Well,
the World Cup starts in a couple of weeks. Anyone excited...?
That's
about three of you...
I
watched a programme on TV last night about World Cup mess ups; cringeworthy
World Cup songs, rash red cards, terrible haircuts, failures to score open
goals and comic goalkeeping errors. Funnily enough, a good number of them
involved England; who have of course the worst record in international football
for penalty shoot outs.
If
anyone can make a mess of a football tournament it seems the England team are
up for making history.
What’s
the worst mess up that can happen at a baptism? Forgetting to fill the font
with water? That’s happened once. Making the baby cry? That’s happened more
than once. Getting the baby’s name wrong?
Of
course we all mess up don’t we? And that’s sort of what baptism is about. It’s
not about making the baby a Christian. Only personal faith in the Lord Jesus
can make you a Christian. That’s why parents and godparents make promises to
help their child grow up with Christian values and beliefs.
The
Bible says “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in
your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” So baptism
is, in itself, unable to make you a Christian. Only personal faith in the Lord
Jesus can do that.
But
baptism means that, whenever we mess up, God’s grace is always available to
pick us up and clean us up.
Of
all the churches the Apostle Paul started, the one at Corinth was the one that
messed up the most. He had to write this letter because, in the church he had
started there, there were sexual scandals, bizarre beliefs and damaging
divisions. And in v12 of our reading he asks them a question which tells you a
lot. “How can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?”
That’s
a bit like saying to a football referee “What do you mean we should get rid of
goalposts?” “Jesus rising again? Not sure we need to believe that…”
Yes
we do! “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your
heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
The
reading we had describes it as being of first importance. In other words, it’s at the very top of
the list of absolutely essential things. It spells out what is at stake. “By
this gospel you are saved, if you
hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in
vain.”
In
other words, if you let the resurrection go, you’ve lost everything. So he says
“Look, I need to remind you of what I said to you before. You received it, you
took a stand on it, remember?”…
And
this is totally non-negotiable. “Christ died for our sins according to the
Scriptures. He was buried and raised on the third day according to the
Scriptures.”
A
friend of mine, who is a retired minister now, once told me about an old parishioner
of his who was lamenting all the changes and innovations being introduced in
church, “I don’t know,” he said, “if Jesus could see all this, he’d turn in his
grave!” That’s the point. He’s not in his grave!
And
then we get a list of names of people who saw Jesus after he was raised.
There’s Peter, then the rest of the twelve, there’s James, then Paul.
Someone
might say, “But what these so-called eye witnesses invented it?” Let’s say that
they did make the story up. You then have to explain why at least ten of the
twelve men were persecuted, tried and executed for spreading the story of
Christ’s resurrection and refusing to deny it.
Would
you accept heavy fines, a prison sentence and capital punishment just to cover
up a story you knew was false? Wouldn’t at least one of the disciples have
caved in when the heat was on and say, “Actually, we made this up. We hid the
body 300 yards away.”
Perhaps
they were just honestly mistaken? What if they just made a mistake and there is
a simple explanation for this apparent extraordinary miracle? What if, for
example, the authorities moved the body and didn’t tell anyone?
The
people arrive at the tomb on Easter Sunday, find it empty, and wrongly conclude
that Jesus must have risen. But that doesn’t work because history records that
the authorities were desperate to stop the public commotion about the
resurrection because it was causing riots. They could have easily stopped it by
producing Jesus’ dead body – but they never did.
And
how do you explain what Paul says in our reading? “After that, Jesus appeared
to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of
whom are still alive today.”
If
I said to you that my Uncle Reg really existed, you might or might not believe
me. I could show you a photograph of him, but you might say that could be a
picture of anyone.
If
I said to you that I know a handful of people who knew him, you could say that
I might have set them up to deceive you.
But
if I told you that I could call on five hundred people who knew him, who spoke
with him, who ate and drank with him, who worked with him on his farm and that
you can meet them if you want, you would probably accept that my Uncle Reg was
a real person.
But
that’s what Paul is saying here. “Shortly after his death and burial, Jesus
appeared alive to over 500
people at the same time. If you don’t believe me (Paul says) and if you don’t trust the apostles, O.K. Go and check it out
then with someone else who saw him with their own eyes. You can choose any one
of five hundred plus people. Take your pick. They’ll tell you that this is no
hoax.”
So
Paul begins this chapter on the resurrection by saying how important it is and
by showing how convincing it is. The ancient Scriptures predicted Jesus would
die and rise again. He was seen alive after his burial by many witnesses. Lives
were changed.
And
nearly two millennia later, lives are still being changed. The reality of Christ’s resurrection
is being discovered and experienced every day, all over the Earth.
In
the Sun newspaper in
April there was an article about a man called Shane Taylor. For many years,
Shane was considered to be one of the most dangerous men in Britain’s prisons.
Originally jailed for attempted murder, he had his sentence extended by four
years when he attacked a prison officer with a broken glass in an incident that
provoked a prison riot.
After
that, Shane was sent to some of Britain’s most secure prisons, where he was
often held in solitary confinement because of his violence towards prison
officers.
But
when he was in Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight, he went on the prison Alpha
Course (which is a Christianity discovery course). Shane said “I was mostly
interested in getting the free chocolate biscuits.”
One
day, the chaplain picked up a Bible and opened up a few verses where it said
‘Jesus Christ died on a cross for you. He died for your sins and you can be
forgiven.’
Shane
prayed for the first time. “Jesus Christ, I know you died on a cross for
me. Please, I don’t like who I am, please forgive me.”
This
is Shane’s testimony; “As I talked I had a weird feeling in my belly. Then I
started to feel this bubbly feeling slowly coming up my body – through my
legs, my chest. When it got to about halfway I started to feel tears coming
into my eyes. I tried to hold it back. I stopped talking, thinking that was
going to stop it. Here I was, a hard man in prison – I didn’t want to cry. But
it rose up and up and up until suddenly I began to sob. I hadn’t cried in
years. I could feel a weight being lifted off me because I felt light.”
And
Shane says this: “Everything suddenly became clearer than before. I knew it was
real. I knew God existed, I knew Jesus was alive and that I was going to live
for him forever. My behaviour changed so much that I went from being in the
segregation to getting a trusted job in the prison within a few weeks.”
Almost
exactly a year after the day that changed his life, he was freed. About seven
months later he met Samantha. They got married in 2008 at South Bank Baptist
Church, here on Teesside and have four lovely children.
“Jesus
has changed my life” Shane says. “Before, I was a man of pure hate and anger.
Jesus has showed me how to love and how to forgive. Almost all the people I’ve
upset, all the people I stabbed, all the people I hurt, have forgiven me and
now we can talk.”
Open
your heart to Jesus and experience his grave-busting power for yourself. Jesus
is alive today. He brings real forgiveness today, true freedom, deep healing today, new life, fresh hope and a bright future today to all who come to him in
faith.
“If
you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that
God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Sermon
preached at Saint Mary's Long Newton, 1st June 2014
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