April 5, Maundy Thursday, Potluck Supper, Candlelight Communion, 6:00 pm

Lesson: Hebrews 8

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1. May I read you a story that I believe catches the quality, the vision, the emotion, and the purpose of this night.

MAIN BODY:

Army private Johnnie Johnson didn't want to forget the hundreds of brave comrades who died in the Korean War, so he risked his life to compile a secret list on scraps of discarded paper. ⁽¹⁾

There were 496 names on the list.

Names written on thin sheets of paper, in tight columns. Four hundred and ninety-six names that Johnnie Johnson didn't want anyone to forget.

The year was 1950, and Johnson was an Army private, just 18 years old, when his division was thrown into combat in what they called a "police action" in Korea. About two-thirds of his comrades were killed, and many others were captured, including himself. While being held as a POW, American planes accidentally strafed Johnson's building, and several more men were killed. Johnson began to worry that these brave men would be forgotten, and that their loved ones back home would never know where, when and how they had died.

So he started a list. Using a pencil stub, he wrote their names on anything he could get his hands on: discarded cigarette packages, strips of wallpaper, pieces of trash. He wrote their names, their units and their dates of death.

After three months, most of Johnson's fellow prisoners were sick and malnourished. Seventy were dead, including seven by execution. Johnson kept writing on his list.

Then a cruel North Korean army major took control of the remaining 758 POWs and forced them to march 120 miles across snowy mountain terrain. The idea of the list increased in importance in Johnson's mind, especially after the North Koreans took away all the remaining prisoners' dog tags. American soldiers were shot and left to die if they stumbled or fell over, and Johnson kept focusing on his list as he walked, in order to ignore his pain. He managed to jot down the names of more than 100 men who died along the way.

That winter, in a camp alongside an ice-choked river, almost 300 more prisoners died. Johnson kept writing, adding their names to his secret list, even risking his life at one point to steal paper from his captors.

Johnson made two identical lists and hid one in the mud-hut wall, the other in the dirt floor. When guards discovered the list in the wall, Johnson was made to eat the bread of pain, drink the waters of tribulation. He was tortured and accused of maintaining "criminal propaganda" for his government.

But it wasn't propaganda he was writing. It was a gift, a gift for the families of his buddies.

The list he buried in the dirt floor was never discovered, and so at the end of the war Johnson dug it up. He sealed the list inside a toothpaste tube, and didn't take it out until he was safely on a troop ship home.

On the ship, an officer asked him, "What have you got there?" Johnson said, "It's my list, sir," and he showed it to him. Four hundred and ninety-six names. A list he had risked his life to complete.

But the military showed no immediate interest in the list, aside from a note in Johnson's debriefing report. It took many years for people to discover its value, and it remained largely hidden until it appeared in a Reader's Digest article and a History Channel documentary. But now, at Korean War Veterans' reunions, Johnson is overwhelmed by relatives who want to hug and thank him. Those who have lost loved ones are anxious to see the list, which Johnson has in a scrapbook, and when they find their loved one's name, you can sense their relief and gratitude. As long as a man is on the list, he is not truly lost.

Johnnie Johnson risked his life to complete his list ---- a piece of paper that has brought true peace to the families of his fallen comrades. It is a record that cost him considerable pain and suffering, but in the end he has no regrets about putting it together.

Johnnie's list is a righteous roster, no doubt about it. But it pales in size or significance to God's list. To get on Johnnie's list, you had to die; to get on God's list, someone died for you...

What a list this is, and what a price Jesus has paid to put it together! Like Johnnie Johnson, Jesus was a man on a mission, a mission that would cost him significant bodily pain and emotional hardship. Jesus played the role of a high priest, a person who had the job of performing temple sacrifices to bring people forgiveness of their sins. But unlike an earthly high priest, Jesus offered his own blood--not the blood of calves and goats. Killed on the cross, he was slaughtered in an unbelievably humiliating, excruciating and bloody sacrifice designed to bring us back into a right relationship with God for all time. He "offered himself without blemish to God,"

CONCLUSION:

1. Jesus' death on the cross gives us a place on the list.
1. It offers us an opportunity to join the roll call of the redeemed.
1. This is the sanctuary of the saints--all the saints.
2. These are those who are forgiven, purified, renewed and restored.
2. When you're on this list, you can never be lost.
2. Before there was a cross there was an upper room.
1. In the upper room a covenant was made.
2. In the upper room a promise was given.
1. We observe and even celebrate the events in the upper room.
2. For in them we find the beneficent Christ and the beneficial covenant.

Amen!

1. Discovered, retrieved, and used with permission The List "HomileticsonLine," 11/2/2003

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