Sermon illustrations for Easter 7 (2013)
Illustration
Object:
Acts 16:16-34
At the age of 17, Dwight Lyman Moody went to Boston to work as a shoe salesman in his uncle's store. It was there that another employee witnessed to Moody, who then accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. In 1855 Moody began forty years of evangelical preaching, and he is attributed with saving over a million souls.
Moody was a street corner evangelist. One day a woman came up to Moody, criticizing him for his outspoken and public disruptive manner of preaching. Moody then asked the lady how she evangelized, and she replied that she did not. To this Moody responded, "Well, I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it!"
Ron L.
Acts 16:16-34
Americans think they are good and decent people, worthy of salvation by their lifestyle. At least that was a finding of a 2001 Barna Research Group poll, finding that 7 in 10 Americans believe that we must do works in order to be saved. But our text suggests that we are just the opposite, sinning again and again as we ask for Jesus for the wrong things (v. 18), get angry with Jesus when he heals a good worker (vv. 19-22), throw men of God in jail (vv. 23-24), and even contemplate suicide (v. 28). No two ways about it: Our lesson reminds us that we need a lot of forgiveness. It is as famed preacher of the early church John Chrysostom said about that text. It reminds us, he contends, that God "more desires to forgive thee thy sins (than thou to be forgiven)" (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 11, p. 227).
Forgiveness is a wonderful reality, even if the world does not understand it. As songwriter Per Allen once put it: "Forgiveness is a funny thing, it warms the hearts and cools the sting." Former United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold offers a wonderful definition of the forgiveness God affords: "Forgiveness is the answer to the child's dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is made clean again." Forgiveness is a fresh start.
Mark E.
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
We wonder, as have Christians throughout the ages, what does Jesus mean by "soon"? Everyone including Martin Luther felt that soon was in his age. We look for him today -- some with hope and some with dread. We will have to leave it up to him when soon will be. The confusing part to me is his next sentence, "I will give to everyone according to what he has done." I thought we were saved by grace alone! He doesn't say "according to his faith -- or what he has believed." We should, of course, try to do what the Lord asks us to do! Each one of us will have to judge that one. Notice in most churches there is the symbol for the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet on the church hangings. I think it means that we need to look nowhere else! Jesus is the answer to everything. The beginning and the ending! If we are baptized and believe, he will wash us in the robes of purity. Again it hints that we are the ones who will do it! By our baptism and faith? If we have obeyed, then we can eat of that tree in the garden which Adam and Eve were not supposed to eat from. At last -- because of Jesus -- the fruit is open to us. Only Jesus has unlocked to door to that tree! It is like a drowning man. The lifeguard throws out a life preserver, but it is up to us to grab hold of it!
Jesus came to give us his word through his holy angels. He is in the line of David who has come to fulfill the prophecies of old! All we can do is come if we are the bride of Christ. I always tell my friends of other denominations that Jesus was not a Mormon bishop who has many wives -- Lutheran, Baptist, Roman Catholic, Methodist, and so on. He only has one bride! We have to recognize that fact and know that he has already made us one. It is not a job for committees of theologians! We only have to recognize what he has done.
All this makes me thirsty for the water he offers us. He said that if we hunger for righteousness we will be filled, and if we are thirsty he will quench our thirst. That fact that we come faithfully to church shows that we are thirsty for what God has to offer. It may not come every Sunday, so be patient! He will fulfill our every need -- our every hunger and thirst!
Bob O.
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
The planet Venus is called the Morning Star and also the Evening Star. It has a very lengthy cycle in its repeated positions as seen from earth. Although it appears in the evening for 250 days, it appears in the morning before dawn for 236 days. In the Mayan culture in Central America, the eight days between the evening cycle and the morning cycle correspond to the death and resurrection of the sky god Kukulcan, the most powerful of ancient Maya deities. When the bright morning star reappears, hope is assured among the people that order is restored in the cosmos.
In a similar way, the image of the bright morning star at the close of the book of Revelation assures the reader that because of Jesus there is ultimate order in the universe, despite the contradictory appearances of the times of persecution endured by the Christian community.
Mark M.
John 17:20-26
There's a poignant scene in the movie Driving Miss Daisy that ought to stir everyone's conscience. Miss Daisy (Jessica Tandy) and her black chauffeur Hoke Colburn (Morgan Freeman) are driving to Mobile to celebrate the 90th birthday of Miss Daisy's uncle. Along the way they innocently park their car on a beautiful lawn next to a serene lake. There they sit in quiet conversation, sharing a box lunch. Two Alabama state troopers arrive and interrupt this peaceful scene, questioning Colburn's right to drive an automobile. Only when Miss Daisy is able to establish the fact that she is a woman of prominence and wealth do the patrolmen cease their harassment. Harried, Miss Daisy and Colburn leave their lunch half-eaten and depart. Watching the car travel down the highway, one trooper says to his partner, "an old nigger and an old Jew woman taking off down the road together. Now ain't that a sorry sight."
The real sorry sight is the inability of the two troopers to see Miss Daisy and Hoke Colburn as human beings who have the same rights and privileges as all other persons. It is pathetic that our whole society is still blinded by the "isms" -- racism, sexism, ageism -- attitudes that demean and belittle other individuals because one thinks of herself/himself as superior to another person due to some arbitrary standard of skin color or religious affiliation. But it seems that hate is such a natural state of man. Former U.S. Senator George Aiken (1892-1984) said, "If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed, and color, we would find some other cause for prejudice by noon."
Ron L.
John 17:20-26
Jesus prays for unity. Unity is good for human beings. Most evolutionists contend that our ability to cooperate has given homo sapiens an evolutionary advantage (Matt Rossano, Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved, pp. 40ff). To be involved in projects bigger than we are is pleasurable, leading to the secretion of the pleasurable monoamine dopamine, which results in happiness (Daniel Amen, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life). Augustine, perhaps the greatest theologian ever to live, claimed that we are made one by Jesus (our denominational differences need not ultimately divide us) in the sense that we share a common faith (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 7, pp. 408-409).
Augustine also refers to the church as the mother of all the faithful (Ibid., Vol. 4, p. 422). Since we all have a common mother, we must be kin! Faith unifies us and in so doing makes life better.
Mark E.
At the age of 17, Dwight Lyman Moody went to Boston to work as a shoe salesman in his uncle's store. It was there that another employee witnessed to Moody, who then accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. In 1855 Moody began forty years of evangelical preaching, and he is attributed with saving over a million souls.
Moody was a street corner evangelist. One day a woman came up to Moody, criticizing him for his outspoken and public disruptive manner of preaching. Moody then asked the lady how she evangelized, and she replied that she did not. To this Moody responded, "Well, I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it!"
Ron L.
Acts 16:16-34
Americans think they are good and decent people, worthy of salvation by their lifestyle. At least that was a finding of a 2001 Barna Research Group poll, finding that 7 in 10 Americans believe that we must do works in order to be saved. But our text suggests that we are just the opposite, sinning again and again as we ask for Jesus for the wrong things (v. 18), get angry with Jesus when he heals a good worker (vv. 19-22), throw men of God in jail (vv. 23-24), and even contemplate suicide (v. 28). No two ways about it: Our lesson reminds us that we need a lot of forgiveness. It is as famed preacher of the early church John Chrysostom said about that text. It reminds us, he contends, that God "more desires to forgive thee thy sins (than thou to be forgiven)" (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 11, p. 227).
Forgiveness is a wonderful reality, even if the world does not understand it. As songwriter Per Allen once put it: "Forgiveness is a funny thing, it warms the hearts and cools the sting." Former United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold offers a wonderful definition of the forgiveness God affords: "Forgiveness is the answer to the child's dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is made clean again." Forgiveness is a fresh start.
Mark E.
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
We wonder, as have Christians throughout the ages, what does Jesus mean by "soon"? Everyone including Martin Luther felt that soon was in his age. We look for him today -- some with hope and some with dread. We will have to leave it up to him when soon will be. The confusing part to me is his next sentence, "I will give to everyone according to what he has done." I thought we were saved by grace alone! He doesn't say "according to his faith -- or what he has believed." We should, of course, try to do what the Lord asks us to do! Each one of us will have to judge that one. Notice in most churches there is the symbol for the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet on the church hangings. I think it means that we need to look nowhere else! Jesus is the answer to everything. The beginning and the ending! If we are baptized and believe, he will wash us in the robes of purity. Again it hints that we are the ones who will do it! By our baptism and faith? If we have obeyed, then we can eat of that tree in the garden which Adam and Eve were not supposed to eat from. At last -- because of Jesus -- the fruit is open to us. Only Jesus has unlocked to door to that tree! It is like a drowning man. The lifeguard throws out a life preserver, but it is up to us to grab hold of it!
Jesus came to give us his word through his holy angels. He is in the line of David who has come to fulfill the prophecies of old! All we can do is come if we are the bride of Christ. I always tell my friends of other denominations that Jesus was not a Mormon bishop who has many wives -- Lutheran, Baptist, Roman Catholic, Methodist, and so on. He only has one bride! We have to recognize that fact and know that he has already made us one. It is not a job for committees of theologians! We only have to recognize what he has done.
All this makes me thirsty for the water he offers us. He said that if we hunger for righteousness we will be filled, and if we are thirsty he will quench our thirst. That fact that we come faithfully to church shows that we are thirsty for what God has to offer. It may not come every Sunday, so be patient! He will fulfill our every need -- our every hunger and thirst!
Bob O.
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
The planet Venus is called the Morning Star and also the Evening Star. It has a very lengthy cycle in its repeated positions as seen from earth. Although it appears in the evening for 250 days, it appears in the morning before dawn for 236 days. In the Mayan culture in Central America, the eight days between the evening cycle and the morning cycle correspond to the death and resurrection of the sky god Kukulcan, the most powerful of ancient Maya deities. When the bright morning star reappears, hope is assured among the people that order is restored in the cosmos.
In a similar way, the image of the bright morning star at the close of the book of Revelation assures the reader that because of Jesus there is ultimate order in the universe, despite the contradictory appearances of the times of persecution endured by the Christian community.
Mark M.
John 17:20-26
There's a poignant scene in the movie Driving Miss Daisy that ought to stir everyone's conscience. Miss Daisy (Jessica Tandy) and her black chauffeur Hoke Colburn (Morgan Freeman) are driving to Mobile to celebrate the 90th birthday of Miss Daisy's uncle. Along the way they innocently park their car on a beautiful lawn next to a serene lake. There they sit in quiet conversation, sharing a box lunch. Two Alabama state troopers arrive and interrupt this peaceful scene, questioning Colburn's right to drive an automobile. Only when Miss Daisy is able to establish the fact that she is a woman of prominence and wealth do the patrolmen cease their harassment. Harried, Miss Daisy and Colburn leave their lunch half-eaten and depart. Watching the car travel down the highway, one trooper says to his partner, "an old nigger and an old Jew woman taking off down the road together. Now ain't that a sorry sight."
The real sorry sight is the inability of the two troopers to see Miss Daisy and Hoke Colburn as human beings who have the same rights and privileges as all other persons. It is pathetic that our whole society is still blinded by the "isms" -- racism, sexism, ageism -- attitudes that demean and belittle other individuals because one thinks of herself/himself as superior to another person due to some arbitrary standard of skin color or religious affiliation. But it seems that hate is such a natural state of man. Former U.S. Senator George Aiken (1892-1984) said, "If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed, and color, we would find some other cause for prejudice by noon."
Ron L.
John 17:20-26
Jesus prays for unity. Unity is good for human beings. Most evolutionists contend that our ability to cooperate has given homo sapiens an evolutionary advantage (Matt Rossano, Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved, pp. 40ff). To be involved in projects bigger than we are is pleasurable, leading to the secretion of the pleasurable monoamine dopamine, which results in happiness (Daniel Amen, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life). Augustine, perhaps the greatest theologian ever to live, claimed that we are made one by Jesus (our denominational differences need not ultimately divide us) in the sense that we share a common faith (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 7, pp. 408-409).
Augustine also refers to the church as the mother of all the faithful (Ibid., Vol. 4, p. 422). Since we all have a common mother, we must be kin! Faith unifies us and in so doing makes life better.
Mark E.
