Sermon Illustrations for Proper 15 | OT 20 (2022)
Illustration
Isaiah 5:1-7, Psalm 80:1-2, 8-19
Charles Paul Conn wrote, in his book Make It Happen, about a church that lost her purpose. The story went something like this.
A preacher was in Atlanta, several years ago, and noticed in the restaurants section of the yellow pages, a place called Church of God Grill. The unusual name aroused his curiosity, so he dialed the number. A man answered with a cheery, “Hello! Church of God Grill!”
The preacher asked how that restaurant had been given such an odd name, and the man said: “Well, we had a little mission down here, and we started selling chicken dinners after church on Sunday to help pay the bills. People liked the chicken, and we did such a good business, that eventually we cut back on the church service. After a while we just closed the church altogether and kept on serving chicken dinners. We kept the name we started with, and that’s Church of God Grill.”
When God’s people lose their purpose, they suffer the consequences. That was true in Isaiah’s time, and it is also true today. Remain true to what you are and who you are.
Bill T.
* * *
Isaiah 5:1-7, Psalm 80:1-2, 8-19
Fables were not considered literature in the ancient world. They were not even respectable. Literature was poetry, and it followed strict rules and required literacy. All fables require are repetition.
There are not a lot of fables in scripture, but I think these passages come close. Both Isaiah 5:1-7 and Psalm 80:8-19 concern themselves with stories about vines. In the Isaiah passage the vine is willful and seeks its own destruction. In the psalm, it is those who tend the vines who fail to protect the hard work that came after transporting and planting it. In the Isaiah passage, the vine will be punished by being uprooted. In the psalm, the prayer is that God will restore the vine despite the shoddy work of those assigned to care for it. In both cases, God’s story is being told through the agency of a vine that should have provided agricultural well-being for those brought out of Egypt and into a land they no longer deserve.
Frank R.
* * *
Hebrews 11:29--12:2
In dealing with this lesson and its teaching that we are saved “by faith,” it is good to be reminded what is entailed when we say we got somewhere “by car”, “by plane,” or “by walking a path.” Actually, it is not the car alone, the plane alone, or our feet that got us where we were going. The car, plane, and feet are just the vehicles. Fuel or energy are required to make them run. In short, faith depends on God supplying us with the fuel or energy for faith. John Wesley makes this point very clearly about needing God to make faith happen. He claims that Christ is “the author and finisher of our faith who begins it in use, carries it on, and perfects it.” (Commentary On the Bible, p.569) Faith is just the plane that brings us to Christ, but he (and the Holy Spirit) are the pilot and the fuel, giving us the energy to believe.
Mark E.
* * *
Luke 12:49-56
In Matthew’s version of this speech, I’ve heard the phrase “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword,” misinterpreted to mean God blesses every military action we embark on. Luke uses the word “division,” instead of a sword, which allows us to focus on this truth: Faith can split families. In the typical Roman household, this was inevitable. Much of the energy of the family went into their shared craft, their manufacture. Business was not a secular activity, either. Prayers and sacrifices were offered together to the patron god of their craft. A new Christian could not take part in the craft because they could not take part in the religious ceremonies that went along with it. They would need to work alongside their new family of faith to produce a new product, because their prayers and offerings would be lifted up for Jesus, not the patron god.
Jesus opens this passage with the phrase, “I came to bring fire to the earth….” (10:49) This could an allusion to Jeremiah 23:29 – “Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?” We see here as well the words of craft, where God's prophet grounds his message in the sights and sounds one experienced wandering through the marketplace. The hammer rises and falls, reducing larger stones to rubble, like the potter digging his hand into the spinning clay so he could start over (Jeremiah 18:4), and like the unmaking of creation by the craftsman God in Jeremiah 4:23-26 utilizing the words of Genesis to unmake it all. In the same way Christians were — and sometimes still are — called to recreate, becoming the family of God (see Luke 8:19-21).
Frank R.
* * *
Luke 12:49-56
I was intrigued by descriptions of “The Great Divide.” The Great Divide is also known as the Continental Divide of the Americas. It separates the watersheds of the Pacific Ocean from those of the Atlantic Ocean. It runs from Alaska, through western Canada along the crest of the Rocky Mountains to New Mexico. From there, it follows the crest of Mexico’s Sierra Madre Occidental and extends to the tip of South America. If rain falls on the west side of its apex, it will eventually find its way to the Pacific Ocean. If it falls on the east side, it will end up in the Gulf of Mexico.
What a fascinating process! Two drops of rain on “The Great Divide,” separated by just a few feet, can end up literally thousands of miles apart. That’s, truly, a divide. As incredible as that is, though, there is a greater one.
Jesus, in this passage, is the “great divide.” People within the same family may come to radically different views about who he is and what he offers. People divided over Jesus then and they do today. A drop of rain can miss a mark by a few feet and end up in the Gulf instead of the Pacific Ocean. That’s a big miss, but no miss is a big as missing Jesus.
Bill T.
Charles Paul Conn wrote, in his book Make It Happen, about a church that lost her purpose. The story went something like this.
A preacher was in Atlanta, several years ago, and noticed in the restaurants section of the yellow pages, a place called Church of God Grill. The unusual name aroused his curiosity, so he dialed the number. A man answered with a cheery, “Hello! Church of God Grill!”
The preacher asked how that restaurant had been given such an odd name, and the man said: “Well, we had a little mission down here, and we started selling chicken dinners after church on Sunday to help pay the bills. People liked the chicken, and we did such a good business, that eventually we cut back on the church service. After a while we just closed the church altogether and kept on serving chicken dinners. We kept the name we started with, and that’s Church of God Grill.”
When God’s people lose their purpose, they suffer the consequences. That was true in Isaiah’s time, and it is also true today. Remain true to what you are and who you are.
Bill T.
* * *
Isaiah 5:1-7, Psalm 80:1-2, 8-19
Fables were not considered literature in the ancient world. They were not even respectable. Literature was poetry, and it followed strict rules and required literacy. All fables require are repetition.
There are not a lot of fables in scripture, but I think these passages come close. Both Isaiah 5:1-7 and Psalm 80:8-19 concern themselves with stories about vines. In the Isaiah passage the vine is willful and seeks its own destruction. In the psalm, it is those who tend the vines who fail to protect the hard work that came after transporting and planting it. In the Isaiah passage, the vine will be punished by being uprooted. In the psalm, the prayer is that God will restore the vine despite the shoddy work of those assigned to care for it. In both cases, God’s story is being told through the agency of a vine that should have provided agricultural well-being for those brought out of Egypt and into a land they no longer deserve.
Frank R.
* * *
Hebrews 11:29--12:2
In dealing with this lesson and its teaching that we are saved “by faith,” it is good to be reminded what is entailed when we say we got somewhere “by car”, “by plane,” or “by walking a path.” Actually, it is not the car alone, the plane alone, or our feet that got us where we were going. The car, plane, and feet are just the vehicles. Fuel or energy are required to make them run. In short, faith depends on God supplying us with the fuel or energy for faith. John Wesley makes this point very clearly about needing God to make faith happen. He claims that Christ is “the author and finisher of our faith who begins it in use, carries it on, and perfects it.” (Commentary On the Bible, p.569) Faith is just the plane that brings us to Christ, but he (and the Holy Spirit) are the pilot and the fuel, giving us the energy to believe.
Mark E.
* * *
Luke 12:49-56
In Matthew’s version of this speech, I’ve heard the phrase “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword,” misinterpreted to mean God blesses every military action we embark on. Luke uses the word “division,” instead of a sword, which allows us to focus on this truth: Faith can split families. In the typical Roman household, this was inevitable. Much of the energy of the family went into their shared craft, their manufacture. Business was not a secular activity, either. Prayers and sacrifices were offered together to the patron god of their craft. A new Christian could not take part in the craft because they could not take part in the religious ceremonies that went along with it. They would need to work alongside their new family of faith to produce a new product, because their prayers and offerings would be lifted up for Jesus, not the patron god.
Jesus opens this passage with the phrase, “I came to bring fire to the earth….” (10:49) This could an allusion to Jeremiah 23:29 – “Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?” We see here as well the words of craft, where God's prophet grounds his message in the sights and sounds one experienced wandering through the marketplace. The hammer rises and falls, reducing larger stones to rubble, like the potter digging his hand into the spinning clay so he could start over (Jeremiah 18:4), and like the unmaking of creation by the craftsman God in Jeremiah 4:23-26 utilizing the words of Genesis to unmake it all. In the same way Christians were — and sometimes still are — called to recreate, becoming the family of God (see Luke 8:19-21).
Frank R.
* * *
Luke 12:49-56
I was intrigued by descriptions of “The Great Divide.” The Great Divide is also known as the Continental Divide of the Americas. It separates the watersheds of the Pacific Ocean from those of the Atlantic Ocean. It runs from Alaska, through western Canada along the crest of the Rocky Mountains to New Mexico. From there, it follows the crest of Mexico’s Sierra Madre Occidental and extends to the tip of South America. If rain falls on the west side of its apex, it will eventually find its way to the Pacific Ocean. If it falls on the east side, it will end up in the Gulf of Mexico.
What a fascinating process! Two drops of rain on “The Great Divide,” separated by just a few feet, can end up literally thousands of miles apart. That’s, truly, a divide. As incredible as that is, though, there is a greater one.
Jesus, in this passage, is the “great divide.” People within the same family may come to radically different views about who he is and what he offers. People divided over Jesus then and they do today. A drop of rain can miss a mark by a few feet and end up in the Gulf instead of the Pacific Ocean. That’s a big miss, but no miss is a big as missing Jesus.
Bill T.
