Robert Fulghum, the author of the book, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”, in another one of his books, reminds us of the old legend of the man who found a horse out in the forest, and he didn’t know who the horse belonged to, so he kept the horse.  But the horse belonged to the king, and when the king found out, he arrested this man and was going to execute him for stealing his horse.  Well the man tried to explain that he didn’t know the horse belonged to the king, but the king insisted that he was still going to execute him, and so the man said that he was willing to be executed, but did the king know that he could teach this horse to talk, and if so the king would be a pretty impressive king, what with a talking horse and all?  So the king thinks what does he have to lose, and says sure, he’ll give the man a year to see if he can teach his horse to talk.  Well, the friends of this man think he’s nuts, he’ll never be able to teach this horse to talk, a horse can’t talk.  But the man says, well who knows what might happen?  The king might die, I might die, the king might forget, the world might come to an end.  But maybe, he says, just maybe, this horse will talk.  One has to believe that anything might happen. 

One has to believe that anything might happen.  There are those times in our lives when we do believe, don’t we, when we do believe that anything might happen, anything might be possible?  When you see the Grand Canyon for the first time perhaps, and you just stand there in awe, with your mouth slightly open, you just can’t believe it, and yet somehow you believe all the more, to see the Grand Canyon helps you believe.  Or when you hold a newborn baby in your arms, maybe it’s your baby or your grand baby, and you are seized once again with just how precious life is, how much of a miracle it all is.  Or when you fall in love (I suppose I might have mentioned love before I mentioned babies), but when you fall in love and begin to contemplate what your future together might mean, and suddenly anything might happen, anything might be possible.  Or when you allow the power of God to take hold of you and you understand things in a new way and see things for the first time.  Like John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, you feel your heart strangely warmed, you feel this assurance of God, this presence of God, and anything might happen, anything might be possible. 

I heard about these two brothers, maybe they were ten years old or so.  They were twins, but they had opposite personalities.  One was negative and cynical: he always looked on the bad side.  But his brother was a born optimist.  He was irrepressible, always positive and resilient.  The parents of these two boys were puzzled by the difference between them.  So they decided one Christmas to conduct a little experiment.  To the negative and cynical son they gave an expensive toy train set.  It had all the bells and whistles, he’d been asking for it for months.  But for the optimistic son, all he got for Christmas was a big pile of manure.  So the parents went into the living room to see how their little experiment was going, and there was their negative son with his toy train, and there he was complaining.  This didn’t work right and that didn’t work right; it just wasn’t the toy he thought it should be.  Then they went outside to see what their other son was up to, and they found him right in the middle of that big pile of manure, digging around in there, and they asked him what on earth was he doing?  And he said, “Well, I just figured that with this much manure all in one place, there must be a pony in here somewhere.” 

I have to say that I admire this in a person, this kind of attitude, this kind of approach to life.  No matter how bad things might be, anything might happen, anything might be possible.  There is a poem I like by a contemporary English poet named Sheenagh Pugh.  I’d never heard of her until I came across her poem, “Sometimes”.  Now let me say two things.  One is that she refers to something called “muscadel”.  Not muscatel, with a “t”, which is a kind of cheap wine.  She is referring to grape hyacinths, the little purple spring flower which she has known in England and Wales as muscadel, with a “d”.  The other thing is that she refers in her poem to “man” or “men”, when what she means is all human beings.  But she thinks it flows better this way, and she is adamant that it not be changed.  So here is her poem: 

Sometimes things don’t go, after all

From bad to worse.  Some years muscadel

Faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail,

Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;

Elect an honest man; decide they care

enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.

Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go

Amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.

The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow

That seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you. 

The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.  I love those words.  Now I have to tell you that my natural tendency is to be more of a pessimist than an optimist, just ask Brenda.  I’m more of a glass half empty person by nature.  I struggle every day, I fight it every day, this natural tendency to look on the down side, to wonder okay now, what could possibly go wrong here, what is going to go wrong.  And I know some of you struggle, too.  But I fight it, because I have discovered that you just cannot read the Bible and stay a glass half empty kind of person.  You cannot stay negative and cynical.  There are too many instances of God making a way where there is no way.  There are too many instances of something that just cannot be done, and yet it gets done, it is done, God does it.  There are too many instances of no hope at all turning into what do we do next, now that we have accomplished this impossible thing what do we do next.  There are too many instances of death, of dry bones, of a sealed tomb, turning into life, a party, a resurrection. 

And too many things have happened in my life and in the lives of others near to me, too many things that can only be explained by the presence of God.  It leads me to believe that every once in a while you need to step out just a little bit, step out into that unknown, step out into that place where whatever it is can only be accomplished, not by you, you can’t possibly do it, it can only be accomplished by God, it will only be done if God does it.  I have found in the Bible a message that is relentless in its desire to change me and transform me and make me into a new being, a new creature. 

We have such a story today.  Here they were, the disciples, hunkered down all together in this one place, timid, as one scholar says, powerless, uncertain, not knowing what they should do, behind their closed doors.  And then the Spirit of God blows through those closed doors and touches them and fills them, so that now here they are, here especially is Peter, preaching with a power he has never known before, a power that can come only from elsewhere, a power that is compelling, a power that turns people’s lives around. 

Someone has said that there are three stages to any great idea, three stages: it’ll never work; it’ll cost too much money; and the third stage is, I was in favor of this all along.  Someone else has said that the three stages of a great idea are these: impossible, improbable, inevitable.  Impossible, improbable, inevitable.  We see this here.  The disciples faced this impossible situation: how were they going to do it without Jesus, how were they going to accomplish anything on their own?  And then the Holy Spirit blows through those closed doors and they realize that it is not them who will accomplish anything, it is God who will accomplish it, the Holy Spirit, this invisible presence of God that will bring it all to pass.  A few chapters later in Acts, in a passage we didn’t read, people are saying about the disciples and the church that they are turning the world upside down.  Impossible, improbable, inevitable. 

One of my favorite scenes in Shakespeare is from the play, “Henry V”, immortalized in the movie with Kenneth Branagh.  It’s a battle scene, which I know doesn’t speak to everyone, but it can be a metaphor of the struggle we all face in life.  The English King Henry has led his pitifully small army into battle against the far superior forces of the French.  It’s the battle of Agincourt, a pivotal moment in world history in the late Middle Ages.  The English army is already half sick and half defeated before they even begin.  It’s near the end of the battle, and Henry has no idea how the battle’s going.  He’s pulled back for just a moment to catch his breath.  He is streaked with grime and blood and he is so exhausted that he can barely lift his sword.  And just as he’s about to go back into the fray, the French emissary appears, dressed in powder blue, riding on a splendid horse, the day hasn’t been hard on him at all.  And Henry has no idea how the battle is going.  All he knows is that it looks as though he is defeated, it looks as though all is lost.  So he asks the French emissary, “Sir, how goes the day?”  And the French emissary says, “Sir, the day is yours.”  The day is yours.  He’s come to surrender. 

For us, of course, we battle not alone, we struggle not by ourselves.  We struggle with the strength and power of God.  What it boils down to for the Christian, I think, the one who belongs to Christ, what it boils down to is this, to be willing, to be open, to be receptive to the Spirit of God living and working in us, and to stay this way, as individuals and as a church, to stay, no matter what it may take, no matter what it may cost, no matter how difficult or impossible it may seem, to stay willing, to stay open, to stay receptive to the Spirit of God. 

Leslie Weatherhead, the great English preacher, once addressed a group of ministers who were being ordained, and he told them, “Remember that in the church you are not doing your work.  Remember that you are not doing God’s work.  Remember that God is doing his work through you.”