Champions!

John 14.15-21 All Age Sermon

• What was all the noise in Barcelona last night? I could hardly sleep with all the fireworks, cheering and car horns…

• Oh, a football match. Who was playing? What was score? What were names of the Barça scorers? (3-1 to Barça, Pedro, Messi and Villa – we’ll come back to them.)

• I’m always on the lookout for sermon illustrations, so I couldn’t help noticing that the team with the devil on its badge lost to the team with a christian cross on its badge (no reflection on members of either club, btw).

• But it is great to be connected with the winning team. We are all connected, by living in or near Barcelona and attending a church in Barcelona. One of our members is more closely connected than any of us. He is the grandson of a Barça player. Guess who? A chocolate euro for the first child to find him … Michael Witty, grandson of Arthur – holding the ball in this 1903 team photo …

• Let’s make some connections with today’s Bible reading. Children, each time I mention the name of one of Barça’s goalscorers, I want you to call out “GOAL, BARÇA!

• At the start of John 14, Jesus talked about his Father’s house having many rooms . So it was bigger than an ordinary house, more like a VILLA (…) in fact.

• So Jesus was saying to the disciples that there is room in his Father’s VILLA (…) for everybody. But that doesn’t mean he wants us to just sit around in our rooms all day, listening to our iplayer or reading books.

• Later in the chapter he makes it clear that he wants his followers to be out doing the same kind of things he did, joining in his and his Father’s work of bringing heaven on earth.

• At the beginning and end of today’s reading (15 and 21) Jesus said that anyone who loves him will obey his commands = live his way, the way he showed us.

• But how can this happen? Well in the first letter of Peter, that’s PEDRO (…) in spanish, it says that all the followers of Jesus are being built by God like living stones into a temple for God to live in and work through. Wow!

• And Jesus says to the disciples that he won’t leave them as orphans – alone and without anyone to care for and guide them. He says he will return to them, but in a different form like a Helper who will live inside them.

• Does this mean we are to be like glove puppets with God’s “hand” inside us making us do the right things (demonstrate)?

• Not a bad illustration, but a better illustration might be a football coach like Barça’s Pep Guardiola.

• Some people in Barcelona seem to think Guardiola is God, but this is not correct!

• However there are similarities between what he does and what Jesus and the Holy Spirit do … He trains the plays every day to make the best of their God-given skills. But when it comes to the game he doesn’t leave them alone, like orphans, he is there with them.

• During the game he signals to the players, guides them, warns them about what their opponents are doing and so on. He calls out instructions and they respond to what he says, enabling them to play better.

• Sometimes it is hard for the players to hear the coach in the excitement of the game and above the noise of the crowd. But when they can hear him, they play better!

• We too are in a contest and we are in the team wearing the cross on its badge, the team which will win, as God saves the world. But we need help and the good news is…

• The same Helper, the same Holy Spirit is available to us, to help us live the way God wants us to. This is amazing, like Pep Guardiola being available to coach your school team.

• So no matter how difficult, how confusing, how complicated, how untidy… how MESSY (…) life gets, we know that we will never be orphans but Champions!