My Summer Associate, Sammy Clark, and I went up to the Rochelle Church to clean up after Youth Activities Week. One of the things that made the week so wonderful was a giant cross, flood-lighted each night in the worship center, so that the shadow was cast high on the wall of the church, overshadowing us all. But Sammy and I took the cross down. We stored it down in the stairway that led to the water-filled basement back in 1957.

The preacher’s son was J. Lytle Jones, Jr. He was two years older than I was and was the newly elected President of the Secret Club. So far there was only one other member of the club, Melville Wood, who lived down Anthony Street and was nine years old. I looked up to these older men. I practically worshipped them from my measly seven years. I lived for what gems of wisdom they might drop my way and for what activities they might let me engage in with them. I was under consideration for membership in the Secret Club, and I saw them coming down the sidewalk, just out of their secret meeting.

John 12:12-13, Mark 15:15ff. A First Person Drama Sermon for Palm or Passion Sunday This morning I want you to forget that you see up here a balding, clean-shaven, “worn-out”(i.e. Retired) Methodist Preacher), and allow Simon the Cyrenian to speak to you from the perspectives of the 1st and 21st centuries.

John 12:12-13, Mark 15:15-25 This morning I want you to forget that you see up here a balding, clean-shaven, “worn-out”(i.e. Retired) Methodist Preacher), and allow Simon the Cyrenian to speak to you from the perspectives of the 1st and 21st centuries.

My name is Simon. My home was in Cyrene, on the coast of North Africa. I have come back to your time to tell you about the most significant moment of my entire life. It happened a long time ago, but I’ll never forget it, and I’ll never tire of telling about it. But I’m about to get ahead of my story.

We’re almost repelled by John’s words aren’t we? And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. What’s this… likening Jesus’ giving of his life to some sort of snake charming voodoo? The reference of course is to the incident when the children of Israel were traveling through the wilderness and were being bitten by snakes so that some of them died.

I Corinthians 1:18-25, Luke 23:32-43 Several years ago on Good Friday, former All-American basketball player, Ed Beck, who was with our Methodist Board of Evangelism, was down at Daytona for the annual pilgrimage of our college students that take their spring break at the beach. This particular year was one of the wildest on record with sexual exposure and drunkenness. Ed saw this happen—a drunken college boy, surrounded by a wild group of drinking co-eds, climbed on top of a car.

My wife’s mother, "Ma,” Mrs. F. H. Wilson of Griffin, Georgia, loved to tell about the little boy in the neighborhood who was a strange little fellow. He would leave his house and come try to play down at the Wilson's with the children there. But he didn't know how to play. He'd be as ornery as he knew how to be. He'd call the girls names. He'd say, "You old elephlunt mule!" He was trying to call them an elephant mule. "Ma" tried to give him refreshments or interest him in a storybook, but always he shied away and rejected any attention.

Joe Cresson, a columnist for: the Louisville Courier-Journal, tells a story about a man in eastern Kentucky, who went to the doctor. As he sat in the doctor's office, he said, he studied the face of a man across the room. "The more I looked at him," he said, "the more I knowed I knowed him. An', what's more, I could tell by the way he was a-starin' at me, he knowed that he knowed me. Well, we set there a-lookin' at each other, knowin' we knowed one another, and finally I decided I was gonna’ get up and go over and make sure I knowed him.

My wife’s mother, “Ma,” had a friend with two little girls. She missed some money off her dresser, and that afternoon after school, her oldest daughter came in upset. She said, “Judy bought ice cream at school, but you didn’t give me any money for ice cream!”
The mother said, “I didn’t give Judy any money.”
The daughter said, “Well, she sure bought some.”
When Judy came in, the mother said, “Judy, did you buy some ice cream at school?”
Judy said, “No, M’aam.”

Luke 9:28-36, Deuteronomy 34:1-6, I Kings 19:9-10 Why do you think Jesus went up on the mountain with Peter, James and John? Matthew, Mark and Luke record this strange experience. It must be important. It occurs just before starting his journey to the cross. Why do you suppose Jesus felt the need for doing this? Transfigured? Go figure! Hadn’t he already been baptized, had the dove descend on him, and had the voice from heaven say, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased?” Can we figure it out?