Mar 27 2005

“We Have a Great Story to Tell!”

March 27, 2005 Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson

There was a gentleman that had stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few items. He got coffee and some bread, and then stood in line to checkout. Behind him is a woman with two full carts, baskets overflowing with groceries, clothing, and a VCR. As he steps up to the register, the clerk invites him to draw a piece of paper out of a fishbowl. “If you pull out the correct slip, then all the groceries are free,” he says. “How many correct slips are there,” asked the buyer. “Just one.” The bowl is full so the chances are slim, but the fellow tries anyway. And wouldn’t you know it, he gets the winning ticket. What a surprise. But then he realizes he is only buying coffee and bread, what a waste. But this fellow is quick, he turns to the lady behind him, the one with the mountain of stuff, and proclaims “Well what do you know, honey, we won.” She stares at him, he winks at her and somehow she has the wherewithal to play along. She steps up beside him, puts her arm in his and smiles. For a moment they stand side by side, wedded by good fortune. In the parking lot, she consummates the temporary union with a kiss and a hug and goes on her way with a grand story to tell her friends.

This is a story told by Max Lucado in his book called When God Whispers Your Name. He goes on to say, “I know, I know, what they did was a bit shady. He shouldn’t have lied and she shouldn’t have pretended, but taken all into account, it’s still a grand story.” A story not too distant from our own; we too have been graced with a surprise. Even more, of course, than the lady, for though her debt was high, she could pay it. We can’t begin to pay ours. Like the woman, we have received a gift not just at the checkout stand, but at the judgment seat. And we too have become a bride, not just for a moment, but for eternity. And not just for groceries, but for feasts in the kingdom of God, forever and ever and ever. We do have a story to tell and it is a grand one, a story of this Easter week, which we’ve heard many times. And yet its power is one that changes the world. It still does. It is our job to tell it.

I will read to you 3 scriptures this morning. I want you to hear and listen to the story once again. First we have a prophecy from Isaiah in the Old Testament. We find resurrection appearing, a promise made. Isaiah 25 says:

On this mountain, the LORD Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine – the best of meats and the finest of wines. On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth. The LORD has spoken. In that day they will say, “Surely this is our God; we trusted in him, and he saved us. This is the LORD, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.”

Once again, the story of the crucifixion as we find it in Mark 15:

In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! Let this Christ, this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.” Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him. At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” – which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When some of those standing near heard this, they said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah.” One man ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,” he said. With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard his cry and saw how he died, he said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!”

Jesus rises from the dead, of course, and He appears to His disciples. And needless to say, they are startled. And this is the story of Him appearing to them; He not only appears to them and proves who He is but He gives them a mission. (Luke 24)

While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. And while still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence. He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, “This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

This is the word of the Lord. Let us pray…

On a cold and snowy night, Dave heard someone knocking at his door. It was late and he wondered who it could be. When he opened it, a man walked into his kitchen and said, “I want you to take me to the cross.” Dave was the manager of a camp in northern Alabama, called Camp Sumatanga. And this camp has a landmark on it, on a mountain near the camp, a huge lighted cross that shines from all around in the dark. This man had been in a plane the night before, when the snow began. He was full of despair, he had no hope, and he was trying to run away from all of his problems. He even considered suicide, that’s why he had started this plane trip on such a bad night. As he got into Alabama, the snow hit and he was lost and he didn’t know where he was. He called to a local airport and asked if they could help. He couldn’t tell them where he was so they couldn’t help him. Finally as though it were a mirage, or a miracle, there the cross was on this mountain. He thought he was seeing things. Well, he radioed to the airport and told them what he was seeing and they said, “Yes we know about this cross” and knew exactly where he was and they were able to guide him home. The next day he went to the camp, he wanted to see this cross. And though it was a treacherous road up to the place, Dave took him and the man stood underneath that cross. And after a while he said, “Its okay now, I’ve been reconciled with God and my life’s okay.”

You know, in one way or another, I have heard this story, a form of it, many, many times in my Christian life. It’s part of my own story. And we all get to this place if we’re Christians, one way or another. Some of us come suddenly; some dramatic event brings us there. Others come gradually. But we all come to the same place, to the ground underneath the cross. Because it is there we find the answer to the greatest need of every human being. And that greatest need is not education, not more money, it’s not world peace. It is none other than forgiveness, or reconciliation with God. This is where our relationship with God starts, underneath the cross. A friend of mine likes to say that the ground underneath the cross is level, meaning that there may be some that are worse sinners than others but we’re all sinners – the Bible says we all fall short of the glory of God – and we start there underneath the cross. And that’s the story we have to tell…that God has provided forgiveness through this cross. It starts with Jesus up on that cross, lost and forsaken by God.

When I was a kid, about 3 years old, my mother would take me to the grocery store. She had no one to keep me, of course, and back then it was the A & P. And being the kind of kid I was – I was always wandering off – I remember getting lost, I couldn’t find mom. I wondered where she was and panic set in, fear, this lost-ness. I couldn’t find her and ran all over the store. Finally I just stopped where I was and said “Mama, where are you” and mamas know the sound of their children’s voices and she appeared around the corner to my great relief. You know we all, to some degree or another, know that sense of abandonment and we can understand a little bit what Jesus must have gone through. You see when Jesus says this curious phrase, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” it’s because God, His Father, had. It’s so surprising in a way, because throughout the New Testament we find Jesus addressing God in His prayers as Abba, or Father. But here, it’s the impersonal God and why have You forsaken me. It’s because, as the Bible says later, that Jesus had become sin for us, in our place. Jesus had become all that was wrong with the world, all the murder and the rape, all the gossip and the lies, all the pride and the war, all the horror that we see all around us. Jesus became that and God said the sacrifice of this man counts for all of that. If we put our trust there, we are forgiven.

I love to use this illustration. We might ask the question, “Why would God do that to Jesus? Isn’t God a god of love?” Well, He is. You can imagine that this hand is me and God looks at me and says, “I love him.” But you see, I have a problem. Imagine this book is all of the sins I have ever thought or committed or left undone – and believe me, it would be a lot thicker than this. God sees me, but God being the Holy God that He is, is blocked. God solved that problem by becoming one of us and laying my sin and your sin on Him. “Amazing love, how can it be? That you, my King, would die for me.” We just sang that, one of my favorite contemporary worship songs. And this solves one of the greatest problems human beings have and I would just pause and say, that if you’ve never met Jesus Christ under the cross, what better time than Easter Sunday? All you have to do is say “yes”.

And that leads to another problem that this cross solves and that is hopelessness. Another great need that we all have is hope. Rick Warren is a pastor out in California and he’s been on television a lot and he says on all the shows he’s on, they ask him a similar question. And the question is, “Is there any connection between the killings in Minnesota, the hostage crisis in Atlanta, and the Terry Shiavo case?” And he says, “Yeah, it’s called hopelessness.” People without hope do hopeless things. And he’s right. You see, people don’t know who they are and they don’t know where they’re going. Billy Graham told a story in the year 2000 about Albert Einstein, who was taking a train ride out of Princeton. He used to teach there. And as he got on the train, he sat down and the conductor came by looking for the tickets. He looked in one pocket and it wasn’t there and he looked in the other and along the seat and he couldn’t find his ticket. The conductor said, “Oh Dr. Einstein, we know who you are, it’s okay. I’m sure you bought a ticket.” And he walked on but then he looked behind him and saw Dr. Einstein on the floor, looking under the seat for his ticket. He ran back and said, “Dr. Einstein, Dr. Einstein, its okay. You don’t have to do this. We know who you are.” Dr. Einstein looked at him and said, “Son, I know who I am too, I just don’t know where I’m going.” Such is life after 50, I think. It’s kind of like the story I heard about a man on an airplane. The pilot comes on the intercom and says, “I’ve got some bad news and I’ve got some good news. The bad news is, I don’t know where we are and have no idea how to find out. But the good news is that we have a tail-wind and we’re making wonderful time.”

In all seriousness, this is the world apart from God. This is the world apart from God, without hope. The Bible says, without hope, without Christ in the world. We have a message my friends, of hope. It is the hope that comes from the grace of God, the power of God to forgive and to reconcile. It is the hope of a purpose in this life, because people not only don’t know who they are, they don’t know where they are going. And who they are, are people created in the image of God, loved of God. I can’t help but wonder if that kid who killed all of those people in Minnesota, north of here, if he had known about the love of God, would that have made any difference? You know in my life, you know there are times when you feel sorry for yourself, and you just don’t think anybody loves you. I’ve had those times but I always turn to one thing – if nobody else loves, I know God does. Of course, I have many people who love me, even when I feel sorry for myself. But sometimes you feel that way. Or I wonder if those terrorists had a different view of God, that it was all about grace instead of earning your way into whatever paradise there is by killing others, if they knew they were loved of God and didn’t have to earn it. You see it’s about that grace and God freely giving it. There’s hope in that, in knowing who God is.

And also love, as we just talked about. You know what our purpose is, in life? I was watching “Everybody Loves Raymond” just a few days ago. The grandmother, of course being the woman that she is, they were arguing about the meaning of life, and she says, “I know what the meaning of life is. It’s right in the Bible.” She got out a Bible and kept looking through it and said, “It’s in here somewhere, I’ll find it.” Well, she’s right about that. I don’t want to sound arrogant, but the meaning of life is pretty simple. The Bible says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul. Love your neighbor as yourself.” It’s not only to be loved, but to love, to worship with all your heart, to love God, and to love others. Rick Warren was doing an interview on CNN and he said, “The church is often accused of being a body without arms and all mouth. We talk a lot, but we don’t do anything.” I’m not sure if that’s totally fair, but he does have a point. We do talk a lot, but we are to be the arms and legs of God in this world. We need to be doing something about poverty and about ignorance and about the hurt and disease in the world. We need to stop just living for ourselves, which we do a lot of. We need to love as we are loved and we are loved so much.

The fourth greatest need is faith. We’ve had forgiveness, which starts at the foot of the cross. And in that cross we find hope and love and we also have faith because Jesus’ death is not the end of the story. It isn’t. If it is the end of the story, all we have is a man hanging on a cross and nothing else. We have a man who was raised from the dead and we have faith in that. You’ve heard me say before that I do not believe faith is apart from reason. I find faith in Christ very reasonable, and for a lot of reasons. One is the conception of God in the Bible. The God of the Bible is all-powerful, He can do anything. And so what’s the big deal about a resurrection – I don’t mean to sound funny, I really mean that. I know it’s hard sometimes to believe. But we have evidence. Interesting what we find in the Bible, the first account of the resurrection we have Peter and James hear about what the women have found and they run to the tomb. It says, interestingly, John poked his head in and saw the grave clothes and he believed. Well, why looking at the grave clothes? Because people were wrapped up like mummies, Jesus was. And what John saw were the grave clothes intact, not torn apart, and the body missing. He couldn’t have gotten out unless He just got out. And later the disciples themselves – you know I’m a story teller, I love to read books, and I don’t find too many books, especially when people are telling stories about themselves, in which the person describes themselves as basically an idiot. The disciples had a lot to do with the writing of the New Testament. They weren’t idiots, but they didn’t have a clue. Why would they describe themselves that way? Because it was true, they just didn’t get it until they saw Jesus. And these same disciples who were running like rabbits from their best friend, just a few weeks later were going into the powers-that-be and saying, “We don’t care what you do to us. We don’t care, we’re still going to do it, we’re going to preach.” Why? Because they had seen Jesus. Because it was real. The change was complete.

And that’s what Jesus does. When we meet Jesus underneath that cross and we accept that forgiveness and then we believe in the power of God and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God changes us. He fills us. And millions upon millions of people in history have been changed – there’s no denying that – and you have been changed. Oh, we’re still sinners, we still fail, we still screw up, we have our ups and downs in faith, but we’re changed, now and forever. The resurrection has begun now. And we look forward to the day when we will be with the Lord in Heaven because death is not the end of the story. Death is not the end of the story. Death is but the beginning of the story, a new story that God is telling about redemption, about renewal, about new life, and about remaking the world. That’s my encouragement to you today, on this Easter Sunday, as we remember once again what Christ has done and been to us. But it’s also a challenge to you because Jesus says very clearly that you and me; we are the light of the world. We are reflected lights, for sure, He is the real light but His light is reflected in us. Go home and take some Windex and clean off that mirror. Be the light of the world. Tell the story, it’s a grand one, isn’t it, about God’s grace, about forgiveness and resurrection. Let us pray.