Sermon “Nugget”:
Weakest Links — The Followers of Jesus
When Jesus gathered his disciples, he chose the weakest links. When Jesus proclaimed, blessed are the meek, the poor, the grieving and the persecuted, he preached to the weakest links. When he promised Paradise to a dying thief, he offered salvation to a weakest link. When he chose God’s definition of Messiah rather than the world’s, Jesus chose to be a weak link. Can you imagine any of the followers of Jesus being contestants on any of these shows? They would probably not even be considered except as providing comic relief. The gospels are painfully honest in portraying them as squabbling among themselves, putting one another down, vying for attention, and falling asleep, betraying, denying and running away in the clutch. They are absolute duds in many ways. As Jesus is arrested and led away, the host, Anne Robinson would stare at Peter and say, “You are the weakest link. Goodbye.”
Yet the story doesn’t end with Peter and the others leaving by a walk of shame out of this life. Instead, something happened, not in a TV studio, but in a garden. Not amidst the halls of power, but in a place of the dead. From there, life came and looked at death and said, “Death you are the weakest link. Goodbye.”The weak links like Peter and Mary and all the other weak links became the foundation of a movement that lives in us today. These weak links kept the faith alive despite numerous attempts to stamp it out.
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