The Magic of our Faith

Acts 2:14, 22-32 2nd Sunday of Easter April 16, 2023 The Magic of our Faith Opening Song Welcome Call to Worship (Acts 2, Psalm 16) My heart is glad! My soul rejoices, and my body rests secure! For you do not abandon me. You give me counsel. You are at my right hand. You show me the path of life. Your presence is sheer joy. You are my God; apart from you, I have no good. Blessed is your name! (United Methodist Ministry Matters, Rebecca Gaudino) Opening Prayer (Acts 2, 1 Peter 1, John 20) Stand among us once again, risen Christ, and bless us with your greeting: "Peace be with you." Stand among us once again, Exalted Brother, and breathe upon us your promised Spirit. Stand among us once again, You Who Have Escaped Death, and give us new birth into your living hope. Amen. (United Methodist Ministry Matters, Rebecca Gaudino) Song He Lives UMH 310 Children’s Sermon Affirmation of Faith (based on 1 Peter 1:3-9) We believe in God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whose mercy we are given new birth into a living hope through Christ’s resurrection from the dead. We believe that through Christ we are born into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading; and into a present salvation that will be revealed in its fullness in the last time. We believe that until that time, the Spirit works in us to grow the genuineness of our faith, that we may give praise, glory, and honor when Jesus, whom we love but have not seen, is revealed. Amen. Adapted from 1 Peter 1:3-9 by Dr. Lisa Hancock, Discipleship Ministries, October 2022. Scripture Acts 2:14, 22-32 Sermon The Magic of our Faith A.W. Tozer, that great preacher of a previous generation, was right. Perhaps we Christians can be seen as a bit odd: We love someone we have never seen; we daily speak aloud to someone we do not hear. We are strongest when we are weakest and richest when we are poorest. We die so that we might live and give away so that we can keep. We see the invisible, hear the inaudible, and know that which is beyond knowledge. Christian strange? Are we delusional? No. We just know the end of the story and that makes all of the difference. The resurrection helps us to see life from a different perspective. It teaches us to look for the presence of God in every situation. It is that different perspective that helps is to see things that others cannot see. But it would not be the first time. Seeing Beyond Our Reality It is difficult to see things that are beyond our reality. We live lives that are narrowly focused, conditioned by our environment, traditions and habits. The name Hans Lippershey is not a famous one, but he made a tremendous contribution to the world of vision. In l600, he created the first telescope. He was a Dutch spectacle maker. One day two children came into his shop and were playing with some of the lenses scattered around. They put two together which greatly magnified a weathervane across the street. Lippershey capitalized on the discovery and made a profit selling his new lenses to the military. This all happened in Middleburg, Netherlands. Several others claimed to invent the telescope about the same time. Galileo is the most famous but even he credits Lippershey for its creation. Most everyone doubted the creation at first. It was hard for them in that time to envision things could be magnified. It was beyond their reality. Even when our vision is enhanced by technology it is sometimes impaired by our lack of faith. Ironically, it took two small children at play to make it all happen. An unexplainable event shaped the beliefs of society and enabled them to see. Keith Wagner, Faith Without Facts, ChristianGlobe Networks Inc. The telescope is only one way to be able to see beyond our present reality. Easter is another one. Jesus not only opened up our hearts, but he also opened up our perspective. Easter is our invitation to have hope and a new vision. Every Easter season we get a chance to go back to the foundation of the Easter vision and the beginnings of the church. Instead of reading from the Hebrew Bible, we read from the book of Acts. The disciples were witness to a miracle during the resurrection. We are here today because they felt that they needed to share that story with the whole world. The doors of heaven are open for anyone. The real miracle of the story is how lives of those who heard were changed immediately. They were able to see life so much clearly than before. In our scripture in Acts two – Peter is preaching his first sermon and 3000 people are baptized and want to become a part of that church. This is just one of the first things that the Holy Spirit did for that community. Today – the average congregation has 65 people present. After the pandemic 65% of congregations in the US have fewer people than that. With numbers like that – it is easy to here this scripture and either think that no one is interested in the power of the resurrection, or we are doing something wrong. We are not – just as Jesus crucifixion and death was a part of God’s plan – so is the waning and testing of our church. What does it mean to be faithful in time like this? The story of the disciples spreading the gospel is not intended to be a comparison, but an example. The gospel is still alive and well. God is still working in our faithfulness. God still performs miracles. We are all modern day witnesses to the power of the gospel. The gospel works one person at a time, one situation at a time. If God can change just one life, that is all that matters. Jesus is that one person that was able to make all the difference in the world. In Peter’s sermon he says that there are a lot of people who God loved and took care of. We have a lot of heroes and legends in the bible. Peter names David as one of those legends and heroes. David is an important person in our faith, and yet he died. But God raised Jesus up and even today we are witnesses to that fact. Is Jesus dead or alive today? Our answer makes all of the difference in the world. Thomas Jefferson thought Jesus was an important person. Yet he was convinced that Jesus was not raised from the dead. As a matter of fact, he rewrote the whole bible, taking out all of the miracles. Here is how his bible ends: "There laid they Jesus and rolled a great stone at the mouth of the sepulcher and departed." It is very easy to rewrite history. To say, "that did not happen." But the story remains that the disciples were witnesses to these events. Thomas Jefferson is in essence calling the disciples liars and that they continued throughout the first century, for 70 years, to propagate those lies. Furthermore, Jefferson's Bible has been robbed of its power. I am convinced that the church does not accomplish 2000 years of life inside the walls of a closed dark sepulcher. There is no power in that dark place; rather, the Church is alive because He is alive forevermore. Brett Blair, www.Sermons.com In your faith is Jesus dead or alive? In 1955, the Cambridge Humanist society was formed at Cambridge University in England. Sir julian Huxley explained that their purpose was to enable people to cope with their environment without resort to the idea that there is a God. He said that one hundred years hence people would find it hard to believe in God as they currently do to believe that the world is flat. A few years later, another distinguished man of science was asked to address the faculty of Cambridge. He opened his address with these words:”before my lecture, I want to tell you something. That I am a Christian. I was brought up in a Christian home with my brother, the two of us were the closest friends. We were both at the university together. My father and mother were deeply religious. My brother and I had no time for religion. We thought that religion was all right for old people, but we were scientist and we thought we had found our way through by what we were pleased to call scientific methods. Then my brother was killed. My parents had the resources to deal with that shattering loss. But I had no one. One night, brokenheaerted, and with all of my proud science in ruined uselessness at my feet, I knelt down. I did not know how to pray. I had scorned prayer. But I put out my hand – and found that it was grasped. I knew that someone was coming to my help and somehow I knew it was Christ. I have been Christian every since and no one, nothing, will take christ from me anymore. Belief in the resurrection gives us a perspective that other people do not have. The doors of heaven are open, and we get to see beyond the darkness of this world. The power to change the world is available to us as it was to the first disciples. How does Easter live in your life? We may never see 3000 people come to Christ in one day. If we witness just one that is all that matters. If we choose to live in the hope of the resurrection for all and not the death, destruction and bad news that we see everyday – then God’s spirit has made a difference. Rosie Lives! Once there was a man named George who was accustomed to driving his wife, Rosie, to church. They had a long and happy marriage; their love for each other was monumental. They did everything together; everything, that is, except one thing. When George drove Rosie to church each Sunday, she went in but he did not. He remained in the car, reading the newspaper. After 45 years of marriage, Rosie died. George was distraught with grief. On Sunday mornings George no longer made that drive to church, transporting Rosie. But several months after her death Easter Sunday rolled around. George drove to the church and he went in. The pastor delivered a stirring resurrection sermon and then closed with prayer. Then there were a few moments of silence as the pastor prepared to announce the final hymn. Suddenly George stood up and with deep emotion declared loudly, "Rosie lives!" Then he began to sing with a deep, rich baritone voice that song that he had always associated with Rosie--"My Wild Irish Rose, the Sweetest Flower That Grows..." The congregation was stunned at first. But several people in the congregation knew George and how he was grieving for Rosie. They stood up and joined in the song. Then more and more people joined into the song. Finally, the whole congregation was joyfully and tearfully singing a glorious, secular Easter hymn. Bill Bouknight, ChristianGlobe Networks If Rose lives on, then so does Jesus. I have really enjoyed having chapel with the preschool this year. They really seem to enjoy hearing the gospel story. I have been really surpised at how much they have gotten into jumping up at saying Halleleujah lately. This week, after hearing the Easter story – we were all looking for Jesus. And one little girl pipes up and shouts Jesus lives in my heart! Christ is alive today! Believe it, live it , witness it. God still has a few tricks up God’s sleeve. – we just have to be awake to see them………… Okay so that wasn’t God, that was magic. But it encourages us to see the little miracles that happen in our life every day – If God can do it for Jesus – God will do it for us – one person at a time. Amen. Song Easter People, Raise your Voices UMH 304 An Easter Prayer Good and gracious God, Our most glorious Creator, As we greet the signs in nature around us: Of Spring once again regaling us in bloom, In the songs of returning birds and fields soon to be planted, We give you praise for an even greater sign of new life: the resurrection of your Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, that we especially celebrate at this time. The sadness and despair of his death has given way to the bright promise of immortality. For the Resurrection is our guarantee that justice will triumph over treason, Light will overcome darkness, and love will conquer death. As we celebrate, we also dare to ask for your grace that we may live the promise given to us, By imitating the life of Jesus in reaching out to the poor, the marginalized, the least among us as we strive to be neighbor to all those we meet. We praise you in this Easter season. Change our lives, change our hearts to be messengers of Easter joy and hope. We make our prayer through Jesus Christ, our risen Lord forever. Amen. Adapted from “An Easter Prayer” written by Fr. Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities USA, Stewardship Moment Moment for Stewardship In some congregations, this first Sunday after Easter is known as “holy humor” Sunday, celebrating with jokes, funny stories and gratitude for the biggest joke of all, played out in the face of those who sent Jesus to the cross, when God raised Jesus from the dead! So I want to share a story of how two mice played a joke on a cat. Two mice out for a stroll when they were surprised by a cat. Just as the cat prepared to pounce on his breakfast, one of the mice barked. The barking so startled the cat, he turned and fled. The mouse who barked turned to her companion and said, “In times like these, it is always nice to know a second language.” Now, I believe most of us know two languages. Yes, really! The first is the language of possessiveness, and the second is the language of generosity. Our first language emerges early, when we learn to say “MINE!” It may be at home, at Sunday School, or in kindergarten, but often by the time a child is 3,4, or 5, “MINE” is a favorite word. Our second language may also emerge in childhood. It often comes when we’re encouraged to share our toys, our books, our clothes or our food. Often, when we manage to share, we get LOTS of affirmation! In the church, we continue to delight in the times we hear others (or hear our own language) offer to share time, responsibility, and money. Recently, I heard _____________________ (describe a moment when you heard someone offer to share). Today, we’re ALL invited to practice our second language, sharing what God has graciously provided for us. Let us offer our morning tithes and gifts. Prayer of Thanksgiving Giver of Life, You’ve raised us up to new life through our baptisms into Christ. You’ve given us all that we have, and called us to be stewards of your many graces. So we ask you to accept these gifts offered today. Help us put to wise use all that has been given, seeking to transform this money into shared blessings for the least and the lost, both here and to the ends of the earth. AMEN ( Disciples of Christ Center for Faith and Giving) Announcements Closing Prayer for Facebook Let us step out into the world Knowing that we are not alone when doubts and fears surround us The Risen Christ is with us Empowering and encouraging us To transform our wounds into sources of liberation May the power of resurrection, the divine peace, and the empowering grace of the Triune God Be with us now and forever more. Amen. (United Church of Christ Worship Ways, Rev. Vinod Wesley) Community Time Benediction We leave this sanctuary a blessed people. Let us go now and be a blessing to others. May the grace, hope, peace and love of God our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer be with us all, now and forever. Amen. (Presbyterian Outlook, Teri McDowell Ott) Additional Illustrations It's Time to Get Up Winston Churchill had planned his funeral, which took place in Saint Paul's Cathedral. He included many of the great hymns of the church, and used the eloquent Anglican liturgy. At his direction, a bugler, positioned high in the dome of Saint Paul's, intoned, after the benediction, the sound of Taps, the universal signal that says the day is over. But then came the most dramatic turn: As Churchill instructed, as soon as Taps was finished, another bugler, placed on the other side of the great dome, played the notes of Reveille - It's time to get up. It's time to get up. It's time to get up in the morning. That was Churchill's testimony that at the end of history, the last note will not be Taps; it will be Reveille. The worst things are never the last things. John Claypool in Leadership, Vol. 12, No.1. God's Back It was Saturday, the day before Easter, and Joanne Hinch of Woodland Hills, California was sitting at the kitchen table coloring eggs with her three-year-old son Dan and her two-year-old daughter Debbie. She told her kids about the meaning of Easter and taught them the traditional Easter morning greeting and response, "He is risen...He is risen indeed!" The children planned to surprise their Dad, a Presbyterian minister, with that greeting as soon as he awoke the next morning. Easter arrived, little Danheard his father stirring about in his bedroom, so the boy got up quickly, dashed down the hall and shouted the good news: "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, God's back!" David E. Leininger, "Laugh, Thomas, Laugh!" Professor Boltloose What follows is a factual story. There once was a seminary student who was having a hard time accepting this idea that the writers of the New Testament Gospels took poetic license with their accounts of the life of Jesus. He was particularly bothered by the extreme view of some scholars that Jesus might not have been an actual historical person at all! One day as a fellow student was playing around with his tape recorder, the two suddenly fell into a spontaneous mock interview with the troubled student pretending to be "professor Rudolf Boltloose" (a parody of the famous German biblical scholar, Rudolf Bultmann). Piously, professor "Boltloose" intoned - "I have come up with a new theory! There was no cross at Calvary. There were only nails. There was no body. There were only clothes. You see, they hung the clothes on the nails ... And this is important for us today!" Although totally spontaneous, this little episode of play-acting was a superb statement of the danger we face when we deal with the fact that the Gospels are not biographies of Jesus. Carl L. Jech, Channeling Grace, CSS Publishing What’s the Good Word? A student from Korea was complaining about how difficult it is to learn the English language. He felt that American idioms were particularly difficult to comprehend. He said that he had studied English for nine years in preparation for attending the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. On his first day at the school, as he was walking across the campus, an American student casually greeted him with, "Hi, What's the good word?" The Korean boy stopped dead in his tracks. He thought to himself: "I don't know the good word! You would have thought that after nine years of studying English, someone would have told me what "˜the good word' was!" Later, trying to solve this puzzle, he decided to turn the tables and ask an American, "What's the good word?" and listen to his reply. So, approaching a fellow student, he repeated, "Hi! What's the good word?" The quick response was, "Oh, not much. How about you?" It was obvious that neither of these students knew what the good word was. It's a rather plastic greeting. But I can tell you the good word for today: Christ the Lord is risen. That's the Good Word. And because it is; it says a great deal about our lives. Brett Blair and King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com he Secret of the Power Thomas Jefferson ranks as one of our nations greatest intellects but not many people know that he rejected the notion of miracles. When he approached the scriptures he could not tolerate those passages, which dealt with the supernatural. So what did he do? He wrote his own bible. In the Thomas Jefferson Bible you will find only the moral teachings and historical events of Jesus' life. No virgin birth. No healing of Jairus' daughter. No walking on water. And, no resurrection. Humor: “I’ll Be Right Back” Sometime back, former talk show host Johnny Carson visited Harvard University to receive an award. After the ceremony he agreed to answer some questions from members of the press. One reporter asked, "What would you like to have inscribed on your tombstone?" Carson thought for just a second, then answered with the words he used before every commercial break on his television show. He wanted his tombstone to say, "I'll be right back." King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com Easter in Us The Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote an ambitious poem entitled 'The Wreck of the Deutschland.' It commemorates the death of five Franciscan nuns drowned on the German ship Deutschland at the mouth of the Thames in the winter of 1875. One half-line especially intrigues me: 'Let him Easter in us.' Let Christ 'Easter' in us. A rare verb indeed, but it suits this sacred season, ... How does Christ Easter in us? In three wondrous ways: (1) By a faith that rises above doubt. (2) By a hope that conquers despair. (3) By a love that does justice. Walter J. Burghardt, Let Christ Easter in Us, Dare to Be Christ: Homilies for the Nineties (Mahwah, NJ.: Paulist Press, 1991), 51. Do we think he is dead or alive? In his book "Living Jesus" Luke Timothy Johnson declares: The most important question concerning Jesus, then, is simply this: Do we think he is dead or alive? If Jesus is simply dead, there are any number of ways we can relate ourselves to his life and his accomplishments. And we might even, if some obscure bit of data should turn up, hope to learn more about him. But we cannot reasonably expect to learn more from him. If he is alive, however, everything changes. It is no longer a matter of our questioning an historical record, but a matter of our being put in question by one who has broken every rule of ordinary human existence. If Jesus lives, then it must be as life-giver. Jesus is not simply a figure of the past in that case, but a person in the present; not merely a memory we can analyze and manipulate, but an agent who can confront and instruct us. What we can learn about him must therefore include what we continue to learn from him. Luke Timothy Johnson, Living Jesus. The Reality of the Resurrection Several hundred years before the birth of Jesus, a crucial battle occurred between the Greeks and the Persians upon the plains of Marathon. The battle raged for hours. In many respects it was a fight to the finish. Finally the numerically inferior Greeks, the underdogs, managed a tremendous tactical win, but there was a problem. Soon the Senate, many miles away in Athens, was to vote and would most certainly ratify a treaty of appeasement. In desperation they sent a runner in full battle gear to go the twenty-seven miles to tell of the news. By the time the young boy got to Athens he had run a Marathon. It is said he was totally spent, that he literally ran himself to death. In his exhaustion he was able to utter only one word to the Athenians: "Victory." Today we come to church with the sound of the Hallelujah Chorus still resonating in our ears. We have been to the empty tomb. We have heard the glad news of resurrection. And now it is time for the church to send a message back to the world. What should that message be? May I suggest that it could be a single word: Victory. Unfortunately, that single truth is not so self-evident to many people today even as it was not initially to the first century disciples. We fall short of victorious living. We must learn anew to live out the reality of the resurrection. Brett Blair, www.Sermons.com A Church with Nothing to Offer Check out the church ads on the religion page of the Saturday edition of most big city newspapers and you find some impressive sounding places of worship. There, with sleek graphics and Madison Avenue phrases, a few select churches boast of their assets -- their choirs, their friendliness, their powerful preaching, their singles ministries, their ample parking, their family life centers, their sensitive child care, and their compassionate spirit. Some churches, it seems, have it all. Other churches, however, appear by contrast to have nothing, absolutely nothing. Take, for example, the church depicted in our text for today. Here, we get our first glimpse of the disciples gathered together after the resurrection, the first glimpse, in other words, of the church in its earliest days, and, all in all, it is not a very pretty picture. Near the end of his life, Jesus had carefully prepared his disciples to be a devoted and confident fellowship of faith. They were to be a community of profound love with the gates wide open and the welcome mat always out, but here we find them barricaded in a house with the doors bolted shut. They were to be the kind of people who stride boldly into the world to bear fruit in Jesus' name, a people full of the Holy Spirit performing even greater works than Jesus himself (John 14:12), but here we find them cowering in fear, hoping nobody will find out where they are before they get their alibis straight. In short, we see here the church at its worst -- scared, disheartened and defensive. If this little sealed-off group of Christians were to place one of those cheery church ads in the Saturday newspaper, what could it possibly say? "The friendly church where all are welcome"? Hardly, unless one counts locked doors as a sign of hospitality. "The church with a warm heart and a bold mission"? Actually more like the church with sweaty palms and a timid spirit. Indeed, John's gospel gives us a snapshot of a church with nothing – no plan, no promise, no program, no perky youth ministry, no powerful preaching, no parking lot, nothing. In fact, when all is said and done, this terrified little band huddled in the corner of a room with a chair braced against the door has only one thing going for it: the risen Christ. And that seems to be the main point of this story. In the final analysis, this is a story about how the risen Christ pushed open the bolted door of a church with nothing, how the risen Christ enters the fearful chambers of every church and fills the place with his own life. Thomas G. Long, Whispering The Lyrics, CSS Publishing. [Suggestion: Take actual church ads from the local newspaper from Saturday's paper into the pulpit and read the ads.] Devout of this World The devout of this world perform their rituals without guarantee that anything good will ever come of it. Of course there are plenty of scriptures and plenty of priests who make plenty of promises as to what your good works will yield (or threats as to the punishments awaiting you if you lapse), but to even believe all this is an act of faith, because nobody amongst us is shown the endgame. Devotion is diligence without assurance. Faith is a way of saying, 'Yes, I pre-accept the terms of the universe and I embrace in advance what I am presently incapable of understanding.' There's a reason we refer to 'leaps of faith' because the decision to consent to any notion of divinity is a mighty jump from the rational over to the unknowable, and I don't care how diligently scholars of every religion will try to sit you down with their stacks of books and prove to you through scripture that their faith is indeed rational; it isn't. If faith were rational, it wouldn't be by definition faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly know all the answers in advance to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be . . . a prudent insurance policy. Elizabeth Gilbert - Eat, Pray, Love - Penguin ______________________________ ____________________________ A Backstage View Garrison Keillor said, "We always have a backstage view of ourselves." We let the audience see only the neatly arranged stage. But behind the curtain all kinds of things are lying around: old failures, hurts, guilt and shame. We hear that we are living in a shameless society, and that people are no longer bothered by shame. I don’t believe it. Shame plagues our souls. Psychologists tell us that shame sweeps over us when we overstep our abilities, or when our fantasy about who we would like to be encounters the backstage reality of who we really are. Nothing is more crippling to our souls than working at hiding shame. We lock up more and more doors, sealing off more and more rooms of the heart to prevent our true selves from being discovered. We think we are keeping the world out, but in fact we are keeping ourselves locked in. Craig Barnes, "Crying Shame," article in The Christian Century, April 6, 2004, pp. 19.