Sermon Illustrations for Advent 1 (2022)
Illustration
Isaiah 2:1-5
Advent is a time for new beginnings. Regarding the new era described in this text, John Calvin once offered advice on how to live in this time of anticipation:
But since we are still widely distant from this perfection of that peaceful reign, we must always think of making progress; and it is excessive folly not to consider that the kingdom of Christ is here only beginning. Besides, God did not gather a church — by which is meant an assembly of godly men — so as to be separate from others; but the good are always mixed with the bad. (Calvin’s Commentaries, Vol. VII/1, p.102)
Famed modern theologian Karl Barth contends that the whole of Christian life is to be lived in anticipation of the better days ahead; we need to wake up to what is coming:
Christians... are those who waken up... as they awake they look up, and rise, thus making the counter-movement to the downward drag of their sinfully slothful being. They are those who waken up, however, because they are awakened. (Church Dogmatics, Vol. IV/2, p.554)
Neurobiologists have discerned that hopefulness contributes significantly to happiness and emotional health. It seems that in these instances muscles relax, the heart beats more slowly, and the brain releases chemicals (esp. the amphetamine dopamine) which makes the body feel good (Daniel Amen, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, esp. p.58).
Mark E.
* * *
Isaiah 2:1-5
In our days of watching and reading about wars in the Ukraine, in some African and South American nations, it’s hard to read Isaiah’s prophecy about the end of war and believe it will ever come to pass. Yet, the prophecy calls for peacemaking, for remaking the tools of war into tools of growth and development — swords into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks. Perhaps it’s too much to expect that human beings will ever lay aside the tools of war — yet as each effort to create peace is undertaken there is a greater chance of success. There is hope in this prophecy — hope for all of us. This Advent, may hope fill us.
Bonnie B.
* * *
Isaiah 2:1-5
I am a fan of the Peanuts comic strip. Charlie Brown is one of my favorite characters of all time. In one strip I found recently, Lucy is talking to Charlie Brown. She tells him, “I hate everything. I hate everybody. I hate the whole wide world!”
Charlie replies, “But I thought you had inner peace.”
Lucy answers, “I do have inner peace. But I still have outer obnoxiousness.”
In many ways, this is the condition of our world. I’m not so sure about the “inner peace” part, but the “outer obnoxiousness” is real. The only true peace is found in what Isaiah notes. When instruction and the Word of the Lord go forth from Jerusalem (the law of God under the Messiah), there will be peace. The conclusion is emphatic: “neither shall they learn war anymore.”
Bill T.
* * *
Romans 13:11-14
It’s time to wake up! In 1957, the Everly Brothers recorded “Wake Up Little Susie.” It soon became the No. 1 song in America. The song is about a boy and girl who go on a date to a drive-in movie, fall asleep, and wake up in a panic because they know that when they get home to their parents they will be in ''trouble deep.'' It’s a catchy, fun song.
The message about waking up, though, is serious. Paul is urging the Christians in Rome to wake up from sleep. The day of Jesus return is nearer than ever. They should live accordingly. The message is even more true for us today. If Jesus return was close then, how much closer is it today? Wake up. Live for Jesus.
Bill T.
* * *
Romans 13:11-14
Put on the Lord Jesus Christ? The Greek word suggests putting on the Lord Jesus Christ in the same way we put on clothes. This would be one garish, even repulsive, costume party if we were to dress like Jesus. Crucified, bearing the marks of slaughter. On the other hand, this is no party. This is real life.
Nowadays we have a wide choice with regards to what clothes we choose to wear and how we will wear them. Until a couple centuries ago people only wore the clothes that represented their profession and economic status. In this passage, the apostle is telling us to wake up! Dawn is approaching, and it’s time to stop dressing for what is symbolically associated with night – banditry, assault, murder, and all sorts of degrading events – and start dressing like the Lord Jesus Christ.
You may remember that Jesus, in the letter to Philippians, was obedient even to a cross. Paul said elsewhere we preach Christ and him crucified. Crucifying our passions, dressing like one has been through the harrowing trauma of our transition from darkness to light, beyond death to light, with our scars still visible (as Jesus demonstrated when he offered to show them to Thomas), is a serious matter – but it also opens the door to joy. This is the beginning of Advent. We demonstrate, in putting on the Lord Jesus, just how badly we need a Savior, and what joy the arrival of the Christ Child in our midst we should feel.
And although I have a shelf of translations to choose from, when it comes to 13:12, I love the wording of the Revised Standard Version the best! “…the night is far gone, the day is at hand.”
Frank R.
* * *
Matthew 24:36-44
Has your home ever been broken into? I can’t imagine how stressful it is to have your home robbed, things you love being taken by strangers. How violating that must be. And yet, the coming of the Son of Man is likened to arriving with as much surprise as that. How awake must one be to be prepared? How aware of the life we are living and the tasks we are undertaking must we be to be prepared? There is a lot of talk these days about being “woke” an expression used to designate an awareness of bias and prejudice and making efforts to change that bias and our behavior. What if we all focused on being “woke” in our faith? Not just in the holiday season when we all, or most of us, strive to be gentler, kinder and more generous, but every day? What if we allowed the Holy Spirit to indwell us and wake us to the path God has laid before us? That’s the kind of fait life I want to live. How about you? Shall we all strive to wake up and be aware?
Bonnie B.
* * *
Matthew 24:36-44
I’m shocked that somehow my college days are now fifty years in the past – so it’s been a half century since I heard fellow Christians talk about Matthew 26:40-41 as a description of the rapture. “Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.” The one taken, it was assumed, had been raptured into heaven.
Well, the rapture is a recent doctrine, and for around 1800 years, Christians never heard of this strange idea that God would remove the starters from the ball game during the fourth quarter.
Today’s lectionary reading is taken from a larger passage in which Jesus connected the trauma of the abomination of desolation from a couple centuries earlier (when the Seleucids, under Antiochus IV Epiphanes brutalized the population of Judea and profaned the temple) with the likely possibility that something of the same thing would happen again under the hand of the Romans. And it did, only a generation later, when military fanatics led the people into a hopeless war against the Roman Empire in order to fulfill their own version of what being the Messiah meant.
According to the church history Eusebius, writing centuries later, the Christians of Jerusalem paid attention to this prophetic warning (“…then those in Judea must flee to the mountains… [Matthew 24: 16]) and took off for the hills when war broke out, escaping the worst of the horrors that followed.
While many seem to think that the apocalyptic statements in scripture exist to allow the few to decode and determine the return of Jesus, Christians in the third world recognize their own lives in these scriptures. Our fellow believers in Nigeria, under siege from Boko Haram, have no problem with seeing how these texts apply to their lives right now.
Frank R.
* * *
Matthew 24:36-44
In this lesson, Jesus clearly wants us looking to the future. Famed 17th-century French scholar Blaise Pascal provides a thoughtful account of why we want such a perspective:
We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight... We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so. (Pensées, p.43)
The way out seems to be to follow Jesus’ directive and to live in light of the future, like modern Theologian of Hope Jürgen Moltmann advises:
As a result of this hope in God’s future, this present world becomes free in believing eyes from all attempts at self-redemption or self-production through labour, and becomes open for loving, ministering self-expenditure in all interests of a humanizing of conditions and in the interests of the realization of justice in the light of the coming justice of God. (Theology of Hope, p.338)
German martyr for the faith against Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, nicely summarized what this future-looking style of life looks like: “There is no room here for shaking your heads and doubting, because Christ is coming.”
Mark E.
Advent is a time for new beginnings. Regarding the new era described in this text, John Calvin once offered advice on how to live in this time of anticipation:
But since we are still widely distant from this perfection of that peaceful reign, we must always think of making progress; and it is excessive folly not to consider that the kingdom of Christ is here only beginning. Besides, God did not gather a church — by which is meant an assembly of godly men — so as to be separate from others; but the good are always mixed with the bad. (Calvin’s Commentaries, Vol. VII/1, p.102)
Famed modern theologian Karl Barth contends that the whole of Christian life is to be lived in anticipation of the better days ahead; we need to wake up to what is coming:
Christians... are those who waken up... as they awake they look up, and rise, thus making the counter-movement to the downward drag of their sinfully slothful being. They are those who waken up, however, because they are awakened. (Church Dogmatics, Vol. IV/2, p.554)
Neurobiologists have discerned that hopefulness contributes significantly to happiness and emotional health. It seems that in these instances muscles relax, the heart beats more slowly, and the brain releases chemicals (esp. the amphetamine dopamine) which makes the body feel good (Daniel Amen, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, esp. p.58).
Mark E.
* * *
Isaiah 2:1-5
In our days of watching and reading about wars in the Ukraine, in some African and South American nations, it’s hard to read Isaiah’s prophecy about the end of war and believe it will ever come to pass. Yet, the prophecy calls for peacemaking, for remaking the tools of war into tools of growth and development — swords into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks. Perhaps it’s too much to expect that human beings will ever lay aside the tools of war — yet as each effort to create peace is undertaken there is a greater chance of success. There is hope in this prophecy — hope for all of us. This Advent, may hope fill us.
Bonnie B.
* * *
Isaiah 2:1-5
I am a fan of the Peanuts comic strip. Charlie Brown is one of my favorite characters of all time. In one strip I found recently, Lucy is talking to Charlie Brown. She tells him, “I hate everything. I hate everybody. I hate the whole wide world!”
Charlie replies, “But I thought you had inner peace.”
Lucy answers, “I do have inner peace. But I still have outer obnoxiousness.”
In many ways, this is the condition of our world. I’m not so sure about the “inner peace” part, but the “outer obnoxiousness” is real. The only true peace is found in what Isaiah notes. When instruction and the Word of the Lord go forth from Jerusalem (the law of God under the Messiah), there will be peace. The conclusion is emphatic: “neither shall they learn war anymore.”
Bill T.
* * *
Romans 13:11-14
It’s time to wake up! In 1957, the Everly Brothers recorded “Wake Up Little Susie.” It soon became the No. 1 song in America. The song is about a boy and girl who go on a date to a drive-in movie, fall asleep, and wake up in a panic because they know that when they get home to their parents they will be in ''trouble deep.'' It’s a catchy, fun song.
The message about waking up, though, is serious. Paul is urging the Christians in Rome to wake up from sleep. The day of Jesus return is nearer than ever. They should live accordingly. The message is even more true for us today. If Jesus return was close then, how much closer is it today? Wake up. Live for Jesus.
Bill T.
* * *
Romans 13:11-14
Put on the Lord Jesus Christ? The Greek word suggests putting on the Lord Jesus Christ in the same way we put on clothes. This would be one garish, even repulsive, costume party if we were to dress like Jesus. Crucified, bearing the marks of slaughter. On the other hand, this is no party. This is real life.
Nowadays we have a wide choice with regards to what clothes we choose to wear and how we will wear them. Until a couple centuries ago people only wore the clothes that represented their profession and economic status. In this passage, the apostle is telling us to wake up! Dawn is approaching, and it’s time to stop dressing for what is symbolically associated with night – banditry, assault, murder, and all sorts of degrading events – and start dressing like the Lord Jesus Christ.
You may remember that Jesus, in the letter to Philippians, was obedient even to a cross. Paul said elsewhere we preach Christ and him crucified. Crucifying our passions, dressing like one has been through the harrowing trauma of our transition from darkness to light, beyond death to light, with our scars still visible (as Jesus demonstrated when he offered to show them to Thomas), is a serious matter – but it also opens the door to joy. This is the beginning of Advent. We demonstrate, in putting on the Lord Jesus, just how badly we need a Savior, and what joy the arrival of the Christ Child in our midst we should feel.
And although I have a shelf of translations to choose from, when it comes to 13:12, I love the wording of the Revised Standard Version the best! “…the night is far gone, the day is at hand.”
Frank R.
* * *
Matthew 24:36-44
Has your home ever been broken into? I can’t imagine how stressful it is to have your home robbed, things you love being taken by strangers. How violating that must be. And yet, the coming of the Son of Man is likened to arriving with as much surprise as that. How awake must one be to be prepared? How aware of the life we are living and the tasks we are undertaking must we be to be prepared? There is a lot of talk these days about being “woke” an expression used to designate an awareness of bias and prejudice and making efforts to change that bias and our behavior. What if we all focused on being “woke” in our faith? Not just in the holiday season when we all, or most of us, strive to be gentler, kinder and more generous, but every day? What if we allowed the Holy Spirit to indwell us and wake us to the path God has laid before us? That’s the kind of fait life I want to live. How about you? Shall we all strive to wake up and be aware?
Bonnie B.
* * *
Matthew 24:36-44
I’m shocked that somehow my college days are now fifty years in the past – so it’s been a half century since I heard fellow Christians talk about Matthew 26:40-41 as a description of the rapture. “Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.” The one taken, it was assumed, had been raptured into heaven.
Well, the rapture is a recent doctrine, and for around 1800 years, Christians never heard of this strange idea that God would remove the starters from the ball game during the fourth quarter.
Today’s lectionary reading is taken from a larger passage in which Jesus connected the trauma of the abomination of desolation from a couple centuries earlier (when the Seleucids, under Antiochus IV Epiphanes brutalized the population of Judea and profaned the temple) with the likely possibility that something of the same thing would happen again under the hand of the Romans. And it did, only a generation later, when military fanatics led the people into a hopeless war against the Roman Empire in order to fulfill their own version of what being the Messiah meant.
According to the church history Eusebius, writing centuries later, the Christians of Jerusalem paid attention to this prophetic warning (“…then those in Judea must flee to the mountains… [Matthew 24: 16]) and took off for the hills when war broke out, escaping the worst of the horrors that followed.
While many seem to think that the apocalyptic statements in scripture exist to allow the few to decode and determine the return of Jesus, Christians in the third world recognize their own lives in these scriptures. Our fellow believers in Nigeria, under siege from Boko Haram, have no problem with seeing how these texts apply to their lives right now.
Frank R.
* * *
Matthew 24:36-44
In this lesson, Jesus clearly wants us looking to the future. Famed 17th-century French scholar Blaise Pascal provides a thoughtful account of why we want such a perspective:
We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight... We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so. (Pensées, p.43)
The way out seems to be to follow Jesus’ directive and to live in light of the future, like modern Theologian of Hope Jürgen Moltmann advises:
As a result of this hope in God’s future, this present world becomes free in believing eyes from all attempts at self-redemption or self-production through labour, and becomes open for loving, ministering self-expenditure in all interests of a humanizing of conditions and in the interests of the realization of justice in the light of the coming justice of God. (Theology of Hope, p.338)
German martyr for the faith against Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, nicely summarized what this future-looking style of life looks like: “There is no room here for shaking your heads and doubting, because Christ is coming.”
Mark E.
