Home Sermons Sermon on John 20: 11 - 29

Sermon on John 20: 11 - 29

Sermon on John 20:11-29 August 23, 2009 preached in Emerson only Maybe it was the three weeks vacation I had in July. Maybe it was being at General Council this past week in Kelowna. I don’t want to nail it down to one thing but I have to begin today by making a great statement of faith. Some people would call it a confession. I am confessing that “I HAVE SEEN THE LORD!” I have seen the Lord. I have seen the Lord who is faithful. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord! Yes, I have. And now I bow before the Lord, and say, “Wow”! Joey and I are going to be talking about General Council here soon and I don’t want to say what we’re going to be saying then. But I just can’t keep it in any longer. I have to tell you, “I have seen the Lord.” Wow! And the Lord I saw was a faithful Lord. God promises over and over and over in the Bible to be faithful. And I saw it with my own eyes. WHEW! General Council began low and slow and boring and ordinary and I wondered what the rest of the week was going to be like. And then I got sick. It wasn’t H1N1 thank God. I think it was sunstroke. I was so sick that I had to miss most of Joey’s Youth Ministry evening workshop and that made me angry. So not only was I bored but I was angry too. I thought at everything was going to go to pot. Our moderator, David Giuliano kept saying, “Let’s go down to the Potter’s House.” And he kept saying that. I wondered if we were ever going to actually GET to the Potter’s House. And what if the Potter’s not home. Then what? David kept telling us to TRUST. I have to admit that it was not easy to trust when things were going downhill. But I went along and tried to trust that God would act. On Thursday God did just that….in a big way. God’s glory began to come into view. People were dancing. People were singing. People were caring for each other, and being kind to everybody they met. People who had previously been strangers to each other came together in mutual and equal relationship. People gave money to the Youth Forum to buy a $35,000 solar panel for a community who needed it. People wept openly and were deeply moved over the suffering of people in Africa, and the First Nations people who survived residential schools. People were overwhelmed with joy after hearing, “God loves you” in their first language. God in all God’s glory came visible right in front of my eyes. I have seen the Lord! And so I am coming back here to tell you that I have seen the Lord. But I’m wondering why I’m doing that because I’m not the only one who has seen the Lord. I worried a little bit about coming back here, from there because this has happened to me before. I’ve been on retreats and great conferences and places in which I became so motivated and excited and replenished and open and everything. But when I returned home I was the only one excited about it. As much as the words flowed out of me, nobody understood because they weren’t there. And so a member of VPC (Joey) to have been there was a gift to me that they’ll never know how much it means to me. I think Joey might understand me when I say that “I have seen the Lord.” Mary Magdalene saw the Lord, three days after the Lord died. And then later on that same day the group of disciples, “saw the Lord”. But Thomas didn’t see the Lord. Thomas wasn’t with them when they saw the Lord. And so Thomas didn’t believe, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nail and my hand in his side, I will not believe”. But later on Jesus became visible to Thomas, and Thomas said: “I have seen the Lord.” Jesus said, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. Seeing is believing isn’t it. But Jesus turns it around and says, Believing is seeing also. Those who don’t see, but yet believe are the blessed ones. People who still believe in spite of the fact that there are not 384 people in front of them: • being generous and excited about mission in the church. • singing and dancing all around me. • sitting and praying and doing amazing work. • loving the church with passionate and compassionate hearts. • filling a huge university gymnasium to the brim. • moving, acting, changing, and flowing in ways that show deep trust. Here in Emerson there is definitely seeing firsthand and then believing, just like me and Thomas and Mary and the Disciples. We see acts of kindness all over town and are moved by them in such a way that we bring our acts of kindness to others. But here in Emerson there is also definitely believing first and then seeing, just like Jesus. When there are no acts of kindness in sight, I have seen how people will bring their acts of kindness anyway. In the midst of people losing heart and entering negative places, I have seen some of you bring lightheartedness and kindness and humour and joy. When we act in such a way as to bring life in places where there is no life, that’s believing and then seeing the Lord. When we keep heart when all around us are losing theirs, that’s believing and then seeing the Lord. These are the people who are blessed! says Jesus. Have you seen the Lord lately? Let us ask God to give us the grace to meet one another with open hearts and minds so that all can be transformed, to more closely resemble the Creator’s dream for us. And may everyone who believes and sees and may everyone who sees and believe be alive and blessed in God’s Holy Spirit …always.