Sermon Illustrations For Proper 12 | Ordinary Time 17 (2020)
Illustration
Psalm 128
Jimmy Carter was asked to speak to a church in the small town of Preston, Georgia. The church was holding a week of revival meetings, and the topic assigned to Carter was “Christian witnessing.” As Carter sat in the front room of his home preparing his speech, he had a sense of self-satisfaction. Undoubtedly, Carter thought, the invitation from the Preston congregation came because they had heard of the wonderful evangelical work he had done for his home church in Plains.
As Carter was composing his speech, he decided that he would make an impression on the Preston congregation by sharing how many home visits he made in Plains on behalf of God. Carter then began to calculate how many individuals he had witnessed to. It had now been fourteen years since he returned home to Plains since serving in the Navy. As a deacon in the church, he made it a point to visit two families each year. Carter, along with another deacon, would read to the family from the Bible, share the events occurring at the church, briefly share their religious beliefs, small talk about community events, then they would have a prayer and depart. Carter decided to assign an average of five people to each home. In his notes, he proudly put the figure of 140 people that he had witness to.
As Carter was looking at the figure and congratulating himself, he recalled the 1966 governor’s election. Having entered the race late, Carter had to abandon everything to campaign. Carter surrendered everything that he cared about – his family, his farm, his bird dogs – in order to campaign sixteen to eighteen hours each day, trying to personally greet as many Georgia voters as possible. At the end of the almost-successful campaign, Carter met more than 300,000 voters.
Jimmy Carter, in his autobiography Why Not The Best? wrote this line of self-condemnation. Carter wrote, “The comparison struck me – 300,000 visits for myself in three months, and 140 visits for God in fourteen years!” With that realization, Carter wrote, “I began to read the Bible with a new interest and perspective, and to understand more clearly the admonitions about pride and self-satisfaction.”
Ron L.
* * *
Genesis 29:15-28
There’s an old saying, “Everybody works, everybody eats.” It recognizes that in a family farm, business, or any other endeavor, we all work together for the good of the family.
In Genesis 29:14 when Jacob, on the run from his brother Esau’s death threats, arrives at the home of Laban, his kinsmen says, “Surely you are my bone and my flesh!” That sounds very welcoming, but Laban is every bit the schemer as his nephew Jacob.
It seems right that Jacob assumes that kinship with Laban means he’s one of the family, and that means he works hard for the good of the family. But a verse later, Laban says something that may be mistranslated. “Because you are my kinsman, should you therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me, what shall your wages be?” Nahum N. Sarna, writing commentary for the Jewish publication “Torah”, suggests a better translation might be, “Are you my kinsman that you should serve me for nothing?” Offering Jacob a salary transforms him from family to employee. Laban will do his best to cheat Jacob — like that whole Rachel/Leah thing. Ultimately Jacob will out-cheat Laban, maximizing his profits before hightailing it out of there.
What do we do that transforms fellow members of the Body of Christ into a lesser status? Do we tell someone anxious to help in the kitchen, or who wants to help mow the church yard, or act as worship leader, because of their age (too old or too young), economic status, or length of history in the congregation, that they should sit back, relax, and enjoy themselves rather than becoming the disciple they aspire to be?
Frank R.
* * *
Genesis 29:15-28
There is a Peanuts comic strip that I read a long time ago and still remember. I thought of it when I read Leah’s story. Picture in your mind a nervous Linus, pacing in front of a television. He’s watching a football game. “Go, Go, Go,” he exclaims as he watches the game. The next frame has him standing on his chair, looking thrilled. The next frame has him shouting, “Fantastic!” The next several panels show him talking to Charlie Brown. “Charlie Brown, I just saw the greatest football game ever! What a comeback. The home team was behind 6-0 with just one second left. They had the ball on their own one-yard-line. The quarterback threw a short pass to the end who ran whirled away from four guys and outran the rest to the endzone! The fans went wild! It was amazing. When they kicked the extra point to win the game, the fans ran onto the field. The fans and the players were so excited and happy. They were rolling on the ground, hugging and crying. You should’ve seen it. It was fantastic!”
The last frame has a pensive Charlie Brown asking Linus a simple question, “How did the other team feel?”
If anyone knows how “losers” feel, it’s Charlie Brown. He might’ve understood how Leah felt, too. Rachel was the one loved and worked for, wanted. In verse 25 we see the trickster Jacob reaping what he’s sown, but can you imagine how Leah must’ve felt? “When morning came, it was Leah! And Jacob said to Laban, ‘What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?’”
In ways deeper than Charlie Brown, God gets how the “unloved,” “unchosen,” and “losers” feel. While Jacob didn’t love Leah, God did. While Jacob refused to honor her, God gave her sons. God understands what it’s like when things don’t go like you hope. You can know he gets it.
Bill T.
* * *
Romans 8:26-39
Predestination: most Americans don’t have much use for it. We’re too free-will oriented. But here it is in the Bible! The Lutheran Confessional documents of the 16th century have a way of talking about predestination which may be more palatable to American ears. The teaching of single predestination says nothing about a God who selects some to damnation. Predestination on these grounds is only about faith and salvation. Damnation is our own fault. At one point these documents state:
Therefore even though we conceded to free will the freedom and power to perform external works of the law, nevertheless we do not ascribe to free will those spirit capacities, namely, true fear of God, true faith. (Book of Concord [2000 ed.], p.234)
Even Methodists teach something like this:
... we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may gave a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will. (Articles of Religion, VIII)
If we could work faith and piety on our own, then we are really saving ourselves. Famed modern theologian Karl Barth made a similar point:
... love toward God knows that assurance is not a “thing,” not a heroic and glorious achievement of this or that man, not a haven... Love knows itself to be altogether the gift and operation of God. (The Epistle to the Romans, p.322)
What predestination does is to assure us that God loves us, that no matter what life holds, God stands by us and for us. The Lutheran Confessions put it this way:
This teaching offers the following beautiful, wonderful comfort... The doctrine also gives the wonderful comfort in crosses and trials, that in His counsel before time began God determined and decreed that He would stand by us in every trouble, grant us patience, give us comfort, create hope, and provide a way out of all things so that we may be saved. (Book of Concord [2000 ed.], p.648)
God’s decisions about us need not negate our reactions if we embrace Augustine’s idea that there is no time in God, that there is neither past or future in eternity so that our decisions and God’s are simultaneous (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol.1, p.179). Just as human love captivates us (we speak of “falling in love”) without negating our choices, imagine the power of God’s love to make us fall in love with Him in faith.
Mark E.
* * *
Romans 8:26-39
Perhaps one of the most misinterpreted verses of scripture is found in this passage, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28, NRSV). Often, we think of this as only good things happen to those who are called according to God’s purpose — and no bad things happen to us if we are faithful. We only need to look at scripture and the individuals in scripture to know this is not true. In my own life, illness, death, pain has regularly been present. That doesn’t mean that I am not faithful, nor that God is punishing me somehow. Rather, I look back and with a little hindsight see the presence of God in each of those times — not causing them but carrying me, accompanying, and loving me through those times. God can use everything in our lives for good — to help us turn to God, to help us love God and our neighbors in new and more compassionate ways. The clouds do sometimes have silver linings — and even when they don’t, the rain — and the reign of God, can nourish us.
Bonnie B.
* * *
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-53
There was a businessman who’d made a lot of money working in the city. For a decade, he was fulfilling his dream of success and fortune. His family had a nice place to live. His kids went to great schools. He seemed to have it all. However, his wife, who’d been born in a small town, didn’t like the city. She endured ten years there but longed for her dream house in the country. The kids liked the idea of living in the country, too. None of them complained, but he knew what was in their hearts. One day, out of the blue, he came home early and called a family meeting. He told them he’d given his notice. He was giving up all the city offered, and the family was moving to the country. “Why,” he was asked. The answer was simple. “Nothing is more important than the ones you love.”
That’s true in the spiritual sense, too. Jim Elliot was a missionary who died in Ecuador in 1956. He gave his life trying to reach the Auca Indians who’d never heard the gospel of Jesus. His journal was discovered later where, on October 28th he had this entry, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain that which he cannot lose.” Elliot and four others gave their lives because they loved Jesus and the Auca people.
That’s the nature of the kingdom of heaven. The value of the kingdom is seen in these parables and how people would give up everything to get it. Is anything more important to you than the kingdom of heaven?
Bill T.
* * *
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
Thomas Rinkart was a German pastor and musician who served the Church in 1637 in Eilenburg, Germany. In that year, 8,000 people died in that city of disease, including Rinkart’s wife. He preached at 200 burial services in one week. Rinkart wrote a hymn text during this plague which is familiar to us. “Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices. Who wondrous things has done, in whom this world rejoices.”
Ron L.
* * *
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
When I was in seminary 44 years ago, we students petitioned for a plot of land in which we could plant gardens.
This was after our recycling plan failed. In those days recycling was a radical new idea and we long-haired seminary students were into radical ideas. The recycling bins were such a great success, the seminary administration shut them down. What? You see, the seminary was so proud of us they showed the bins to potential donors when they toured the seminary. They in turn were alarmed to see bins for brown and green glass, which of course were used for beer and wine. What use, they asked, did seminary students have for green and brown glass bottles?
The gardens worked out better, especially for those of us who spent the summer on campus, working in local ministries or on-campus jobs. Now this city boy planted mustard seeds — what could be more biblical — and I discovered what real farmers know. Despite what Jesus says in this parable, mustard seeds grow into bushes, not trees. Now I enjoyed putting mustard leaves on my sandwiches and using them in salads, but since then I’ve had to preface sermons on the mustard seed parable of Jesus by explaining — what? That Jesus had it wrong? That doesn’t fly with church people.
But in recent years I’ve begun to rely on my copy of The Jewish Annotated New Testament, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler. The many annotations and essays illuminate the New Testament from a Jewish perspective. There are some great insights here.
Now Levine knows mustard seeds produce plants, not trees, and she notes “…the plant can grow as high as five feet.” Regarding the phrase “becomes a tree,” she adds, “an ironic comment; the parable is a parody” and she cites Ezekiel 17:23;31:5 and Daniel 4:7-9, 17-19 as examples of Biblical parody.
That’s helpful, but I want to point you in the direction of some children’s books co-authored by Levine with Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, aided by some wonderful illustrators. Specifically you might want to turn to The Marvelous Mustard Seed (illustrated by Margaux Meganck) in which two children discover just how useless one tiny mustard seed can be, but when they finally plant it, the seed grows into “a humongous tree.” She assures us that mustard plants generally grow into “ordinary bushes”— “But not this one. This one is a mustard…tree!” I assure you this book is wonderful not only for a children’s story in worship, but for use in sermons and adult Sunday school.
In her note for parents and teachers at the back of the book she offers this observation. Parables, she says, don’t have one correct reading and they are not simple. They are meant to challenge and cause people to think.” That audience, of Jewish people listening to a Jewish storyteller, would have expected a parable to challenge them.” They knew mustard seeds didn’t produce trees, but this challenge from Jesus caused them to wonder at the true mystery of the kingdom of God.
Anyway, see if your library has children’s books by Amy-Jill Levine and if they don’t, ask them to order them. Or else use your book allowance and buy some.
Frank R.
Jimmy Carter was asked to speak to a church in the small town of Preston, Georgia. The church was holding a week of revival meetings, and the topic assigned to Carter was “Christian witnessing.” As Carter sat in the front room of his home preparing his speech, he had a sense of self-satisfaction. Undoubtedly, Carter thought, the invitation from the Preston congregation came because they had heard of the wonderful evangelical work he had done for his home church in Plains.
As Carter was composing his speech, he decided that he would make an impression on the Preston congregation by sharing how many home visits he made in Plains on behalf of God. Carter then began to calculate how many individuals he had witnessed to. It had now been fourteen years since he returned home to Plains since serving in the Navy. As a deacon in the church, he made it a point to visit two families each year. Carter, along with another deacon, would read to the family from the Bible, share the events occurring at the church, briefly share their religious beliefs, small talk about community events, then they would have a prayer and depart. Carter decided to assign an average of five people to each home. In his notes, he proudly put the figure of 140 people that he had witness to.
As Carter was looking at the figure and congratulating himself, he recalled the 1966 governor’s election. Having entered the race late, Carter had to abandon everything to campaign. Carter surrendered everything that he cared about – his family, his farm, his bird dogs – in order to campaign sixteen to eighteen hours each day, trying to personally greet as many Georgia voters as possible. At the end of the almost-successful campaign, Carter met more than 300,000 voters.
Jimmy Carter, in his autobiography Why Not The Best? wrote this line of self-condemnation. Carter wrote, “The comparison struck me – 300,000 visits for myself in three months, and 140 visits for God in fourteen years!” With that realization, Carter wrote, “I began to read the Bible with a new interest and perspective, and to understand more clearly the admonitions about pride and self-satisfaction.”
Ron L.
* * *
Genesis 29:15-28
There’s an old saying, “Everybody works, everybody eats.” It recognizes that in a family farm, business, or any other endeavor, we all work together for the good of the family.
In Genesis 29:14 when Jacob, on the run from his brother Esau’s death threats, arrives at the home of Laban, his kinsmen says, “Surely you are my bone and my flesh!” That sounds very welcoming, but Laban is every bit the schemer as his nephew Jacob.
It seems right that Jacob assumes that kinship with Laban means he’s one of the family, and that means he works hard for the good of the family. But a verse later, Laban says something that may be mistranslated. “Because you are my kinsman, should you therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me, what shall your wages be?” Nahum N. Sarna, writing commentary for the Jewish publication “Torah”, suggests a better translation might be, “Are you my kinsman that you should serve me for nothing?” Offering Jacob a salary transforms him from family to employee. Laban will do his best to cheat Jacob — like that whole Rachel/Leah thing. Ultimately Jacob will out-cheat Laban, maximizing his profits before hightailing it out of there.
What do we do that transforms fellow members of the Body of Christ into a lesser status? Do we tell someone anxious to help in the kitchen, or who wants to help mow the church yard, or act as worship leader, because of their age (too old or too young), economic status, or length of history in the congregation, that they should sit back, relax, and enjoy themselves rather than becoming the disciple they aspire to be?
Frank R.
* * *
Genesis 29:15-28
There is a Peanuts comic strip that I read a long time ago and still remember. I thought of it when I read Leah’s story. Picture in your mind a nervous Linus, pacing in front of a television. He’s watching a football game. “Go, Go, Go,” he exclaims as he watches the game. The next frame has him standing on his chair, looking thrilled. The next frame has him shouting, “Fantastic!” The next several panels show him talking to Charlie Brown. “Charlie Brown, I just saw the greatest football game ever! What a comeback. The home team was behind 6-0 with just one second left. They had the ball on their own one-yard-line. The quarterback threw a short pass to the end who ran whirled away from four guys and outran the rest to the endzone! The fans went wild! It was amazing. When they kicked the extra point to win the game, the fans ran onto the field. The fans and the players were so excited and happy. They were rolling on the ground, hugging and crying. You should’ve seen it. It was fantastic!”
The last frame has a pensive Charlie Brown asking Linus a simple question, “How did the other team feel?”
If anyone knows how “losers” feel, it’s Charlie Brown. He might’ve understood how Leah felt, too. Rachel was the one loved and worked for, wanted. In verse 25 we see the trickster Jacob reaping what he’s sown, but can you imagine how Leah must’ve felt? “When morning came, it was Leah! And Jacob said to Laban, ‘What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?’”
In ways deeper than Charlie Brown, God gets how the “unloved,” “unchosen,” and “losers” feel. While Jacob didn’t love Leah, God did. While Jacob refused to honor her, God gave her sons. God understands what it’s like when things don’t go like you hope. You can know he gets it.
Bill T.
* * *
Romans 8:26-39
Predestination: most Americans don’t have much use for it. We’re too free-will oriented. But here it is in the Bible! The Lutheran Confessional documents of the 16th century have a way of talking about predestination which may be more palatable to American ears. The teaching of single predestination says nothing about a God who selects some to damnation. Predestination on these grounds is only about faith and salvation. Damnation is our own fault. At one point these documents state:
Therefore even though we conceded to free will the freedom and power to perform external works of the law, nevertheless we do not ascribe to free will those spirit capacities, namely, true fear of God, true faith. (Book of Concord [2000 ed.], p.234)
Even Methodists teach something like this:
... we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may gave a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will. (Articles of Religion, VIII)
If we could work faith and piety on our own, then we are really saving ourselves. Famed modern theologian Karl Barth made a similar point:
... love toward God knows that assurance is not a “thing,” not a heroic and glorious achievement of this or that man, not a haven... Love knows itself to be altogether the gift and operation of God. (The Epistle to the Romans, p.322)
What predestination does is to assure us that God loves us, that no matter what life holds, God stands by us and for us. The Lutheran Confessions put it this way:
This teaching offers the following beautiful, wonderful comfort... The doctrine also gives the wonderful comfort in crosses and trials, that in His counsel before time began God determined and decreed that He would stand by us in every trouble, grant us patience, give us comfort, create hope, and provide a way out of all things so that we may be saved. (Book of Concord [2000 ed.], p.648)
God’s decisions about us need not negate our reactions if we embrace Augustine’s idea that there is no time in God, that there is neither past or future in eternity so that our decisions and God’s are simultaneous (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol.1, p.179). Just as human love captivates us (we speak of “falling in love”) without negating our choices, imagine the power of God’s love to make us fall in love with Him in faith.
Mark E.
* * *
Romans 8:26-39
Perhaps one of the most misinterpreted verses of scripture is found in this passage, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28, NRSV). Often, we think of this as only good things happen to those who are called according to God’s purpose — and no bad things happen to us if we are faithful. We only need to look at scripture and the individuals in scripture to know this is not true. In my own life, illness, death, pain has regularly been present. That doesn’t mean that I am not faithful, nor that God is punishing me somehow. Rather, I look back and with a little hindsight see the presence of God in each of those times — not causing them but carrying me, accompanying, and loving me through those times. God can use everything in our lives for good — to help us turn to God, to help us love God and our neighbors in new and more compassionate ways. The clouds do sometimes have silver linings — and even when they don’t, the rain — and the reign of God, can nourish us.
Bonnie B.
* * *
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-53
There was a businessman who’d made a lot of money working in the city. For a decade, he was fulfilling his dream of success and fortune. His family had a nice place to live. His kids went to great schools. He seemed to have it all. However, his wife, who’d been born in a small town, didn’t like the city. She endured ten years there but longed for her dream house in the country. The kids liked the idea of living in the country, too. None of them complained, but he knew what was in their hearts. One day, out of the blue, he came home early and called a family meeting. He told them he’d given his notice. He was giving up all the city offered, and the family was moving to the country. “Why,” he was asked. The answer was simple. “Nothing is more important than the ones you love.”
That’s true in the spiritual sense, too. Jim Elliot was a missionary who died in Ecuador in 1956. He gave his life trying to reach the Auca Indians who’d never heard the gospel of Jesus. His journal was discovered later where, on October 28th he had this entry, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain that which he cannot lose.” Elliot and four others gave their lives because they loved Jesus and the Auca people.
That’s the nature of the kingdom of heaven. The value of the kingdom is seen in these parables and how people would give up everything to get it. Is anything more important to you than the kingdom of heaven?
Bill T.
* * *
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
Thomas Rinkart was a German pastor and musician who served the Church in 1637 in Eilenburg, Germany. In that year, 8,000 people died in that city of disease, including Rinkart’s wife. He preached at 200 burial services in one week. Rinkart wrote a hymn text during this plague which is familiar to us. “Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices. Who wondrous things has done, in whom this world rejoices.”
Ron L.
* * *
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
When I was in seminary 44 years ago, we students petitioned for a plot of land in which we could plant gardens.
This was after our recycling plan failed. In those days recycling was a radical new idea and we long-haired seminary students were into radical ideas. The recycling bins were such a great success, the seminary administration shut them down. What? You see, the seminary was so proud of us they showed the bins to potential donors when they toured the seminary. They in turn were alarmed to see bins for brown and green glass, which of course were used for beer and wine. What use, they asked, did seminary students have for green and brown glass bottles?
The gardens worked out better, especially for those of us who spent the summer on campus, working in local ministries or on-campus jobs. Now this city boy planted mustard seeds — what could be more biblical — and I discovered what real farmers know. Despite what Jesus says in this parable, mustard seeds grow into bushes, not trees. Now I enjoyed putting mustard leaves on my sandwiches and using them in salads, but since then I’ve had to preface sermons on the mustard seed parable of Jesus by explaining — what? That Jesus had it wrong? That doesn’t fly with church people.
But in recent years I’ve begun to rely on my copy of The Jewish Annotated New Testament, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler. The many annotations and essays illuminate the New Testament from a Jewish perspective. There are some great insights here.
Now Levine knows mustard seeds produce plants, not trees, and she notes “…the plant can grow as high as five feet.” Regarding the phrase “becomes a tree,” she adds, “an ironic comment; the parable is a parody” and she cites Ezekiel 17:23;31:5 and Daniel 4:7-9, 17-19 as examples of Biblical parody.
That’s helpful, but I want to point you in the direction of some children’s books co-authored by Levine with Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, aided by some wonderful illustrators. Specifically you might want to turn to The Marvelous Mustard Seed (illustrated by Margaux Meganck) in which two children discover just how useless one tiny mustard seed can be, but when they finally plant it, the seed grows into “a humongous tree.” She assures us that mustard plants generally grow into “ordinary bushes”— “But not this one. This one is a mustard…tree!” I assure you this book is wonderful not only for a children’s story in worship, but for use in sermons and adult Sunday school.
In her note for parents and teachers at the back of the book she offers this observation. Parables, she says, don’t have one correct reading and they are not simple. They are meant to challenge and cause people to think.” That audience, of Jewish people listening to a Jewish storyteller, would have expected a parable to challenge them.” They knew mustard seeds didn’t produce trees, but this challenge from Jesus caused them to wonder at the true mystery of the kingdom of God.
Anyway, see if your library has children’s books by Amy-Jill Levine and if they don’t, ask them to order them. Or else use your book allowance and buy some.
Frank R.
