Sermon Illustrations for Lent 4 (2022)
Illustration
Joshua 5:9-12
Racial and ethnic minorities, including Jews, have no way of escaping the prejudice and injustice that characterize American life. African American poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou put it this way: “Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.” Most of us feel less economic freedom, as when you live from paycheck to paycheck you are less and less free. So much office time on the internet also reduces a sense of freedom. This lesson is about the Passover, which is about freedom. Concerning freedom, Martin Luther wrote:
From this anyone can clearly see how a Christian is free from all things and over all things so that he needs no works to make him righteous and save him, since faith alone abundantly confers all these things. (Luther’s Works, Vol.31, p.356)
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s comments on freedom are most relevant for this text:
... the essence of man is found in freedom. This is what Paul Tillich means when he declares, “Man is man because he is free,” or what Tolstoy implies when he says, I cannot conceive of a man not being free unless he is dead”... There is nothing in the world greater than freedom. It is worth paying for; it is worth losing a job; it is worth going to jail for. (A Testament of Hope, pp.120, 144)
Mark E.
* * *
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
I think Paul is trying to get us back before the garden, the Garden of Eden. Before the story about how things started to go wrong, in the garden, with the snake, and Adam, and Eve, the first creation story in Genesis 1:1-2:4a states that God made all humans in the image and likeness of God. Christ is who Jesus really is. Children of God is who we really are, made in the image and likeness of God. The Corinthian Christians, who Paul got to know very well during the eighteen months he spent working as a tent maker and repairer alongside Priscilla and Aquila in the marketplace, have squeezed each other into human categories: Jew, Gentile, male, female, rich, poor, but Christ has loosed the bonds, so that we no longer see each other from a human point of view.
Frank R.
* * *
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
I came across an article in “This Old House” about a house and a couple determined to make it new again. The house wasn't much to look at, really. Abandoned for twenty years after a fire, the windows and doors were missing, charred, or boarded up. There were no floors downstairs, and the water-damaged plaster was crumbling. Squirrels ran in and out, and birds nested in the claw-foot tub. It was a disaster. In May 2006, Walt and Patricia Purcell moved in. Patricia cried that first night and asked Walt if they were doing the right thing, taking on this rundown little house in a slowly revitalizing urban area. But by the next morning, that moment of doubt had passed. The couple worked five years making old things new and when they were finished, the house won an award for “Best House Before and After.”
There is something special about things being made new. It’s cool when houses are remade, but it is far more important when lives are made new. Jesus remakes lives. Verse 17 notes, “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”
C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, “Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what he is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently, he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is he up to? The explanation is that he is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but he is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself.”
Bill T.
* * *
Luke 15:1-3,11b-32
Martin Luther reminds us that all the love that surrounds us is first by God’s initiative, not contingent on our first asking for it. The reformer writes:
With these words one can apprehend God as he is to be apprehended. You do not seek him; rather he seeks you... (Complete Sermons, Vol.2/1, p. 344)
Famed modern theologian Karl Barth seems to agree. He has pointed out that God does not owe it to the world to love it (Church Dogmatics, Index Vol., p. 432).
In the same spirit, Luther compares Christ’s love to the sun, which, “will not refuse to shine because I am lazy and would gladly sleep an hour or two longer.” In the same way the light of God’s love will keep shining on the hardhearted, even if we do not want to see it. (Complete Sermons, Vol.2/1, pp. 347-348)
Mark E.
Racial and ethnic minorities, including Jews, have no way of escaping the prejudice and injustice that characterize American life. African American poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou put it this way: “Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.” Most of us feel less economic freedom, as when you live from paycheck to paycheck you are less and less free. So much office time on the internet also reduces a sense of freedom. This lesson is about the Passover, which is about freedom. Concerning freedom, Martin Luther wrote:
From this anyone can clearly see how a Christian is free from all things and over all things so that he needs no works to make him righteous and save him, since faith alone abundantly confers all these things. (Luther’s Works, Vol.31, p.356)
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s comments on freedom are most relevant for this text:
... the essence of man is found in freedom. This is what Paul Tillich means when he declares, “Man is man because he is free,” or what Tolstoy implies when he says, I cannot conceive of a man not being free unless he is dead”... There is nothing in the world greater than freedom. It is worth paying for; it is worth losing a job; it is worth going to jail for. (A Testament of Hope, pp.120, 144)
Mark E.
* * *
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
I think Paul is trying to get us back before the garden, the Garden of Eden. Before the story about how things started to go wrong, in the garden, with the snake, and Adam, and Eve, the first creation story in Genesis 1:1-2:4a states that God made all humans in the image and likeness of God. Christ is who Jesus really is. Children of God is who we really are, made in the image and likeness of God. The Corinthian Christians, who Paul got to know very well during the eighteen months he spent working as a tent maker and repairer alongside Priscilla and Aquila in the marketplace, have squeezed each other into human categories: Jew, Gentile, male, female, rich, poor, but Christ has loosed the bonds, so that we no longer see each other from a human point of view.
Frank R.
* * *
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
I came across an article in “This Old House” about a house and a couple determined to make it new again. The house wasn't much to look at, really. Abandoned for twenty years after a fire, the windows and doors were missing, charred, or boarded up. There were no floors downstairs, and the water-damaged plaster was crumbling. Squirrels ran in and out, and birds nested in the claw-foot tub. It was a disaster. In May 2006, Walt and Patricia Purcell moved in. Patricia cried that first night and asked Walt if they were doing the right thing, taking on this rundown little house in a slowly revitalizing urban area. But by the next morning, that moment of doubt had passed. The couple worked five years making old things new and when they were finished, the house won an award for “Best House Before and After.”
There is something special about things being made new. It’s cool when houses are remade, but it is far more important when lives are made new. Jesus remakes lives. Verse 17 notes, “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”
C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, “Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what he is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently, he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is he up to? The explanation is that he is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but he is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself.”
Bill T.
* * *
Luke 15:1-3,11b-32
Martin Luther reminds us that all the love that surrounds us is first by God’s initiative, not contingent on our first asking for it. The reformer writes:
With these words one can apprehend God as he is to be apprehended. You do not seek him; rather he seeks you... (Complete Sermons, Vol.2/1, p. 344)
Famed modern theologian Karl Barth seems to agree. He has pointed out that God does not owe it to the world to love it (Church Dogmatics, Index Vol., p. 432).
In the same spirit, Luther compares Christ’s love to the sun, which, “will not refuse to shine because I am lazy and would gladly sleep an hour or two longer.” In the same way the light of God’s love will keep shining on the hardhearted, even if we do not want to see it. (Complete Sermons, Vol.2/1, pp. 347-348)
Mark E.
