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Sermon Outline: "A Smile on Jesus' Face"
Dr. James L. KiddIsn't it true that if a person is going to be able to really laugh, he or she has to be able to really weep?
I. Jesus has a way of turning everything upside down. "Blessed are you who weep, for you shall laugh." A. The Bible is not too big on smiles or laughing. B. All the great leaders of the church insisted that smiles and laughter are a very real part of religion.
II. Jesus had a smile, which affirms the goodness of life. A. Smiles and laughter are some of God's great healing forces.
B. God smiled on that first Christmas as he thought of the joy that his gift to the world would bring. People would know a new kind of joy.
III. Jesus felt good and smiled when he was surrounded with joy. Those happy days in Galilee surely brought joy to his heart and a smile to his face.
A. Jesus had a nice warm smile, but it did not indicate weakness, it showed his power.
B. You can smile, too; it is important for all the lonely, frightened, angry people. Go the extra smile!
A SMILE ON JESUS' FACE
The older I get, the more amazed I am at the wisdom of Jesus' sayings, especially those sayings that seem to turn everything upside down. In the Beatitudes, Jesus makes a statement that seems to be a paradox: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted" (Matthew 5: 4) If one is going to be able to really laugh., one has to be able to really weep.. That is why Ecclesiastes says, "There is a time to weep and a time to laugh. There are some people who believe they should never weep. They think they always have to be smiling. People who are like that have a smile that is not a real smile. It becomes an inauthentic, unreal smile, a frozen smile, an insipid smile. If one is not free to be honest about grief and sorrow, then one is not free to be honest about joy.
The Bible does not seem to be too big on smiles and laughter. In checking a concordance, which lists all the passages in the Bible in which a certain word appears, I could only find the word smile once in the Bible. Then I looked up the word laughter and found that it is used five times in all of the New Testament Some people are convinced that because of that Jesus never smiled and that he never laughed; therefore, Christians are not supposed to smile or laugh, especially not in church.
Last year, following his Palm Sunday sermon, a pastor received an anonymous post card in the mail. It read, "Do you think it would be possible to have an Easter sermon without including a single "ho, ho, ho" joke? Loud laughter during a church service is not what I anticipated when I joined this church on Palm Sunday."
Let us consider how important it is to smile and to laugh, especially at Christmas time. Christmas is the time for smiling and laughing, and Christians are invited by God to be people who not only weep, but also who are able to smile and to laugh.
Abraham Lincoln used to be famous for his gaunt form, wandering around the corridors of the White House during the darkest days of the Civil War, frantically searching for someone with whom he could share a funny story he had just read. To be human means that you smile and laugh, and if we believe that Jesus was fully human, that God sent his Son to be fully a human being, then we believe that Jesus must also have been one who smiled and laughed.
Imagine two of the ways in which Jesus smiles at us during this season of smiles. First of all, I believe Jesus had the kind of smile that is sometimes described as a grin, the kind of smile you know is just about to break into a chuckle or a laugh, a hearty laugh, able to affirm the goodness of life in embracing it with affirmation. Many of us remember Norman Cousins, the former editor of The Saturday Review, was desperately sick. His physicians told him his illness could be fatal. He continued his treatments, but he still had a great deal of pain. He embraced a form of therapy that included laughter. He watched funny movies and laughed and laughed and laughed until he laughed the pain away. Our text for this morning in Proverbs says, "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine" (Proverbs 17:22a KJV). Perhaps it is time to take laughter more seriously.
Surely God must have been laughing or smiling on that first Christmas. Have you ever bought someone a gift you knew was going to make that person so happy when he or she opened the gift their heart would sing – they would probably cry. You thought about how exciting this moment was going to be because you had provided this gift. That is how it must have been for God on that first Christmas when he thought about the gift he had given his children, the gift he was giving to the world, the gift would make people know joy – joy like they had never known before. Paul says joy is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, that a sign of being filled with God’s Spirit is that you are filled with joy; you feel good, you are happy.
C.S. Lewis was a Christian who knew about joy, and he told in his autobiography how surprised he was at how good he felt when he became a Christian, when Christ was born in his heart, when Christmas came to him personally. He entitled his biography, "surprised by Joy".
I believe that Jesus felt good. It is true Jesus was able to weep. He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. He began and completed his life in Judea in Bethlehem and Jerusalem. But it is also true that he spent most of his life in Galilee, in the north of Israel. Galilee is a land flowing with milk and honey. It is not like Judea, which is all barren rock. Galilee is a place where the sun shines; the hills are surrounded by fertile fields, with a beautiful lake and the River Jordan. It is where Jesus went to weddings and turned water into wine and walked on the water. I think Jesus must have felt good. And when you feel good, you smile.
Jesus had a nice smile, but it did not indicate weakness. Jesus .had a warm, inviting smile, and he was strong because he was filled with the power of God. He had a smile when he said, come and be my friend. Let me know who you are and I will let you know who I am. Jesus said, "Come unto me all ye that labour and I will give you rest." (Matthew 11:28 KJV). When he said that, he must have had a smile on his face! That smile on the face of Jesus contains this message: You are accepted. You are invited to return that smile with a smile of your own and to turn to the world all about you and to smile at them as well. That is what life is all about. It is about God poured out for you and for me and revealed in Jesus Christ. And so we are called to smile.
Sometimes when you smile at other people, they will not always smile back. But then remember that Jesus said we are called to go the extra smile. So keep smiling and feel good
That is what Jesus’ smile is all about. You are invited to smile because there is nothing you can do more important than to see all the lonely, frightened, angry people all around you -- on the streets, at work, here in church – and smile. Smile at your neighbor. Go the extra smile! Keep on smiling, and you will feel good.
Our text for this morning says, "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine" (Proverbs 17:22a KJV). And in this merriest of seasons I wish all of you a merry heart in the name of Jesus.