One Set of Twelve Apostle Action Figures with a Fully-Articulated Jesus – Just in Time for Easter!

I can see why some people laugh at Christians. We can be pretty silly.

Some of us wear t-shirts with groan inducing slogans like “7 Days without Prayer Makes One Weak” or “Brushing Up on the Word Daily Prevents Truth Decay.”

We sport bumper sticks that proclaim “Jesus on Board” or “Do You Follow Jesus This Close?”

And some of us are making a buck or two off of tasteless products like “The 10 Plagues of Egypt Toy”(does the child actually play with boils?), Testamints (for your offensive breath?) and “Jesus Loves You” footwear that leaves that message in your shoe’s imprint wherever you tread (that’s sure to show up on an episode of CSI!).

When my son was little, I had to draw the line at buying a set of twelve apostle action figures that came with their own fully articulated Jesus. I just knew I’d end up saying something like “Do not let Darth Vader hit Jesus with his light saber and come back to life again. It’s just not right.”

Christians are easy to spoof in movies and on TV. It always works to get a laugh to bring in some Bible thumping Jesus freak spouting scripture verses and then reveal them as out of touch with popular culture or as closet hypocrites. Guaranteed laughs, baby. Money in the bank.

Yep, we can seem pretty weird.

We spend sunny spring days in church. We put on pageants and productions based on the same old stories again and again and again. We pray over pizza, talk to strangers on the beach about eternal life and we still refuse to believe people evolved from monkeys (although I find some people more convincing evidence than others).

We are a peculiar people. We have been from the start.

Our King rode in to the big city on a borrowed donkey as we hailed Him with palm branches and cried out to Him to save us and then He was dead by the end of the week – at our request. We abandoned Him like frightened sheep.

We were a pretty wild bunch when He rose from the dead – running around, announcing the news, touching His scars and hanging on His every word for forty days or so, eating and laughing together.

We got even weirder when He left. We got hit with a power like nothing we’d ever known. People thought we were drunk, and now we were like “super sheep”, sheep on steroids, sheep who would go where no sheep had gone before!

We rocked the planet, changed the calendar, wrote the book and built the kingdom fueled by a steady flow of Holy Spirit on tap. We faced down lions and hostile family members, braved deserts, jungles and inner cities, explored uncharted seas and spelunked deep into the human heart – all for Jesus.

We are a weird people and sometimes others laugh. That’s OK.

The truth is, there have always been only two kinds of people in the world.

First, there are the people who need to be saved and know they need to be saved.

Second, there are those who need to be saved and DON’T know they need to be saved.

It’s that simple.

Christians are people who know we need to be saved and realize we can’t save ourselves. We’ve probably tried to work out our own salvation through good behavior, moral reform, education, better government, great sex, cocktail hour, deep relationships, travel, charity, fulfilling careers, parties, mind-altering drugs, introspection, therapy, plastic surgery, philosophy, Oprah, green tea, politics, self-help books, physical training or extreme personality makeovers.

But somewhere between our first failed relationship, our fourth successful marathon, our fifth new church and our third martini we realized none of our efforts were quite hitting the mark. We needed an infusion of clean blood – blood that has lived in this world and has NOT sinned. Blood that defeated sin and death and triumphed in a way that caused the universe to laugh – a great resounding belly laugh of joy and relief that, at last, there was hope for humanity.

When the sound of that laughter reaches the heart of a person who needs to be saved and knows she needs to be saved it’s like a life boat in a giant sea of screw-up and there is no turning back from following Jesus and finding life there.

There are still people who need to be saved and know it – they need to hear that cosmic laughter rippling through the lives of Jesus followers.

There are still people who need to be saved and don’t know it. They’re laughing but they aren’t really in on the joke.

And it’s an old joke and it’s been told a thousand different ways but the punch line is always the same.

It’s the one about the people who built a boat in the desert because God told them the rain would come and a bunch of other people who sat back and mocked the boat builders – they laughed and laughed – right up until the water reached their knees.

On second thought,

it’s not really that funny, is it?