“So Funny I
Could Cry”
John 20: 19-31
NRSV
In an interview with an African Safari
guide, the guide was asked, “Is it true that jungle animals won’t harm you if
you carry a torch?” The guide replied, “That depends on how fast you carry it.”
A
defendant was on trial for murder. There was strong evidence indicating guilt,
but there was no corpse. In the defense's closing statement the lawyer, knowing
that his client would probably be convicted, resorted to a trick.
"Ladies
and gentlemen of the jury, I have a surprise for you all," the lawyer said
as he looked at his watch. "Within one minute, the person presumed dead in
this case will walk into this courtroom." He looked toward the courtroom
door. The jurors, somewhat stunned, all looked on eagerly. A minute passed. Nothing
happened.
Finally the lawyer said, "Actually,
I made up the previous statement. But, you all looked on with anticipation. I
therefore put to you that you have a reasonable doubt in this case as to
whether anyone was killed and insist that you return a verdict of not
guilty." The jury, clearly confused, retired to deliberate. A few minutes
later, the jury returned and pronounced a verdict of guilty.
“But how?" inquired the lawyer.
"You must have had some doubt; I saw all of you stare at the door."
The jury foreman replied, "Oh, we looked, but your client didn't."
How do you act when you are confronted
with something you don’t believe? Each of us know things that others may
believe in that are harmless – Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy for
instance. But what about things that may be dangerous like taking “folk”
medicine or performing a superstitious behavior to cure a disease, infection,
or serious ailment?
Leeches and blood-letting were major
folk cures that were dangerous.
But some of you may say some of those
cures work! But which ones? Some of the claims and cures are so strange and
funny, you’ll laugh so hard it’ll make you cry!
What are we to believe or not? If we
cross over into religion “what should we believe” grows larger. What truths about
Jesus do we believe or not?
Here’s one to consider: A survey a few
years ago by the Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University found that
most Americans do not believe they will experience a resurrection of their
bodies when they die.
When asked, "Do you believe that,
after you die, your physical body will be resurrected someday?" Only 36 %
of adults surveyed said "yes," 54 % said they did not believe, and 10
percent were undecided.
Down thru the ages many people have
expressed the opinion that death is final. Back in the days of ancient Greece
the poet Aeschylus wrote: “Once a man dies, there is no resurrection.”
The Greek Philosopher Theocritus wrote:
“There is hope for those who are alive, but those who have died are without
hope.”
There’s something about death that seems
(pause) permanent… and tragic. Sigmund Freud wrote: “And finally there is the
painful riddle of death, for which no remedy at all has yet been found, nor
probably will ever be!”
Let’s read our Gospel Lesson for today
(John 20: 19-31), and then I am going to tell you an amazing thing that is so
simple and funny, it should make you laugh!
When
it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the
house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came
and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed
them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the
Lord.
Jesus
said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send
you.” When he had
said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of
any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
But
Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when
Jesus came. So the
other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless
I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the
nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
A
week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them.
Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace
be with you.”
Then
he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand
and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!”
Jesus
said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who
have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
Now
Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not
written in this book. But
these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah,
the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
To say that death is permanent and final
is to forget one important detail of creation: God created humanity perfect and
in His image; which also means eternally. God created us to live forever. His
desire for us was to live with Him forever.
Yet Adam and Eve sinned and fell from
perfection. The consequence of sin was that death entered into the world.
Through Jesus’ birth, life, death, and
resurrection reconciliation and restoration of eternal life was given back to
humanity. Of course, Jesus’ resurrection was real! How could it not be?
But still some people waffle.
Boudreaux was out fishin’ when he came
back in with a boat load of fish. The game warden was watchin’ and came and
said, "Boudreaux, how you caught all dem fish?" And Boudreaux say,
"Com’ see." They both went out again and then Boudreaux said this is
the spot.
So he pulled out a stick of dynamite and
lit it. The warden he done started hollerin’, "Boudreaux, you can’t do
dat! You can’t fish dat der dynamite! What you tink boy?"
Just then Boudreaux threw the dynamite
to the warden who caught it and said to the warden, "You gonna sit there a
hollerin’ or you gonna fish?"
What does it take to change your
convictions or understanding of a simple answer? For some it may take dynamite
for others it is as simple as the breeze blowing.
In
a speech made in 1863, Abraham Lincoln said, "We have been the recipients
of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in
peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other
nation has ever grown.
But
we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us
in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us.
And we have vainly imagined, in the
deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some
superior wisdom and virtue of our own.
Intoxicated
with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity
of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made
us."
Carl Sagan was
fascinated that educated adults, with the wonders of science manifest all
around them, could cling to beliefs based on the unverifiable testimony of
observers dead for two thousand years.
“You’re so smart,
why do you believe in God?” he once asked a pastor he knew. He found this a
surprising question from someone who had no trouble accepting the existence of
black holes, which no one has ever observed. “You’re so smart, why don’t you
believe in God?” he answered.
Sagan never
wavered in his agnosticism, even when he was dying. “There was no deathbed
conversion,” his wife, Ann Druyan, says. “No appeals to God, no hope for an
afterlife, no pretending that he and I, who had been inseparable for twenty
years, were not saying good-bye forever.”
“Didn’t he want to
believe?” someone asked. “Carl never wanted to believe,” she said fiercely. “He
wanted to know.”
Thomas wanted to
know, too. And Jesus had an answer ready for him.
Friends, that the point. I have told you so many times
about the beautiful symmetry of God’s creation. God created us with eternal
life. We screwed it up. So God had to find a way to restore it. That’s His
message for us.
Let’s hear those immortal words from
John’s Gospel, chapter 3, verses 16-17:
“For God loved
the world in this way, He gave his One and Only Son, so that everyone who
believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the
world that He might condemn the world, but that the world might be saved
through him.”
Friends, Jesus came for this! He was
born, grew up, ministered and performed miracles, became the foretold Messiah,
died on a cross as the atonement for humanity’s sin, and triumphed over death
on the third day. That’s history, that’s reality, that’s our faith. Believe in
the resurrection!
Amen.
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