Sermon Illustrations for Easter 7 (2022)
Illustration
Acts 16:16-34
John Wesley notes how this text testifies to the countercultural character of the Christian message:
But this is a property of the gospel truth: It has something in it peculiarly Intolerable to the world. (Commentary On the Bible, p. 485)
To tell people they are sinners and need grace seems countercultural in a lot of circles. A 2020 Barna research group poll indicated that 48% of think we are basically good. Just 35% of us think salvation is only through faith in Christ. But this lesson is about grace and forgiveness, and according to the famous preacher of the early church John Chrysostom, the message of the text is that God “more desires to forgive thee thy sins (than thou to be forgiven.”) (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, , Vol.11, p.227) The great American Puritan Jonathan Edwards claims that you are better prepared for this comfort when you counter-culturally confess your sinfulness. He proclaimed in a sermon on the text:
Seek that you may see, that you are utterly undone, and that you cannot help yourself; and yet, that you do not deserve that God should help you, and that he would be perfectly just if he should refuse ever to help you. If you have come to this, then you will be prepared for comfort. (Works, Vol. 2, p. 829)
Forgiveness is a wonderful reality. Like songwriter Peter Allen once put it: “Forgiveness is a funny thing, it warms the hearts and cools the sting.”
Mark E.
* * *
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
I came across this in Our Daily Bread, from November 10, 1991. It’s a powerful story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. At the height of World War II, Bonhoeffer was imprisoned for taking a stand against Hitler. Despite the arrest, he continued to urge fellow believers to resist Nazi tyranny. A group of Christians, believing that Hitler was the Antichrist, asked Bonhoeffer, “Why do you expose yourself to all this danger? Jesus will return any day, and all your work and suffering will be for nothing.” Bonhoeffer replied, “If Jesus returns tomorrow, then tomorrow I’ll rest from my labor. But today I have work to do. I must continue the struggle until it’s finished.”
The text for today powerfully depicts what the return of Jesus will be like. It will be a wonderful time of reward, celebration, and victory. The Christians around Bonhoeffer were right in the sense that nothing that happens on this earth will compare to what happens then. I admire Bonhoeffer’s view, though. Jesus is coming back. May we be found working until the day he comes. Amen. Come Lord Jesus!
Bill T.
* * *
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
Ask anybody what’s the hottest planet in the solar system, and they’re likely to say Mercury. Why not? It’s the planet closest to the sun. But that’s wrong. It’s Venus. Surface temperatures are over 900 degrees. The thick cloud cover holds in the heat creating the most hostile environment in the solar system this side of the sun itself. I remember sharing this fun fact with my kids when they were little, with the result that they’d get the answer wrong at school, and I’d have to explain to the teacher it was their source material, not my kids, that was wrong.
All this is prelude to the observation that it’s ironic that such a hellish planet has such a heavenly reputation. Though it’s a commonplace to say, “The Greeks had a word for it,” they actually had two or three words for Venus. When it was the morning star they called it Phosphorus, “Light Bringer,” or Eosphorus, “Dawn Bringer.”
Both allude to the fact that when Venus rises in the sky before sunrise or shines in the western sky after sunset it is gloriously bright. Sometimes it is unbelievably bright. Even today people call 911 to report the descent of an alien spacecraft when it’s only Venus.
Here, at the end of Revelation, Jesus identifies himself as “…the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star (Revelation 22:16). John the revelator is writing to Christians who believe that someday at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, but it’s not happening just then. The eternal day of the new heavens and the new earth is still in the future. In the meantime, Jesus is the bright morning star, heralding the dawn, the new day that is coming, but is not quite here. By shining in the darkness of our history while we wait for God to resolve everything Jesus gives us not only light (there are times Venus is so bright that she casts shadows) but hope! We are to take comfort in the good news of Jesus Christ, which we experience as a graphic novel in Revelation, but it’s the same gospel, the same good news as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
I see this as another tried and true Christian practice — baptizing another pagan symbol for our own use! Just as our major holy days of Christmas and Easter cheerfully baptize pagan solstice and spring rituals so we can enjoy them too, so too the symbols of Roman and Greek mythology are rebranded to comfort us and remind us that history is aiming for a glorious conclusion, and all will be well.
(By the way, Venus as the evening star is Hesperus, which means “Evening Star.” The Greeks thought these were two different astronomical bodies, or at least some of them did. To complicate matters, the Latin word for phosphorus is Lucifer, and if you think about it, this works well with the Christian story as well. In Isaiah 14:12 the King of Babylon is referred to as the day star in the sense that his attempt to be the god of the world — “I will raise my throne above the stars of God…(14:13).” — only to melt away to nothing with the rising of the sun, much as we think of Lucifer attempting to assault heaven ((see Revelation 12:1ff)), and falling under the sword of the archangel Michael.)
Frank R.
* * *
John 17:20-26
Jesus prays for the unity of the faithful in this lesson (v.22). Commenting on this, John Calvin noted that the Father cannot look upon the Son without also having his eyes on the Body of Christ (the Church) (Calvin’s Commentaries, Vol. XVIII/1, p. 189). Martin Luther’s closest colleague Philip Melanchthon offers penetrating insights about another sense in which the prayer for unity among the faithful might be made incarnate:
For he [Paul] says that love is a bond or unbroken chain in order to show that he is talking about linking and binding together the many members of the church with one another. In all families and communities, harmony needs to be nurtured by mutual responsibilities, and it is not possible to preserve tranquility unless people overlook and forgive certain mistakes among them. (The Book of Concord [2000 ed.], p.155)
Martin Luther himself believed that this unity could be nurtured by the sacrament of The Lord’s Supper:
In this sacrament, therefore, man is given... a sure sign firm God himself that he is united with Christ and his saints and has all things in common [with them], that Christ’s sufferings and life are his own together with the lives and sufferings of all the saints. (Luther’s Works, Vol. 35, p.52)
Mark E.
John Wesley notes how this text testifies to the countercultural character of the Christian message:
But this is a property of the gospel truth: It has something in it peculiarly Intolerable to the world. (Commentary On the Bible, p. 485)
To tell people they are sinners and need grace seems countercultural in a lot of circles. A 2020 Barna research group poll indicated that 48% of think we are basically good. Just 35% of us think salvation is only through faith in Christ. But this lesson is about grace and forgiveness, and according to the famous preacher of the early church John Chrysostom, the message of the text is that God “more desires to forgive thee thy sins (than thou to be forgiven.”) (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, , Vol.11, p.227) The great American Puritan Jonathan Edwards claims that you are better prepared for this comfort when you counter-culturally confess your sinfulness. He proclaimed in a sermon on the text:
Seek that you may see, that you are utterly undone, and that you cannot help yourself; and yet, that you do not deserve that God should help you, and that he would be perfectly just if he should refuse ever to help you. If you have come to this, then you will be prepared for comfort. (Works, Vol. 2, p. 829)
Forgiveness is a wonderful reality. Like songwriter Peter Allen once put it: “Forgiveness is a funny thing, it warms the hearts and cools the sting.”
Mark E.
* * *
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
I came across this in Our Daily Bread, from November 10, 1991. It’s a powerful story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. At the height of World War II, Bonhoeffer was imprisoned for taking a stand against Hitler. Despite the arrest, he continued to urge fellow believers to resist Nazi tyranny. A group of Christians, believing that Hitler was the Antichrist, asked Bonhoeffer, “Why do you expose yourself to all this danger? Jesus will return any day, and all your work and suffering will be for nothing.” Bonhoeffer replied, “If Jesus returns tomorrow, then tomorrow I’ll rest from my labor. But today I have work to do. I must continue the struggle until it’s finished.”
The text for today powerfully depicts what the return of Jesus will be like. It will be a wonderful time of reward, celebration, and victory. The Christians around Bonhoeffer were right in the sense that nothing that happens on this earth will compare to what happens then. I admire Bonhoeffer’s view, though. Jesus is coming back. May we be found working until the day he comes. Amen. Come Lord Jesus!
Bill T.
* * *
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
Ask anybody what’s the hottest planet in the solar system, and they’re likely to say Mercury. Why not? It’s the planet closest to the sun. But that’s wrong. It’s Venus. Surface temperatures are over 900 degrees. The thick cloud cover holds in the heat creating the most hostile environment in the solar system this side of the sun itself. I remember sharing this fun fact with my kids when they were little, with the result that they’d get the answer wrong at school, and I’d have to explain to the teacher it was their source material, not my kids, that was wrong.
All this is prelude to the observation that it’s ironic that such a hellish planet has such a heavenly reputation. Though it’s a commonplace to say, “The Greeks had a word for it,” they actually had two or three words for Venus. When it was the morning star they called it Phosphorus, “Light Bringer,” or Eosphorus, “Dawn Bringer.”
Both allude to the fact that when Venus rises in the sky before sunrise or shines in the western sky after sunset it is gloriously bright. Sometimes it is unbelievably bright. Even today people call 911 to report the descent of an alien spacecraft when it’s only Venus.
Here, at the end of Revelation, Jesus identifies himself as “…the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star (Revelation 22:16). John the revelator is writing to Christians who believe that someday at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, but it’s not happening just then. The eternal day of the new heavens and the new earth is still in the future. In the meantime, Jesus is the bright morning star, heralding the dawn, the new day that is coming, but is not quite here. By shining in the darkness of our history while we wait for God to resolve everything Jesus gives us not only light (there are times Venus is so bright that she casts shadows) but hope! We are to take comfort in the good news of Jesus Christ, which we experience as a graphic novel in Revelation, but it’s the same gospel, the same good news as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
I see this as another tried and true Christian practice — baptizing another pagan symbol for our own use! Just as our major holy days of Christmas and Easter cheerfully baptize pagan solstice and spring rituals so we can enjoy them too, so too the symbols of Roman and Greek mythology are rebranded to comfort us and remind us that history is aiming for a glorious conclusion, and all will be well.
(By the way, Venus as the evening star is Hesperus, which means “Evening Star.” The Greeks thought these were two different astronomical bodies, or at least some of them did. To complicate matters, the Latin word for phosphorus is Lucifer, and if you think about it, this works well with the Christian story as well. In Isaiah 14:12 the King of Babylon is referred to as the day star in the sense that his attempt to be the god of the world — “I will raise my throne above the stars of God…(14:13).” — only to melt away to nothing with the rising of the sun, much as we think of Lucifer attempting to assault heaven ((see Revelation 12:1ff)), and falling under the sword of the archangel Michael.)
Frank R.
* * *
John 17:20-26
Jesus prays for the unity of the faithful in this lesson (v.22). Commenting on this, John Calvin noted that the Father cannot look upon the Son without also having his eyes on the Body of Christ (the Church) (Calvin’s Commentaries, Vol. XVIII/1, p. 189). Martin Luther’s closest colleague Philip Melanchthon offers penetrating insights about another sense in which the prayer for unity among the faithful might be made incarnate:
For he [Paul] says that love is a bond or unbroken chain in order to show that he is talking about linking and binding together the many members of the church with one another. In all families and communities, harmony needs to be nurtured by mutual responsibilities, and it is not possible to preserve tranquility unless people overlook and forgive certain mistakes among them. (The Book of Concord [2000 ed.], p.155)
Martin Luther himself believed that this unity could be nurtured by the sacrament of The Lord’s Supper:
In this sacrament, therefore, man is given... a sure sign firm God himself that he is united with Christ and his saints and has all things in common [with them], that Christ’s sufferings and life are his own together with the lives and sufferings of all the saints. (Luther’s Works, Vol. 35, p.52)
Mark E.
