Mar 21st - In Person

Please pray with me. Lord, God, Heavenly Father, we come here today, and we we listen to the word of God and we sing the hymns of praise. But we also, Jesus - although not only to know You, but to see You. And see You, yes, we do. In Your Word as we hear it, and in Your sacrement, as you lay it before. But also to see You, Jesus. And to love You. In Your name we pray. Amen.

So, what if you could meet a celebrity that you really like the most, that could be a movie star, could be a leader, could be... but what would you do if you were able to meet the person - that celebrity person to talk to them? Well, Philip got to do that. And what happened was, he was in line, and all of a sudden Dolly Parton here signs his CD and you know, what would you do?

Well, he just blurted out, "I've been in love with you for 20 years!"

And Dolly being Dolly just patted his head and says, "Well, don't stop now, honey!"

Well, when we think about that, we don't know what we would do, right? Well in our Gospel text for today, we see now among those who went up to the worship in the feast were some Greeks. So they came to Philip who was from Bethsaida in Galilee and asked him, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus."

And I'm thinking, what would they say? If it was today's world, would they take their phone to take a selfie with Jesus or something like that?

But Greeks - if you follow the Greeks at all, like philosophers, and they like philosophy. But if you think about it, Jesus never wrote anything down like philosophers do. They would write out what their philosophy was. Yet, even though He never wrote anything down and really, when you think about the Gospels - not a lot - He spoke in Parables. He had that sermon on the mount, those three chapters, but other than that, a lot of what He said wasn't it put down. Yet the Gospels, the Bible has probably been studied more than any other book in the history of mankind. Volumes upon volumes upon volumes have been written about Jesus. And yet, here's the deal, He didn't write anything. But the Greeks, they wanted to see Jesus, so I wasn't really what Jesus was, you know, who He was. It was what He did that impacted the world so much. I think about that and I think about treadmills. I know, I'll get to it. Because what are treadmills? You get on them today - I mean, they're so high-tech today, it's amazing. You get on them today and push a few buttons and you can lower, you can go faster. And then they have a lot of them have you can plug your stuff in and listen to music, or they even have TVs on some of them. But do you know, the original reason for treadmills? They were punishments in prison. Some of you may have tredmills, and you say you can believe that, right? I get that. In the Victorian England, they installed treadmills in their prisons, and the prisoners would have to go hour upon hour, day after day on these treadmills. He was considered punishment for the punishment.

But I think about that, and, you know, it had to be because they weren't going anywhere. Not like today's treadmills that have all this stuff in front of you. It would be so mundane to do the same thing day after day every day.

And that's really what we're talking about. For so many people in our world - we were talking about it in Bible study today - you know, the purpose of life has been lost. Yet, they're still doing the same thing. They're still going to work. They're still doing that same thing day after day after day, yet they're not going anywhere. It's so sad. In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus said, "Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone." Notice that word "alone." "But if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life."

And if you think about it, that's this world. It's specifically our culture. I don't know if you've been watching the NCAA basketball, but what are the commercials about? It's what they can do for you, right? It's what you can purchase, it's what you can go to. It's all about that, because why? If your life, as it says in our Gospel lesson, has no purpose, you are alone. Jesus says the person who loses his life - in other words, gives up his life to Jesus - will gain it through everlasting life.

William Gibson wrote a book called "A Mass for the Dead." And in there, he talks about his mother. His mother was a very God-fearing woman. She loved Jesus, and you know, she what to meet her maker smiling at the hospital bed. And the son, William wanted to have that. So he got his mother's prayer book, his mother's Bible. A Bible which is worn to a frazzle. He got her spectacles, her glasses where she used to read, and he got her rocker. And William sat down in the rocker, thinking he could feel, you know, what his mother had felt. And then he put on the spectacles, thinking he could see what his mother had seen. And then, he got the prayer book and the Bible, thinking he could actually look at it. But nothing happened.

And then, he began to understand that he could not, he could not have the faith or substitute the faith of his mother. He had to have faith by himself. And sadly, he didn't understand that. He didn't understand that at all.

See, when Jesus in the Gospel, when He says, "If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. And if anyone serves me, the Father will honor him." Notice it says "there will my servant be also." You read through the Gospels, you read through the New Testament. And what's very interesting, when it talks about Jesus and talks about how we're with Jesus, we're in Jesus, we're near Jesus. All those prepositions. But the proximity of Christ is right with us.

See, we want to see Jesus, too. We want to see Jesus, and we do in the World. Tara did a great job with it. We see Jesus in the sacraments. We're going to do that in a little bit. But the other place we see Jesus - well look around you. Just turn and look. It's okay. I'm serious. Turn and look, see who's around you. Brian is waving back there.

We see Jesus in each other. We are brothers and sisters in Christ.

Now, when you leave here today, and maybe you're going out, you know, I heard there's a nice restaurant on the river, you know, or cafe or whatever. And you walk in there, and you may be the only Jesus those people ever see. Because that's part of who we are. We are created, not only to worship Him - and we're worshipping Him today - but we're created to share Him. And notice, again, what that Gospel lesson says: "Where I am, there will my servant be also."

That's important. I want to tell you Charles' story for a number of reasons. First of all, you have to understand Charles was not a nice person. He was a drunk. He treated his wife and children shabbily, sometimes abusively. At work, he was hard to get along with, so when he ended up in the hospital, even the nurses and the doctors were a little bit "Woahh. This is Charles." So it's kind of a shock when Charles asked for the chaplain. And the chaplain came in and said, "What can I do for you?" He says, "I'd like you to talk to God for me." The chaplain said, "Okay, well what do you want to tell God?" "First of all, I want you to tell Him that I'm sorry for the way I treated my wife. I'm sorry for the way I treated my children. And I'm sorry for the way I treated my co-workers." The chaplain said, "Okay. Okay, we can we do that. What else do you want to tell God?"

He says, "Well, I don't know. But I hope that God would be merciful enough, that I can spend eternity with Him."

The chaplain said, "Ok, any thing else?" "Nope." So, that's what the chaplain prayed: exactly what Charles asked for to God. And then he left the room. The next day, the chaplain came around and looked in, but there's nobody in the bed. What happened? Oh, Charles died last night.

So, what do you think? Did Charles go to heaven? Was this a deathbed confession?

See, sometimes we as longtime Christians have a hard time grabbing a hold of that. And then we remember Good Friday. What did Jesus say to the thief on the cross? Today you will be with me in where? Paradise. I mean, if this truly was a confession that Charles had - and I had many in my 40 years of ministry.

There's no doubt in me that he's with Jesus. The problem is he missed out on so much. He missed out on a lifetime of worshipping Jesus. He missed out on a lifetime of seeing how Jesus works in his life and all the different things that are part of it.

We have that. We have that amazing gift, but we do know that whoever believes - I mean that's part of what we talk about when Jesus says "I am the resurrection and life. Whoever believes in me will live even though he dies." Because of who we are.

Because, you see, we see Jesus everyday.

We see Jesus as we get into the Word. We see Jesus as we worship here at Immanuel. We see Jesus as we go out in the community and we are like Jesus to the people that we know.

A week from today, we come to this place again. And what are we going to do? We're going to walk with Jesus. We're going to see His praises on Palm Sunday. We're going to see Him give us an amazing gift. Are we going to see how He works in our lives, and then we're going to see His cruel death and resurrection. But for now, sing with me again.

"Therefore I'll say again, God loves me dearly. God loves me dearly. Loves even me."

Amen.