LifeLink Devotions

Friday, October 21, 2022

The minister of a church in Wyckoff, NJ told the sexton to put on the church sign his sermon topic for the following Sunday: “Are Ministers Cracking Up?” The sexton looked puzzled but did as he was told and put up the letters to announce: “Our Minister’s Cracking Up.”

I love bloopers. I have to, because I make so many of them. Some of these are pretty old, but here are a few funny ones I’ve read over the years. Most of them come from church bulletins.

“Don’t let worry kill you—let the church help.”

“Thursday night: Potluck supper. Prayer and medication to follow.”

“The Scouts are saving aluminum cans, bottles and other items to be recycled. Proceeds will be used to cripple children.”

“The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday morning.”

“Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 PM. Please use the back door.”

“The eighth graders will be presenting Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the Church basement Friday at 7 PM. The Congregation is invited to attend this tragedy.”

“At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be “What Is Hell?” Come early and listen to our choir practice.”

And my favorite one of all:

“This being Easter Sunday, we will ask Mrs. Lewis to come forward and lay an egg on the altar.”

Bloopers are hilarious, even though they can be very embarrassing. I don’t think I know of anyone who died from one unless they laughed themselves to death. What is not hilarious is that we tend to call sin a blooper. We laugh it off. We may get a little embarrassed for a while, but soon the flushed face is gone with a flush of the memory.  

We seem to have forgotten that our bloopers were the cause of Someone’s death.

We have been overcome with fear that the price we would have to pay to confess our bloopers would be too great. We are afraid that our bloopers will bring us enduring shame. So we try to hide them if we can, and when they are discovered, we laugh them off as insignificant. When that fails, our last resort is to transfer the guilt to others for not being willing to overlook what we did.

But we have also forgotten that the price for the bloopers has already been paid by the death of Christ.

1 Peter 3:18  “For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit…” 

Christ has already taken all the guilt and punishment for our sin. He became our sin so that we might have the righteousness of God. And His death was no blooper. It was the predetermined will of the Father so that our relationship with Him might be restored. Praise be to God, who in His mercy has given us new life through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ His Son.

Even those who know these truths tend to live under the power of past bloopers. They all guilt to make them silent partners of Jesus, when the truth of their forgiveness should make them explode with words of witness.

One Sunday years ago there was a blooper that I missed. Someone told me about it after the service. It happened during the singing of a song. One letter was omitted from a word in the lyrics on the screen. That letter made all the difference. Unfortunately, it made the song truer than it should be about some of us. We sang, “Jesus is our closet friend.”

Oops! Is that too true of you? Or are you thrilled daily with the thought that He who had never committed a sin became your sin for you, that you might be forgiven and never again have to be reminded of them? That makes Jesus our closest friend, not a closet one. Tell someone about Him today.

Pastor John