The Sermon That Wasn't

[This message wasn't given...although it was. I originally thought that I would be preaching at just one of our weekend worship celebrations at Friendship Church, Amelia, Ohio. The Sunday celebration was given over, I knew, to a fine workshop called Finding Your Passions, conducted by one of our members.

[I did something I have probably only done five times in the twenty-two years I've been a pastor: I revised an old message, one from three years ago. It was revised and ready to be shared when I was reminded that, in fact, the workshop would be presented at the Saturday celebration as well.]

[So, here it is, the sermon that was in a pre-revised form in 2003 and wasn't in its revised form.]

John 20:19-31

When I was a young man the thing that kept me from following Christ was the Easter story: the Church’s insistent proclamation that Jesus had risen from the dead. I couldn’t believe and I couldn’t understand how any rational human being could believe, that Jesus had been resurrected.

After attending worship at what would eventually become my home congregation, Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Columbus, with my wife, I started to investigate, reading a number of books that presented evidence to convince readers rationally that Jesus had risen from the dead. Today, you can find lots of books like that. Many of them are very good. But it was my experience that for every piece of evidence one could present supporting Jesus’ resurrection, there was a counter-argument just as compelling.

Yet something led me to trust not only that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, but also to trust Him as my Lord and God and Savior. That “something” came in all the people whose lives I had seen changed when they followed Jesus Christ:

• The person who wrestled with mental illness for decades and finally found peace and purpose for life in the arms of Christ.
• The elderly paint contractor who cared for his ill wife for years and provided that care with cheerfulness.
• The reluctant congregational president who, when forced to make almost impossible decisions, forged ahead with a love and passion that one would have hardly expected to see in someone who seemed so ordinary.
• The parents of high school classmates who knew what a loser I had been but still accepted me, encouraged me, and to this day, remain my loving boosters.

What led me to believe in the risen Jesus was all the people I saw who lived with Him in the center of their lives.

If Jesus was alive in them, I concluded, He must really be alive!

Pinchas Lapide is a Jewish scholar who studies the New Testament, the portion of the Bible which Jews reject because it affirms Jesus’ resurrection and that Jesus is the Savior of the world. But Lapide, after extensive study, concludes that God the Father really did raise Jesus from the dead. Listen to what he writes in his book, The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective:

When this scared, frightened band of the apostles which was just about to throw away everything in order to flee in despair to Galilee; when these peasants, shepherds, and fishermen, who betrayed and denied their master and then failed Him miserably, suddenly could be changed overnight into a confident mission society, convinced of salvation and able to work with much more success after Easter than before Easter, then no vision or hallucination is sufficient to explain such a revolutionary transformation.

What ultimately convinced this Jewish scholar that Jesus really rose from the dead was that he observed the risen Jesus living in the people who first claimed they’d seen Jesus resurrected from the dead. He believes in Jesus’ resurrection because of the way the lives of Jesus’ followers—ordinary women and men—changed after the first Easter morning.

Have you seen the risen Jesus living and active in ordinary people?

Are people able to see the risen Jesus in you and me?

As we begin our ‘Drive to Five,’ seeking to grow to five-hundred baptized members of Friendship by Easter, 2007, we must remember that will only happen if people see the risen Jesus living in us!

There are times when we can feel confused and upset by the seeming absence of God from our lives. We wonder, “If Jesus is risen and living, why has this happened in my life? Or, why has tragedy befallen someone we care about?” We must remember in times like these that this world is imperfect. Horrible things happen. But if we open our eyes, we can also see that the risen Jesus is alive and at work in the lives of people who follow Him.

This past week, I met here with the priest of a local Roman Catholic parish. I have to tell you that I wondered what a priest would think of our building facility and our multi-use sanctuary. But he stood and gazed around this place for a long time. Finally, quietly, he said, “What a warm and inviting space, a very human space, and that’s good!”

When I shared that incident with some of our servanthood team members this past Wednesday evening, one of them said, “But I don’t think it’s just the building that does that. I think that it’s the way we live in it and the way we worship in it. People feel that when they come here.”

I agree. It’s like a deeply committed Christian woman from another congregation has told me: “When I walk into that building on Sunday mornings, surrounded by all those believing people of Friendship, I can see Jesus’ presence in the center of the place.”

When people see the risen Jesus living in His followers, they believe in the resurrection!

Hector Vasquez is a Lutheran pastor who once lived and worked as a missionary in Guatemala. There, he says, he and his wife Mirtha “learned an important lesson—the success of any church is not dependent on great decisions or great wisdom, it depends on the ability and knowledge of [God’s] Holy Spirit [working in] each one of us.”

According to Vasquez, early one morning, he found a group of people standing outside his home. They represented several indigenous communities where he and his wife were starting to do community service work. These people had a request: “They said, ‘Pastor Hector, our communities sent us so that we can ask you to send us pastors and teachers to teach us and our children. We know that what you do is good and, therefore, what you believe must also be good.’”

The Church is the family of the risen Jesus. When we let the risen Jesus be our Lord and God, the whole world sees Him!

When we allow Him to unleash His passionate love in us, we see Him too! "Love God and love neighbor" are more than mottos stitched on a pillow somewhere; they are our way of life when the risen Jesus takes up residence in our lives!

“Linking hands with God and neighbor" needs to be more than our congreational motto; it needs to describe the way we live.

And our mission statement--Friendship Church is a welcoming and caring people who seek to share the kindness of God so that all metropolitan Cincinnati may grow in the faith, hope, and love of the living Jesus Christ!--must become more than mere words to us.

I don’t understand how Jesus’ once-dead tissue and organs were brought back to life on the first Easter Sunday. And it’s only natural for us to wonder how and even if, it all can be possible. That’s certainly how Thomas, one of Jesus’ first followers felt.

According to our Bible lesson for this morning, the risen Jesus had made several appearances to His followers. They had excitedly shared their news with other followers who hadn’t yet seen Him. One of those who hadn’t yet seen Jesus was Thomas.

“Unless I’m able to see Jesus and touch the scars left behind by His crucifixion and by the sword that pierced His side, I’m not buying this whole story,” Thomas tells the others. On the Sunday following Easter, Thomas got the shock of his life. Gathered in a locked room, probably listening disbelievingly to his fellow Jesus-followers yammer on about how they had seen the risen Jesus, Thomas looked up and there stood Jesus. Thomas fell down on his face, worshiping Jesus, calling Him, “My Lord and my God.” And then Jesus told Thomas:

“Have you believed Me because you have seen Me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Jesus is risen from the dead whether we see Him or not.

Jesus is with and is blessing those who follow Him whether they can point to Him or not.

Whether they know it or not, the people of today's world world are desperate for the hope that only the risen Jesus can give. When in our everyday lives, you and I let Jesus take control of who we are, what we do, and what we say, both we and the world around us see the risen Jesus. Then, like Thomas, people will feel compelled to worship at Jesus’ feet and like him and us, to call Jesus, “Lord and God.”