Cornerstone Community Church, San Jose Ca

A little boy was sick on Palm Sunday and stayed home from church with his mother. His father returned from church holding a palm branch. The little boy was curious and asked, "Why do you have that palm branch, Dad?" "Well son, when Jesus came into town, everyone waved palm branches to honor him, so we got palm branches at church today." The little boy replied, "Aw, shucks! The one Sunday I miss is the Sunday that Jesus shows up!"

I don't know if any of you ever watch Jon Stewart, the host of "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central. According to a number of pollsters, even though he's primarily a comedian, Jon Stewart is the most trusted newsperson on television. Sometimes "The Daily Show" is just plain silly, but I've also found that from time to time Jon Stewart's humor makes a pretty compelling point.

Well good morning I am privileged to have the opportunity to fill in for Pastor Craig this week as he is off visiting with his mother in Minnesota. I hope to fill his shoes quite nicely. Now you may be aware that our beloved pastor has a particular phobia of the winged creatures and just so you felt comfortable with me this morning I thought I would share a phobia that I had as a child. I was terrified of vacuum cleaners. It all started with the movie "Mr. Mom" with Michael Keaton and that vacuum cleaner that chases the kids around the house with a seemingly endless chord, seriously is a vacuum cord really that long? My mom, who is in attendance this morning, discovered this phobia of mine while I did the potty dance at the beginning of the hallway because I was so scared of the vacuum cleaner in between me and the bathroom. She was vacuuming the hallway when the phone rang and she stopped to get it. Me being the happy-go-lucky kid I was came in from playing outside to use the bathroom and there

In my 15 years working as a lawyer, one of my job duties that I particularly enjoyed was interviewing law students who were looking for their first job out of law school. Most interviews lasted about half an hour, and part of that time required me to give a little sales pitch for our firm, but for most of those 30 minutes I got to sit back and ask the recruit questions about his or her background. Before the interview I would get a copy of the recruit's resume, so I would have some information to help shape my questions, but I really liked to hear it all from the recruit. Where did you grow up? What schools did you go to? Why did you pick those schools? What were your favorite classes? What kind of summer jobs have you had? What people have been the biggest influences in your life?

In our society we don't have to go looking for interesting offers -- they come to us, every day, and all day. We get offers in the mail, we get offers on TV, and we get offers all day long in our email box. Most of those go right into my junk mail, but I still take a quick look just to make sure I'm not deleting an important email that got sent to junk by mistake. I got one recently that said "Click here for tomorrow's lottery numbers." The email ad continued, "Wish you knew tomorrow's lottery numbers? We already do!" It even had a picture of a very happy leprechaun, who apparently won last week's lottery. Something told me not to click on the link, so I guess I'll never know if it's true.

Back in the day when I was still courting my wife and I was still somewhat sappy, I would quote to her from time to time from my favorite Shakespearean play, the love story we know as "Romeo and Juliet." One of my favorite scenes in that play is the balcony scene where Romeo climbs up a tree to talk to Juliet who is standing on the balcony outside her bedroom. Romeo and Juliet had met just that night at a dance, but already were quite sure that they were in love. There is a fair bit of tension in the scene, since Romeo and Juliet come from families who hate each other and they know they can't be seen talking to each other. So after they talk for a few minutes and share their feelings for each other, Juliet bids Romeo good night. And then comes this line from the lips of Romeo: "O wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?" Juliet responds a bit indignantly: "What satisfaction canst thou have tonight?" She's thinking that Romeo is suggesting that they engage in some hanky-panky. But that's actually not what he

One of the most popular sports come the Olympics is gymnastics, and in particular, women's gymnastics. My daughters both spent some time in competitive gymnastics, so we got something of an education in just how difficult the sport is and how hard the gymnasts train. And it's not just the girls who put in hours and hours of time -- it's the coaches and trainers, and, of course, the parents, who put in both time and significant amounts of money.

The message of TV's so-called most interesting man in the world is this: "Stay thirsty, my friend." More to the point, this man wants us to stay thirsty for Dos Equis, a brand of beer. Scientists tell us that we will do just that if we drink beer, since drinking alcohol, rather than quenching our thirst, makes us thirstier. So if we want something to quench our thirst, perhaps we need to look somewhere besides a beer commercial.

How would you describe the most interesting man in the world? Here are a few more attempts to do just that by the makers of the most interesting man in the world commercials:..... Yes, the Dos Equis man is pretty interesting, but the Gospel of John makes it very clear who the most interesting man in the world really is - Jesus, who John tells us is God in the flesh. In another book written by John, the book of Revelation, John quotes Jesus describing himself this way: "I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever. And I hold the keys of death and Hades." (Revelation 1:17-18) Now that's an interesting man.

It was the 1980 Winter Olympics, and the United States was playing the Soviet Union in ice hockey. In those days the United States used only amateur hockey players, although we all knew that the Russians were professionals. In a tune up for the Olympics the Russians beat the U.S. team 10 to 3. It was truly a matter of men playing boys. I had a particular interest in our hockey team because one of the starting defensemen, Bill Baker, had lived in the dorm room next to me for two years at the University of Minnesota, and we had spent many hours in conversation. I really wanted Bill to do well, and like all Americans I wanted our whole team to do well. But to be honest, what we meant by doing well against the Russians was that they hold the Russians under ten goals.

If you watch TV at all you can't help but see an ad featuring the so-called "most interesting man in the world." He is portrayed to be a distinguished older gentleman who is shown through film clips of deliberately varying quality to have led an extremely eventful and colorful life, packed with over-the-top acts of heroism and adventure. He is played by actor Jonathan Goldsmith, who tells us at the end of the ads to "stay thirsty, my friend." I'm not a beer-drinker so I've never tried the product he's selling, which is a beer called Dos Equis, but I do find the ads to be pretty humorous.

Have you noticed that there are some people who have an easier time speaking their mind than others of us? It seems to me to largely be a genetic thing. You don't have to raise your hands, but how many of you have had kids who were born to talk? They'll talk even if there's no one around to listen to them. It seems to cause them pain to have an unexpressed thought. No one has to encourage them to speak their mind.

From time to time someone will ask me this question: "Have you ever seen a miracle? Have you ever seen God do something in the world that was clearly supernatural, that couldn't be explained by anything other than divine intervention?" How would you answer that question? It's a fair question for people to ask us as Christians. After all, we've devoted ourselves to studying this book - the Bible - that records numerous miracles. The Gospels identify 35 miracles performed by Jesus, and tell us that he did many more besides. The Book of Acts talks about the miracles performed by the apostles. In this series we're studying the Book of Jonah, a book that tells us a man lived inside a big fish for three days and three nights, which I think we would all agree can only be considered a miracle. So there's no doubt that we believe in miracles. The question, then, is this - have you ever seen one?

For years I've been fascinated by stories of people who climb mountains, particularly Mt. Everest, the tallest mountain on earth. I've read a number of books by mountain climbers and watched any number of movies and documentaries about their adventures. I have no aspirations of ever doing what they do, but I have entertained some fantasies about what it might be like to stand on top of the world. I imagine the views are quite spectacular.

In November of 2009 Sarah Palin published her first book under the title "Going Rogue: An American Life." Sarah Palin, as we all know, was John McCain's running mate in the 2008 presidential election that was won by Barack Obama. She took the title of her book from some comments allegedly made by some McCain handlers sometime after the election to the effect that on occasion Palin "went rogue" in her speeches and strayed from the formerly agreed-upon party line. The phrase was meant, allegedly, as a criticism, but Palin wore it as a badge of honor.

I have always been jealous of people who were able to jump high enough to dunk a basketball. I've had a love affair with basketball since I was in the 3rd grade. I loved to dribble, I loved to make a good pass, and I loved to make a shot. But what I really wanted to do was to dunk, like the guys I saw on TV. And as I got a little older it was my assumption that my day would come, that it was just a matter of time before I got tall enough to dunk a ball. But the best I could ever do was to touch the rim … just barely. I never came close to dunking a ball. And although I'm only 5'10" and could thus use my lack of height as something of an excuse, I eventually played against guys my same height who could, as we used to say, "jump out of the gym." I remember seeing some short kid like me take off down the court, rise up and dunk the ball and thinking I had just seem some kind of miracle. In my mind, he had defied gravity. And for a time, my greatest dream was to do the same thing.

At the end of the first episode of the second season of the TV show "Glee," the Rachel character sings a song that was originally from the musical "A Chorus Line" called "What I Did For Love." It's quite a sweet song, sung so beautifully, as always, by Lea Michelle, who plays Rachel on the show. ....

Since we're in a series called "A Christmas With Glee," I wanted to spend a few minutes this morning talking about the most exuberantly joyful of all our Christmas carols. "Joy To The World" is one of those carols that make us feel better no matter where we are or what we're doing when we hear it. Right from its first word, this carol expresses the deepest longing of our heart, not just for Christmas but for the entire year - joy. Some of us have had enough sadness this last year. We have lost loved ones. We have lost jobs. We have had marriage struggles and health struggles. We've had run-ins with our children and we've had run-ins with our parents. We've been angry, we've been anxious, and we've been apathetic, and now it's time for a different emotion. Now we want joy, real joy, the kind of joy that Isaac Watts wrote about in 1719 in his classic Christmas carol we know as "Joy To The World."

Jesus... The Most Interesting Baby In The World!

Those who are fans of the TV show "Glee" can tell you that the 19th episode of the series, which first aired on May 18, 2010, was called "Dream On." The episode got its name from a song by the same name written by the rock band Aerosmith in 1973, a song that was selected by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the 500 Songs That Shaped America. In the episode Neil Patrick Harris guest stars as a cynical former member of a high school glee club whose dreams of one day becoming a musical star have long since been crushed. He takes it on himself to try to convince the gang at "Glee" that they should give up their dreams, because dreams never come true. But the director of the Glee Club, Will Shuster, joins Neil Patrick Harris in a performance of the song "Dream On" and encourages his old high school friend to, in the words of the song, "dream until the dream comes true."