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Click to hear this sermon sermon100419
Danny
Dutton, an 8-year old living in Chula
Vista, California,
had a school assignment to 'Explain God,' and here is what he wrote:
Three Names - Luke 24: 13-35 - April 18, 2010 - Cicero United Methodist
Church-
Everett J.
Bassett
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Danny
Dutton, an 8-year old living in Chula
Vista, California,
had a school assignment to 'Explain God,' and here is what he wrote: One of
God's main jobs is making people. He makes them to replace ones that die so
there will be enough people to take care of things on earth. He doesn't make grown-ups,
just babies. I think because they are smaller and easier to make. That way, he
doesn't have to take up His valuable time teaching them to talk and walk. He
can just leave that to mothers and fathers. God's second most important job is listening
to prayers. An awful lot of this goes on, since some people, like preachers and
things, pray at times besides bedtime. God doesn't have time to listen to the
radio or TV because of this.
Because He hears everything, there must be a terrible lot of
noise in His ears, unless He has thought of a way to turn it off. God sees
everything and hears everything and is everywhere, which keeps Him pretty busy.
So you shouldn't go wasting His time by going over your mom and dad's head
asking for something they said you couldn't have. Atheists are people who don't
believe in God. I don't think there are any in Chula Vista. At least there aren't any who
come to our church.
Jesus is
God's Son. He used to do all the hard work like walking on water and performing
miracles and trying to teach the people who didn't want to learn about God.
They finally got tired of Him preaching to them and they crucified Him. But He
was good and kind like His Father and He told His Father that they didn't know
what they were doing and to forgive them and God said OK. His Dad (God)
appreciated everything that He had done and all His hard work on earth so He
told Him He didn't have to go out on the road anymore, He could stay in heaven,
so He did. And now He helps His dad out by listening to prayers and seeing
things which are important for God to take care of and which ones He can take
care of Himself without having to bother God. Like a secretary only more
important. You can pray any time you want and they are sure to hear you because
they got it worked out so one of them is on duty all the time.
You should
always go to church on Sunday, because it makes God happy, and if there's
anyone you want to make happy, it's God. Don't skip church to do something you
think will be more fun like going to the beach. This is wrong! And, besides,
the sun doesn't come out at the beach until noon, anyway. If you don't believe
in God, besides being an atheist, you will be very lonely; your-parents can't
go everywhere with you, like to camp, but God can. It is good to know He's
around when you're scared in the dark or when you can't swim very good and you
get thrown into real deep water by big kids. But you shouldn't just always
think of what God can do for you. I figure God put me here and He can take me back
any time He pleases. And that's why I believe in God.
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Last Sunday
I talked about reasons to believe in God. I claimed that the signs of God
are all around us, and lifted up two ways we can ascertain God's presence - one
is external: the fact of existence itself, and the beauty of this world that
God created. In his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul says, "Ever
since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible
though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has
made." And the other is internal: the voice within our spirits that speaks
from Someone greater than ourselves. Psalm 42 begins, "As a deer longs for
flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, 0 God."
Those
experiences of the outer world and the inner voice are universal experiences -
they are the basis for all religion, establishing a foundation for human faith.
But faith doesn't remain on that general level. Sooner or late, faith gets
specific - and it goes down different paths for different people, depending on
what story they embrace. There is the Buddhist path, and the Muslim path, and
the Jewish path, and so on. And we haven't solved how to deal with all those
different paths - some people do it by saying that any path beside their own is
wrong, and others say things like maybe God relates to people in many different
ways, like we do.
But this
much we know: we're on the Christian path. That's why we're here. We can look
at those other paths and say, "God was at work there, too. And we can
learn much from them. And God has a different plan for them." But our path
is Christ; and the specific way God speaks to us is this: "Jesus said, 'I
am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by
me.'" That's our path. Some of us are here today because we are far down
that road - we have dedicated our lives Christ, and that statement of Jesus is
the truth around which our whole lives are built; others of us are just
stepping onto the path to see if it works for us. And maybe most of us are
somewhere between those two points, like the pendulum between faith and doubt
that I mentioned last week. Whatever our level of involvement, what we're about
today has to do with one person, and that is Jesus. He is the focus of our
unique way of relating to God.
And there
are three levels of relating to Jesus that I want to mention today, and they
correspond to three names in the central Christian statement: Jesus Christ is
Lord. That is the statement that separates Christian faith from others, and
each of those three names takes us deeper into what the Christian path means.
The first
name is Jesus. Jesus was a man who lived about 2000 years ago, and most
everybody, including secular historians, accept at least these facts: that
Jesus was a Jewish person who came out of a little town called Nazareth, and
began to preach about something he called the Kingdom of God - a new way of
seeing the world, based on the love of God, and how it could be lived out. It
was a way of peace, and it was strongly focused on hope for the poor. And
crowds of people came to hear him. This evolved into a threatening situation
for some powerful people, and they arranged to have him arrested. He made his
way to the main city of Jerusalem,
and there he suffered greatly in their hands, and eventually they killed him on
a cross.
I don't
know of many who would contest those facts. The teachings of Jesus are honored
in many faiths - love your enemies, follow the Golden Rule, care for those less
fortunate, give of yourself sacrificially. That's the level implied by honoring
Jesus.
But
Christians claim more. A pivotal moment happened when Jesus was asking the
disciples who people thought he was. And eventually he asked them who they
thought he was, and Peter responded, "Thou art the Christ." And that
is a whole different level on the Christian path. It is not just Jesus we
follow, the man from Nazareth
who died. It is Jesus Christ. And 'Christ' is not Jesus' last name, it is a
title of someone who was sent here with special power to carry out a special
plan. And so when we talk about the name Christ, we start talking about
miracles. And you know the stories - Jesus Christ turned water into wine,
healed people of their diseases, commanded the storm to be still, fed 5000
people, drove out demons, walked on' water. And, of course, most miraculous of
all, rose from the grave on Easter. That's the Christian story, too.
Once a boy
came home from Sunday School, and his mother asked him what he learned. He
replied, "Well, Mom, our teacher told us how God sent Moses behind enemy
lines on a rescue mission to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. When he
got to the Red Sea, he had his engineers build
a pontoon bridge, and all the people walked across safely. He used his
walkie-talkie to radio headquarters and call in an air strike. They sent in
bombers to blow up the bridge, and all the Israelites were saved." So Mom
interrupted at that point to say, "Now, Joey, is that really what they
taught you in Sunday School?" Joey replied, "No but if I told you the
way they told it, you'd think I was nuts!"
And that's
about right. For 2000 years now, followers of Christ have been making claims
about their leader that have sounded nuts - or, as the apostle Paul put it,
like foolishness. But, Paul writes, the foolishness of God is greater than the
wisdom of human beings. And those who go beyond just appreciating the good teacher
Jesus, and declare their faith in the supernatural Son of God - Jesus Christ -
have sworn by the power of the miracle-working God. Of course what's happened
is that humankind is now enlightened by science and technology, and many people
feel too sophisticated to believe in miracles, including believing that Christ
rose from the dead. But far more people still believe, and here are a couple
reasons why.
First of
all, as I mentioned last week, just being able to explain something
scientifically doesn't make it less miraculous. As someone said, "I don't
know why people are always wondering if miracles happen, when every year the
dogwood tree blossoms. Nothing could be more miraculous." As spring
unfolds around us, the world is full of miracles. All we have to do is look.
Secondly,
and more importantly, belief in Christ works.
Heaven knows so much of what the world is pursuing outside of faith
doesn't work. There are so many
destructive paths that people take.
Faith - true faith - in Christ, is not one of them. That's risky to say, because the fact is, in
the name of religion - including the Christian religion - people have done some
terrible things. But that's not because
of any true understanding of Christ.
Those who have truly lived out his spirit have been nothing but positive
forces of hope in this world. And
miracles of hope happen all the time in the power of Jesus Christ. This is the testimony of a woman whose
husband finally stopped drinking and started supporting the family. "I don't know," she said, "if Jesus turned
water into wine. But in my house he
turned wine into mortgage payments, and that's miracle enough for me." And from the very first disciples to see the
Risen Christ to Christian people around us right her now, people have found
that faith works. Miracles did not stop
2000 years ago. Lives are still
changed. Forgiveness is still given
where no human heart could ever make it happen.
Acts of kindness still overwhelm the odds. Love still blossoms.
And you
know, that's about all you can say to 'prove' Christ. Christ is known just the
way Jesus taught - by the testimony of those who met him, and the ongoing
witness through twenty-plus centuries of a Saviour who is real, and a faith
that works. From the outside, it looks nuts. But from the inside, it is life
itself. And we can't prove it any other way. There is no one here who can make
a miracle happen to prove the faith we profess. But when we look back, we know.
I suspect most everyone here can look back over the journey of our lives and
say, "Only the goodness and power of God could account for where I ended
up, and how this happened." All we can do is give testimony to what Christ
has done in our lives, and invite others to take the leap of faith. I can give
that invitation in full confidence, because I am convinced that when we leap,
Christ catches us, and amazing miracles of love and power happen in people'
lives. Those travelers on the Road to Emmaeus in our scripture lesson suddenly
realized that they were talking with the Risen Christ, and then he vanished -
because we're not supposed to believe by sight; we're supposed to walk by
faith. And when they stood looking at each other, wondering what had just
happened, they finally said, "Didn't we feel him in our hearts? Wasn't his
love burning within us?" And they ran to tell others.
That kind
of holy heart-burn is what leads us even deeper into faith, to the third name:
Jesus Christ is Lord. If you've experienced the power and
love of the Risen Christ, then the only reasonable response is to declare him
Lord of your life. The true foolishness involved in faith would be to realize
that the greatest thing in the world - the very gift of abundant and eternal life
- has been given, and then respond by saying, "I'll file that away for
future reference as it becomes convenient for me." That's not what Jesus
died on the cross to accomplish, and it's selling your life so far short of
what God intended. The only reasonable response to the Gospel-story is to
declare Jesus Christ as Lord of all of it: Lord of my heart; Lord of my time;
Lord of my wealth; Lord of my relationships; Lord of my morals; Lord of my
vocation; Lord of my soul; Lord of my hereafter.
So in
closing I'd like to suggest that each of us here take this coming week to live
with
those three names - Jesus Christ is Lord. At least once every day, more times
if possible - maybe when you first wake up, or when you go to bed at night -
think about Jesus the man who lived and died on a cross for you, about Christ
the Son of God who rose from the tomb to declare the victory of God's power,
and about Jesus Christ as the rightful Lord 'of your life. Can you make the
leap of faith that makes that statement true? If so, I believe God has
wonderful plans for you, nothing short of joy and peace and salvation.
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