Reflections on "A Changed Life" John 12: 20-26; Acts 9: 36-43

I am one of those people who has never known what it is like to be outside the church (although I have certainly had moments where I wondered about God), so I have always been fascinated with stories like Zamperini's.  One of the challenges of using a story like his becomes making it meaningful for a congregation where most people who gather already have made a commitment to Christ.  On the other hand, maybe even committed Christians need to be reminded of how inspiring believing can be.

The Acts passage was a late addition, but then it hit me that the phrase, "The believed," or a synonymous phrase is often used in Acts to describe how some powerful event is received by those watching or hearing the story told later.  If I preached the sermon again, I might spend more time on what it takes to make us believe.

A fundamental issue with the sermon was the implicit linking of belief in Christ with being involved in church -  I'm not sure that Zamperini's story of believing in Christ and the last person's story of becoming involved in church are comparing apples to apples.  yet, for the gathered congregation the belief in Christ is identified by the living it out in the context of the church community.  I know that there are distinctions that I glossed over between those two responses.

I really enjoyed preaching this sermon.  I've been trying to figure out if there is a pattern to why I like a sermon and why I don't particularly like it, but I haven't reached any conclusions yet.

“A Changed Life” January 8, 2012; FPC, Troy John 12: 20-26; Luke 9: 36-43

Introduction: In her book Unbroken, author Laura Hillenbrand tells the story of Lt. Louis Zamperini, whose plane went down in the Pacific during WWII. He survived the crash, along with two others, and floated in the Pacific for almost two months before landing on a Japanese occupied island. Then, he was held captive and tortured in a Japanese prison camp.

He survives both brutal experiences and returns home after WWII. He marries and is working, but his life is slowly falling apart. The nightmares will not stop, and they are dominated by images of the most brutal of the Japanese prison guards. Zamperini turns to drinking.

When things had gotten so bad there seemed to be no hope, a Billy Graham crusade came to CA. Zamperini's wife and friends begged him to go to hear Billy Graham. He finally relents and sits on the back row of the tent and listen to Graham's sermon. Then, when Graham moves to prayer and a chance to give your life to Christ, Zamperini gets up and flees from the tent. He is full of anger and rehearsing his life and all the awful experiences he has had.

His wife wants him to go back to hear Billy Graham again. She pesters him until he agrees to go. But he only agrees to stay for the sermon. He tells her he will leave when they get to the prayer part with the silence and the invitation to give their lives to Christ.

Again, the sermon evokes all sorts of thoughts and lots of anger in Zamperini. The sermon ends and Graham invites them into a time of pray and commitment.

Zamperini gets up to leave. Graham notices the movement and announces that no one should leave at this point. They need quiet and stillness while they pray.

This causes Zamperini to hurriedly push his way down the row to flee. He gets to the aisle and before he can leave, something overtakes him. He has a flashback to his time on the raft when he promised God that if God would help him survive, he will live his life for God forever.

In that moment, he changes. He lays claim to the love Christ has for him that Graham had just preached to them. He sees himself not as a the broken person who had had been beaten down by fighting for survival on a raft or by the Japanese prison guards. He suddenly sees himself as someone Christ loves.

He goes home and empties all the alcohol from his liquor cabinet. He never has another nightmare again. Within a year, he is traveling the United States telling his story and inviting people to know Christ. (This part of the story is found on pages 370-376 of Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand, NY:Random House, 2010).

A changed life.

Move 1: A changed life is what Christ desires.

a. I have always been fascinated by this passage from the gospel of John.

1. The Greeks want to meet Jesus.

2. They think something can happen if they can meet him.
3. They come to Philip, one of Jesus' disciples and ask for an introduction.
   
   
   b. Philip does not know what to do.

1. Maybe he is thrown off by them because they are Greeks.

2. Outsides, Gentiles, they are not like these others who follow Christ.

               3. So he takes them to Andrew.

100. Andrew is a probably the perfect person to ask what to do.
     
     
     1. after all, Andrew is the one who earlier had been out looking for the Messiah.
     
     
     2. He had been trying to find the one who would change his life.
     
     
     3. And when he found Christ, he immediately recognized him as the Messiah and began to follow him.
     
     
     d. Andrew's solution for the Greeks is rather simple.
     
     
     1. Take them to meet Christ.
     
     
     2. They are seeking something; Christ has something to offer; let's get them together.
     
     
     e. Jesus has a fascinating response to hearing that Greeks want to meet him.
     
     
     1. He turns this from a simple instance of people wanting to meet him to a sign.
     
     
     2. the arrival of the Greeks indicate that Christ's message is moving on to the Gentiles and the rest of the world.

2. Anyone who wants to be changed, whether they be Jew or Gentile, Aramaic or Greek, Jesus welcomes them.
   
   
3. Jesus then describes what it means to be changes. The challenges involved in discipleship.

4. The power to be changed when people who need something more meet the one who desires that their lives be changed.

f. But I also wonder what happened to the Greeks.

1. Were they like Zamperini? Changed forever.

2. Or was it like a New Year's resolution that is made and then quickly forgotten?

We do not know what happened to the Greeks, but we know that the one they sought is the one who seeks to change our lives.

Move 2: What does it take to make you believe and how have you been changed by an encounter with Christ?

a. The passage we read in Acts notes that after the miracle performed by Peter, many believed.

1. We read that phrase in several places in Acts.
   
   
2. It gives the impression that people were looking for something and that when they saw what Jesus' followers were doing, they believed they had found what they were looking for in Christ.
   
   
3. This story immediately follows the story of Saul.
   
   
4. Remember Saul, the persecutor of Christians who is struck blind on the road to Damascus and hears the voice of the Lord. And then gives his life to following Christ and becomes Paul, the great church leader.
   
   
   5. It's not clear he was looking for Christ, but when he found him, he was changed.
   
   
   b. Did you have a single moment in which you encountered Christ that changed you?

100. Over the years I have heard people share their stories of growing up in the faith.

1. Not really knowing what it was like to not be a Christian.

2. And yet often their faith story includes an event or several events over the course of their lives in which their faith in Christ is confirmed.

500. I also wonder what how long these people who believed in Acts continued to believe?
     
     
     1. how did that change in their lives get lived out?

2. How does your belief in Christ get lived out in your ongoing life?
   
   
   Conclusion: it was Easter morning at the church I served in KY. I had been serving there for a couple of years.
   As I expected, the sanctuary was packed. Lots of people that were not usually there. Most of them I knew – either as members of the congregation who did not make it to church very often or people from around the town.
   But over on the left side of the sanctuary was a younger man and woman with two young girls. Presumably husband and wife. I did not know them, nor did I recognize them. That caught my attention, I suppose, as well as the fact that their youngest daughter looked just a year or two older than my young child Caitlin.

As they leave, the man introduces himself, his wife and his two daughters to me. Then, he looks me in the eye and says quite sincerely, “It's time we started going to church. We'll see you next week.”

I said something like, “That will be great.”

what I really wanted to say was, “Yeah right.” It had not taken me too Easter services to hear the promises to return, all the while knowing that the next Sunday would arrive as the one of the poorest attended Sundays of the year.

but, lo and behold, a week later he and his family were there.

And the week after that, they were there.

And I suspect that over the next four years or so that I served that congregation that family was in worship as many weeks, if not more.

I wish I could say it was the sermon that Easter morning that inspired them to change their Sunday morning habits, but I suspect it was not.

Maybe it was hearing the story of Christ's resurrection and desiring to connect to the power of the living Christ.

I never did find out the rest of the story.

I did ask him a few times. In fact, this summer when I saw him and I asked him again.

He always has the same smile and the same answer, “it was time.”

It was time for the desire for something more to meet the power of Christ to change lives.

Amen.