The Third Day

Easter 2016

Happy Easter, everyone.

Some of you know the traditional Easter Greeting…

One person says, He is risen

the other person says, he is risen indeed.

But a lot of people don’t know where that came from.

The saying is based on scripture,

but people started using it as a greeting,

almost 2000 years ago,

and it was passed down by the Eastern Orthodox Churches,

the churches that started a couple thousand years ago,

in places that are now Greece, Turkey, and Russia.

And of course you didn’t just say the greeting to each other,

you had to kiss the other person on the cheek 3 times,

one for each member of the trinity.

So lets all practice that greeting,

and you can do the kissing part if you want,

but no tongues allowed…

Ready… HE IS RISEN,

How many of you filled out a March Madness bracket?

My wife Kathy has one every year at her work,

and if you win its about a 100 bucks.

so I join in with her every year,

I fill out my bracket,

and I have high hopes every year,

and then I lose every year.

This year I did something different.

I subscribe to the online version of The Wall Street Journal,

and this year, they had a bracket picking application.

thats got all the stats for all the teams built into it,

So you can put in your priorities for defense, offense,

tournament experience, and few other options,

and then it picks your teams for you,

based on all the stats.

So I'm thinking, whoh buddy,

I've got an advantange nobody else has,

this is my year,

I'm gonna win this thing for sure this year.

I was so excited,

my hopes were really high.

Let me just say that,

once again, I am hopeless.

At least when it comes to the basketball tournament.

Anyone heard of Warren Buffet?

Third richest man in the world?

2 years ago Warren Buffet offered a billion dollar prize,

to anyone who could correctly pick all the winners

for the March madness brackets.

You're wondering, how could he risk a billion dollars on that?

What if somebody gets really lucky?

Well, Buffet is no buffoon.

He knows that the odds are incredibly high.

In fact, mathematicians can’t even agree on

how to calculate the odds.

but some mathematicians have put the odds at,

1 in 9 million trillion.

So, after Warren Buffet offered this prize,

11 million people filled out a bracket,

to try and win the billion dollars,

and all of them were out, within 31 hours

of the start of the tournament.

This year Buffet isn't making the billion dollar offer.

But he is offering a $million a year for life,

to anyone who works for any of his companies

who picks all the winners correctly,

up to the sweet 16.

So you don’t even have to get the whole tournament right,

just the first two rounds, up to sweet 16,

and you’ve got a million a year for life.

So there are 360,000 employees of his companies,

who had high hopes this year…

Of course, there's no record of anybody

ever picking all the teams right,

even through the sweet 16,

so again, Buffett is pretty safe.

He does offer a consolation prize though,

the person who gets the most right, gets 100,000 bucks.

that’s a nice consolation.

Have you ever hoped for something,

despite long, long odds.

Like the guy who went for an interview for a job driving a delivery truck.

In the interview, they asked him why he wanted the job.

He said,

Because my dad drove a delivery truck,

and I hope to make a million dollars, just like my dad.

They said, your father made a million dollars, driving a delivery truck?

The guy said,

No, but he always hoped to.

Sometimes our hope doesn’t have much basis.

This morning,

I want to talk about 2 types of hope:

Hope for Something

vs.

Hope in Someone.

First, there’s the kind of hope where

you’re hoping for something

When you’re hoping for something,

you’re hoping a particular circumstance

will turn out the way that you want it to.

Hope I get that job.

Hope I get that house.

Hope I get that girl.

Or even better,

I hope I get that girl,

who has a house and a good job.

Now, of course,

Sometimes the thing we’re hoping for,

is for something not to happen,

something we want to avoid.

And of course the granddaddy of all those hopes,

is simply to avoid death.

So we say things like,

I hope it’s not cancer.

I hope she makes it.

I hope the test comes back okay.

But whenever we hope for something,

its always very temporary,

because circumstances in our lives,