Sermon Illustrations for Epiphany 7 (OT 7) Cycle C (2025)
Illustration
Genesis 45:3-11, 15
Christal Berns wrote, in a May 23, 2023, article for Christian Learning, about Jacksonville, FL police officer Ike Brown. On May 27, 2002, Brown received heartbreaking news from his colleagues. His sergeant, lieutenant, chief, and chaplain came to his home and told him his son had lost his life in a shooting incident.
On the day the shooting happened, his son was playing video games at his friend’s home. Then shots started going off inside the house, killing 21-year-olds Isaac Brown Jr. and Jeffrey Hicks. After the police investigation, they discovered that the two young men weren’t connected with the murderer at all. They just happened to be there when the suspect, Takoya Criner, opened fire. A prosecutor attested that Takoya “went to Bury South Side home that night to smoke pot and drink beer.”
Three years after Ike Jr.’s burial, the trial began. And for the first time, Ike would face the man who killed his eldest son. He thought he would feel rage, anger, and revenge against him. But he was surprised that he felt compassion from the moment he laid his eyes on him. Ike questioned God about the compassion he felt towards his son’s murderer. Instead of hate, he chose forgiveness and even wanted to hug the man who murdered his son. Takoya was sentenced to life imprisonment for first-degree murder.
“I realized that something was happening inside of me that I wasn’t even aware of,” the father recalled. “I know without a doubt it was God.” Ike often prayed for Takoya. And a couple of years later, he sent him a letter forgiving him that eventually led to his encounter with the Father’s unconditional love. Criner was officially adopted by Brown in 2009.
It is a powerful, true story. Grace given to those who do not deserve it. Takoya Criner knows about that grace. So do Joseph’s brothers. Joseph told them, “And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors” (vv. 5-7). God works through all kinds of circumstances to bring about his good and perfect will. While we may not always understand it, we can trust him. Will you?
Bill T.
* * *
Genesis 45:3-11, 15
A hidden identity is a great storytelling device.
Superman hid his identity behind a pair of glasses and a geeky suit that hid his muscles. Clark Kent’s only revealed to us, the audience, as Superman. The people in whose midst he lives and works don’t have a clue.
In Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night a brother and sister who are identical twins are separated in a shipwreck, each assuming the other died, and are until the big reveal at the end of the play are mistaken for each other in a series of mishaps because of people’s assumptions about who are they are talking about.
Meanwhile, in the original Star Wars trilogy Luke Skywalker remains clueless about the true identity of his mortal enemy Darth Vader until the big reveal. (He’s also clueless about his sister as well).
And in the Joseph saga, there’s also a hidden identity just waiting to be revealed. We know Joseph’s alive, and we know who he is when he starts yanking the chains of his clueless brothers who know something’s rotten in Denmark (Shakespeare again — he’s hard to escape) but haven’t a clue why this Egyptian muckamuck has it in for them. They never see it coming. The big reveal — I am Joseph, your brother — must have shaken them to their core, and if anything, made them think their situation was even worse than they imagined. It’s an even bigger shock when he responds with grace.
Now in our own lives, we’re familiar enough with incidents when we can’t put our finger on why a total stranger we run into at the store or on the street looks so familiar, even though it’s obvious it’s not anyone we know, but then there is the big reveal. It’s our doctor, a woman or man on leave from military service and temporarily out of uniform, the minister in civilian clothes, or any number of people we don’t recognize because we’re seeing them out of their normal context.
Then there’s the flip side of our failure to recognize Clark Kent is Superman. We don’t see, as C.S. Lewis put it in his essay, “The Weight of Glory,” that we have never met a mere mortal. Every person we run into, though clothed in a body that comes from dust and to dust will return, is an immortal being whom, if we could see them from the vantage pointy of heaven, might well be a figure of light who would astonish us with their glory, or sadly a figure of evil that would paralyze us with horror. We don’t recognize the image of God that is stamped on every face! Let’s hope we do, before the scene that contains the big reveal.
Frank R.
* * *
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
Every gardener knows that there is life inside the apparently dead seeds we plant. Paul uses this metaphor of seeds that are sown and new life forthcoming in his conversations about the life of the body and the life of the spirit. Our human bodies are born and die. Our spiritual bodies are the everlasting bodies we are given by God. The first humans are the physical beings of the earth. The second humans are spiritual beings of heaven.
It's hard to understand how God resurrects us from earthly to spiritual and maybe we don’t really need to understand it completely. I will tell you that as a pastor who has sat or stood at the bedside of those transitioning from this world to the next, you can tell when the spirit has left a human body, when the earthly is the only body present. There is a shift in the life energy and life force of the individual when they move into their heavenly body and away from their earthly body. I can’t explain how God does this, but I believe it to be true. And I know with the certainty of everything in my being that the spiritual body is everlasting.
Bonnie B.
* * *
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
Paul's discussion of the resurrected bodies the faithful will have clearly undercuts the idea of eternal life as the immortality of free-floating souls. No less than Pope Benedict XVI made that clear when he wrote:
In contrast to the dualistic conception of immortality expressed in the Greek body-soul schema, the biblical formula ... means to convey a collective and dialogic conception of immortality: the essential part of man, the person, remains; that which has ripened in the course of this earthly existence ... goes on in a different fashion. (Introduction To Christianity, p.353)
The Pauline image of the seed and the flower to describe the resurrected suggests that our earthly bodies are perfected in the spiritual/resurrected body, like the flower perfects the seed, ripens the seed. Martin Luther offers some interesting insights about the resurrected life:
And then, when the body thus lives spiritually in God, it will sally forth into heaven and earth, play with sun and moon and all the other creatures, and also be delighted by this. It will find such content and bliss in this that it will never think of eating and drinking. (Luther's Works, Vol.28, pp.189-190)
Modern scientific insights lend further credence to the Christian version of eternal life. For example, we know from the Theory of Relativity that matter is a function of energy, and the First Law of Thermodynamics teaches that energy cannot be destroyed. Can we not readily conclude then that the stuff of the body is eternal? Add to that observation, insights from the field of bioelectricity. Electrical signals running through the mind and the body seem at least in principle seem to be possible agents of reviving dead bodies (Sally Adee, We Are Electric, esp. p.54)
Mark E.
* * *
Luke 6:27-38
The proclamation of Jesus to love our enemies, to offer blessings and grace to those who are cruel to us, is hard for we human beings to understand, let alone practice. I want to be angry with my enemies. I want, in my physical being, to strike back when I am struck — maybe not with my hands or fists, but certainly with my voice. I don’t always want to surrender my perceived power.
What I have learned, however, is that offering love and forgiveness is a sign of even greater strength. Anyone can lash out at another. How much more strength and discipline does it take to intentionally choose to love? And love is intentional, my friends. Love isn’t just a feeling. Love is a commandment and a choice. We can choose love. And as Jesus proclaims to us, we need to choose love, always and everywhere, and with everyone. What a blessing the world would experience if we fulfilled this command.
Bonnie B.
* * *
Luke 6:27-38
In Luke 6:29, Jesus tells his followers that when someone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other as well. This startling statement is a direct contradiction of what is expected in a society based on honor and shame. One is shamed if one is slapped — and a response is required that restores honor even if it means death.
Emily Wilson, in the preface to her translation of the epic poem The Iliad, points out that “The leaders with the highest status…are most vulnerable to the threat of shame. Any slight, such as an insult or the loss of a particular prize, may threaten a leader’s whole identity as well as his standing in the eyes of his peers and his inferiors. …Those who are the greatest winners can be damaged most by any loss. Privilege entails terrible vulnerability.” (The Iliad, by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson, Norton, 2023, p. xxxi) The paths of honor inevitably lead to death.
(Remember that in the ancient world both The Iliad and The Odyssey were scriptures that told basic facts about life, described the disappointing ways their gods acted, and told the basic truth — quite different from our scriptures — that it doesn’t matter what you do, it’s all futile).
By contrast, Jesus is suggesting we jump out of the rat race and stop being rats — we will see life from a totally different angle. Abandon the mindset of The Iliad and The Odyssey. It’s not about honor or shame — it’s about honoring God and serving others. This whole passage demonstrates another way of living, separate from the obligations and expectations of the honor driven ancient Roman and, to some extent, our modern world.
Frank R.
* * *
Luke 6:27-38
Jesus' words in this lesson suggest Martin Luther King's famed quote, "Let no man pull you so low as to hate him." Hatred is bad for you biologically. It shuts down the front part of the brain which governs rationality and it also releases a cascade of neurochemicals that destroy the parts of the brain which control emotional reactivity (Andrew Newberg and Mark Waldman, How God Changes Your Brain, pp.19-20). But let's not forget the real purpose of Jesus' commands here, the purpose of God's law. As Martin Luther put it:
... God wants to teach man to know himself through the law. He wants him to see how false and unjust his heart is, how far he still is from God, and how entirely impotent his nature is... Thus man is to be humbled, to creep to the cross, to sigh for Christ, to long for his grace, to despair of himself, and to base all his confidence on Christ. From him he is then to expect the gift... (What Luther Says, p.737)
Mark E.
* * *
Luke 6:27-38
I came across this little anecdote and thought it was too good not to share. A reporter was interviewing an old man on his 100th birthday. “What are you most proud of?” he asked.
“Well,” said the man, “I don’t have an enemy in the world.”
“What a beautiful thought! How inspirational!” said the reporter.
“Yep,” added the centenarian, “outlived every last one of them.”
Mary Marty shares the story of a Christian who was doing his morning quiet time under a tree by the riverbank. During his meditation he noticed that the river was rising, and a scorpion caught in the roots was about to drown. He crawled out on the roots and reached down to free the scorpion, but every time he did so, the scorpion struck back at him.
An observer came along and said to the holy man, “Don’t you know that’s a scorpion, and it’s in the nature of a scorpion to want to sting?” To which the holy man replied, “That may well be, but it is my nature to save, and must I change my nature because the scorpion does not change its nature?”
Jesus challenges his followers to “love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.” Jesus is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. We are to “be merciful, just as the Father is merciful.”
Bill T.
Christal Berns wrote, in a May 23, 2023, article for Christian Learning, about Jacksonville, FL police officer Ike Brown. On May 27, 2002, Brown received heartbreaking news from his colleagues. His sergeant, lieutenant, chief, and chaplain came to his home and told him his son had lost his life in a shooting incident.
On the day the shooting happened, his son was playing video games at his friend’s home. Then shots started going off inside the house, killing 21-year-olds Isaac Brown Jr. and Jeffrey Hicks. After the police investigation, they discovered that the two young men weren’t connected with the murderer at all. They just happened to be there when the suspect, Takoya Criner, opened fire. A prosecutor attested that Takoya “went to Bury South Side home that night to smoke pot and drink beer.”
Three years after Ike Jr.’s burial, the trial began. And for the first time, Ike would face the man who killed his eldest son. He thought he would feel rage, anger, and revenge against him. But he was surprised that he felt compassion from the moment he laid his eyes on him. Ike questioned God about the compassion he felt towards his son’s murderer. Instead of hate, he chose forgiveness and even wanted to hug the man who murdered his son. Takoya was sentenced to life imprisonment for first-degree murder.
“I realized that something was happening inside of me that I wasn’t even aware of,” the father recalled. “I know without a doubt it was God.” Ike often prayed for Takoya. And a couple of years later, he sent him a letter forgiving him that eventually led to his encounter with the Father’s unconditional love. Criner was officially adopted by Brown in 2009.
It is a powerful, true story. Grace given to those who do not deserve it. Takoya Criner knows about that grace. So do Joseph’s brothers. Joseph told them, “And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors” (vv. 5-7). God works through all kinds of circumstances to bring about his good and perfect will. While we may not always understand it, we can trust him. Will you?
Bill T.
* * *
Genesis 45:3-11, 15
A hidden identity is a great storytelling device.
Superman hid his identity behind a pair of glasses and a geeky suit that hid his muscles. Clark Kent’s only revealed to us, the audience, as Superman. The people in whose midst he lives and works don’t have a clue.
In Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night a brother and sister who are identical twins are separated in a shipwreck, each assuming the other died, and are until the big reveal at the end of the play are mistaken for each other in a series of mishaps because of people’s assumptions about who are they are talking about.
Meanwhile, in the original Star Wars trilogy Luke Skywalker remains clueless about the true identity of his mortal enemy Darth Vader until the big reveal. (He’s also clueless about his sister as well).
And in the Joseph saga, there’s also a hidden identity just waiting to be revealed. We know Joseph’s alive, and we know who he is when he starts yanking the chains of his clueless brothers who know something’s rotten in Denmark (Shakespeare again — he’s hard to escape) but haven’t a clue why this Egyptian muckamuck has it in for them. They never see it coming. The big reveal — I am Joseph, your brother — must have shaken them to their core, and if anything, made them think their situation was even worse than they imagined. It’s an even bigger shock when he responds with grace.
Now in our own lives, we’re familiar enough with incidents when we can’t put our finger on why a total stranger we run into at the store or on the street looks so familiar, even though it’s obvious it’s not anyone we know, but then there is the big reveal. It’s our doctor, a woman or man on leave from military service and temporarily out of uniform, the minister in civilian clothes, or any number of people we don’t recognize because we’re seeing them out of their normal context.
Then there’s the flip side of our failure to recognize Clark Kent is Superman. We don’t see, as C.S. Lewis put it in his essay, “The Weight of Glory,” that we have never met a mere mortal. Every person we run into, though clothed in a body that comes from dust and to dust will return, is an immortal being whom, if we could see them from the vantage pointy of heaven, might well be a figure of light who would astonish us with their glory, or sadly a figure of evil that would paralyze us with horror. We don’t recognize the image of God that is stamped on every face! Let’s hope we do, before the scene that contains the big reveal.
Frank R.
* * *
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
Every gardener knows that there is life inside the apparently dead seeds we plant. Paul uses this metaphor of seeds that are sown and new life forthcoming in his conversations about the life of the body and the life of the spirit. Our human bodies are born and die. Our spiritual bodies are the everlasting bodies we are given by God. The first humans are the physical beings of the earth. The second humans are spiritual beings of heaven.
It's hard to understand how God resurrects us from earthly to spiritual and maybe we don’t really need to understand it completely. I will tell you that as a pastor who has sat or stood at the bedside of those transitioning from this world to the next, you can tell when the spirit has left a human body, when the earthly is the only body present. There is a shift in the life energy and life force of the individual when they move into their heavenly body and away from their earthly body. I can’t explain how God does this, but I believe it to be true. And I know with the certainty of everything in my being that the spiritual body is everlasting.
Bonnie B.
* * *
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
Paul's discussion of the resurrected bodies the faithful will have clearly undercuts the idea of eternal life as the immortality of free-floating souls. No less than Pope Benedict XVI made that clear when he wrote:
In contrast to the dualistic conception of immortality expressed in the Greek body-soul schema, the biblical formula ... means to convey a collective and dialogic conception of immortality: the essential part of man, the person, remains; that which has ripened in the course of this earthly existence ... goes on in a different fashion. (Introduction To Christianity, p.353)
The Pauline image of the seed and the flower to describe the resurrected suggests that our earthly bodies are perfected in the spiritual/resurrected body, like the flower perfects the seed, ripens the seed. Martin Luther offers some interesting insights about the resurrected life:
And then, when the body thus lives spiritually in God, it will sally forth into heaven and earth, play with sun and moon and all the other creatures, and also be delighted by this. It will find such content and bliss in this that it will never think of eating and drinking. (Luther's Works, Vol.28, pp.189-190)
Modern scientific insights lend further credence to the Christian version of eternal life. For example, we know from the Theory of Relativity that matter is a function of energy, and the First Law of Thermodynamics teaches that energy cannot be destroyed. Can we not readily conclude then that the stuff of the body is eternal? Add to that observation, insights from the field of bioelectricity. Electrical signals running through the mind and the body seem at least in principle seem to be possible agents of reviving dead bodies (Sally Adee, We Are Electric, esp. p.54)
Mark E.
* * *
Luke 6:27-38
The proclamation of Jesus to love our enemies, to offer blessings and grace to those who are cruel to us, is hard for we human beings to understand, let alone practice. I want to be angry with my enemies. I want, in my physical being, to strike back when I am struck — maybe not with my hands or fists, but certainly with my voice. I don’t always want to surrender my perceived power.
What I have learned, however, is that offering love and forgiveness is a sign of even greater strength. Anyone can lash out at another. How much more strength and discipline does it take to intentionally choose to love? And love is intentional, my friends. Love isn’t just a feeling. Love is a commandment and a choice. We can choose love. And as Jesus proclaims to us, we need to choose love, always and everywhere, and with everyone. What a blessing the world would experience if we fulfilled this command.
Bonnie B.
* * *
Luke 6:27-38
In Luke 6:29, Jesus tells his followers that when someone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other as well. This startling statement is a direct contradiction of what is expected in a society based on honor and shame. One is shamed if one is slapped — and a response is required that restores honor even if it means death.
Emily Wilson, in the preface to her translation of the epic poem The Iliad, points out that “The leaders with the highest status…are most vulnerable to the threat of shame. Any slight, such as an insult or the loss of a particular prize, may threaten a leader’s whole identity as well as his standing in the eyes of his peers and his inferiors. …Those who are the greatest winners can be damaged most by any loss. Privilege entails terrible vulnerability.” (The Iliad, by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson, Norton, 2023, p. xxxi) The paths of honor inevitably lead to death.
(Remember that in the ancient world both The Iliad and The Odyssey were scriptures that told basic facts about life, described the disappointing ways their gods acted, and told the basic truth — quite different from our scriptures — that it doesn’t matter what you do, it’s all futile).
By contrast, Jesus is suggesting we jump out of the rat race and stop being rats — we will see life from a totally different angle. Abandon the mindset of The Iliad and The Odyssey. It’s not about honor or shame — it’s about honoring God and serving others. This whole passage demonstrates another way of living, separate from the obligations and expectations of the honor driven ancient Roman and, to some extent, our modern world.
Frank R.
* * *
Luke 6:27-38
Jesus' words in this lesson suggest Martin Luther King's famed quote, "Let no man pull you so low as to hate him." Hatred is bad for you biologically. It shuts down the front part of the brain which governs rationality and it also releases a cascade of neurochemicals that destroy the parts of the brain which control emotional reactivity (Andrew Newberg and Mark Waldman, How God Changes Your Brain, pp.19-20). But let's not forget the real purpose of Jesus' commands here, the purpose of God's law. As Martin Luther put it:
... God wants to teach man to know himself through the law. He wants him to see how false and unjust his heart is, how far he still is from God, and how entirely impotent his nature is... Thus man is to be humbled, to creep to the cross, to sigh for Christ, to long for his grace, to despair of himself, and to base all his confidence on Christ. From him he is then to expect the gift... (What Luther Says, p.737)
Mark E.
* * *
Luke 6:27-38
I came across this little anecdote and thought it was too good not to share. A reporter was interviewing an old man on his 100th birthday. “What are you most proud of?” he asked.
“Well,” said the man, “I don’t have an enemy in the world.”
“What a beautiful thought! How inspirational!” said the reporter.
“Yep,” added the centenarian, “outlived every last one of them.”
Mary Marty shares the story of a Christian who was doing his morning quiet time under a tree by the riverbank. During his meditation he noticed that the river was rising, and a scorpion caught in the roots was about to drown. He crawled out on the roots and reached down to free the scorpion, but every time he did so, the scorpion struck back at him.
An observer came along and said to the holy man, “Don’t you know that’s a scorpion, and it’s in the nature of a scorpion to want to sting?” To which the holy man replied, “That may well be, but it is my nature to save, and must I change my nature because the scorpion does not change its nature?”
Jesus challenges his followers to “love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.” Jesus is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. We are to “be merciful, just as the Father is merciful.”
Bill T.
