There was a great story in the news today about a grandmother and her grand-daughter, Rita Nurskanova, in a field a few miles south of Moscow on this day sixty years ago.
The grandmother was making holes in the earth and the five year-old grand-daughter was dropping seed potatoes into the holes.
Sixty years on Ms. Nurskanova remembers seeing something "orange and beautiful. It was coming towards us".
She tells how her grandmother was frightened and grabbed her hand and they wanted to run back to the house but then they heard a voice speaking to them in Russian: "Ladies Stop! I am one of us!"
It was Yuri Gagarin, the first man to have blasted into space, and he had just parachuted to earth from his space capsule.
By his own account: "When they saw me in my space suit and the parachute dragging alongside as I walked, they started to back away in fear.
I told them, don't be afraid, I am a Soviet like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!"
When asked what she remembered most about him, Rita Nurskanova says: "His smile ... and he had such a kind voice".
A smile and a kind voice
What banished the fears of this welcoming party?
A smile and a kind voice.
Now, Yuri Gagarin had not had an easy life. He was raised in a Russian village that lay in the path of a number of invasions of Russia and his family suffered a gresat deal during the Nazi invasion when their town was occcupied from 1941 onwards.
After working as a foundryman he joined the Russian airforce and ended up as the first man in space on April 12th. 1961.
Apparently, the frightened family in the field that day questioned him as to whether he had come from Mars, but he reassured them that he was a Soviet just like them.
He was scary, looking scary and saying scary things ... but they trusted him even though what he was saying seemed so outlandish to them ... because of his smile and his kind voice.
I couldn't help wondering if that should REALLY have been QUITE so reassuring?!
Well, Gagarin was awarded the highest honours Russia could confer and was acclaimed as the number one guy on the Soviet space programme.
All of a sudden, he was a national treasure.
Not long after Gogarin was the stand-by for another Soyuz astronaut who was killed in a subsequent space flight that went badly wrong, and realising they didn't want to lose him, the authorities forbade him from ever going to space again. He was too prestigious a asset to the regime.
He was sent to fly aeroplanes again and was killed a very short time after that in a training aircraft crash.
Gone.
His life lost.
Because in fact they couldn't save him.
Sadly, this was the same Gagarin that reportedly returned to Earth with a simple, Soviet-style message: “I looked and looked and looked, but I didn’t see God.”
I looked but I didn't see God
This can hardly be a surprise to us, not simply because Heaven is not 'up there' but outside time and space, but also because when people were confronted with a real, live bodily Jesus down here ... God in the flesh right in front of them ... such an awful lot of people couldn't see Him then either!
And when He looks and sounds scary ... and you don't recognise Who He really is ... it's only natural to want to run the other way - just like the two potato-planters on that day.
Scary stuff sends peple running
So the first part of our verse for the day today might set people Who don't recognise quite Who Jesus is running themselves ...
"Then he said to them all:
‘Whoever wants to be my disciple
must deny themselves and
take up their cross daily and
follow me."
Luke 9:23
Let's be honest, that's not a GREAT pitch for any evangelist ... if you preach THAT you won't have many people rushing to the front!
But Jesus doesn't stop there ... you need to notice the smile and hear the kind voice:
"For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it."
The Point
The people this airforce officer served, putting his life so obviously on the line for them, tried to protect Gagarin's life, and the plan they put in place quickly cost him his life.
Mankind CANNOT control the outcome of a life.
But God promises eternal life to those who put their temporary, this-earthly life on the line for Him.
It's worth it when you grasp His identity, you see?
Gagarin put his life on the line for his human commanders and they singularly failed to look after it ... not because they didn't want to but because they COULD not.
Christ calls us to put the way we live our lives on the line for Him ... and it's SAFE to do that when we recognise Who He is.
- He is the Lord of resurrection Life, and the conqueror of death.
- He is the One Who came from somewhere else, but He is really no alien.
- He became just like us ... tried and tested in every way just as we are yet victoriously living without sin.
- He bore our death-causing sin to the grave, then rose to signal that its penalty was fully paid for us.
And because He did that, we can safely commit our lives to His trust.
The Takeaway
It sometimes doesn't feel very safe to commit our lives in faith to do what He teaches us to do.
But because of Who Jesus IS we can trust Him with that ... in fact it is the ONLY safe way to live your (eternal) life.
Putting your life on the line for powerful politicians may not be safe.
Putting your life on the line for the conqueror of death looks like a thoroughly different proposition.
And we do that in the choices that we make, as we follow Him a day at a time.
Choose carefully - choose well.
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