Sunday - 06/09/13
RWJ/Pottersville UMC
Sermon: “He tells the
dead to breathe”
Scripture Lesson: Galatians 1:11-24
Gospel Lesson: Luke 7:11-17
Good morning brothers and sisters! What
a joy and a pleasure it is to be here with you all on this our “Third Sunday
after Pentecost.” This third Sunday after the Holy Spirit showed up on that day
of Pentecost almost 2,000 years ago. The day that the spirit of God arrived,
and that day the Christian Church was born. The day that the Apostles and all
of the other followers of Christ, both men and women had the courage, the conviction,
and the faith to go and preach the Good News of Jesus Christ, regardless of the
consequences.
If
the Apostles and the early Christians were this committed to spreading the
faith, and if they were even willing to die to have people know Jesus, then
logic would argue that they believed it! If our faith has become the largest
faith in the whole world, which it has, then it must be true. How could a faith
with one Messiah, and a rag tag group of followers grow to such epic
proportions? It is true! Jesus Christ is the savior of all!
Throughout
history, so many have claimed to be prophets, so many have claimed to be God, and
so many have claimed to have some form of truth. Yet, we have yet to encounter
anyone in all of human history who was like Jesus of Nazareth. No one in fact,
did all that Jesus did and still does even today.
When
we are talking with non-believers then, or people of other faiths, those people
might not fully understand all that is Jesus Christ. I think that as Christians
though, we must love all of God’s people, and that we must love all people of
other religions. Yet in doing so, we should at the same time stand on Christ
and Christ alone, because we believe him to be the one and the only way to
glory. While I personally have friends that are Jewish, Buddhist, Atheist, and
etc., if you talk to any of them about me, this is what they would probably say
about me. “Paul respects me and my beliefs, but yet he persists that only true
way to almighty God is through Jesus Christ. He believes that I might have some
sort of connection to God with what I believe, but he persists that the purest
and truest revelation of God is found only in Jesus Christ. Yet I feel loved
and respected by Paul though, and while he values me, at the end of the day he
is a full-fledged and devout Christian.”
I
have even heard some of my students and some of friends say things like this: “Paul
is a devout Christian, but he is not mean to me. He does not judge me.” So when
a child of God of another faith, or a non-believer asks you, “Why do you
believe in Jesus Christ?” When they then ask you “What makes him so unique and so
powerful, what do we then say in response to those people?”
Well
my brothers and sisters, among the many things that I could say to these people,
one is, is that “He tells the dead to breathe.” That Jesus Christ can bring
back the dead to life. That we serve a Messiah that can raise the dead, heal
the sick, cleanse the lepers, and can do anything. So while I think that the
love of God is everywhere, and while I think that all people can have at least
some connection with God, I challenge you to find me another Messiah that can “Tell
the dead to breathe.” You find me another prophet who meets the qualifications
to be the savior of all of humankind. You find me another savior who was
sinless, who changed the world with his words, and who created an entire new
way living, being, and existing. A Messiah that has given us morals and ethics
to live by, and a Messiah who’s teachings are at the very core of who we are
and what we represent, when we proudly say, “In God we trust.”
Yet
I worry my brothers and sisters, that so many of our young people today have
not only abandoned the free salvation that Christ offers us, but in addition to
this they have further turned away from our Judeo-Christian teachings
altogether. For if we are not made to learn Judeo-Christians ethics or morality
then as one of my student’s told me we can then believe that, “the only crime
is getting caught.” I however, don’t follow the laws, just because they are
laws, but also because almighty God and the Bible forbid me to break many of
them. I will not steal something from someone just because I am worried that “I
will get caught,” but because it is immoral to do so. Without the teachings of
Christ then, where do we draw our ethics and our morality from? After all, he
was the one “who tells the dead to breathe.”
Let
us look at our scripture reading for this morning from the Apostle Paul’s
letter to the churches in Galatia. This is what the Apostle Paul said, “For I
want you to know, brothers and sisters that the gospel that was proclaimed by
me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor
was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation in Jesus Christ.” The
Apostle Paul was a devout follower of Christ, and his ethics, his morals, were
governed not by what the world said, but by what almighty God said. The Apostle
Paul went on to say in this scripture that at one time he was a Pharisee and a
great persecutor of the Christian Church. Yet he said, “But when God, who has
set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to
reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles.” You see
Paul had encountered God, had encountered the Spirit, and believed. Despite
what the world told him, his faith in Christ, his belief in a better world, and
his moral and ethical compass led him to free people all over from the bondage
of disbelieve and emptiness. That robbing and stealing are not ok, because
Jesus Christ says, “we shouldn’t do that.” That we should feed the poor and
care for the sick, because Jesus said to “do that.” That when we view dictators
like the North Korean dictator Kin Jong-Un, we should long to liberate those
people who are in bondage, who long to be free, and who desperately need to be
healed by the gospel of Jesus Christ. That we should long to have all people be
free and live in the light of the grace of Jesus Christ.
In
this morning’s gospel reading from the gospel according to Luke, it says
speaking of Jesus, “Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples
and large crowd went with him. As he approached the gate of the town, a man who
had died was carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow;
and with her was a large crowd from the town.”
Now
listen carefully to what the gospel says next, “When the Lord saw her, he had
compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then he came forward and
touched the bier, and the bearers stood still.” Just for clarification, a “bier”
is A
stand on which a corpse or a coffin containing a corpse is placed before burial,
and this is what Jesus had touched. Jesus than said, “Young man, I say to you,
rise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his
mother. Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, “A great
prophet has risen among us!”
Brothers
and sisters, a man was dead, and Jesus said, “breathe.” Jesus said “rise.”
Jesus said, “live.” Only the Son of God could do such things, only the savior
of all humankind could do things such as this. When we chose to believe we are
not being ignorant, we are not being irrational; instead we are surrendering
our lives to King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. In a world draped in darkness
and so much immorality, Jesus has come to deliver the captives, restore sight
to the blind, and yes even “tell the dead to breathe.”
What this world
needs today then is people who are willing to be in the trenches showing people
who Jesus Christ is. Who are willing to lead and love a person who is staving
and thirsty, to the fountain of life, to feast at the banquet table of the
Lord.
In
my workings, so many non-believers have said to me, “Well Paul if God really
exists, then why do such bad things happen.” I often reply with a quote from
Sir Edmund Burke, that “All that is
necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” The
people of God are on the front lines brothers and sisters, even now as I speak.
Our brothers and sisters are in Oklahoma, feeding and caring for the Tornado
victims, the United Methodist Church is partnering with other organizations to
cure Malaria in Africa, and so many of us feed the sick and clothe the naked. We
brothers and sisters are a people of the resurrection, we serve the risen King,
and he is King “who tells the dead to the breath.”
Yet I think
that some of the people in the world today, who are alive, are actually dead.
Sure they get up in the morning and go to work, sure they pay their bills, but
they are dead. Their soul is stifled, their hearts our bitter, and they long to
know truth and to know the meaning of it all. They are hungry, thirsty, beaten
down, and are heavy laden. Yet Jesus said in Mathew 11:28, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I
will give you rest.” Jesus said in John 6:35-37, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go
hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do
not believe. All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to
me I will never drive away.”
Jesus teaches that we should all come unto him, and that if we follow
him, we will grow in righteousness, we will become more pure, we will become
more whole as people, and as the founder of Methodism John Wesley said, “We
will go on to perfection.”
Mother Theresa said, “At the end of life we will not be judged by how many
diplomas we have received, how much money we have made, how many great things
we have done. We will be judged by "I was
hungry, and you gave me something to eat, I was naked and you clothed me. I was
homeless, and you took me in.”
I would like to close this
sermon this morning with my own story. Here is the story. A student of mine
asked me other day, “How do you know there really is a God?” She asked this
because she does not believe. I told her, that “I don’t just believe, I have
experienced God.” I have felt the presence of the Holy Spirit, I have seen
healings, I have witnessed miracles, and I have seen great things.” I then said,
“in fairness though there are days that believers feel like God is very distant,
and there are days that they feel that he is heavily present.” I then also
said, “And we believers aren’t perfect, we are just as human as anyone else.” She
then said, “So to be a believer, you need to have a “spiritual experience?” I
then said, “Well it doesn’t hurt, and it usually really convinces people of
Gods existence.”
Well brothers and sisters,
this student called me yesterday and said that she had a “spiritual experience.”
She then explained that something inside of her caused her to start telling
people the phrase “One love,” as in the one love of God for all people. She
then went to store shortly after this feeling compelled to begin to say this phrase
to many people. She said that when she got to the store, the first thing that
she saw in that store was a key chain. The key chain she said, said “One love”
on it. She told me this story with such excitement, and I could hear God
working in her. I could tell that she had never had an experience like this
before, and I can’t wait until I see this student next week.
You see so often, I wonder
if I am being effective with my students, yet one of my students a couple of
weeks ago told me that he is thinking about becoming a minister, but “a cool
minister like you, he said.” Then I had the student I just talked about call me
yesterday with this story of having a “spiritual experience.” Two or three of
my students that I have worked with in the last year have switched from
becoming Atheists to Agnostics, or people who believe in God. You see they all
believe in various things, and therefore, have become convinced that there is
something more than just us. That God is real and is on the throne. For if you
go to the movie to watch haunted movies, movies about demon possessions, and
etc., and if you believe in any of it, than guess what, “you’re not an atheist!”
I have a feeling that there are many more believers in the world than we think
there are.
As
children of God, as a people of the resurrection, we must continue to see a
world that is hurting, that is fallen, and that desperately needs to be saved,
and we must tell these people that, “He tells the dead to breathe.” We must tell
them, “You're the one
who conquers giants. You're the one who calls out kings. You shut the mouths of
lions. You tell the dead to breathe. You're the one who walks through fire. You
take the orphan's hand. You are the one Messiah. You are I am. You are I am,” when
speaking of Jesus. So go forth this week brothers and sisters and proclaim that
we serve a risen Lord who “tells the dead to breath.” Amen.
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