Dying to Win

As you can see in your bulletin, we are nearing the end of our Superheroes series – just one more message after today. I’ll confess that I’ve never been a great fan of fantasy superheroes. Most of the books that I enjoyed reading growing up were about more realistic characters – still heroic, many of them, but with courage and abilities that I felt I could aspire to. However, one of the main points of this whole series has been to point out how God’s definition of a superhero is in many ways completely different, sometimes even the opposite of how the world might imagine one to be. God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness, as it says in 2 Corinthians 12. 

I’m convinced that God’s top superheroes are people that we never hear about. They’re not out there leaping tall buildings in a single bound. They are quietly living out God’s love and grace, faithfully reaching out day by day to the “least of these” that Jesus talked about. They will receive their reward in heaven; they don’t need to be recognized right now. In fact, I think we need to be careful about holding someone up as a spiritual superhero. Pride is such a pitfall. Any glory that a person receives diminishes what God receives. So if you do something good and no one notices, be glad! God sees – and that is what really matters.

Chi-Rho (XP) Men

So we’re continuing on with the series Superheroes in Christ.  Today’s title is Chi-Rho Men.  I think it’s important for us to explain where this title comes from.  What do we mean by saying Chi-Rho?

I was pondering how best to go about explaining this, and then unexpectedly I had some help from a source I would never have thought to consult:  our two year old son Elijah.

Back at the beginning of February, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, the boys and I went up to Tallulah Gorge over in Georgia.  We had never been there, and it was a real treat. There’s an interpretive center (which means a gift shop, a small museum and some nature displays).  There are a variety of stuffed animals:  bears, birds, beavers, deer, and so on.

Kryptonite

Welcome! We are in the middle of our series entitled “Superheroes through Christ”. Today our title is “Kryptonite.” This is perhaps the first title in the series that requires a little bit of detailed knowledge about superheroes.

What is kryptonite? This goes back to one of the earliest modern superheroes, Superman. I have fuzzy memories as a little kid arguing with other little kids about who was the greatest superhero. Eventually we ended up arguing who was the greatest superhero other than Superman, because, at least in the small world of superheroes we knew about, nobody could touch Superman. He could do anything – even turn back time!

I think the writers of Superman realized that maybe they had made him too powerful, and that made stories about him kind of boring, so they invented kryptonite. Superman came from the planet Krypton (he had come from there to Earth as a baby), and for some reason I don’t remember, being in the presence of kryptonite, which was material from his home planet or solar system, made him become weak. In the presence of enough kryptonite, for a long enough time, he might even die! Of course, all the supervillains somehow managed to come up with kryptonite so that they could capture Superman (and so the stories could be exciting again).

Arch-Villains

Good morning and welcome!  We’re going to continue today with our superheroes series.  Over the last four weeks, we’ve talked about some of the amazing things that God has said about us, those who believe in Him.  “Everything is possible for one who believes.” Mark 9:23

We talked about how we are called to believe what God has said about us.  Carl shared Philippians 4:13 and John 15:5, how we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us and how we can do nothing apart from Christ. 

Our greatest superpower is?  Love.  (I Corinthians 12:31-13:13)  “Love never fails.”