Sermon Illustrations for the Fifth Sunday after Easter (2018)
Illustration
Acts 8:26-40
Policies and procedures are sometimes the bane of a pastor’s existence. There are those, in some churches and denominations, who think that only church members should have their children baptized. I get it. Churches are concerned about members and about the time and energy their pastors utilize. But how can anyone turn away someone who seeks to be welcomed into the family of God?
I know all the practical reasons, but really! If Philip can stop on the side of the road and baptize one of the forbidden and impure ones (at least by Jewish faith standards) with water on the side of the road, how can anyone turn a family, an infant, an adult, or any child of God away from the baptismal font? I cannot! I would not! I have not! Your lives are not diminished by this act of love. Rather we are spreading the gift of grace and love, of inclusion and compassion, of faith to those in our midst.
Bonnie B.
Acts 8:26-40
Sometimes we are puzzled when the Lord is telling us to go down a certain way. We wonder what is at the end of a trip that is so important. But along the way we run into someone who needs our help.
When I was called by the Lord to go to Nepal, I was talking with one of my members in the church I was serving before I left. He was thinking about serving the Lord on the mission field in Africa, but had many doubts. When I shared with him the doubts I also had, it encouraged him to know that he was not alone in his doubts. We discussed the scripture that applied to our doubts and it led him to serve in Liberia, which he enjoyed greatly and thanked me for my help. When he was preparing to go to Africa, but still had doubts, he met a woman one day and asked her offhandedly if she was interested it going to a mission field. She was enthusiastic about the idea when he told her he was thinking of going to Africa. They were married before he left.
I was on a plane heading for a service in Sacramento, when the passenger next to me asked why I was going to California. We had a long talk about the Lord’s calling and before we landed, he had come to the Lord and planned to go immediately to a church and seek baptism.
We have to be prepared to witness for the Lord wherever we are going and whenever an opportunity arises.
Our church can prepare us to use opportunities the Lord opens for us when we least expect them.
So when it seems the Lord is calling you to go somewhere, he may have something for you to do for him along the way. Study God’s word, not just on Sunday, but read your Bible everyday and meditate on it in prayer. Be prepared for the Lord’s accidental opportunities but also it may be that some are planned ahead, as when our children need our encouragement to be faithful to their Lord, or a friend needs our encouraging words.
The message is, “Be prepared!”
Bob O.
Acts 8:26-40
The American Bible Society’s 2017 “State Of The Bible” report says that 71% of African-Americans frequently study the Bible, compared to just 58% of all Americans. How appropriate then that this lesson should be about the conversion of the Ethiopian Eunuch, who was a student of the Hebrew Bible. Christianity came to Africa in Biblical times! Nor should we think that it is only in this lesson that there is a “black presence” in the Bible. We need to remember that the characters in the Bible (including Jesus) are mostly Jews. And Jews of the first century in Israel were not the European, Ashkenazi Jews most of us know, but were of a darker complexion, resembling many of today’s Palestinian or Arab populations.
Other angles on the text are to stress the importance of Bible study for a nation that does not read that much. Comments by famed 20th-century theologian Karl Barth are most relevant in that connection about the importance of studying scripture, not just of reading it:
Famed preacher and Bishop of the Church’s first centuries, John Chrysostom, also well explains why we need to study the Bible:
If ever one needs language to encourage the reading and studying of scripture, famed Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards powerfully expresses what is to be gained:
Urge the congregation to plunge into scriptures and be blessed with the rich experiences Edwards so compellingly describes.
Mark E.
1 John 4:7-21
Aharon Appelfeld was 9 when he heard the Germans shot his mother and grandmother on their farm in Romania. The young Jewish boy knew what was happening to his family, and he jumped out of a second-floor window into a corn field. He was later caught and taken to a forced-labor camp in Transnistria. From there he escaped into the forest and found a group of Ukrainian criminals. He became their slave boy, but knowing he was Jewish they kept him alive. He later left them and took refuge with a village prostitute. But, when one of her clients recognize Aharon as a Jew, he fled once more. Aharon spent the rest of the war working as a cook for the Soviet army. In 1946 he immigrated to Israel. It was there, along with teaching at the university, he became a novelist. Appelfeld, in his novels, rarely ventured into historical analysis or first-person anecdote of the Holocaust. Instead, the murder of six million European Jews hung ominously in the background of his books, addressed obliquely through the presence of dirtied trains, curls of smoke and characters with disabilities or missing limbs. Speaking to those that want to forget the Holocaust and move on, Appelfeld said, “Everywhere the slogan was ‘Forget,’ but I wanted to remember. To be close to people who went through experiences similar to mine.”
Application: We are called in our lectionary reading to give testimony.
Ron L.
1 John 4:7-21
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18).”
Johann Albrect Bengel (1687-1752) was a German theologian and a prolific writer. In 1734 he published his edition of the Greek New Testament. Eight years later he published a massive commentary on the New Testament, the Gnomen Novia Testamenti. Alongside these many works he was also known for his expertise at encapsulating complex thoughts briefly and in simple words.
Bengel wrote a short epigram in Latin based on the verse quoted above. Here’s the present author’s translation.
Humans go through various states:
Without fear and love.
With fear and without love.
With fear and love.
Without fear and with love.
Where would you say you are in your faith journey?
Frank R.
1 John 4:7-21
Can you imagine hiring someone to take your place in the army? During the Civil War this was a common practice among wealthy families of both the Union and Confederacy. By late 1862 and early 1863, the patriotic fervor that had characterized the war effort early on was wearing thin in both the Confederacy and the United States, and finding men to replenish the armies of both nations was becoming difficult. Those who wanted to serve were already engaged; those who did not had either refused to serve, or, having volunteered and found the experience to be much more arduous than it seemed at first, had deserted or refused to re-enlist. This necessitated instituting a draft to choose men for service, and, in both the North and the South, the practice of hiring substitutes to serve in the place of those who were called and did not want to serve. This process was done through “Enrollment Acts” and allowed the war to become a “rich man’s war, but a poor man’s fight.” The cost of hiring someone to fight in place of another began at $300 and went as high as $1,000.
It is hard to envision hiring someone who might die in your place, but that’s what happened across the country in the mid-1860’s. Something about that, I think, makes us uncomfortable. One dying in place of another. What would compel a man to do that? That is, though, exactly what we find in the text today. Verse 10 notes, “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” We understand what compelled God to send Jesus. We get what compelled Jesus to make the ultimate sacrifice. It was love. We love because he first loved us.
Bill T.
John 15:1-8
Pruning always seems like such a destructive act. Yet, I know that the fruit produced by pruned trees and bushes is significantly more abundant. At one of the houses where I lived as a pastor, there were overgrown blackberry bushes behind a shed. The first year I was there I just picked what was there. However, the second year, I savagely, I thought, pruned the bushes, cutting them back significantly. Was I ever amazed! The crop of blackberries the following year was amazing.
I know that when I ask God to help me prune things like self-centeredness, selfishness, distrust, anger, prejudice, and hate from my life, there is more room for inclusiveness, generosity, trust, peace, acceptance and love. I need the pruning just as my blackberry bushes needed pruning. What do you want God to help you prune from your life? Truly pruning what is detrimental and harmful can make such a difference. It’s all worth it!
Bonnie B.
John 15:1-8
Our church might be called the Father’s garden. We grow in his garden and if we have his message in our heart, we will bear fruit. Unfortunately even some regular churchgoers may not bear fruit. It is the job of the pastor to find opportunities for them to bear fruit in the church and in the community. The rest of the congregation should watch and learn.
In Nepal, the new converts were bearing fruit so fast that the churches there were growing to over a million in just a few years.
Having served as pastor of churches in this country and helping churches in Nepal, it is easy to see that new converts are more enthusiastic and seem to bear more fruit. Just because our families for generations have been church members, we have to be careful not just to relax and enjoy our membership and live off the fruit of our past history.
Notice that plants do not grow fruit instantly. Every day it gets a bit larger, so don’t prune the branches before you give them a chance. Watch your children as they grow. Some grow fruit faster than others, so be patient.
In World War II, I was in school, and with so many in the service they needed help in weeding on a farm just out of town. They gave us a day off school if we would go and weed. I took the day off and went, but as I went along the rows of carrots, I didn’t know a weed from a carrot, so when I pulled up a carrot, I stuck it back in the ground. I got fired. We need to recognize the fruit from the weeds so we don’t hurt some who are just beginning to grow. Sometimes the pastor is the one who can tell a weed from a fruit. One of the pastor’s jobs is to cultivate the field by his words of encouragement.
Sometimes we need a pruning when there are too many things in our life that pull us away from our Lord and his message. Some need to prune off the branches that spend too much time on TV or vacations or using time and money to buy things we don’t need. We all have branches that need pruning. That is one helpful thing we find in our church.
Bob O.
John 15:1-8
Jesus’ Parable of the True Vine and the Branches is a reminder how much we owe to Christ, how every good comes from our Lord. The great North African theologian of the 4th and 5th centuries, St. Augustine, powerfully made this point:
Martin Luther notes that with this self-understanding Christian life is a joyous, confident existence of bearing fruit.
Remembering this and our status as vines puts all the trials and hardships we face in life in perspective. Luther adds:
Mark E.
Policies and procedures are sometimes the bane of a pastor’s existence. There are those, in some churches and denominations, who think that only church members should have their children baptized. I get it. Churches are concerned about members and about the time and energy their pastors utilize. But how can anyone turn away someone who seeks to be welcomed into the family of God?
I know all the practical reasons, but really! If Philip can stop on the side of the road and baptize one of the forbidden and impure ones (at least by Jewish faith standards) with water on the side of the road, how can anyone turn a family, an infant, an adult, or any child of God away from the baptismal font? I cannot! I would not! I have not! Your lives are not diminished by this act of love. Rather we are spreading the gift of grace and love, of inclusion and compassion, of faith to those in our midst.
Bonnie B.
Acts 8:26-40
Sometimes we are puzzled when the Lord is telling us to go down a certain way. We wonder what is at the end of a trip that is so important. But along the way we run into someone who needs our help.
When I was called by the Lord to go to Nepal, I was talking with one of my members in the church I was serving before I left. He was thinking about serving the Lord on the mission field in Africa, but had many doubts. When I shared with him the doubts I also had, it encouraged him to know that he was not alone in his doubts. We discussed the scripture that applied to our doubts and it led him to serve in Liberia, which he enjoyed greatly and thanked me for my help. When he was preparing to go to Africa, but still had doubts, he met a woman one day and asked her offhandedly if she was interested it going to a mission field. She was enthusiastic about the idea when he told her he was thinking of going to Africa. They were married before he left.
I was on a plane heading for a service in Sacramento, when the passenger next to me asked why I was going to California. We had a long talk about the Lord’s calling and before we landed, he had come to the Lord and planned to go immediately to a church and seek baptism.
We have to be prepared to witness for the Lord wherever we are going and whenever an opportunity arises.
Our church can prepare us to use opportunities the Lord opens for us when we least expect them.
So when it seems the Lord is calling you to go somewhere, he may have something for you to do for him along the way. Study God’s word, not just on Sunday, but read your Bible everyday and meditate on it in prayer. Be prepared for the Lord’s accidental opportunities but also it may be that some are planned ahead, as when our children need our encouragement to be faithful to their Lord, or a friend needs our encouraging words.
The message is, “Be prepared!”
Bob O.
Acts 8:26-40
The American Bible Society’s 2017 “State Of The Bible” report says that 71% of African-Americans frequently study the Bible, compared to just 58% of all Americans. How appropriate then that this lesson should be about the conversion of the Ethiopian Eunuch, who was a student of the Hebrew Bible. Christianity came to Africa in Biblical times! Nor should we think that it is only in this lesson that there is a “black presence” in the Bible. We need to remember that the characters in the Bible (including Jesus) are mostly Jews. And Jews of the first century in Israel were not the European, Ashkenazi Jews most of us know, but were of a darker complexion, resembling many of today’s Palestinian or Arab populations.
Other angles on the text are to stress the importance of Bible study for a nation that does not read that much. Comments by famed 20th-century theologian Karl Barth are most relevant in that connection about the importance of studying scripture, not just of reading it:
As the Word of God needs no explanation, of course, since as such it is clear in itself... But this Word of Scripture assumes the form of a human word. Human words need interpretation. (Church Dogmatics, Vol.I/2, pp.712f.)
Famed preacher and Bishop of the Church’s first centuries, John Chrysostom, also well explains why we need to study the Bible:
To get the full flavor of an herb, it must be pressed between the fingers, so it is the same with the Scriptures; the more familiar they become, the more they reveal their hidden treasures and yield their indescribable riches.
If ever one needs language to encourage the reading and studying of scripture, famed Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards powerfully expresses what is to be gained:
I had then, and at other times, the greatest delight in the holy Scriptures, of any book whatsoever. Oftentimes in reading it, every word seemed to touch my heart. I felt a harmony between something in my heart, and those sweet powerful words. I seemed often to see so much light, exhibited by every sentence, and such a refreshing ravishing food communicated, that I could not get along in reading; often dwelling long on one sentence, to see the wonders contained in it; and yet almost every sentence seemed to be full of wonders.
Urge the congregation to plunge into scriptures and be blessed with the rich experiences Edwards so compellingly describes.
Mark E.
1 John 4:7-21
Aharon Appelfeld was 9 when he heard the Germans shot his mother and grandmother on their farm in Romania. The young Jewish boy knew what was happening to his family, and he jumped out of a second-floor window into a corn field. He was later caught and taken to a forced-labor camp in Transnistria. From there he escaped into the forest and found a group of Ukrainian criminals. He became their slave boy, but knowing he was Jewish they kept him alive. He later left them and took refuge with a village prostitute. But, when one of her clients recognize Aharon as a Jew, he fled once more. Aharon spent the rest of the war working as a cook for the Soviet army. In 1946 he immigrated to Israel. It was there, along with teaching at the university, he became a novelist. Appelfeld, in his novels, rarely ventured into historical analysis or first-person anecdote of the Holocaust. Instead, the murder of six million European Jews hung ominously in the background of his books, addressed obliquely through the presence of dirtied trains, curls of smoke and characters with disabilities or missing limbs. Speaking to those that want to forget the Holocaust and move on, Appelfeld said, “Everywhere the slogan was ‘Forget,’ but I wanted to remember. To be close to people who went through experiences similar to mine.”
Application: We are called in our lectionary reading to give testimony.
Ron L.
1 John 4:7-21
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18).”
Johann Albrect Bengel (1687-1752) was a German theologian and a prolific writer. In 1734 he published his edition of the Greek New Testament. Eight years later he published a massive commentary on the New Testament, the Gnomen Novia Testamenti. Alongside these many works he was also known for his expertise at encapsulating complex thoughts briefly and in simple words.
Bengel wrote a short epigram in Latin based on the verse quoted above. Here’s the present author’s translation.
Humans go through various states:
Without fear and love.
With fear and without love.
With fear and love.
Without fear and with love.
Where would you say you are in your faith journey?
Frank R.
1 John 4:7-21
Can you imagine hiring someone to take your place in the army? During the Civil War this was a common practice among wealthy families of both the Union and Confederacy. By late 1862 and early 1863, the patriotic fervor that had characterized the war effort early on was wearing thin in both the Confederacy and the United States, and finding men to replenish the armies of both nations was becoming difficult. Those who wanted to serve were already engaged; those who did not had either refused to serve, or, having volunteered and found the experience to be much more arduous than it seemed at first, had deserted or refused to re-enlist. This necessitated instituting a draft to choose men for service, and, in both the North and the South, the practice of hiring substitutes to serve in the place of those who were called and did not want to serve. This process was done through “Enrollment Acts” and allowed the war to become a “rich man’s war, but a poor man’s fight.” The cost of hiring someone to fight in place of another began at $300 and went as high as $1,000.
It is hard to envision hiring someone who might die in your place, but that’s what happened across the country in the mid-1860’s. Something about that, I think, makes us uncomfortable. One dying in place of another. What would compel a man to do that? That is, though, exactly what we find in the text today. Verse 10 notes, “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” We understand what compelled God to send Jesus. We get what compelled Jesus to make the ultimate sacrifice. It was love. We love because he first loved us.
Bill T.
John 15:1-8
Pruning always seems like such a destructive act. Yet, I know that the fruit produced by pruned trees and bushes is significantly more abundant. At one of the houses where I lived as a pastor, there were overgrown blackberry bushes behind a shed. The first year I was there I just picked what was there. However, the second year, I savagely, I thought, pruned the bushes, cutting them back significantly. Was I ever amazed! The crop of blackberries the following year was amazing.
I know that when I ask God to help me prune things like self-centeredness, selfishness, distrust, anger, prejudice, and hate from my life, there is more room for inclusiveness, generosity, trust, peace, acceptance and love. I need the pruning just as my blackberry bushes needed pruning. What do you want God to help you prune from your life? Truly pruning what is detrimental and harmful can make such a difference. It’s all worth it!
Bonnie B.
John 15:1-8
Our church might be called the Father’s garden. We grow in his garden and if we have his message in our heart, we will bear fruit. Unfortunately even some regular churchgoers may not bear fruit. It is the job of the pastor to find opportunities for them to bear fruit in the church and in the community. The rest of the congregation should watch and learn.
In Nepal, the new converts were bearing fruit so fast that the churches there were growing to over a million in just a few years.
Having served as pastor of churches in this country and helping churches in Nepal, it is easy to see that new converts are more enthusiastic and seem to bear more fruit. Just because our families for generations have been church members, we have to be careful not just to relax and enjoy our membership and live off the fruit of our past history.
Notice that plants do not grow fruit instantly. Every day it gets a bit larger, so don’t prune the branches before you give them a chance. Watch your children as they grow. Some grow fruit faster than others, so be patient.
In World War II, I was in school, and with so many in the service they needed help in weeding on a farm just out of town. They gave us a day off school if we would go and weed. I took the day off and went, but as I went along the rows of carrots, I didn’t know a weed from a carrot, so when I pulled up a carrot, I stuck it back in the ground. I got fired. We need to recognize the fruit from the weeds so we don’t hurt some who are just beginning to grow. Sometimes the pastor is the one who can tell a weed from a fruit. One of the pastor’s jobs is to cultivate the field by his words of encouragement.
Sometimes we need a pruning when there are too many things in our life that pull us away from our Lord and his message. Some need to prune off the branches that spend too much time on TV or vacations or using time and money to buy things we don’t need. We all have branches that need pruning. That is one helpful thing we find in our church.
Bob O.
John 15:1-8
Jesus’ Parable of the True Vine and the Branches is a reminder how much we owe to Christ, how every good comes from our Lord. The great North African theologian of the 4th and 5th centuries, St. Augustine, powerfully made this point:
Why your assertion that man of himself worketh righteousness, that is the height of your self-elation. But the truth contradicts you, and declares, “The branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine...” For whoever imagines that he is bearing fruit of himself is not in the vine and he that is not in the vine is not in Christ, and he that is not in Christ is not a Christian. (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol.7, p.345)
Martin Luther notes that with this self-understanding Christian life is a joyous, confident existence of bearing fruit.
The life of such a person and whatever he does, whether great or small and no matter what it is called, is nothing but fruit and cannot be without faith... Everything such a person does becomes easy for him, not troublesome or vexatious. Nothing is too arduous for him or too difficult to bear. (Luther’s Works, Vol.24, p.230)
Remembering this and our status as vines puts all the trials and hardships we face in life in perspective. Luther adds:
This is indeed a fine and comforting picture. Happy is the Christian who can interpret it thus and apply it in hours of distress and trial, when death upsets him, when the world reviles and defames him as an apostle of the devil. Then he can say: “See I am being fertilized and cultivated as a branch on the vine. All right, dear hoe and clipper, go ahead. Chop, prune, and remove unnecessary leaves. I will gladly suffer it, for these are God’s hoes and clippers. They are applied for my good and welfare.” (Luther’s Works, Vol.24, p.195)
Mark E.
