Sermon Illustrations for Advent 4 (2012)
Illustration
Object:
Micah 5:2-5a
The earliest Jewish belief, shared by the Greeks, was that the firmament was a solid dome. When the door of the dome was opened God's blessing could descend upon the earth, as one could also have a vision of the everlasting. This is serious ideology that far surpasses a concept that we are a part of Truman Burbank's story (played by Jim Carrey) in the 1998 movie The Truman Show, whose tagline was "all the world's a stage." In Judaism the world is a stage but not one of entertainment and spoof for the director is God himself.
The world was played out on the stage of Bethlehem, as it is in all villages and hamlets, cities and suburbs, across the globe.
Ron L.
Micah 5:2-5a
This lesson is a prophecy of the Messiah. As such it is about how God keeps his promises at Christmas. But of course we also know that Jesus did not come precisely as Micah and the first-century Hebrews expected -- not in majesty and as one who establishes peace (vv. 4-5a). He came instead as a lowly babe, whose life has caused controversy, not visible earthly peace. Yet God's promise to Micah was still kept, if we look at things Martin Luther's way: "…what the Lord God has in mind is that: Man; you ought to accept Christ, just as God sends him, not as you want him to be" (Complete Sermons, Vol. 5, p. 81).
God keeps his promise but not always the way we want that promise to be fulfilled. That happened in the case of Jesus, but it continues to this very day to be the way God honors his promises. We can take guidance from a word of wisdom commonly taught in the black church: "God always answers prayers [keeps his promises]. But he may not answer 'em the way you want."
Mark E.
Hebrews 10:5-10
This passage is a quote from the Psalms. How much Old Testament scripture refers to the coming Messiah! The writer of Hebrews throws this in the face of the Pharisees. Nothing could be more opposite to their idea of "sacrifice" but they can't argue with scripture. Here the writer quotes from the scripture so they are stuck with it. How can they deny what is written in their accepted Word? The Messiah replaces their traditional sacrifices, which had to be repeated over and over!
We need to ask our Lord about the sacrifices we make every week when the plate comes around. Are they sufficient? We might even ask if our offering could be called a sacrifice! Something in us rebels against the idea that we have to humbly accept what someone else has done for us. It goes against our American spirit. But an offering doesn't make up for it. God is not saying we should not make sacrifices to him. That is a duty. He is saying that only Christ can make an acceptable sacrifice for our sin.
Christ the Messiah opens up much of the Old Testament and explains it in unique ways. He lives it out but only those with the Holy Spirit can understand this. Without the Spirit it is so easy to interpret passages like this to mean David and not the one promised to follow him. Jesus also introduced the Jews to a different kind of priesthood.
When we visited Morocco one year, our Muslim guide had many questions about our interpretations of scripture. Their "prophet" had as many interpretations as the Pharisees had in Jesus' day. When they asked about us believing in three Gods, I asked him, "How many men am I?" He said, "One, of course." But I told him that I am really at least three! I am a father and have children, but I am also a son and have a father. I am also a husband and have a wife. I even use different language when I address the three. That took him by surprise and he said he would have to think about that. Jesus used only parables, as he said, to open the meaning of God's Word, so we often have to think in terms of parables and analogies to get a clearer picture of God's word.
All Jews were looking forward to a Messiah, but they had trouble when he was standing in front of them, especially when he was quoting their word and finding things that they had not found -- or refused to find.
Don't we have trouble when someone quotes scripture differently than we expected? Sometimes it is the other fellow who is reading it wrong like the Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses who come to our door. We should not invite them in unless we are familiar enough with the Bible and have the Holy Spirit to guide us in showing them the error of their interpretations.
Bob O.
Hebrews 10:5-10
When we look over the political landscape, before and after the recent election, we wonder what interests our politicians truly serve. There is so much corruption and self-serving in government among elected and appointed officials. News report after news report can leave us despondent about the health of our system of governance. Jesus was open and transparent about one vital thing: he came to do God's will. That was clear from the start in Nazareth (Luke 4:16f), all along the way to Jerusalem (Matthew 20:28), and finally on the cross (Luke 23:46). Because he was not self-serving but focused on doing God's will, God was able to work through Jesus to reveal the truth of God's abundant, abiding, and amazing love for us all.
Mark M.
Luke 1:39-45 (46-55)
Mary's famous prayer, The Magnificat, is a profound and moving celebration of God's merciful treatment of ordinary people like us. The Mother of Jesus also gives us a healthy dose of humility. With all our American hang-ups with doing for yourself (Clinton's Secretary of Labor Robert Reich alleged we live in a "meritocracy" in America, where the best and the brightest succeed), we need the wisdom Martin Luther learned from The Magnificat: "For we desecrate God's name when we let ourselves be praised or honored, or when we take pleasure in ourselves and boast of our works or our possessions, as is the way of the world…" (Luther's Works, Vol. 21, p. 329). Benjamin Franklin offers a thoughtful elaboration on how too much focus on yourself and what you do cheapens human life: "A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle."
The Magnificat gives us a way out of the smallness, this emptiness. It reminds us, Martin Luther tells us, that all our skills and possessions are ultimately only gifts of God (Complete Sermons, Vol. 7, p. 348). When we believe that we can bring nothing to God, we can also say with the first Reformer: "Even now and to the end of the world, all his [God's] works are such that out of that which is nothing, worthless, despised, wretched, and dead (out of that which is nothing) He makes that which is something, precious, honorable, and blessed" (Luther's Works, Vol. 21, p. 299).
Mark E.
Luke 1:39-45
In a comic strip that appears regularly in the Sunday newspaper, a man is greeted by his wife as he arrives home. He is obviously frazzled and exhausted, spent from the day's demands. He offers this confession, "I tried to seize the day, but it fought back." Life is often a wrestling match, overpowering us to the position that our shoulders are pinned to the mat, down for the count. It is helpful to remember that above us will always be the door to the kingdom and our hope for a new day in the morning.
When Mary said, "for he has looked with favor on one of the lowliness of his servants," that it the promise that there will always be a new day in the morning.
Ron L.
The earliest Jewish belief, shared by the Greeks, was that the firmament was a solid dome. When the door of the dome was opened God's blessing could descend upon the earth, as one could also have a vision of the everlasting. This is serious ideology that far surpasses a concept that we are a part of Truman Burbank's story (played by Jim Carrey) in the 1998 movie The Truman Show, whose tagline was "all the world's a stage." In Judaism the world is a stage but not one of entertainment and spoof for the director is God himself.
The world was played out on the stage of Bethlehem, as it is in all villages and hamlets, cities and suburbs, across the globe.
Ron L.
Micah 5:2-5a
This lesson is a prophecy of the Messiah. As such it is about how God keeps his promises at Christmas. But of course we also know that Jesus did not come precisely as Micah and the first-century Hebrews expected -- not in majesty and as one who establishes peace (vv. 4-5a). He came instead as a lowly babe, whose life has caused controversy, not visible earthly peace. Yet God's promise to Micah was still kept, if we look at things Martin Luther's way: "…what the Lord God has in mind is that: Man; you ought to accept Christ, just as God sends him, not as you want him to be" (Complete Sermons, Vol. 5, p. 81).
God keeps his promise but not always the way we want that promise to be fulfilled. That happened in the case of Jesus, but it continues to this very day to be the way God honors his promises. We can take guidance from a word of wisdom commonly taught in the black church: "God always answers prayers [keeps his promises]. But he may not answer 'em the way you want."
Mark E.
Hebrews 10:5-10
This passage is a quote from the Psalms. How much Old Testament scripture refers to the coming Messiah! The writer of Hebrews throws this in the face of the Pharisees. Nothing could be more opposite to their idea of "sacrifice" but they can't argue with scripture. Here the writer quotes from the scripture so they are stuck with it. How can they deny what is written in their accepted Word? The Messiah replaces their traditional sacrifices, which had to be repeated over and over!
We need to ask our Lord about the sacrifices we make every week when the plate comes around. Are they sufficient? We might even ask if our offering could be called a sacrifice! Something in us rebels against the idea that we have to humbly accept what someone else has done for us. It goes against our American spirit. But an offering doesn't make up for it. God is not saying we should not make sacrifices to him. That is a duty. He is saying that only Christ can make an acceptable sacrifice for our sin.
Christ the Messiah opens up much of the Old Testament and explains it in unique ways. He lives it out but only those with the Holy Spirit can understand this. Without the Spirit it is so easy to interpret passages like this to mean David and not the one promised to follow him. Jesus also introduced the Jews to a different kind of priesthood.
When we visited Morocco one year, our Muslim guide had many questions about our interpretations of scripture. Their "prophet" had as many interpretations as the Pharisees had in Jesus' day. When they asked about us believing in three Gods, I asked him, "How many men am I?" He said, "One, of course." But I told him that I am really at least three! I am a father and have children, but I am also a son and have a father. I am also a husband and have a wife. I even use different language when I address the three. That took him by surprise and he said he would have to think about that. Jesus used only parables, as he said, to open the meaning of God's Word, so we often have to think in terms of parables and analogies to get a clearer picture of God's word.
All Jews were looking forward to a Messiah, but they had trouble when he was standing in front of them, especially when he was quoting their word and finding things that they had not found -- or refused to find.
Don't we have trouble when someone quotes scripture differently than we expected? Sometimes it is the other fellow who is reading it wrong like the Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses who come to our door. We should not invite them in unless we are familiar enough with the Bible and have the Holy Spirit to guide us in showing them the error of their interpretations.
Bob O.
Hebrews 10:5-10
When we look over the political landscape, before and after the recent election, we wonder what interests our politicians truly serve. There is so much corruption and self-serving in government among elected and appointed officials. News report after news report can leave us despondent about the health of our system of governance. Jesus was open and transparent about one vital thing: he came to do God's will. That was clear from the start in Nazareth (Luke 4:16f), all along the way to Jerusalem (Matthew 20:28), and finally on the cross (Luke 23:46). Because he was not self-serving but focused on doing God's will, God was able to work through Jesus to reveal the truth of God's abundant, abiding, and amazing love for us all.
Mark M.
Luke 1:39-45 (46-55)
Mary's famous prayer, The Magnificat, is a profound and moving celebration of God's merciful treatment of ordinary people like us. The Mother of Jesus also gives us a healthy dose of humility. With all our American hang-ups with doing for yourself (Clinton's Secretary of Labor Robert Reich alleged we live in a "meritocracy" in America, where the best and the brightest succeed), we need the wisdom Martin Luther learned from The Magnificat: "For we desecrate God's name when we let ourselves be praised or honored, or when we take pleasure in ourselves and boast of our works or our possessions, as is the way of the world…" (Luther's Works, Vol. 21, p. 329). Benjamin Franklin offers a thoughtful elaboration on how too much focus on yourself and what you do cheapens human life: "A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle."
The Magnificat gives us a way out of the smallness, this emptiness. It reminds us, Martin Luther tells us, that all our skills and possessions are ultimately only gifts of God (Complete Sermons, Vol. 7, p. 348). When we believe that we can bring nothing to God, we can also say with the first Reformer: "Even now and to the end of the world, all his [God's] works are such that out of that which is nothing, worthless, despised, wretched, and dead (out of that which is nothing) He makes that which is something, precious, honorable, and blessed" (Luther's Works, Vol. 21, p. 299).
Mark E.
Luke 1:39-45
In a comic strip that appears regularly in the Sunday newspaper, a man is greeted by his wife as he arrives home. He is obviously frazzled and exhausted, spent from the day's demands. He offers this confession, "I tried to seize the day, but it fought back." Life is often a wrestling match, overpowering us to the position that our shoulders are pinned to the mat, down for the count. It is helpful to remember that above us will always be the door to the kingdom and our hope for a new day in the morning.
When Mary said, "for he has looked with favor on one of the lowliness of his servants," that it the promise that there will always be a new day in the morning.
Ron L.
