When Pigs Fly

Flying Pig Print, by Stephen Wheeler

  

Children’s Sermon

25 January 2026

Hey, guys. Keeping warm? January just is not going to let us go without reminding us that we live in Minnesota, now is she?

Today I’d like to tell you the story of a boy named Thomas. Thomas lived about 800 years ago, in Italy. He was very smart, but also shy, and kind of a bigger kid. So his classmates used to tease him, calling him a big dumb ox.

But his teacher could see something special in Thomas. Just because he was quiet didn’t mean that he wasn’t bright. “Someday, when this ox bellows,” his teacher once said, “then the whole world will hear.”

One day the other kids decided to pull one over on Thomas, so they said, “Look! Come quick! Would you believe it? There’s a pig flying around in the sky outside!” And Thomas immediately ran over to the window to see.

Well, that made them laugh. How could anybody be so gullible? And here we thought he was supposed to be the smart one. “What a big, dumb ox,” they said. “I can’t believe you fell for that. Any idiot ought to know that pigs can’t fly.”

“I would rather believe that pigs could fly,” Thomas replied, “than that my fellow Christians would lie to me.”

You know, the Church’s job is to show Jesus to the world, to be Jesus, together, for anyone in need of Him—which would be pretty much everybody. And we do this not just in what we say, but in how we treat people.

Jesus taught us to love our neighbors, even to love our enemies. And that has to start here, in the Church, with our brothers and sisters in Christ. It isn’t always easy. Christians are sinners, after all; that’s why we’re here.

But if we want to heal the world, if we want to show people Jesus, then we have to start treating people as though they were Jesus. And we have to start living as though we also had a bit of Jesus in us, a little flame of His Holy Spirit.

Because they are. And we do.

Make sense? Okay. Let’s pray.