Sermon Illustrations for Lent 5 (2022)
Illustration
Isaiah 43:16-21
It was Walt Whitman, in his poem “Song of Myself,” who said, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” More recently Bob Dylan made the same claim in the song titled “I Contain Multitudes” from his album “My Rough and Rowdy Ways.” I feel like Isaiah could have beat them both to the punch. He contradicts himself, but if anyone contains multitudes, it’s Isaiah. We’re called upon to remember that the Lord is the one “who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick.” What a great description of the miracle of the Red Sea’s parting followed by the water’s rushing back upon the Egyptian chariots! No sooner does he call this to mind with vibrant, even shocking images, when we are told, “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.” We’re told God is going to make a path in the wilderness! Great things are happening! Who cares about contradictions. Hold on and do your best to keep up!
Frank R.
* * *
Isaiah 43:16-21
I am humbled by the movie the 2016 movie Hacksaw Ridge. This movie chronicles the life of Desmond T. Doss in World War II. In WWII, over 70,000 men were designated conscientious objectors, mostly men whose religious beliefs made them opposed to war. Some refused to serve, but 25,000 joined the US armed forces in noncombat roles such as medics and chaplains. Desmond Doss of Lynchburg, Virginia, was one of those men, though he personally shunned the title of conscientious objector. A member of the Seventh Day Adventist church and a strict believer in the sixth commandment—thou shalt not kill—he refused to bear arms. He was, however, willing to serve as a medic, one of the most dangerous jobs the Army had to offer. One day on the Pacific Island of Okinawa, Private Doss rescued almost a whole company of men who had been cut down by Japanese fire while trying to capture an important hilltop. Crawling out among bullets and shell bursts, he dragged the wounded one by one to a sheltered spot behind a rock, tied a double-bowline knot around their chests and legs, and lowered them over a 35-foot cliff to safety. “Dear God,” he remembers praying over and over, “let me get just one more.” It took all day, but he got them all. The Army estimated he had saved 75 lives. Doss was eventually wounded by grenade fragments and a sniper’s bullet through his arm. He continued to put others first, refusing treatment before those more seriously wounded. Due to his extensive wounds, Doss was evacuated in late May. He returned home but spent years recovering from his wounds. Later in 1945, President Harry S. Truman presented Doss with the Medal of Honor in a ceremony on the White House lawn.
Doss rescued many men, pulling them from certain death. As God's people are returning from captivity, the prophet Isaiah is reminding them of how God has saved them in the past and how he will continue to protect them. God's care and concern for his people, both then and now, is clear.
Bill T.
* * *
Philippians 3:4b-14
This is a text which reminds us that Christian faith is a religion of the future, that the past, filled
with all our sin, does not ultimately matter. John Wesley once put it this way in a sermon on this lesson:
... no man can say, I have not sinned, I have no sin to be cleansed from... but God is ready both to forgive our past sins, and so save us from them for the time to come. (Works, Vol.6, p.15)
We need to look on our past and its sin the way 20th-century American poet Paul Eldridge advised: “Praises for our past triumphs are as feathers to a dead bird.”
To be a Christian is a little like being in a happy life-long marriage after forty years or so (though even better). Married that long, your spouse is so much tied into your life that you almost forget what life was like before him or her. The freedom from the past in Christ is a little like that. You forget what life was like without Christ.
Mark E.
* * *
John 12:1-8
There’s nothing surprising about the picture presented at the outset of this text. We know from the gospels that Mary and Martha provided a hospitable home away from home for Jesus, so it’s natural for them to host their good friend for dinner. And now with their brother Lazarus back from the dead, we get a glimpse of what heaven looks like. It looks like life. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Friends, food, family.
And then something happened that changed everything.
Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of her perfume.
This is a miracle. In the Gospel of John, miracles are called signs because, like road signs, they point in the direction of Jesus. Mary’s sign pointed the way to Jesus. Like the feeding of the multitudes, and the act of turning water into wine, Mary engaged in an act of abundance.
The fragrance of that powerful perfume, not watered down, but poured out like pure luxury, filled every corner of the house, and inundated every individual in the room. The cost was enormous. Everybody there was blessed.
This action was prophetic. Mary understood Jesus had been talking about his death for some time. Remember, in Luke’s Gospel she sat at the feet of Jesus, like his disciples, listening intently to every word. She heard the living word and knew hearing the word leads to action. While others were confused, she seems to have seen right to the heart of the matter.
So, when Mary foreshadowed the moment when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples, she also foreshadowed his death and burial. In effect, he got to smell the flowers at his funeral.
Death is not to be denied nor should the topic be avoided but prepared for. The knowledge that death looms over all of us should not lead us to cower and attempt to accumulate many more moments. It calls us to live, and to act while our loved ones are living.
Frank R.
* * *
John 12:1-8
Bob Goff, a Christian writer, and speaker, tells the story of Ryan. Really though, it is a story of extravagant love. According to Goff, a young man named Ryan approached him and his wife at their house down by the water. Goff writes, “there’s a little grass path where couples hold hands and walk along the bay front. My wife and I sit on the back porch and hold hands a lot too as we watch the couples meander by. We’re close enough to the water that they wave to us, and we wave back, a nostalgic snippet from another time where people waved to each other during slow walks. This is how I met Ryan.”
He goes on to describe Ryan as a young man hopelessly and radically in love. Ryan asked Goff and his wife if he could propose to his girl in Goff’s yard by the water. The wild, outrageous requests continued until the day of the wedding which Goff and his wife pulled off with class and grace. It’s an amazing story and one worth reading. What struck me, with respect to this text, is Goff’s quote about the story. Goff writes, “It’s about going to extremes and expressing the bright hope that life offers us, a hope that makes us brave and expels darkness with light. That’s what I want my life to be all about—full of abandon, whimsy, and in love. I want to be engaged to life and with life.”
That’s what I think is happening here with Mary. Her love for Jesus prompts her to act in ways that many would deem outrageous, extreme, and extravagant. Yet, to love that way is to really love. Jesus seems to acknowledge that as he commands her to be left alone. Love extravagantly. That’s what Jesus does. Do we?
Bill T.
It was Walt Whitman, in his poem “Song of Myself,” who said, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” More recently Bob Dylan made the same claim in the song titled “I Contain Multitudes” from his album “My Rough and Rowdy Ways.” I feel like Isaiah could have beat them both to the punch. He contradicts himself, but if anyone contains multitudes, it’s Isaiah. We’re called upon to remember that the Lord is the one “who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick.” What a great description of the miracle of the Red Sea’s parting followed by the water’s rushing back upon the Egyptian chariots! No sooner does he call this to mind with vibrant, even shocking images, when we are told, “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.” We’re told God is going to make a path in the wilderness! Great things are happening! Who cares about contradictions. Hold on and do your best to keep up!
Frank R.
* * *
Isaiah 43:16-21
I am humbled by the movie the 2016 movie Hacksaw Ridge. This movie chronicles the life of Desmond T. Doss in World War II. In WWII, over 70,000 men were designated conscientious objectors, mostly men whose religious beliefs made them opposed to war. Some refused to serve, but 25,000 joined the US armed forces in noncombat roles such as medics and chaplains. Desmond Doss of Lynchburg, Virginia, was one of those men, though he personally shunned the title of conscientious objector. A member of the Seventh Day Adventist church and a strict believer in the sixth commandment—thou shalt not kill—he refused to bear arms. He was, however, willing to serve as a medic, one of the most dangerous jobs the Army had to offer. One day on the Pacific Island of Okinawa, Private Doss rescued almost a whole company of men who had been cut down by Japanese fire while trying to capture an important hilltop. Crawling out among bullets and shell bursts, he dragged the wounded one by one to a sheltered spot behind a rock, tied a double-bowline knot around their chests and legs, and lowered them over a 35-foot cliff to safety. “Dear God,” he remembers praying over and over, “let me get just one more.” It took all day, but he got them all. The Army estimated he had saved 75 lives. Doss was eventually wounded by grenade fragments and a sniper’s bullet through his arm. He continued to put others first, refusing treatment before those more seriously wounded. Due to his extensive wounds, Doss was evacuated in late May. He returned home but spent years recovering from his wounds. Later in 1945, President Harry S. Truman presented Doss with the Medal of Honor in a ceremony on the White House lawn.
Doss rescued many men, pulling them from certain death. As God's people are returning from captivity, the prophet Isaiah is reminding them of how God has saved them in the past and how he will continue to protect them. God's care and concern for his people, both then and now, is clear.
Bill T.
* * *
Philippians 3:4b-14
This is a text which reminds us that Christian faith is a religion of the future, that the past, filled
with all our sin, does not ultimately matter. John Wesley once put it this way in a sermon on this lesson:
... no man can say, I have not sinned, I have no sin to be cleansed from... but God is ready both to forgive our past sins, and so save us from them for the time to come. (Works, Vol.6, p.15)
We need to look on our past and its sin the way 20th-century American poet Paul Eldridge advised: “Praises for our past triumphs are as feathers to a dead bird.”
To be a Christian is a little like being in a happy life-long marriage after forty years or so (though even better). Married that long, your spouse is so much tied into your life that you almost forget what life was like before him or her. The freedom from the past in Christ is a little like that. You forget what life was like without Christ.
Mark E.
* * *
John 12:1-8
There’s nothing surprising about the picture presented at the outset of this text. We know from the gospels that Mary and Martha provided a hospitable home away from home for Jesus, so it’s natural for them to host their good friend for dinner. And now with their brother Lazarus back from the dead, we get a glimpse of what heaven looks like. It looks like life. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Friends, food, family.
And then something happened that changed everything.
Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of her perfume.
This is a miracle. In the Gospel of John, miracles are called signs because, like road signs, they point in the direction of Jesus. Mary’s sign pointed the way to Jesus. Like the feeding of the multitudes, and the act of turning water into wine, Mary engaged in an act of abundance.
The fragrance of that powerful perfume, not watered down, but poured out like pure luxury, filled every corner of the house, and inundated every individual in the room. The cost was enormous. Everybody there was blessed.
This action was prophetic. Mary understood Jesus had been talking about his death for some time. Remember, in Luke’s Gospel she sat at the feet of Jesus, like his disciples, listening intently to every word. She heard the living word and knew hearing the word leads to action. While others were confused, she seems to have seen right to the heart of the matter.
So, when Mary foreshadowed the moment when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples, she also foreshadowed his death and burial. In effect, he got to smell the flowers at his funeral.
Death is not to be denied nor should the topic be avoided but prepared for. The knowledge that death looms over all of us should not lead us to cower and attempt to accumulate many more moments. It calls us to live, and to act while our loved ones are living.
Frank R.
* * *
John 12:1-8
Bob Goff, a Christian writer, and speaker, tells the story of Ryan. Really though, it is a story of extravagant love. According to Goff, a young man named Ryan approached him and his wife at their house down by the water. Goff writes, “there’s a little grass path where couples hold hands and walk along the bay front. My wife and I sit on the back porch and hold hands a lot too as we watch the couples meander by. We’re close enough to the water that they wave to us, and we wave back, a nostalgic snippet from another time where people waved to each other during slow walks. This is how I met Ryan.”
He goes on to describe Ryan as a young man hopelessly and radically in love. Ryan asked Goff and his wife if he could propose to his girl in Goff’s yard by the water. The wild, outrageous requests continued until the day of the wedding which Goff and his wife pulled off with class and grace. It’s an amazing story and one worth reading. What struck me, with respect to this text, is Goff’s quote about the story. Goff writes, “It’s about going to extremes and expressing the bright hope that life offers us, a hope that makes us brave and expels darkness with light. That’s what I want my life to be all about—full of abandon, whimsy, and in love. I want to be engaged to life and with life.”
That’s what I think is happening here with Mary. Her love for Jesus prompts her to act in ways that many would deem outrageous, extreme, and extravagant. Yet, to love that way is to really love. Jesus seems to acknowledge that as he commands her to be left alone. Love extravagantly. That’s what Jesus does. Do we?
Bill T.
