Sermon Illustrations for Proper 12 | OT 17 (2022)
Illustration
Hosea 1:2-10
This is a lesson which is all about sin and the absurdity of life, epitomized by the prophet marrying prostitute, rather like Christ did in forming the church. Ancient theologian Irenaeus made this point, contending that in creating the Church as his body, Jesus married a prostitute (Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol.1, p. 492). After all, he has bound himself up with a bunch of spiritual whores like us.
The meaninglessness of life in our sinful condition is powerfully described by German novelist Hermann Hesse in his Narcissus and Goldmund:
It was shameless how life made fun of one. It was a joke, a cause for weeping! Either one lived and let one’s sense play, drank full at the primitive mother’s breast — which brought great bliss but was not protection against death... Or else one put up a defense imprisoned oneself for work and tried to build a monument to the fleeting passage of life — then one renounced life... and lost one’s freedom and zest for life.
We need an awareness of our sin and life’s meaninglessness in order to appreciate God and what He gives us. Martin Luther said it well:
For a person cannot praise God only unless he understands that there is nothing in himself worthy of praise of God and from God. (Luther’s Works, Vol.11, p.144)
Mark E.
* * *
Psalm 85
Commenting on the psalm’s claim that God’s righteousness goes before us (v.13), Martin Luther wants to make clear that God’s righteousness is not dependent on our behaving in a righteous manner (God’s honor is not dependent on our works). He wrote:
Therefore, just as it is not correct to say that fire gets hot because it makes hot, because it gets hot or is not it makes hot,... so righteousness goes before him (that is it is active before he is)... I do not have vision because I see, but because I have vision I see. Hence... [it] must not be so understood that one who is not yet righteous can do righteous deeds... In its place the righteousness of Christ is now given us before every meritorious work. (Luther’s Works, Vol.10, pp.173-174)
John Calvin makes a similar point:
When it is said that righteousness shall go before God[v.13], the meaning is, that the prevalence and unobstructed course of righteousness, which is equivalent to setting her steps in the way, is to be attributed to the appointment of God. (Calvin’s Commentaries, V/2, p.379)
Calvin also adds:
When God is said to cover sins, the meaning is, that he buries them, so that they come not into judgment... (Calvin’s Commentaries, V/2, p.369)
Mark E.
* * *
Colossians 2:6-15 (16-19)
One of the stock characters in ancient comedies was the Braggart Soldier. If you’ve seen the musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, (music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart), the character Miles Gloriosus (Latin for Braggart Soldier) gives you a pretty good idea of what that character was like. The thing is, of course, stock characters are based on reality.
There is nothing funny about the reality, of course. These rulers and their generals left behind inscriptions boasting of their murderous ways, listing the number of people they crucified, brutalized, and enslaved. Often these boasts are accompanied by illustrations of victory parades in which we see lines of people chained to each other on their way to a bloody, public execution.
In Paul’s letter to the Colossians, the tables are turned. Christ, the crucified, “disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.” This is a startling turnaround. The braggarts, the boasters, the tyrants, the despots, and all their foul lot, will discover to their alarm the world does not revolve around them. It is Jesus who is Lord.
So there.
Frank R.
* * *
Colossians 2:6-15 (16-19)
Do you remember the “alligator shirt?” I do. It was a symbol of “being cool” if you had an alligator shirt. What is that for those that don’t know or remember? It was a shirt that had a little alligator or crocodile embroidered on the chest. I’d forgotten about that fad until I came across an old story found in Our Daily Bread.
In the 1997 September/November issue there’s a story about the origin of that fad. Rene Lacoste, the world’s top tennis player in the late 1920s, won seven major singles titles during his career, including multiple victories at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the French Open. His friends called him “Le Crocodile,” an appropriate term for his tenacious play on the court. Lacoste accepted the nickname and had a tiny crocodile embroidered on his tennis blazers. When he added it to a line of shirts he designed, the symbol caught on. While thousands of people around the world wore “alligator shirts,” the emblem always had a deeper significance for Lacoste’s friends who knew its origin and meaning.
In this passage from Colossians, I was struck by another symbol. It’s one that people wear as jewelry. It appears on shirts, and on posters. It’s been the subject of many great pieces of art. What is that symbol? The cross. Speaking of trespasses and sins in this passage, Paul writes that God dealt with it by “erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross” (vs. 14). John Stott wrote, “The Christian community is a community of the cross, for it has been brought into being by the cross, and the focus of its worship is the lamb once slain, now glorified.”
The “alligator shirt” points back to Rene Lacoste, though I doubt many know that. Do many know what the cross represents?
Bill T.
* * *
Luke 11:1-13
In the most recent poll on the subject (in 2014), the Gallup organization found that two out of three Americans Christians claim to pray daily, but one in five never do. Most of us feel we could do better on this score. John Wesley observed that Christians pray without ceasing. By that he meant, “Not that he [the Christian] is always in the house of prayer... In retirement or company, in leisure, business or conversation, his heart is ever with the Lord.” (Works, Vol.8, p. 343) His comments about prayer, noting that just to live as a Christian is to be in conversation with God and so in prayer, are reminiscent of a phrase one hears from older African American Christians that “there ain’t no difference ‘tween prayin’ and plowin’.” Martin Luther put it this way:
Nor is it a necessary part of this commandment that you have to go into a room and lock yourself in... As we have said, a Christian always has the spirit of supplication with him... For his entire life is devoted to spreading the name of God. (What Luther Says, p.1082)
Mark E.
This is a lesson which is all about sin and the absurdity of life, epitomized by the prophet marrying prostitute, rather like Christ did in forming the church. Ancient theologian Irenaeus made this point, contending that in creating the Church as his body, Jesus married a prostitute (Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol.1, p. 492). After all, he has bound himself up with a bunch of spiritual whores like us.
The meaninglessness of life in our sinful condition is powerfully described by German novelist Hermann Hesse in his Narcissus and Goldmund:
It was shameless how life made fun of one. It was a joke, a cause for weeping! Either one lived and let one’s sense play, drank full at the primitive mother’s breast — which brought great bliss but was not protection against death... Or else one put up a defense imprisoned oneself for work and tried to build a monument to the fleeting passage of life — then one renounced life... and lost one’s freedom and zest for life.
We need an awareness of our sin and life’s meaninglessness in order to appreciate God and what He gives us. Martin Luther said it well:
For a person cannot praise God only unless he understands that there is nothing in himself worthy of praise of God and from God. (Luther’s Works, Vol.11, p.144)
Mark E.
* * *
Psalm 85
Commenting on the psalm’s claim that God’s righteousness goes before us (v.13), Martin Luther wants to make clear that God’s righteousness is not dependent on our behaving in a righteous manner (God’s honor is not dependent on our works). He wrote:
Therefore, just as it is not correct to say that fire gets hot because it makes hot, because it gets hot or is not it makes hot,... so righteousness goes before him (that is it is active before he is)... I do not have vision because I see, but because I have vision I see. Hence... [it] must not be so understood that one who is not yet righteous can do righteous deeds... In its place the righteousness of Christ is now given us before every meritorious work. (Luther’s Works, Vol.10, pp.173-174)
John Calvin makes a similar point:
When it is said that righteousness shall go before God[v.13], the meaning is, that the prevalence and unobstructed course of righteousness, which is equivalent to setting her steps in the way, is to be attributed to the appointment of God. (Calvin’s Commentaries, V/2, p.379)
Calvin also adds:
When God is said to cover sins, the meaning is, that he buries them, so that they come not into judgment... (Calvin’s Commentaries, V/2, p.369)
Mark E.
* * *
Colossians 2:6-15 (16-19)
One of the stock characters in ancient comedies was the Braggart Soldier. If you’ve seen the musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, (music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart), the character Miles Gloriosus (Latin for Braggart Soldier) gives you a pretty good idea of what that character was like. The thing is, of course, stock characters are based on reality.
There is nothing funny about the reality, of course. These rulers and their generals left behind inscriptions boasting of their murderous ways, listing the number of people they crucified, brutalized, and enslaved. Often these boasts are accompanied by illustrations of victory parades in which we see lines of people chained to each other on their way to a bloody, public execution.
In Paul’s letter to the Colossians, the tables are turned. Christ, the crucified, “disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.” This is a startling turnaround. The braggarts, the boasters, the tyrants, the despots, and all their foul lot, will discover to their alarm the world does not revolve around them. It is Jesus who is Lord.
So there.
Frank R.
* * *
Colossians 2:6-15 (16-19)
Do you remember the “alligator shirt?” I do. It was a symbol of “being cool” if you had an alligator shirt. What is that for those that don’t know or remember? It was a shirt that had a little alligator or crocodile embroidered on the chest. I’d forgotten about that fad until I came across an old story found in Our Daily Bread.
In the 1997 September/November issue there’s a story about the origin of that fad. Rene Lacoste, the world’s top tennis player in the late 1920s, won seven major singles titles during his career, including multiple victories at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the French Open. His friends called him “Le Crocodile,” an appropriate term for his tenacious play on the court. Lacoste accepted the nickname and had a tiny crocodile embroidered on his tennis blazers. When he added it to a line of shirts he designed, the symbol caught on. While thousands of people around the world wore “alligator shirts,” the emblem always had a deeper significance for Lacoste’s friends who knew its origin and meaning.
In this passage from Colossians, I was struck by another symbol. It’s one that people wear as jewelry. It appears on shirts, and on posters. It’s been the subject of many great pieces of art. What is that symbol? The cross. Speaking of trespasses and sins in this passage, Paul writes that God dealt with it by “erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross” (vs. 14). John Stott wrote, “The Christian community is a community of the cross, for it has been brought into being by the cross, and the focus of its worship is the lamb once slain, now glorified.”
The “alligator shirt” points back to Rene Lacoste, though I doubt many know that. Do many know what the cross represents?
Bill T.
* * *
Luke 11:1-13
In the most recent poll on the subject (in 2014), the Gallup organization found that two out of three Americans Christians claim to pray daily, but one in five never do. Most of us feel we could do better on this score. John Wesley observed that Christians pray without ceasing. By that he meant, “Not that he [the Christian] is always in the house of prayer... In retirement or company, in leisure, business or conversation, his heart is ever with the Lord.” (Works, Vol.8, p. 343) His comments about prayer, noting that just to live as a Christian is to be in conversation with God and so in prayer, are reminiscent of a phrase one hears from older African American Christians that “there ain’t no difference ‘tween prayin’ and plowin’.” Martin Luther put it this way:
Nor is it a necessary part of this commandment that you have to go into a room and lock yourself in... As we have said, a Christian always has the spirit of supplication with him... For his entire life is devoted to spreading the name of God. (What Luther Says, p.1082)
Mark E.
