Sermon Illustrations for Proper 10 | OT 15 (2021)
Illustration
2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19
This was supposed to be the beginning of a new era. After a decisive military victory, King David prepared to unite north and south with a new capital in Jerusalem. The union would be cemented with the arrival of the Ark of the Covenant in its new home. However, when the cart carrying the ark threatened to tip over, a man named Uzzah reached up to steady things, and like anyone who might have driven a pick-ax into a power cord, death was instantaneous and inarguable. A death on the day of the triumph turns things around. This is not the crowning moment David imagined.
In the previous chapter, David’s military victory led him to claim that the name of the place, Baal-Perazim, which might have meant “Baal is god of earthquakes,” but really meant “the Lord has burst against my enemies like a bursting flood.” (2 Samuel 5:20) Now, ironically, the word for bursting is turned against David, as the place where Uzzah died is named Perez-uzzah for “David was angry because the Lord had burst forth with an outburst upon Uzzah…” (2 Samuel 6:8).
David went through several stages of grief in the time that followed — anger, denial, bargaining, and acceptance — before once more attempting, this time successfully, to bring in a holy, and therefore, dangerous object.
What went wrong? The chronicler, writing long after this historian, seems to suggest that David should have followed the instructions and had the Levites install the ark in its new home (See 1 Chronicles 13 & 15).
Frank R.
* * *
2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19
Irish novelist and playwright Samuel Beckett received great recognition for his work—but not everyone was impressed by his accomplishments. Beckett and his wife Suzanne had a strained marriage that was not terribly happy. They lived in separate rooms of one apartment they shared. Suzanne, jealous over his success and feeling less needed as she did in his earlier years, continually mocked and resented him. Suzanne grew increasingly jealous and angry at any success Beckett achieved. It is reported that one day in 1969 she answered the telephone, listened for a moment, spoke briefly, and hung up. She then turned to Beckett and with a stricken look whispered, “What a catastrophe! She had just learned that Beckett had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
That is a tragic situation and not unlike the situation we see in 2 Samuel 6. King David is bringing the ark of the Lord back from the house of Obed-edom. It is a time of celebration and David is dancing before the ark. Michal, his wife, and Saul’s daughter, sees him. Rather than be excited for what his happening, she is disgusted and “despised him in her heart.” Michal’s inability to rejoice before the Lord with her husband led to her being childless. Benjamin Franklin once said, “It is the eyes of other people that ruin us. If all but myself were blind, I should want neither a fine house nor fine furniture.”
Bill T.
* * *
Ephesians 1:3-14
Twentieth-century French Catholic theologian and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin sang a beautiful song about this lesson’s reference to all things being gathered up in Christ (v.10). He wrote:
Nothing, Lord Jesus, can subsist outside of your flesh... All of us, inescapable, exist in you, the universal milieu in which and through which all things have their being...
When your presence, Lord, has flooded me with its light I hoped that I might find ultimate reality at its most tangible.
But now that I have in fact laid hold of you who are utter consistency, and feel myself born by you, I realize that my deepest hidden desire was not to possess you but to be possessed. (Hymn of the Universe, pp. 35,78)
How wonderful to know that our entire universe and we in it are possessed by Christ!
Mark E.
* * *
Ephesians 1:3-14
We are inheritors of all the gifts from God, through Jesus who came to live among us, to teach us, to lead us into intimate and personal relationship with God. What a blessing this inheritance is for us. Contrast this with earthly inheritances from family which sometimes are accepted graciously and sometimes are deeply contested. No one denies the grace of God, unless they are told by others that they are not included within that grace. The church has spent much of its history drawing circles of inclusion and exclusion, based on doctrine, gender, gender identification, or sexual orientation. Those boundaries are human, not divine. It is the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus that redeems and includes us in the family of God, in God’s inheritance. No human force or being can change or limit that. For that, I am profoundly grateful.
Bonnie B.
* * *
Mark 6:14-29
Proverbs 27:12 says, “The clever see danger and hide; but the simple go on and suffer for it.” Making hasty or rash decisions can be a problem. I read an account of that from the Roanoke Times, March 31, 2013.
On Easter Sunday, 2013, the southbound side of I-77 near the North Carolina-Virginia border was closed for several hours following a massive chain of accidents. Police reported that seventeen different collisions involved ninety-five cars and trucks. The accidents left more than two dozen injured. How did this happen? People drove into the thick fog that descended over the interstate that Sunday afternoon. A police spokesman reported, “Visibility at the time this accident occurred was down to about one hundred feet or less.” As people continued to drive blindly forward, they could not see the danger that was just ahead until it was too late.
I get the sense that King Herod couldn’t see the danger that was ahead (literally) until it was too late, too. He made a hasty and foolish promise to his dancing daughter whose mother told her to ask for John the Baptist’s head. Though it grieved him, Herod felt compelled to keep his promise. Only the foolish blindly rush ahead in words or actions.
Bill T.
* * *
Mark 6:14-29
Herod arrested John the Baptist for having enough spine to quote Leviticus 18:16 and 20:21 and denounce him for having married his brother’s wife. Herodias, however, was a willing party to the marriage, abandoning her marriage to Phillip because she was politically ambitious, and this first husband was going nowhere. Mark notes that Herodias wants John killed but can’t do it because her husband both fears and protects him. As he notes, “When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed, and yet he liked to listen to him.”
Part of me wonders if Herod simply appreciated someone who spoke truth, since he had to know that most of those who surrounded him relied on false flattery to bolster their determination to agree with him no matter what he said.
What I find most intriguing is how this verse applies to all of us. John the Baptist told Herod what he was doing wrong, and although Herod found himself unable to do what he knew was right, he couldn’t stop listening. It’s easy to simply criticize Herod, but really, this is our story. I’ll speak for myself, and you talk about your own weaknesses, but I know all about what it takes to lose weight and I read the literature. I even pay to remain part of a weight loss organization even if I’m not behaving, because I know that knowledge does not always translate into action. If we’re honest with ourselves, we realize we need the support and encouragement of others, as well as the strength that comes from Jesus Christ, to make serious changes in our lives.
Frank R.
This was supposed to be the beginning of a new era. After a decisive military victory, King David prepared to unite north and south with a new capital in Jerusalem. The union would be cemented with the arrival of the Ark of the Covenant in its new home. However, when the cart carrying the ark threatened to tip over, a man named Uzzah reached up to steady things, and like anyone who might have driven a pick-ax into a power cord, death was instantaneous and inarguable. A death on the day of the triumph turns things around. This is not the crowning moment David imagined.
In the previous chapter, David’s military victory led him to claim that the name of the place, Baal-Perazim, which might have meant “Baal is god of earthquakes,” but really meant “the Lord has burst against my enemies like a bursting flood.” (2 Samuel 5:20) Now, ironically, the word for bursting is turned against David, as the place where Uzzah died is named Perez-uzzah for “David was angry because the Lord had burst forth with an outburst upon Uzzah…” (2 Samuel 6:8).
David went through several stages of grief in the time that followed — anger, denial, bargaining, and acceptance — before once more attempting, this time successfully, to bring in a holy, and therefore, dangerous object.
What went wrong? The chronicler, writing long after this historian, seems to suggest that David should have followed the instructions and had the Levites install the ark in its new home (See 1 Chronicles 13 & 15).
Frank R.
* * *
2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19
Irish novelist and playwright Samuel Beckett received great recognition for his work—but not everyone was impressed by his accomplishments. Beckett and his wife Suzanne had a strained marriage that was not terribly happy. They lived in separate rooms of one apartment they shared. Suzanne, jealous over his success and feeling less needed as she did in his earlier years, continually mocked and resented him. Suzanne grew increasingly jealous and angry at any success Beckett achieved. It is reported that one day in 1969 she answered the telephone, listened for a moment, spoke briefly, and hung up. She then turned to Beckett and with a stricken look whispered, “What a catastrophe! She had just learned that Beckett had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
That is a tragic situation and not unlike the situation we see in 2 Samuel 6. King David is bringing the ark of the Lord back from the house of Obed-edom. It is a time of celebration and David is dancing before the ark. Michal, his wife, and Saul’s daughter, sees him. Rather than be excited for what his happening, she is disgusted and “despised him in her heart.” Michal’s inability to rejoice before the Lord with her husband led to her being childless. Benjamin Franklin once said, “It is the eyes of other people that ruin us. If all but myself were blind, I should want neither a fine house nor fine furniture.”
Bill T.
* * *
Ephesians 1:3-14
Twentieth-century French Catholic theologian and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin sang a beautiful song about this lesson’s reference to all things being gathered up in Christ (v.10). He wrote:
Nothing, Lord Jesus, can subsist outside of your flesh... All of us, inescapable, exist in you, the universal milieu in which and through which all things have their being...
When your presence, Lord, has flooded me with its light I hoped that I might find ultimate reality at its most tangible.
But now that I have in fact laid hold of you who are utter consistency, and feel myself born by you, I realize that my deepest hidden desire was not to possess you but to be possessed. (Hymn of the Universe, pp. 35,78)
How wonderful to know that our entire universe and we in it are possessed by Christ!
Mark E.
* * *
Ephesians 1:3-14
We are inheritors of all the gifts from God, through Jesus who came to live among us, to teach us, to lead us into intimate and personal relationship with God. What a blessing this inheritance is for us. Contrast this with earthly inheritances from family which sometimes are accepted graciously and sometimes are deeply contested. No one denies the grace of God, unless they are told by others that they are not included within that grace. The church has spent much of its history drawing circles of inclusion and exclusion, based on doctrine, gender, gender identification, or sexual orientation. Those boundaries are human, not divine. It is the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus that redeems and includes us in the family of God, in God’s inheritance. No human force or being can change or limit that. For that, I am profoundly grateful.
Bonnie B.
* * *
Mark 6:14-29
Proverbs 27:12 says, “The clever see danger and hide; but the simple go on and suffer for it.” Making hasty or rash decisions can be a problem. I read an account of that from the Roanoke Times, March 31, 2013.
On Easter Sunday, 2013, the southbound side of I-77 near the North Carolina-Virginia border was closed for several hours following a massive chain of accidents. Police reported that seventeen different collisions involved ninety-five cars and trucks. The accidents left more than two dozen injured. How did this happen? People drove into the thick fog that descended over the interstate that Sunday afternoon. A police spokesman reported, “Visibility at the time this accident occurred was down to about one hundred feet or less.” As people continued to drive blindly forward, they could not see the danger that was just ahead until it was too late.
I get the sense that King Herod couldn’t see the danger that was ahead (literally) until it was too late, too. He made a hasty and foolish promise to his dancing daughter whose mother told her to ask for John the Baptist’s head. Though it grieved him, Herod felt compelled to keep his promise. Only the foolish blindly rush ahead in words or actions.
Bill T.
* * *
Mark 6:14-29
Herod arrested John the Baptist for having enough spine to quote Leviticus 18:16 and 20:21 and denounce him for having married his brother’s wife. Herodias, however, was a willing party to the marriage, abandoning her marriage to Phillip because she was politically ambitious, and this first husband was going nowhere. Mark notes that Herodias wants John killed but can’t do it because her husband both fears and protects him. As he notes, “When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed, and yet he liked to listen to him.”
Part of me wonders if Herod simply appreciated someone who spoke truth, since he had to know that most of those who surrounded him relied on false flattery to bolster their determination to agree with him no matter what he said.
What I find most intriguing is how this verse applies to all of us. John the Baptist told Herod what he was doing wrong, and although Herod found himself unable to do what he knew was right, he couldn’t stop listening. It’s easy to simply criticize Herod, but really, this is our story. I’ll speak for myself, and you talk about your own weaknesses, but I know all about what it takes to lose weight and I read the literature. I even pay to remain part of a weight loss organization even if I’m not behaving, because I know that knowledge does not always translate into action. If we’re honest with ourselves, we realize we need the support and encouragement of others, as well as the strength that comes from Jesus Christ, to make serious changes in our lives.
Frank R.
