3rd Sunday of Easter Yr B (April 22, 2012) Acts 3:12-19

            But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given 

            to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we 

            are witnesses. And by faith in his name, his name itself has made this man strong, 

            whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given him this 

            perfect health in the presence of all of you.                                             Acts 3:14-16

   

Unbelievable. Those who had known him all those years of his life. All those years he had been brought to the gate called 'Beautiful' to beg for alms because he was born lame and could not work as a man works for a living. Living instead in shame.

And Peter had healed him in the name of Jesus Christ, having no money to give him. What a choice!  As if anyone would rather beg than work.

And now Peter and John are preaching in Solomon's Portico in the temple, and Jews are questioning that they were able to do this healing. Peter is crystal clear that it is not their  power at all, but Christ's power and the man's faith in Jesus of Nazareth that healed him.

We often find this as difficult to believe ... as the Jews did ... as it is to believe that people can walk on water or that pigs fly ... yet I know this kind of unbelievable event to have truly happened! 

      = human beings walked on the moon!

      = the 1980 American Winter Olympics Hockey team beat the Russians!

      = A baby born with a congenital defect needs surgery to correct it but
          must wait several months; when the time comes despite dozens of
          tests showing the defect clearly, the baby is perfect, totally normal!

On Thursday evening a (young and quite cynical) sports radio talk show host in Pittsburgh was taking odds on the Penguins a) winning Friday's Game 5 and b) winning the series. He agreed with the majority of callers that they had about a 30-35% chance of winning the next game, but UNlike most of the callers, he gave them NO CHANCE, 000% chance, of getting past the Flyers. 

I wanted to call in and tell him while he was certainly entitled to that opinion, it was a primary reason why he was sitting at a mike and not playing or coaching a professional sport. There is ALWAYS a chance to win, and if you don't believe that, you've lost the game before you play it. We saw that with the way the Steelers' season ended, and on and on. Great upsets have been immortalized in movies and books from long before Shakespeare to Lucas and beyond. 

As it turns out, the Pens DID win Friday, but lost again on Sunday .... yet I still say that I've seen pigs fly. It's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

      + do you know of a person being healed that can

          only be explained 'by faith in the name of Jesus'?

      + why is it easier to believe in a sports team 

          'upset' than a person's unexplainable healing?

      + what might God be calling YOU to do 'in the

          name of Jesus' that you have avoided because 

         you just don't quite believe it could ever happen?

     As the following pictures are not mine I have distorted them to be unrecognizable.   

     They are intended to help you imagine or visualize the event, nothing more.

 

The FIRST 'Miracle on Ice' US Olympic Hockey Team, a Gold Medal upset in 1960 at Squaw Valley, Idaho

Did you ever dream that it could come down?

As DW (Darrell Waltrip) would say 'Who woulda thunk it?  A kid not even 21 could win the Daytona 500?'      In 2010 Rookie Trevor Blayne did just that!