Easter 2 year A 08 SermonIt’s amazing what you can find on the internet.
While I was writing this sermon... I came across a web site... dedicated to funny and bizarre ideas...
that adults thought were true... when they were children.
It’s creator... hopes his website will remind us what it was like to be a child...fascinated and horrified by the world in equal parts.
He shares this idea of his own...When I was a kid...
I had a morbid fear of toilets. I was sure there was a vampire living down there... just out of sight... and that it would attack me if I sat there for too long.
Many years later I found out that a good friend used to believe his body was filled with baked beans.
These weird ideas are sorted under headings... like pets. Where one woman writes...when she was about six...
her big sister told her...their pet hamster could fly.
She says...‘I remember looking at my hamster
and wondering how he could fly with such tiny legs.
Eventually... I convinced myself... his little legs would become flat and thin like wings when he started to fly..
Later when my pet was old and blind...
I found out hamsters couldn't fly...
after he walked off the edge of the table.’
And there’s section on sex where someone writes
‘My parents told me I came out of my mums tummy button. And I believed it for a long long time.’
And there’s a religion section... where someone writes...I used to believe that the soul was a "green... pea shaped organ... located somewhere near the gall bladder.... And my grandma... had a decoration in her kitchen...a little purple man... who peeked over the cupboard with his nose hanking over -- somehow I became conceived that God was like this...
sitting in clouds ... peeking over them when necessary...to throw down lightning bolts.’
Personally... because of something my mother told me...I used to believe... human beings shed all their skin... once every seven years... Whatever it was my mother told me... that’s not what she meant.
When we’re little... we trust what bigger people tell us even if they’re only 9. Our parents... give us a view of reality that’s hard to shake... even when we’re forty.
It was like that for me back in 1969. I mean who was alive in 1969? Seriously... raise your hand...
if you weren’t even born then. Look around.
You know some people today... seriously don’t believe
NASA ever landed on the moon... in 1969.
They think it was all a great deception...a hoax... perpetrated by the American Government. They believe all everything I watched on telly with my cousins...
when I was twenty...was shot in a studio somewhere.
They don’t believe in the moon landing.
But I believed it then... and I believe it now.
Why? Because my dad...whom I trust absolutely...
was one of the aerospace engineers who worked on the Apollo project. My own father was there... watching TV with us...in fact we were having a family reunion....so we could all celebrate together.
Just a few days before...I’d witnessed the launch
with my own eyes...[pause]
I believe my father’s version of events. He’s neither a liar nor a nut case. I trusted him when I was a child and I trust him now. So as far as I’m concerned... there was and is... a rational reason...
for me to believe NASA really did land on the moon.
Doubting Thomas slide
And this... is the kind of situation... our storyteller John is dealing with...at the end of the first century... as he’s writes the gospel words you heard before.
Slide words
‘These are written... that you may believe ...
Blank slide
John’s audience had good reason to be skeptical... they’d never met Jesus at all...
let alone bumped into the risen Christ.
All they had to go on were the eye witness accounts of those who were actually there
Slide words
‘on the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked...
for fear of the Jews.’
Blank slide
John is asking them to trust his evidence…to rely on his version of events… All John’s readers have to go on…
is the word of the people who were there
It boils down to trust…
who do you trust to give you the good oil…
it all comes down to deciding…who or what you trust…
You have to decide…don’t you…
When we were kids… we just accepted what our parents told us didn’t we…when we were little…
we even accepted…
what our big brothers and sisters told us…
but now we are grown [pause] we have to decide.
And John doesn’t want them to believe just any old thing… John wants them to believe…that this Jesus about whom the stories are told…really was…
really is… the Christ... the anointed one of God...
The one sent to proclaim the good news... that its God’s universe...not Caesar’s...or Hitler’s or Osama’s or George W’s...
This Jesus the one sent to brings life to all the world...
by preaching peace with justice and mercy and compassion...The one who reveals God to us...
The one who took on everything it means to be human ...even death so we would listen. [pause]
There were only ever a few people...
at most a few hundred or so...
who meet Jesus... after... he well and truly died...
But those who do...well... something happens...
to change them from quivering cowardly wrecks ... hiding behind locked doors...into men and women with the courage to tell their story...because Jesus sent them to tell it...even at the ends of the earth.
Many who came after... like John’s readers...many who hadn’t seen what they saw... and touched what they touched...well...many would trust their eyewitness accounts of what happened...
And even though they hadn’t seen...
they decided to believe ...and in their turn...they carried the message to others...and here we are today... at the ends of the earth...[pause]
still having to decide... what story we trust...who we trust...still having to decide... what we believe...
and what we will teach our children...to believe.
The early Christians though living in worrying times...persecuted and ridiculed...they knew the story by heart...they could give their children hope...the same hope that was told to them...that God’s love is stronger.. than death. And that God has revealed his love to us in the flesh in Jesus ... his Christ...
So may you dig deep into the story today...
and may you decide...that Jesus is the Christ... and may you have life in his name.
