

Righteousness – being right with God. Godliness – imitating Christ. Faith – trusting in God. Love – caring for and helping others. Endurance – continuing through difficult times. Gentleness – interacting through soft words and touches rather than through harsh words and violence.

6:12 Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
Remember the day you were baptized! Look back at the things you declared!

6:13 In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you 14 to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 which he will bring about at the right time--he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. 16 It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.

6:17 As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.
And so I speak today to us who are rich, for each of us is wealthy beyond the dreams of any person from the time of Jesus. Don’t be stuck up, don’t trust in your employer or your 401K or social security, but trust in God instead.

6:18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, 19 thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

And so I remind us of Paul’s words. Do good. Be rich in good works. Be generous and ready to share so much that people will find us remarkable.

You see, my friends, God richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. We do good, so that we may take hold of the life that really is life.

Like the bunnies that Saundra saw at work that night, God has taken us out of the cage. This is what the purpose of the path of holiness is. We must learn to hop down the path, learn to run free, run to pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness – all those good things that were the birthright of people before the Fall in the Garden. Godliness – truly, we can be like God in our attitudes toward others – but we can achieve this only in a good, wholesome way when we bow down to the true God – God the Father, God the Son who is Jesus Christ, and God the Holy Spirit.

And so, let us follow the Word of God and listen to the Holy Spirit. Let us believe that Jesus has the love and the power to save us, and let us accept the Holy Spirit through baptism, that we and our children may live forever. Is there a good reason to wait? I can’t think of any.

On the Beach at Normandy

This is the story of how the Ascension of the Lord, the day when Jesus returned to Heaven after teaching His disciples for forty days - follows one man's story, a man who walked onto the beach at Normandy on June 6, 1944 - 75 years ago.

Acts 1:1-11 - Audio Version; Ephesians 1:15-23; Luke 24:44-53

Audio Podcast of this

After the first Easter, after Jesus’ death and resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples at least eleven times that we’ve counted in the Bible. And reading between the lines of the Bible, from what the disciples wrote, it appears that Jesus sat and talked with them for many hours during these forty days, teaching them many things before He left them to return to His Father in Heaven. Luke pays particular attention to this day, for Luke wrote both the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts – two  of our readings today.

And the story is simple. Jesus gets the disciples together – not just the twelve, but a whole big group of perhaps 120 men and women. He leads them out of Jerusalem, up the Mount of Olives to Bethany on the other side of the hill, while talking. He tells them to go back and wait in Jerusalem a few days until they receive power from the Holy Spirit, and then they are to tell people what they saw – to be witnesses of the great events of Jesus’ teaching and miracles, his death, his resurrection, and his appearances after his resurrection, which, when you put it all together is proof of God’s great love for us and all of our friends, neighbors, and family. And the last thing Jesus talks about is that we are to go and tell people about all this.

And then, he floats up to Heaven, the disciples just keep staring up like when you let go of a balloon and the balloon floats up, up, up into the clouds! And about this time, a couple of angels appear standing beside these men and women who are staring at the sky and those angels tells them “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” And so everybody worships Jesus and returns laughing and singing in joy to Jerusalem, where they go into the Temple and bless God for what God has done…Their friend and teacher had left, but promised he’d return again for them. What joy!

But there was also a bit of fear. They were alone! Their leader had left them, and they began to realize that the entire success of the Jesus movement would lie upon them. In particular, Simon Peter felt the weight of Jesus leaving, for Jesus had told him to take care of his sheep. What would he do, as the men and women around him joyfully walked back to Jerusalem. What should Peter do next? For Peter had led a fishing boat as captain, but this was something altogether new and different. Peter was about to lead his small band of friends in the invasion of Satan’s world. He had only about 120 men and women who had followed Jesus…would they follow Peter’s leading as they encountered the full force of the Roman Empire? More importantly, did Peter have the faith that this Holy Spirit would give him life-bringing advice, blowing at his back as Peter met with evil? Would the Holy Spirit provide the support that Peter needed?

I was thinking this week about a friend of mine from college days – Scott. As a little boy, Scott had his first run-in with evil. Have you ever seen one of those Zombie movies? Scott grew up about a quarter-mile from the house where “Night of the Living Dead” was filmed, one of the original Zombie movies. The movie zombies walked in the field near his home! It really affected Scott - I can’t think about him without thinking about Zombies – and Zombies are all the rage with some people. I was driving along and there was a bumper sticker that said, “I love Zombies”. You know zombies – you kill them, but pretty soon, give them a few minutes and they start to move again. Give them five minutes and they’re coming after you again.

Scott was fascinated by Zombies back in college. And he was fascinated by the bizarre. He used to record every TV show that was weird or strange. He particularly liked “The Twilight Zone”, where every week we saw some unusual – but made-up stories that taught us a lesson. Scott tried to tape every episode. Often, the hero of the made-up story would find himself or herself alone in a strange location, and they would have to decide what to do.

I want to tell you a true story today, about an unusual man who had learned many good lessons and then found himself all alone with many men’s lives depending upon the decisions he made. It is a true story; a true story about a man named Ted.

Ted was born to wealthy parents who lived on Long Island. When he was just a child, his father often taught him. Oh, Dad didn’t teach Ted how to read and write. Instead, Dad taught Ted about history. As Ted later said, it wasn’t the usual dry history of dates and mere facts, though. It was an exciting history, a history which had stories of men and battles. Dad and Ted would be out walking around, and Dad would start telling another story about another great leader and another war. Every time they got to a battle, Dad would draw the entire battle out in the dust with the tip of his umbrella. Furthermore, Dad asked Ted what HE would do in the situation. Ted began to believe that HE could be one of those great men. It was as if Ted was getting trained for something God would do with him later in life. And Ted was being trained.

Dad bought Ted a rifle when he was nine or so. Just to test it out and show his son it was real, Ted’s Dad fired the gun – inside the house – and the bullet went into the ceiling. Luckily for them both, Mom never caught them. It could have been very dangerous. But soon Ted became comfortable with rifles. He loved to hunt, but he also understood the military uses of the weapons.

Ted went to Harvard for college, and then into business, but he never forgot those history lessons. He even paid to go to a summer camp where he received some military leadership training, so when a war broke out, he was made a second lieutenant and eventually a major and finally as a lieutenant colonel. Since he had good money and his men needed new combat boots, he bought them all new boots. He cared about his men. He served well in that war as an officer – but he was wounded. He experienced physical pain. And while he was fighting, he got word that his father had died at home. He experienced emotional pain. Plus now, Ted had to learn things on his own – reading books and looking for places he could learn, since his Dad would not be able to teach him any longer.

After the war, he went back into business and politics, but every couple of years, he would go to another class or two and learn more about fighting wars and leading men. But he always cared about his men. He even helped found the American Legion. 

Ted spent some time in Puerto Rico as the governor of that territory, learning 20 words of Spanish a day so he could understand the problems of Puerto Rico, which is an island where most people speak Spanish, and then he spent some more time in the Philippines as the governor of that territory, which was controlled by the United States at the time. After a few years in politics, he went back to business running a couple of important companies. He had found those history lessons and war fighting lessons very valuable in teaching him how to lead.

Then, another war broke out and he went back to soldiering, this time as a colonel. He soon became a general.

He led troops in major landings on beaches in North Africa and Sicily and Italy and Sardinia, solving problems and telling men where to attack. But a couple of higher ranking generals, George Patton and Omar Bradley, decided that he cared too much for his men and that this hurt discipline when they were between battles. So he was removed from his command and sent to England to prepare and plan for the great invasion that was coming that summer.

He asked his commanding general several times if he could go to the beach with the first group of soldiers, but his commander was concerned about his age – after all, he was 56 years old and would be the oldest man to hit the beach. Finally, Ted put his request in writing and his commander reluctantly approved it – he said later that he did not think Ted would survive the day.

So 75 years ago this Thursday morning, on June 6, 1944, early before dawn, he landed with his troops on a beach. He was one of the very first men off the boats. Immediately, he went with a handful of soldiers and checked out the approaches to the beach. They had landed in the wrong place – a mile or so too far south! Nothing was where it was supposed to be – the whole plan needed changing! So Ted said, “We’ll start the war from right here!” and changed the plan and then told all of his soldiers about the new plans while being shot at.

There were enemy troops on the hill overlooking the beach, so he took some soldiers and went out under fire. After some hard fighting, Ted and his troops controlled the beach and the hill.

For the rest of the day, more soldiers landed on the beach, every hour or two more and more soldiers landed, more and more tanks landed, reinforcements were pouring onto the beach, wave after wave of men arriving to help out Ted. And as they landed, Ted calmly told their commanders exactly where their new objectives were, where to go and how to get there. All the while, bullets and artillery shells were landing around, sometimes sending dirt clods landing on Ted’s helmet. One solder later said that he had been scared until he saw General Ted walking around calmly and decided that if the general was calm it couldn’t be that bad. All that teaching that Dad gave Ted had come in handy. And for all this, he won the Medal of Honor for bravery under fire.

Now, some of you probably know by now who I’m talking about.

Yes, it was Teddy Roosevelt –but not the President Teddy Roosevelt you’ve all heard about. It was General Theodore Roosevelt, JUNIOR. DAD was the Teddy Roosevelt who had charged up San Juan Hill in Cuba in 1898, leading the Rough Riders Calvary charge. DAD was the man who had become President. Dad was the man for whom the Teddy Bear was designed after. His son Ted, Teddy, Junior, was the Commander-in-Chief of the first wave of the invasion force that landed at Utah beach on D-Day on June 6, 1944, 75 years ago this Thursday morning.

Now, there are several things that we have to notice about this story.

First, parents should notice that Ted’s father intentionally taught Ted Junior what he considered important. Now every father teaches his sons – and every mother teaches her daughters. Actions speak very loudly and teach our children. But what do you intentionally teach your kids? Do you intentionally teach your children about what you consider important? Things like trusting in God, being brave, being a leader, never lying, making church the most important thing on Sundays?

Second, though, the senior Roosevelt taught his son many things without ever meaning to, Teddy Sr. lived his life the same way he wanted his son to live life. His actions also taught Ted the same things his words taught his son. Don’t you think that Ted, Junior, knew how his father had bravely ridden up San Juan Hill during the invasion of Cuba? After all, the boy had been eleven years old when Dad led that cavalry charge. The boy had learned the lesson well - and led the charge up to take the hill at Normandy. He had learned what his father meant by character – by demonstrating it time and again. He watched his father and listened to what other people said about his father – and he learned more from his father’s actions than he did from what his father said. But his father's words helped things make sense.

Roosevelt, Senior, became President. But he didn’t play by the corrupt rules of most politicians. He did what was right – even though it cost him two elections. Ted, Junior, didn’t follow the ordinary rules, either. He was the only general to land by sea with the first wave of troops – and that had required several verbal requests and a written request to get permission. He had argued intensely for him to be there to make sense of the chaos that is combat, to solve the inevitable problems, to adjust the plans when things weren't the way the planners had assumed. Finally, his boss had agreed to him hitting the beach.

Let me go back for a minute to General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr on Utah Beach in Normandy. General Ted’s boss, the 4th Division commander, Major General Barton, arrived later that afternoon after things had quieted down a bit. Roosevelt had absolutely everything under control. He had done what he was supposed to do. Problems had been solved on the spot, objectives were being taken, the new plan was working – and Barton was tickled pink! Barton sent in a request for a medal for General Ted and told Eisenhower how well General Ted had led. Because of this, Eisenhower prepared to promote Roosevelt to Major General and orders were cut to put him in charge of the 90th Infantry Division.

Unfortunately, Roosevelt died of a heart attack 5 weeks after the invasion on July 12th. He received the Medal of Honor, the army’s highest award, and he is buried at the Normandy Cemetery. Both Omar Bradley and George Patton were pallbearers at his funeral.

Ted did what his father had taught and practiced in front of him. If anything, he exceeded his father’s military accomplishments. Dad, President Teddy Roosevelt, SR was a real soldier. And Ted - Teddy Roosevelt, JR followed and was also a real soldier, like millions of other men and women who fought in that war, World War II and like millions of other men and women who fought in other wars since. Every once in a while, I think it is necessary that we remember what lessons are important to learn – and even remember that learning, always learning is important.

And so, we all need to learn our lessons. Some lessons are given to us by our earthly fathers and mothers, by our aunts and uncles, by our grandfathers and grandmothers. Other lessons are given to us by our older friends – our teachers, our Sunday school teachers, our church friends.

But one day, each of us must decide ourselves to seek out new ideas, to learn things by ourselves, to find out how to learn by ourselves. We must find the classes, the books, the Scripture that applies to our lives.

You see, when General Ted’s father died, General Ted stepped forward and found places to learn even more about what he needed to know. When Jesus went back to Heaven, Peter and the other disciples began to spend time, lots of time, reading their Scriptures, the Old Testament, so they could know what to do and how to speak and what to say to others. They understood that they were now on their own…

But were they?

Jesus had promised that they would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon them…and they remembered that on that Thursday night before his death, while they were sitting eating the Last Supper, Jesus had said, “But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit—the Father will send Him in My name—will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have told you.”

And so Peter read Scripture and listened to the Holy Spirit. He quickly had the group replace Judas with Mathias so they had a full Twelve Apostles once again. And then, when something wonderful happened a week and a half later, Peter understood what was happening and stepped forward. But that is a story for next week.

And so, remember this, each of you…when you are standing all alone, everything is messed up, the old plan won’t work, bullets and artillery shells are landing all around – there may even be zombies headed your way, and you are the only general on your personal beach…remember the lessons your heavenly Father has taught you, the lessons you have learned from reading and studying your Scripture, the Bible lessons: pray for help from God your Father…and listen to the advice of the Holy Spirit, the Counselor, God the Holy Spirit, who will teach you all things and remind you of everything Jesus has said.

And if you do, you will be fine, the new plans will work out, God will send you reinforcements to overwhelm the enemy and at the end of the day, you can say to Jesus, “I did what I was supposed to do.”

And He will say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

The Counselor will Teach

This morning I’d like to ask you to sit back and remember. Do you remember a time when you were trying to accomplish something and didn’t know how to do it? Maybe you were very young and trying to learn how to swing a bat for Little League and an older boy or your dad or uncle helped you. Maybe you wanted to bake some bread and didn’t understand what “Kneading the dough” meant – an aunt or friend explained it to you. Maybe you had to add some oil to your car and wondered if 5W40 oil could be used if it said to use 10W30 oil – your grandfather or a friend from school told you.

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All the way through our lives, we have learned from others. Some people taught us this and some taught us that. Some people taught us just one thing that was of limited value, like how to dial an old-style dial telephone – of limited value today. Others taught us something more broadly useful like how to read or helped us with our multiplication tables. Some brave fool sat down beside us and taught us to drive! But for many of us, we’ve had a few, very few people through our lives to whom we could turn for almost any question and say, “How do I do this?” We call these people “mentors”, and they have an unusual impact upon our lives. Who was your mentor? Was it a teacher, an older friend, an uncle or aunt, a grandmother or grandfather, your dad or your mom? Was it a friend at work or a neighbor?

We came to rely upon our mentor. Those regular conversations taught us a lot about the “how to’s” of life – how to bake cakes, how to grill steaks, how to paint a wall, how to repair a car, how to grow a garden, how to be successful at your job, how to get connected to email. Our mentor was always there. You may have a mentor today and enjoy that sort of relationship, a real person, not a YouTube video, not a book, not a help screen, not a Google’d article. A real person. Someone who would pick up the phone or be ready to talk when you have a question.

Some of you may be like me. You’ve lived long enough that you’ve become the mentor – your mentor has retired, or moved to Florida, or moved to Heaven. And now you mentor other people, mostly younger than yourself. You pass on that information that is so simple, but difficult to learn the first time, like making sure meringue has peaks, like tightening lug nuts until they squeak, like approaching a new dog with your fingers pointed down and slightly curled while letting the dog sniff the back of your hand, or like never drawing to an inside straight in poker. You are now the mentor – and you are mostly on your own – and sometimes you miss having that mentor, don’t you? Like all of us, you still have questions about living life, right?

Turn to your neighbor and say, “Neighbor!” “I still need a mentor!” 

Revelation 21:10, 22:1-22:5; Acts 16:9-15; John 14:23-29 Audio Gospel

As the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry rolled around, He recognized that He had been teaching His disciples a lot. There were the twelve core disciples, but there were also the 120 or so people that formed His group of regular followers, both men and women. What would happen to all these men and women when He returned to Heaven? There was a plan that had been waiting since the Beginning, a plan for continued teaching that would help the people through all those days when questions would come up that Jesus hadn’t spoken about – or the disciples had been distracted when Jesus HAD spoken about those things.

You see, if Jesus had stayed on earth, there would have been a problem. All the disciples would have stayed with Jesus, listening to Him, day after day as they grew older and older. Nobody would have been intentionally spreading the word about God. How do we know this?

Jesus once tried sending out 70 disciples to spread the word to the small villages of Judah that The Kingdom of God was coming. Those disciples went out – and then, a couple days later, they came right back to Jesus. For being near Jesus was more comfortable than answering difficult questions in those villages with people who were often a bit antagonistic, upset, angry or “had issues”. Jesus’ mere physical presence was impeding the ministry.

So the night of His last Passover meal, the Seder meal that became known as The Last Supper, Jesus spoke at length to His disciples, probably the Twelve and a handful more.

He told them in John 14:25: “I have spoken these things to you while I remain with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit—the Father will send Him in My name—will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have told you.”

In our world today in 21st Century America, many people speak of God. Our young people are very spiritual. There is great discussion of God – millions of people who never attend church, who never open a Bible speak of God and are very quick to share their opinions of God, debating what type of God would be acceptable to them. Many of these people are Christian – but many are not, for they never speak of Christ, of Jesus. The proper term for a person who believes in the existence of a god is a “theist”. A theist is a person who believes in a god. An “a-theist” is a person who does not believe in a god. And in today’s America, about 1 person in 10 is an a-theist, while about 9 out of 10 are theists, people who believe in a god.

One of those nine theists is either Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu, religions with views of God which often radically different from the Christian God, who is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

But only 8 of those theists even claim to be Christian. But if we take a bit more stringent definition, we can find that only about 4 of those theists actually have any understanding of Jesus Christ as God. The other 4 theists who claim to be Christians have their own views of God which more or less ignore Jesus Christ, so let’s just talk about those Christians who understand Jesus Christ to be truly the Son of God, part of God in a complicated way. Let me be clear – a Christian talks about Christ and worships Christ as well as God the Father. A wannabe Christian, person is only thinks they are Christian almost never talks about Christ – they are focused solely on God. If you have a friend or relative or neighbor like this, speak with them about how Jesus’ death and resurrection make Him worthy of worship. Help them move from theist to Christian by teaching them about Jesus.

So about 40 percent of Americans actually worship Jesus Christ as God. About 10 to 15% of Americans are true Christians who are unable or unwilling to come to church regularly because of health, work, or being hurt by their most recent encounters with the church. That leaves us with what the surveys say is between 25 and 30 percent of Americans attending church each week, which is also about what we see here in this county.

By the way, children who attend church at least weekly have average GPA’s of 3.0. Kids who attend at least monthly have GPA’s of 2.9. Kids who attend church less than monthly have GPA’s of 2.7. And those who never attend church have GPA’s of 2.6. Church attendance helps our children.



In the church-going Christian community, we talk a lot more about Jesus than the wannabe Christians do. Almost every week, we have Gospel readings and sermons that talk about the deeds and teachings and sayings of Jesus Christ. The Christian community talks a lot about Jesus, who is God the Son, and we talk a lot about God the Father, the Creator of the Universe.

But we church-going Christians also have a blind spot. We don’t speak much about God the Holy Spirit. In most of our churches, we leave the Holy Spirit on the front doorstep, mentioning the Spirit occasionally, but often getting mixed up about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has almost become a dividing line between churches and denominations. But that is largely because of our general ignorance about the Spirit.

At the one extreme, we have the churches which forbid the action of the Holy Spirit. We once attended a church that maintained that the Holy Spirit had stopped acting when the Book of Acts closed, that the original Apostles had to be present for the Holy Spirit to act – and only the original Apostles were qualified. Needless to say, that church – and others like it that we have seen over the years – are cold, rational, intellectual….and feel dead.

At the other end are the Pentecostal and Charismatic churches that believe that you are only saved if you speak in tongues or are slain by the Spirit. These churches can be frightening to the average person who attends a service because of the chaotic worship and the irrational, highly emotional events that are going on.

In our modern United Methodist churches, we seem to often equate the presence of the Holy Spirit with a lack of planning until the service begins, a lack of order, a sermon delivered with shouting, arms swinging, men running on the tops of pews and other theatrics, a sermon that makes us weep or shout with joy. We measure the presence of the Holy Spirit by the buckets of tears - sad or joyful - that we weep. 

Yet the highly planned, well written sermons of Jonathan Edwards, delivered by him in almost a monotone, boring reading, completely without any shouting, had people weeping and crying and coming to the altar in Connecticut in colonial days – in fact, it was these revivals of Edwards that first drew John Wesley’s attention to the possibilities of an English revival, the revival that came to be known as the Methodist Revival. For, you see, both Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley wrote out their sermons carefully under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, praying deeply before and during their writing, so the words became so powerful no extra theatrics were needed. You see, the Holy Spirit can act - and does act - in the quiet of a pastor's study as well as in the sanctuary on Sunday morning.

So let’s try to understand today a bit more about the Holy Spirit as discussed in the Bible and how the Holy Spirit comes into the church.

Biblically speaking – and generally speaking, when the pastor baptizes you, you receive the Holy Spirit. The water is applied by sprinkling, pouring, or dunking you in the creek, the pastor lays hands upon you, and prays a prayer which asks the Holy Spirit to come into you. We Methodist believe that all baptized believers receive the Holy Spirit at this point.

However, there are some biblical cases where the Spirit came upon people before their baptism, such as the case we mentioned last week when Peter visited the Roman Cornelius’ household – see Acts Chapter 10. Peter had just begun to speak about Jesus when the Holy Spirit came upon the household, when all the members of the household began to praise Jesus and celebrate Him. Peter used this as evidence that God wanted even Gentile pagan Romans baptized, so he baptized the entire household at that time.

As we look through the Bible, the Holy Spirit is usually discussed in one of two ways. “The Holy Spirit came upon so-and-so,” and then so-and-so did something miraculous, or “So-and-so was filled with the Holy Spirit”.

What do we mean? In the first case, we can go back to I Samuel 10 for a good example, where the Holy Spirit came upon Saul, the man whom Samuel had just anointed with oil to be the first king of Israel. Saul, who a day earlier had been minding his own business, looking for his donkey, begins to prophesy with a group of prophets.

Now we often look at prophesying as meaning “predicting the future”, and it can mean that, but the root meaning is broader. It simply means “speaking on behalf of God”. In this context, apparently Saul was taken control of by God’s Holy Spirit, and he began to speak on behalf of God in a group of prophets.

A similar thing happened to the greater group of apostles and disciples on the day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit came upon them and they all began praising God in various languages. Furthermore, those languages were not languages they necessarily understood, but they were languages which were understood by the people who heard them. It was as if Debbie began to praise God in Japanese, just as a person from Japan entered our hall here, while Carl spoke a message in Russian to the guy from Moscow. Something similar, without the mention of the different languages, apparently happened when Peter began preaching at Cornelius’ house. People began praising God – people who had no good former knowledge of God or Christ.

In the other context, certain people are talked about as “full of the Holy Spirit”, as in Acts 6, where Stephen is described as “a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit”. In this context the daily actions – the conversation and the signs and wonders that Stephen shows are both evidence of and the result of the Holy Spirit which fills Stephen. So how might the Holy Spirit work in other ways?

First of all, it is the consensus of most Christian theologians that the Bible, and in particular, the New Testament was written by men who were inspired by the Holy Spirit. Even the word “inspired” refers to the air which is breathed into the person, and, as we have discussed before, in the original Greek and Hebrew languages, the same word is translated as “spirit”, as “wind”, and as “breath”. So inspired literally means “in spirited” – you can even see it in the spelling of the word. So we have this precedent that we know certain documents can be inspired by the Holy Spirit, guided in their creation by the gentle urging of the Holy Spirit.

Why is this important?

It is important because it tells us the Holy Spirit is not just the cause of immediate, spontaneous actions such as a spontaneous prayer or an unscripted sermon, but the Holy Spirit can plan things centuries in advance. How many times has Holy Scripture which was inspired by the Holy Spirit tugged at your emotions and transformed you?

So theologians maintain that the Holy Spirit can work through Scripture, but also in the writing of prayers which are said decades or even centuries later, in the very recommendation of the appropriate order of scriptures to choose, such as the order of scriptures in the Lectionary from which many pastors, including myself, often choose the readings, and in a sermon written days or even weeks ahead of time.

I’ve spoken to several of you at different times and told you after some question or discussion, “I want to make sure you understand that I’ve already written my sermon for this weekend, it will deal directly with your problem or your question.” And this is true. I might have a sermon written on Tuesday and then on Sunday it looks like I had a secret camera recording your life on Friday or Saturday because the sermon is so directly attuned to what is going on in your life. I’ve seen it happen over and over again. And not just with sermon’s I’ve delivered, but I’ve been on the receiving end of this, most notably with a pastor I know who actually wrote his sermons months in advance because he liked to work in batches. In a couple memorable weeks just before I accepted Christ, it was as if Pastor Doug MacIntosh had a bug in our bedroom as we were getting ready for church Sunday morning. 

I remember speaking to Saundra: "You need to go to church today. It's like our family is painting a mural, each one painting a portion of it, and you're the master painter. When you miss church, things go wrong in the painting of our family mural."

We drove to church. In the middle of his sermon, Pastor Doug said, "Consider a large mural. There is a master painter who is guiding the painting while many other painters paint small portions of it."

And I’ve seen it with Sunday school lessons I’ve taught and Saundra taught back before we were pastors – we would independently choose what to teach our classes and then after Sunday school, in the main service Pastor Steve would preach on the exact same subject.

The defining mark of the Holy Spirit is not when a sermon is changed at the last minute. The defining mark of the Holy Spirit is when truth is taught and the Spirit sets up a situation where, if you are willing, you can be transformed by that Truth. Remember what Jesus said:

But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit—the Father will send Him in My name—will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have told you.

Sometimes, the most important part of worship preparation, I have found, is in the selection of a hymn from four hundred years ago or from 1930 or that first appeared last year, the selection of a prayer that was written decades ago or from scratch, the choice to read from the Psalm instead of from Romans, or yes, the one-line throw-away that the Spirit gives me as I read this sermon in front of you, a single line that I don’t use at the other church – or maybe I do.

Last week, the Spirit had me to plan ahead of time the worship service with the sermon – and the part where we told our neighbor we loved them and why. The Spirit guided the selection of the after sermon song, a song written in the 1970’s that many of you told me you loved, a song which the Spirit had led me to select a few weeks ago so you would remember it, a song the Spirit had led me to practice ahead of time and add the drumbeat to because I knew Calvary’s piano player Candace would be out of town, something the Spirit had planned a couple of years ago when Candace had joined the choir that took her to Toronto that week she missed. Yes, the Spirit plans far ahead - in this case, at least two years. And during the delivery at Calvary, the Spirit told me to tell you to go to a second friend and tell them that you loved them also. That was NOT in the original plan, but it turned out to have unleashed the Spirit among you.

And so I’d like you to understand that the Spirit both plans and works spontaneously. Don’t limit your understanding of the Spirit to purely an emotional impact that a sermon has on you. For the Lord is not just emotion, but is also rationality. The Spirit is not just spontaneous, but also plans centuries in advance. The Spirit is not just speaking in tongues, but is also a still, small voice in your head who would guide you in your actions, in your speech, in your daily life if you will listen, just as the Spirit guides pastors to put some thoughts down on paper and not other thoughts, to add or subtract a few words when those written sermons are delivered, to speak with emotion or to speak dryly and clearly from time to time.

Perhaps the biggest misunderstanding of the Spirit is where the Spirit comes from in a body. For, you see, Paul tells us in Ephesians Chapter 4 that there is one Spirit – and if this is so, then this means that the Holy Spirit resides in you just as much as the Spirit resides in me or Saundra or any other preacher. You each bring the Spirit into church, just as much as the preacher does. For there is only one difference between all of us – how much do we listen to the Holy Spirit and act upon the Spirit’s suggestions?

For if we allow it, if we listen to the Spirit, if we act upon the Spirit, then Jesus’ words become true: “the Counselor, the Holy Spirit…will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have told you.”

And the Holy Spirit, my friend, is the greatest Counselor, the greatest mentor, the greatest adviser the world has known or ever will know. And THIS is why the early Christians we see in the Book of Acts were so excited. This is why the early church grew so fast. This is the key reason why a group of people who had lost their visible supernatural leader were able to quickly spread from Jerusalem west to Greece, to Italy, and even to Spain and Britain, to spread south to Ethiopia, to spread north to the shores of the Black Sea, and even spread East to India within the lifetime of the disciples. The Holy Spirit is why within two hundred years this tiny sect of Judaism had become a new religion which was the most powerful religion in the entire Roman Empire.

And since those days, the Holy Spirit has led this religion to become the largest religion on the planet, where the Spirit today is leading the growth in India, in Africa, in South America, even in China, persecuted as those Chinese Christians are, and yes, even today in America it is the churches that recognize the Holy Spirit is a gift given to ALL Christians that are growing whereas those churches to whom the Holy Spirit has become a frightening concept are shrinking and dying.

Let’s all stand and hold hands in a big circle. (If you are reading this, simply pray by yourself.)

Let us pray.

Holy Spirit,
We ask you to come upon this congregation in a great and mighty way.
I ask you to come upon me in such a way I cannot deny you.
I ask you to fill me….to mold me…to guide me…to speak to me.
I ask you to turn up the volume so I can hear you.
I ask you to guide me to the sound of your voice.
And I ask you to speak to me in the silence of this place now…[Pause]
I ask you to now give me a message to proclaim to others…[Pause]
And now I ask you to give me the courage in a moment to speak that message.
This I pray…in the name of our Lord Jesus….Amen.

And so I ask you today to turn to your neighbor and say, “Neighbor”! “You have the Holy Spirit!” And turn back to your neighbor with all seriousness and say, “Neighbor”! “The Spirit has told me this...” And speak out that message!

Preparing for the Holy Spirit

Our readings this week talk about three aspects of the Christian life. I’ll begin with the reading from Revelation, for it is the aspect of the Christian life that leads most people to Christ in the first place – eternal life with God and Christ. The Apostle John is generally recognized as the author, writing after he experienced an extended vision of the far future when Jesus would return to earth. This chapter is after the great wars and the wrath of God has been poured out on the earth, after the great Resurrection that is promised to all believers.

(For Audio Podcast version, click here.)

Revelation 21:1-6; 

John wrote:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea no longer existed. I also saw the Holy City, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband.

Then I heard a loud voice from the throne:

Look! God’s dwelling is with humanity, and He will live with them.
They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God.
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
Death will no longer exist; grief, crying, and pain will exist no longer,
because the previous things have passed away.

Then the One seated on the throne said, “Look! I am making everything new.” He also said, “Write, because these words are faithful and true.” And He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give water as a gift to the thirsty from the spring of life.

It is a beautiful vision of our future. It is a beautiful vision of what lies ahead for me and for you. It is a wonderful view of what will happen one day – and turns upside down the way many people live their lives.

Did you notice that we don’t go to Heaven? No, instead, God comes down from Heaven to be with us. “God’s dwelling is with humanity and He will live with them”. “God Himself with be with them”.

Many people, even Christians, often work very very hard to be good enough for Heaven. We mess up from time to time, with a harsh word here, a mean and nasty act there. We harm ourselves and others, and then try to justify it by saying that “at least we aren’t as bad as so-and-so”, as if God has a quota of people who can get into Heaven: 

“Heaven’s doors are open, but only the best million people get in.” 

“Sorry, sir, you are currently ranked 1,000,002, so you’ll have to work a bit harder. Maybe you can make your neighbor stumble a bit?" 

So turn to your neighbor and say, “Neighbor, would you curse a little bit today so I can get ahead of you in the line for Heaven?” HUH!?

No, God has a clear, definite cut off point for to be with Him that doesn’t depend upon how good or bad other people are. He has drawn a very bright line. We have exactly two ways to be saved. Either we can be perfect – never, ever in our whole life sinning – which is impossible, for we goofed up when we were children – or we can say to God, “Jesus is your Son and worthy of being followed. I will choose to follow Jesus because I am not worthy, I am not good enough, only Jesus is good enough. Will you accept me as your subject, your servant, your slave?”
And so John shows us that one day, God will come down to us, to dwell with us because we are not good enough for Heaven, but if we choose to follow Jesus, we are good enough for God to be with us. And that is how our eternal life is secured – by trusting in the power and love of Jesus for us.

Therefore we probably should spend substantial time and effort trying to learn what it means to follow Jesus, attending church regularly, getting involved in a Sunday school class and a midweek study and discussion, reading our Bible daily before bed or when we awaken or at lunch. That’s why our Sunday evening service has a question and answer period, our Tuesday and Wednesday Bible studies are really discussion times.

We need to practice two-way prayer, speaking to God and listening for the response of the Holy Spirit. Good times to pray are in the shower and when driving to and from work. Those are when I pray.

The people I really pity are those people who make excuses for behavior they and the people around them know are wrong. They are the people who take pride in how bad they are...how rude they are or how much they gossip or how angry they can get. “This is just the way I am”, they say. “I’ll never change.” That sort of comment and belief is making a rude gesture at God and the Holy Spirit. For we all can change with God’s help. We just have to want to change and ask for help.

Learning to follow Jesus means that this year I should be a better follower of Christ than I was last year. He’s still working on me. This year I am a bit more regular in my church attendance, I am a bit more involved in church activities, I give a bit more money, I take my Bible reading and prayer more seriously, I get more involved in my church group. Each year, I get more and more Christ-like. Yes, I often have to ask Jesus for help, but that’s okay. Jesus wants to help me, just as He wants to help you. Are you a bit more holy than you were last year? What will you work on this year so next year you will be a bit more like Jesus?

The first aspect of the Christian life is that we are not good enough for Heaven, but we are good enough for God, and God will help us become better every year if we ask God for help. That first step is focused upon ourselves.

 John 13:31-35 Audio Gospel Reading

The second aspect of the Christian life comes from the Gospel of John, in the 13th chapter. John tells us of Jesus’ talk at the Last Supper. Jesus says:

“I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you must also love one another. By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
So if following Jesus is the key to eternal life, showing love to other people is the way people know that you are following Jesus. If you love each other, people will know you are indeed followers of Christ.

We have many people who have studied Jesus, but do not follow Jesus. There are many people who have been baptized but do not follow Jesus. We all know of these people, for they are the hateful people we have encountered in our churches, the people who follow a particular interpretation of the Law of Moses, the people who are most concerned with being better than their neighbors and keep their eyes and their comments on their neighbor’s behavior rather than upon their own behavior. For love is rarely shown when we point out the flaws in our friend’s behavior. 

I’ve found that those few times I have felt compelled as a pastor to point out these flaws to a member of one of my congregation I have found that it is extraordinarily difficult to say this in a way that helps the person rather than hurts the person, simply because none of us like to have our flaws pointed out by another. We didn’t enjoy it when we were children, we didn’t enjoy it as teens, and we still don’t enjoy it as adults.

Yet, we know that we have flaws. And so, it is important for our own growth that we develop a relationship with someone to whom we give permission to point out our flaws because we know they love us. And we must love our friends and neighbors and relatives despite the fact that they are very clumsy when they try to point out our flaws to us, for, you see, it is often a mark of love when someone tries to point out our flaws. Not always...but often, especially when that person is close to us.

So how do we love another? For learning to love others is the second major step of the Christian life.

According to the excellent book, The Five Love Languages, there are five ways: Words, deeds of service, touch, gifts, and quality time. Five ways to love others. Let's see how that works:

We tell people when they are doing good things. We tell people we love them. We tell them they are important to us. We tell them their children bring us joy. We use words that life them up.

We do good deeds of service for others. We clean their sink, we repair their cars, we trim their hedges, we take out the garbage, we pressure wash their homes.

We give people hugs after asking permission. We give the frail person an arm to walk on, we help them from their car. We shake their hands. We gently touch their shoulders when they are praying with tears. We let them cry on our shoulders.

We give gifts to people we love. A box of chocolate, some flowers. We bring them a gift card for Lowe’s or Home Depot when their home needs paint, a bag of groceries when they are struggling with money, diapers when they have a new baby, a pie for their celebration or a meal when they are sick. We give them a Bible when they need one or a devotional book if they have one.

And we share quality time with the people we love. We sit and listen to their boring stories and we tell them our uplifting, funny stories. (Have you ever noticed that their stories are boring and ours are always interesting? That might have something to do with our point of view, eh?)

We work together on the car and paint together on the fence. We invite them over for grilled hot dogs or steaks, and tell them all they can bring is a salad or deviled eggs. We meet them for lunch or breakfast and we use the time to talk about the love of Christ, for one day we want to be able to spend years with them in New Jerusalem, and teaching them about Christ’s love today is the best way we can assure us both of that future meeting.

And this leads us to our third aspect of the Christian life. If at first we are concentrating upon getting ourselves better, then we begin to work more and more at loving others, the third aspect of the Christian life is found in Peter’s story which is first told in Acts 10 and then Peter repeats the story here in Acts 11 to a group of believers. 

Acts 11:1-18

Simon Peter had been raised as a good, Law-following Jew. This particular day, up in the sun on the roof of a house, Peter had a vision, a vision of a sheet or tarpaulin being let down with all sorts of animals on it – sheep, cattle, pigs, lizards, birds. A voice told Peter to kill and eat, but Peter protested that He had never eaten anything unclean like pigs or lizards and never would. But the voice told Peter that what God has made clean he must not call common.

About this time some Romans came and asked Peter to follow him to the next town. When Romans came and asked you to follow them, you did that because they carried weapons and ordinary people did not. Of course, ordinarily, Jews would not associate with Romans, for they considered them to be dirty, evil, nasty men and women. 

When the group arrived in the next town, it turned out that Cornelius, the Roman centurion, or captain, wanted to hear about Jesus. Peter began to speak and suddenly everyone was hit by the Holy Spirit and started praising God. Peter put two and two together and realized that God had declared the Gentile, pagan Romans clean now, and so Peter baptized these men and women. He also said: “Now I really understand that God doesn’t show favoritism, but in every nation the person who fears Him and does righteousness is acceptable to Him.”

And this is the third aspect of the Christian life. We are to talk about God and Christ not just to members of our family, not just to our friends, not just to our neighbors, but to every person. We are to learn to treat all people equally.

If the first step of the Christian life is getting ourselves right with God, and the second step is learning to show love to others, the third step is when we no longer show favoritism, but learn to share the good news of Christ with all people, loving all people, teaching all people.

How far along are you?

Are you a beginner, trying to develop the self-discipline that puts you on the way of holiness, following Jesus, doing more than just studying Jesus but learning to follow Jesus?

Or are you beginning to look around you and show love to others, your friends, your relatives, your neighbors? Are you practicing the five languages of love?

Or are you more advanced, beginning to accept all people, to look at each person as someone who needs God’s love, even those people you don’t particularly like? Are you learning that God's will always is more important than our preferences?

In each case, we are best helped in our progress if we learn to study our Bible more carefully and listen more carefully to the Holy Spirit.

When Peter encountered the Roman centurion Cornelius and his household, Peter saw the Holy Spirit come upon the household. And he remembered the word of the Lord, how He said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’

My friends, most of us have been baptized with water. If you have not been baptized with water, please let me know this week and we will arrange a baptism time over the next few weeks.

But has the Holy Spirit come upon you?

Over the next couple of weeks, we will be talking more about the Holy Spirit and how the Spirit operates in and through believers. Do not doubt – the Book of Acts is clear that the Holy Spirit was what stirred the massive expansion of the church in the days of the Apostles, from a small band of about 120 followers of Christ when He returned to Heaven, to many thousands over the next couple of years.

We are poised on the edge of a massive outpouring of the Holy Spirit. But first, we must learn to love one another much deeper than before. So I am asking you to stand at this time and turn to your neighbor. Say, “Neighbor!” “I love you!” and then tell them why you love them so much. And then, tell your next neighbor why you love them. And continue this.

Feed My Sheep

You know, Easter is a busy time for pastors. I had twelve continuous days of events, including three services on Palm Sunday, three services on Easter Sunday, two nights preaching revival at Andy’s churches, four Bible studies, a Seder dinner, a Good Friday service – and two egg hunts and a clothing giveaway. And so, I took a day off last week and slept in. 

Audio Sermon Podcast

The events of the first Easter week were also stressful for the disciples. So after the Resurrection, after Jesus appeared to the disciples and then the next week appeared again to the disciples, this time with Thomas, a group of the disciples, led by Peter, decided to go fishing on the Sea of Galilee – the Sea of Tiberius as it was also called. 

Revelation 5:11-14; Psalm 30; John 21:1-19 Audio Gospel

The group that went fishing that day were Peter, James and John, Thomas, Nathaniel and a couple others – likely Peter’s brother Andrew and we’re not sure of the other. Seven altogether. Seven, the biblical number of completion.

They went out that night on the lake, throwing their nets into the waters. It was the custom at the time to fish at night, because it was cooler, they could sell their catch to people at the dock in the early morning, and the fish were probably attracted to their lights. And besides, the disciples needed to think and process everything they’d been through.

It had been about a couple of years since they had gone fishing, for Jesus liked to travel and in most of Israel, there weren’t suitable waters for net fishing. They had walked up and down the land, as far as Jerusalem and Bethlehem in the south and north to Sidon in modern day Lebanon. They had walked up Mt Hermon in the northeast, and down to near the Dead Sea in the south, and made the 3000 foot climb to Jerusalem.

They had met with crowds of thousands of people, fed them at least twice, debated with Pharisees about the Law of Moses, Sadducees who loved the Temple almost as much as God, and met with Roman soldiers and Greeks who were seeking wisdom. Their leader had been arrested, and they had run for safety after boasting about sticking with Him always – and they had seen Him die – and they had seen Him alive again. And so they were exhausted and needed time to think and process and rest in the quiet of the cool lake air at night. And possibly because of this, they caught nothing that night.

The day dawned hot and muggy. Several of the disciples stripped down to nothing, there being no problem with this at that time and place, a hundred yards from shore.

In the gray of the morning, they saw a man walking on the shore as the new day brightened and the fog lifted. The man yelled to them, “Men, you don’t have any fish, do you?” “No,” they answered, for it had been a disappointing night.

“Cast the net on the right side of the boat,” He told them, “and you’ll find some.” So they did, and they were unable to haul it in because of the large number of fish.
The disciple John remembered that day three years before when Jesus asked to borrow Simon Peter’s boat as a floating platform form which to preach to the people. Afterwards, Jesus suggested Peter move the boat out into the deeper water and let down the nets. Peter pointed out that they’d worked hard all night and hadn’t caught anything, but because the teacher had said to do it, he let down the nets. And they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break, requiring help from another boat. It was at that time that Peter, James, and John all chose to follow Jesus.

Remembering this event from three years ago, looking at the situation around, John, the disciple, the one Jesus loved, said this morning to Peter, “It is the Lord!”

When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he tied his robe around him and dove into the sea, swimming like crazy for the shore. But since they were not far from land (about 100 yards away), the other disciples just came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish. When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish lying on it, and bread.

“Bring some of the fish you’ve just caught,” Jesus told them. So Simon Peter got up and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish—153 of them. Even though there were so many, the net was not torn.

Many people have speculated on the reason that John was so specific about the number of fish they caught that day. Someone thought it represented the number of nations. If so, it had to be at a specific time, for the number of nations keeps changing. Others have developed convoluted mathematical ideas, such as 153 being the sum of the first 17 integers which represents the 7 gifts of the Spirit plus the Ten commandments. Others have pointed out that in the Greek, like Roman numerals, the letters have numerical values, and found several words or phrases that add up to 153. But the most convincing argument for me is that in II Chronicles 2:17, Solomon conducted a census of foreigners and found that there were a hundred and fifty three thousand foreigners in the land of Israel, which may indicate that these new fishers of men could expect a harvest of the foreigners.

“Come and have breakfast,” Jesus told them. None of the disciples dared ask Him, “Who are You?” because they knew it was the Lord.

Once again, we see that Jesus doesn’t look exactly the same as He did before. There is something that is different about Him, but they are sure that this man on the seashore is Jesus.

Jesus came, took the bread, and gave it to them. He did the same with the fish. This was now the third time Jesus appeared to the disciples after He was raised from the dead.

When they had eaten breakfast, Jesus asked Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these?” Jesus was pointing to the fish, and he used the Greek word agape, one of the four words in Greek that we translate as love. Agape means a self-sacrificing love, a love which is always embracing God’s preferences. The root of the word agape is "prefer".

“Yes, Lord,” he said to Him, “You know that I love You.” But here Peter’s love is the Greek word philo, which means “affectionate friendship” or “brotherly love”. In essence, Peter says, "You know that I love You as a brother."

“Feed My lambs,” He told him.

A second time He asked him, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me?”

“Yes, Lord,” he said to Him, “You know that I love You.”

“Shepherd My sheep,” He told him. Essentially the same exchange – Jesus asks Peter to agape Him and Peter says he philos Jesus. "Will you self-sacrifice?" "I love you as a brother."

He asked him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me?” This time, Jesus backs off a bit. He asks Peter if he philos him – does he have brotherly love for Him?

Peter was grieved that He asked him the third time, “Do you love Me?” Peter is upset because he knows that the three questions correspond to the three times Peter denied knowing Jesus on the night He was betrayed. Three denials; three questions.

He said, “Lord, You know everything! You know that I love You.” Peter responds with his assurance of brotherly love.

“Feed My sheep,” Jesus said. And just like that, Peter knows that he is back in the good graces of the Lord, that the Lord trusts him, Peter, with leadership of Jesus’ continuing mission. And it is the same with us when we mess up. Jesus is ready to welcome us back into the mission.

Jesus continues, though, with a prophecy about Peter’s old age:

“I assure you: When you were young, you would tie your belt and walk wherever you wanted. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will tie you and carry you where you don’t want to go.” He said this to signify by what kind of death he would glorify God. After saying this, He told him, “Follow Me!”

“Follow Me.“ Hmm.

There is much more in this exchange than meets the eye. This is not just the story of Jesus and Peter; It is the story of all believers. For we must look to Peter as an example of how each of us encounter Jesus and ultimately the demands that Jesus puts on us.

First, Jesus gets our attention and we recognize Jesus as holy and perhaps even as God, as Peter recognized Jesus was holy with the first large catch of fish. Before Peter met Jesus, there was nothing more important in Peter’s life than his daily fish catch, for this determined his income. He worked hard – yet Jesus had led Peter to his largest catch of fish ever, and that got Peter’s attention, so he began to the follow Jesus.

All along throughout the three year ministry of Jesus, Peter is the outspoken one, the one who is ready to have the extreme, radical faith before the others. Are you like Peter? 

It is Peter who first says that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. It is Peter who is ready to put Jesus as high as Moses and Elijah on top of the mountain of Transfiguration. At the last supper, it is Peter who boasts that he will never deny Jesus – and it is Peter who does indeed deny Him when the soldiers come for Jesus that night to keep Peter from being identified as a follower of Jesus. It is Peter who weeps bitterly over his own actions. And it is Peter who races to the tomb and puts his head first in the tomb to see that the body is missing. And now, it is Peter who Jesus forgives, and, not only forgives Peter, gives Peter an important duty in the kingdom, to do what Jesus wants, to feed the young Christian lambs, to take care of the flock of Christians, to feed the adult sheep.

Perhaps you are like Peter – daring to see the Son of God where others merely see a great teacher? Are you ready to lift Jesus’ name up with the greats of history? Are you the one who boasts that you will never deny Jesus – yet you fail to mention His name to your family, friends, and neighbors when given the chance? Do you have regrets over the times you don’t speak of Jesus when you could have?

Are you always ready to find the next miracle, to look for the next miracle of Jesus? And are you the one who understands the love of Christ when Christ forgives you of the things you’ve done that you are not proud of? Are you the one to whom Jesus is even now speaking, saying that there are baby Christians out there who need you to feed them with mentoring, by leading them through the Bible, by teaching them how to read Scripture, by praying with them in addition to praying for them?

Try this. Write down 12 names of people you don’t think are regular, believing Christians, or who need to be shepherded along to grow their young faith. Pray for and about these 12 people daily. Make a point to speak to them monthly, or better yet, speak to them once a week. Praise God to them and tell them a bit more of what you’ve already learned about Jesus. Treat them as though you were the leader of their Sunday School class, even though most of them may never have entered a church. And see what happens.

Feed His lambs. Shepherd His sheep. Feed His sheep. And Follow Jesus.

Church tradition tells us that Peter quickly became the spiritual leader of the Jesus movement. After a couple of decades in Jerusalem, he may have traveled to Babylon and back. Later, he traveled to Rome. When Peter was an old man, living in Rome, tradition tells us that Nero chose to blame the Christians for the great fire in Rome, and so Peter became one of those Nero had killed. Tradition tells us that Peter, humble, asked to be crucified upside down because he was not worthy to have the same death as Christ. And this is what happened.

Now it’s your turn. Jesus is calling you. Feed His lambs. Shepherd His sheep. Feed His sheep. And Follow Jesus.

Bodies and Spirits

He is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Hallelujah! Happy Easter!

Sunday evening, after all the services, after visiting my mother for dinner, Saundra and I came back to the parsonage and sat down and binged on a favorite television show. After a week of continuous services, we were just tired and zoned out for a bit. And then we slept for almost ten hours. And when we awoke, it was still Easter. 

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Yes, it is still Easter, for Easter is not just a day, but an entire season for the church. Easter continues until the Day of Pentecost, which is June 9th this year. Easter celebrates the time between the Resurrection and the return of Jesus to Heaven 40 days later, known as the Ascension. Easter is a time for understanding the Resurrection. It is a time to understand why the Resurrection happened, what Resurrection means for us, and what the Resurrection should lead to in our lives. 

Isaiah 65:17-25; 1 Corinthians 15:19-26; John 20:1-18  (Audio Gospel)

On Good Friday we talked of the death of Jesus. Nicodemus, the man who came to talk to Him one night about being born again, brought many pounds of spices and linen, while Joseph of Arimethea donated his own tomb for Jesus’ burial. And Jesus was laid to rest and the tomb sealed.

Last week, we talked about the women going to the tomb, supposedly to remove the temporary linen wraps that had been placed on Jesus’ body in haste Friday afternoon. The women planned to remove the wraps, wash and clean His body, and then re-wrap the body with new linen soaked in spices such as myrrh. Nicodemus had used between 75 and a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes Friday afternoon – which was about a hundred times the amount commonly used, which was a pound or so. Even the highly respected Rabbi Gamaliel, the famous teacher of Saul/Paul, was buried using only about 40 pounds of the very expensive spices, according to the Jewish historian Josephus. But the women brought more on Sunday morning. Such was their respect and Nicodemus' respect for Jesus.

As we know, they found the tomb open and empty. Mary ran and got Peter and John, and they all three ran to the tomb. Peter and John looked in and saw just the linen lying there and went home. Mary hung around, weeping, and finally looked inside to find two angels who asked her why she was crying. “They’ve taken his body!” Turning around, she had a similar exchange with the cemetery gardener, who turned out to be Jesus, healthy, whole, and happy. He gave her a message for the disciples and she ran and told them that she "had seen the Lord! "

In I Corinthians 15, the apostle Paul repeats a very early Christian formula that speaks of the post-Resurrection appearances of Jesus. Paul tells us that after the women, Jesus then appeared to Peter, but we have no details of this appearance. We know from Luke that two disciples walked to the village of Emmaus with Jesus that afternoon. He was strong, healthy, and walked about 6 miles with them. And they didn’t recognize Him until he blessed and broke bread with them towards evening.

John 20:1-18  (Audio Gospel)

The disciples gathered together that Sunday evening, most likely in the upper room of the same house they had met for the Passover Supper on Thursday evening. John tells us that they had locked the doors because they were afraid of the Jewish authorities.

Then Jesus came, stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you!”

Having said this, He showed them His hands and His side. So the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.

It is not clear how Jesus came into the room. Did He just appear? Did He come through the closed door? Was He in the house before the doors were locked? We don’t know. But we need to notice that Jesus is not a ghost – He speaks to them. And He shows them His hands with the nail holes and His side where the spear had pierced Him.

Luke adds some more detail about this visit to the disciples in Chapter 24 of Luke's Gospel account.

But they were startled and terrified and thought they were seeing a ghost. “Why are you troubled?” He asked them. “And why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself! Touch Me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have.” Having said this, He showed them His hands and feet. But while they still were amazed and unbelieving because of their joy, He asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” So they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish, and He took it and ate in their presence.

It is clear that Jesus was in a physical body – He was not a ghost or spirit. And this has been the conclusion of all of the great church councils of ancient times and more modern respected church theologians such as Luther, Calvin, and Wesley. Jesus’ resurrected body was the same body, repaired and healed – but having the holes from the nails and spear. He wanted them to know that He was real and substantial, with a newly repaired body - what we call a "glorified" body. That’s why he asked for fish – spirits and ghosts don’t get hungry!

John continues with his version of events:

Jesus said to them again, “Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.”

And here we get the first sense of our mission as followers of Jesus, a mission that will be more fully explained over the next forty days.

After saying this, He breathed on them and said,

“Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

Remember that the original Greek word for Spirit is pneuma, which is the root of our word pneumonia. Pneuma also means breath and wind. So Jesus says to them to “Receive the Holy Breath” when He breathes upon them. The Holy Spirit and the Holy Breath are one and the same. And the disciples have new life from this point onward, for God breathed into Adam’s nostrils and gave Him life back in Genesis. The disciples also now have new life – and the power and guidance that comes from the Holy Spirit. 

Additionally, Jesus tells them they have been delegated the power to forgive sins, crimes that have been committed against God. They have the ability to give grace to people on earth on behalf of God. We have the ability to give grace to people on earth on behalf of God.

Folks, this is an awesome power. Christ gave His disciples – and therefore us, who follow in the disciples’ footsteps, the ability to forgive people of sin, the ability to speak on behalf of God and keep people from hellfire. You and I both have that power if you are a baptized believer. Consider what that means - we have been entrusted by Christ the power to make people right with God, to rescue them from the fire, to grant them the eternal life which is given by Christ.

You will notice that during Holy Communion, the first step in Communion is that we confess our sins before God in a group prayer. And then, I forgive you of your sins in the name of Jesus – and then you forgive me in the name of Jesus. And then we both give glory to God because we have been forgiven. Every time we have Communion, we forgive each other of our sins, we are made right with God once again.

Notice that Jesus also tells the disciples that “if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” That is also an awesome power, not to be misused. For in the Lord’s Prayer, we ask God to “forgive our trespasses as we forgive others.” God wants us to forgive others that all may be saved.

Such tremendous power conferred to people in just a couple of minutes! The ability to help people get right with God. WE have that power! Is it any wonder that the people of the early church were excited about what God and Christ had done?

John continues:

But one of the Twelve, Thomas (called “Twin”), was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples kept telling him, “We have seen the Lord!”

But he said to them, “If I don’t see the mark of the nails in His hands, put my finger into the mark of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will never believe!”

Poor Thomas. His skepticism has marked him throughout eternity as “doubting Thomas”. But to be fair to him, consider the crowd he’d been with – a group of young men. Could it be possible that these young men had played jokes on each other, had teased each other, had set up each other as young men often do? And if so, wasn’t it awfully easy for Thomas to go with common sense and assume the other disciples were playing him, having a sick prank, pretending that they had all seen Jesus just to have a joke at Thomas’ expense? 

After all, what would you think if your friends told you that a mutual friend that you had seen die and buried had come back to life? Wouldn’t it be easier to think your friends were playing a sick prank than to believe without any other proof? Be careful which jokes you pull on your friends – you may keep them from eternal salvation! Imagine if Thomas had decided not to come back to be with the other disciples a week later because of what he thought was a sick prank! Imagine if your friends decide they cannot trust you!

After eight days His disciples were indoors again, and Thomas was with them. Even though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them. He said, “Peace to you!”

Then He said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and observe My hands. Reach out your hand and put it into My side. Don’t be an unbeliever, but a believer.”

Thomas responded to Him, “My Lord and my God!”

Jesus said, “Because you have seen Me, you have believed? Those who believe without seeing are blessed.”
And so Thomas got his proof. Jesus was alive – not a ghost, not a prank, not a spirit, but a truly alive man with a real body. In Luke’s gospel, between the morning and the evening appearances, Jesus takes a walk to the nearby village of Emmaus, walking with Cleopus and another disciple – and they don’t recognize Him until they sit down to have dinner with Him and He breaks bread with them and disappears. Clearly, our new body is somehow changed in appearance from our old body – could it be that we are younger, stronger, cleaned up, having that body that we’ve always dreamed of? Or could it be that all the stress had been removed from Jesus that day, that He had showered, washed His hair, put on clean clothes? You've seen how your friends' appearances change when stress is removed. Jesus looked different that day.

I used to think – "Wow! I could have a twenty-year old body again!" Now, I’d be wonderfully happy with a forty year old body.

We know this fact from the Book of Revelation – when Jesus returns, His hair will be white, but he will be in fit and trim condition, riding a horse. So is white hair merely a mark of old age, the gradual deterioration of the body? Or is white hair a marker of great wisdom? It is something to consider.

John concludes:

Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of His disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and by believing you may have life in His name.

John wrote his gospel so we "might believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God." It is interesting that John apparently had already read Mark and Matthew and Luke, but felt it necessary to write his own account of Jesus’ ministry, death and resurrection, an account that is organized differently, an account that almost assumes you have read one of the other three Gospels. But perhaps the key is when John identifies himself as “the disciple Jesus loved”.

It is clear that John felt that he was Jesus’ best friend. And most people think that John’s gospel is the deepest of the four gospels, the most well constructed from a literary standpoint, the most heart felt. Matthew wrote for a Jewish audience, people who already understood the Old Testament. Mark wrote for the Romans – emphasizing action and power. Luke prepared the thoughtful, comprehensive complete account after carefully interviewing disciples and Jesus’ mother Mary - if they had existed in Luke's day, he might have received a Pulitzer Prize. But John wrote as a close friend speaking directly to us, clearly with help from the Holy Spirit, with a strong purpose in mind, “by believing you may have life in His name.”

Jesus’ Resurrection is the pattern for our future resurrections. It shows us how we will have life again. We see that we have a body, we do not turn into angels with harps, we don’t flit about Heaven as spirits. Those are heresies, false teachings that were settled over 1500 years ago by the ancient church councils, but they keep appearing in our movies, in non-Christian writings, in science fiction, in the writings of the Christian Scientists and the Scientologists, the Hindu religion, the Buddhist views. They are not Christian belief – but they make good visuals, good CGI, in movies. Movies made by people who are not yet Christians. Our destiny is much better than becoming a spirit or an angel. For we will not be ghosts, but real people, living in a solid world – but living for eternity.

For the apostle Paul, and John writing again in Revelation makes clear that we are not destined for Heaven where God is today, because the old Heaven and the old earth will pass away. We end up on the new earth that God recreates, living in the wonderful city of New Jerusalem in our new bodies -  like our old bodies but strong, healthy, and “incorruptible”. We don’t wear out, we don’t have weak hearts, bad kidneys, leathery wrinkled skin, bad knees. We have bodies that last forever instead of deteriorating and die. We shall walk in a physical body beside the tree of life, pick from its fruit which grows twelve crops a year, drinking the water of life, getting our light directly from God the Father and the Son who rules directly in New Jerusalem as king of the entire earth.

The Apostle John wrote in Revelation 21 these words:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea no longer existed. I also saw the Holy City, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband.

“Then I heard a loud voice from the throne:

Look! God’s dwelling is with humanity, and He will live with them.
They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God.
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
Death will no longer exist; grief, crying, and pain will exist no longer,
because the previous things have passed away.

Then the One seated on the throne said, “Look! I am making everything new.” He also said, “Write, because these words are faithful and true.” And He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give water as a gift to the thirsty from the spring of life. The victor will inherit these things, and I will be his God, and he will be My son.”

I urge you to read the end of the Bible this week, beginning with Revelation Chapter 20.

Where before we believed that stuff was critically important, we now realize that nothing is important, nothing at all, except that we and the people we love come to know and follow Jesus Christ, for in a few hundred years nothing else will matter.
Friends, there are many times in our life here on earth when all seems lost, when the bills stack up, when the doctor’s reports are poor, when relationships fall apart, when people are just plain mean and nasty to us, when it seems like we have nothing left to live for.

But the Resurrection of Jesus Christ tells us that we have hope: 

• Where before we thought that we live a few years and then we die – now we know that we shall live forever. 
• Where before we thought that everything that happens to us on a daily basis is so very important, the traffic jam is so frustrating, the details of what our employer pays us and how he makes us work are so very important, the actions of our Congress and our legislature are so earth shattering important – now we realize that nothing they do will really be important in ten thousand years, and so we can relax. 
• Where before we believed that stuff was critically important, we now realize that nothing is important, nothing at all, except that we and the people we love come to know and follow Jesus Christ, for in a few hundred years nothing else will matter.

You see, when we know we can live forever, nothing that happens this week, this month, this year, even this decade or this century has any lasting importance, except whether or not we have helped ourselves and others find the key to eternal life.

• Does it matter eternally if your child succeeds at baseball or mathematics? No, but it does matter if they choose to follow Christ.
• Does it matter eternally if your husband or wife gets the promotion at work? No, but it does matter if they are followers of Christ.
• Does it matter eternally if you see the latest ballgame or the newest movie or the next episode of a television show? Does it matter eternally who is elected in the next election? Does it make any difference eternally whether or not you die at age 40 or at age 90? It only matters for your ability and time to lead yourself and others to follow Christ, for the single most important thing a person can do for another is to lead them to follow Christ.

You’ve heard that if you give a man a fish, he eats for a day, but if you teach him to fish, he’ll eat for a lifetime? But if you can set God’s hook in him and pull him into Christ’s boat, if you lead him to follow Christ, he’ll live for eternity!

This body we have will gradually fail us or quickly be destroyed, and then it will turn to dust. But at our resurrection, we will gain a new, glorified body that will never fail us and will never be destroyed. It is a difficult thing for us to understand, but we are not spirit beings – our spirit is what gives life to our bodies. And our natural spirit cannot give life for long – a hundred years or so. But the Holy Spirit of God has existed since the beginning, and can give life to our bodies for eternity, endlessly repairing them, removing the problems of age, clearing the cobwebs that form in our minds, giving us the energy that will allow us to walk miles every day, to personally build mansions, to take the time to learn anything we want to learn, to spend a year binge-watching Bonanza if we want – and recognizing that we have not wasted any time, any time at all, for there is still just as much time to come as there ever was.

It is still Easter. Easter isn’t a day as the world thinks. Easter isn’t even an entire seven-week season as most of the church believes. Easter is something that started almost 2000 years ago and will continue until the end of time, for when Jesus was Resurrected, Easter began. And one day, even though pastors and people often move about, even though friends drift apart, even though death may temporarily come between us – we will walk together by the tree of life in New Jerusalem as if it were a warm summer’s evening, talking about old times, the people we’ve know, and the great sacrifice that Jesus made that allows us to be together once more. Hallelujah! Christ is Risen!