THE "NEW NEW STORY" AND THE "OLD OLD STORY"

“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” (I Corinthians 15:58)

That chapter concludes one of the great Resurrection chapters of the New Testament.  In fact, I’ll be preaching from I Corinthians 15 for my Easter Sunday sermon.  My theme today, however, is more about “labor” or “labour” as the King James Version says, than it is about resurrection...well maybe a little of both.

First the “NEW NEW STORY”.  (Well, if you’re not someone who has been a born-again Christian for over thirty years, you won’t appreciate my play on words with an “old time Gospel song” which is entitled, “Tell Me the Old Old Story”. )  Anyway, back to the “NEW NEW STORY”:  To some I realize this is a yawn, but like my namesake “Bob” in the Bill Murray/Richard Dreyfus film, “What About Bob?”  I took some baby steps this Tuesday.  With help from AG website services technical support, I launched First Assembly of God of Framingham’s first true website at www.agframingham.org.  The first step took place last week when I registered a domain name at NameCheap.com for a nominal (annually renewed) sum.  I’m not technically savvy at all.  People THINK I am because I have a blog, but let’s face it, today, “everybody” has a blog!  It took a number of steps but the website got launched.  The national Assemblies of God established “AG website services” which makes available free websites for its churches which can be customized as the church sees fit.  Thus, again like “Bob” in the movie when he said, “I’m a sailor- I sail!” and then added that the boat really did all the work for him...I can claim to be a webmaster or something, but the AG website service really did 90% of the work for me- but it’s still COOL.  Our church website will get much better and much more sophisticated in time, but this fulfills a dream I’ve had for well over a year for our church to have a REAL website.  (For three or four years, we’ve had a free page on www.framingham.com which is better than nothing, but it’s just not the same thing.)

Now for the “OLD OLD STORY”.  Well, most of you know that the “Old Old Story” is of Jesus Christ dying on the cross for our sins and rising from the dead. This year, I’ll not only be conducting a Good Friday evening service at our church and an Easter Sunday morning service, but once again I’m participating with the “Christian oriented” clergy of the Framingham Interfaith Clergy Association in their Good Friday service held at Edwards Congregational Church in Framingham’s Saxonville Section.  That service is at 12 Noon and runs until around 1:15.  This year, we’re doing several “tableaux” (still life dramatic presentations as Scripture is being read).  Originally I was just supposed to be playing Pontius Pilate, but today I was asked to be Pontius Pilate, a Roman Guard, and Simon of Cyrene.  I guess I’ll feel a bit like Clark Kent changing into Superman or something!

So whether it’s the “NEW NEW STORY” of a website or the “OLD OLD STORY” of the Gospel, there’s never a dull moment!