Almost a Good Sermon

Well tonight I went to a youth event at a Baptist Church. I love a good Baptist preacher.  Plenty of Amens mixed in with lots of repetition, and lots of repetition. Let me say that again...no, it's ok, we heard it the first time.  So the young guy was doing alright really. Lets get right into the book of John. He was pacing, he was letting us know that Jesus was in real trouble talking with church leaders. The preacher said that because of what Jesus was answering, if he wasn't careful, he would be stoned to death right there. I couldn't help but wonder; if Jesus already knew how he would die, and we know that as well, the whole "in grave danger" bit wasn't working for me. And what about the image of the cross? Think of how all our churches would look with a stone on top of them. But ok, we move forward.  Jesus tells the Jews that if we sin we may as well cut off our arm (paraphrased of course). To drive this point home he (the preacher) tells the story of the rock climber that found his arm trapped under a rock and used his pocket knife to cut his arm off so he would escape with his life and not die. This was going somewhere. The rock is sin, holding us down...ok. The knife is the word of God, otherwise known as the sword of the Spirit, so we use the word of God to escape sin by cutting it out. I think it works, but uh-oh; he has one last question. He turns to the high schoolers, the people he has been repeatedly been calling children, and asks them, "so what is your rock? Is it sin or is it Jesus?" What? What? Maybe you should ask again and re-phrase. Nope, he didn't rephrase, he just asked again. SO the image he left us with is was either sin crushing your arm or Jesus crushing your arm. He went on to say that our arm would be comfortable under the rock because it is a safe place. Really? Then why did the guy have to cut it off? And I'm not sure but my guess is your arm crushed under a rock may not be that comfortable. His now mixed-metaphor went horribly wrong at that point, but he had no way out. So he prayed that the rock in our lives would be Jesus, not exactly a great ending, but I gave him points for a good start.