Sermon Illustrations for Proper 24 | Ordinary Time 29 (2014)
Illustration
Exodus 33:12-23
Alfred Hitchcock before filming any movie would draw sketches of every scene, meticulously listing each camera angle. He would work with a screenwriter for months writing up to 100 pages of shot schedules absent of any dialogue, which would come with another tedious marathon writing session. Once the production of the film began he would never improvise on the set.
Application: It was enough for Moses to see only the back of God, for that was all the film footage needed to realize that the presence of God was with him.
Ron L.
Exodus 33:12-23
Americans have this habit of making God into their own image. When we do that, we get it wrong. That is why Moses was told by God that one cannot see his face and live. French intellectual Blaise Pascal tells us why:
Man is nothing by a subject of natural error that cannot be eradicated except through grace. Nothing shows him the truth, everything deceives him... The senses are disturbed by passions, which produce false impressions.
(Pensees, p. 45)
Since as a result of our sinfulness we mess up the way we perceive things, no wonder we don't get God right and we cannot see his face. The only way to know Christ, it seems, is in Christ. He is the lens we need to see God as he really is, in all his forgiving love. Martin Luther sheds penetrating insight on why we need Christ to know God:
So completely does everything depend on the Son that no one can really know anything about God unless the Son, who thoroughly knows the Father's heart reveals it.
(What Luther Says, p. 149)
The incarnate Son of God is, therefore, the covering in which the divine majesty presents himself to us with all his gifts and does so in such a manner that there is no sinner too wretched to be able to approach him with the firm assurance of obtaining pardon. This is the one and only view of the divinity that is possible in this life.
(Luther's Works, Vol. 2, p. 49)
Mark E.
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
General U.S. Grant arrived to take command at Chattanooga, Tennessee, and discovered that the northern forces were depressed, discouraged, and hard pressed. The troops were short on provisions and their horses starving. You could count their ribs because they were so thin. Chattanooga was surrounded on all sides by the Confederate forces ready to destroy them. Grant was on crutches from an accident he sustained while in New Orleans, but the moment he arrived the whole atmosphere changed for the northern troops. He gave immediate commands to break through the rebel lines to secure relief. Within five days of that order, the line was broken and a food supply became available. An encouraged army was ready to move against their enemy, and the most important ingredient was confidence. They knew that they could have the victory!
Paul writes to the Thessalonians and says that their endurance was inspired by confidence in the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thessalonians 1:3c).
We too can be encouraged because our confidence is also in our general for life... Jesus. Our resources are unused, courage at a low ebb, disheartenment saps the life -- but in comes the commander, Christ, who leads us at once to a more abundant life. Our foundation is the Lord of hosts.
Derl K.
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Paul did not travel alone most of the time, but sometimes he left one of his friends behind and sometimes he sent one back if he himself could not go.
How often do we thank God for all our fellow Christians? We support each other.
As a former prison chaplain I talked often with prisoners, and they told me that they would have a hard time surviving if it weren't for fellow prisoners who are Christian and if it weren't for our church members who are praying for them and looking forward to helping them when they get out.
One pastor here lost a grandson a couple years ago and then lost his son last week. But he is an example by his life of faith to encourage all who have problems in his church. He stands firm and goes on with his work for the Lord. We show our fellow Christians by the life we live after tragedies that our faith in God has not faded. It can encourage others better than many quotes from scripture -- not that they can't be added since that is where our faith came from. Jesus' example in life did most to build the faith of his disciples.
I asked a group in one of the churches I served when they felt closest to the Lord. Almost everyone told the group that they felt closest to our Lord when he brought them through rough times in their life. He was their strength.
Maybe we haven't changed from serving the kind of idols they thought of back then, but our idols may be money and power and intimate relationships.
Bob O.
Matthew 22:15-22
Jesus' words in this lesson could be taken as a biblical authorization for the separation of church and state. But does that marginalize the impact of Christians in the political institutions, relegate the church's influence to a so-called private sphere? In fact, the strengths of the model that is described in this text (with parallels to the American system) have been recognized by some of the great theologians of the past. For one item, the separation of church and state entails that Christians need to become wise in the ways of the world. The Bible does not teach how to govern, how to stimulate the economy, or how to solve the problem of the Ukraine. Martin Luther recognized this nearly 500 years ago: "To be sure, God made the secular government subordinate and subject to reason... For this reason nothing is taught in the gospel about how it is to be maintained..." (Luther's Works, Vol. 13, p. 198).
Famed American social ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr has noted that this in turn makes Christians more realistic and so more effective in politics. For they do not have the right to hide behind the Bible in order to justify their own positions as somehow above and better than everyone else's views. And their view of original sin offers a healthy cynicism about claims politicians make about their intentions and what even a good law can accomplish:
Christians ought to be able to analyze a given situation more realistically than moralists and idealists because they are not under the necessity of having illusions about human nature in order to avert despair and preserve their faith in the meaning of life... but the Christian faith gives him no warrant to lift himself above the world's perplexities and to seek or to claim absolute validity for the stand he takes. It does, instead, encourage him to the charity which is born of humility and contrition.
(Reinhold Niebuhr, p. 130)
You've got a better shot at bringing about justice when you don't hide your politics behind the Bible.
Mark E.
Matthew 22:15-22
When Alfred Hitchcock was asked to sum up his approach to making a movie he replied, "Some films are slices of life, mine are slices of cake."
Application: Caesar may have wanted cake, but Jesus came to give us life.
Ron L.
Alfred Hitchcock before filming any movie would draw sketches of every scene, meticulously listing each camera angle. He would work with a screenwriter for months writing up to 100 pages of shot schedules absent of any dialogue, which would come with another tedious marathon writing session. Once the production of the film began he would never improvise on the set.
Application: It was enough for Moses to see only the back of God, for that was all the film footage needed to realize that the presence of God was with him.
Ron L.
Exodus 33:12-23
Americans have this habit of making God into their own image. When we do that, we get it wrong. That is why Moses was told by God that one cannot see his face and live. French intellectual Blaise Pascal tells us why:
Man is nothing by a subject of natural error that cannot be eradicated except through grace. Nothing shows him the truth, everything deceives him... The senses are disturbed by passions, which produce false impressions.
(Pensees, p. 45)
Since as a result of our sinfulness we mess up the way we perceive things, no wonder we don't get God right and we cannot see his face. The only way to know Christ, it seems, is in Christ. He is the lens we need to see God as he really is, in all his forgiving love. Martin Luther sheds penetrating insight on why we need Christ to know God:
So completely does everything depend on the Son that no one can really know anything about God unless the Son, who thoroughly knows the Father's heart reveals it.
(What Luther Says, p. 149)
The incarnate Son of God is, therefore, the covering in which the divine majesty presents himself to us with all his gifts and does so in such a manner that there is no sinner too wretched to be able to approach him with the firm assurance of obtaining pardon. This is the one and only view of the divinity that is possible in this life.
(Luther's Works, Vol. 2, p. 49)
Mark E.
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
General U.S. Grant arrived to take command at Chattanooga, Tennessee, and discovered that the northern forces were depressed, discouraged, and hard pressed. The troops were short on provisions and their horses starving. You could count their ribs because they were so thin. Chattanooga was surrounded on all sides by the Confederate forces ready to destroy them. Grant was on crutches from an accident he sustained while in New Orleans, but the moment he arrived the whole atmosphere changed for the northern troops. He gave immediate commands to break through the rebel lines to secure relief. Within five days of that order, the line was broken and a food supply became available. An encouraged army was ready to move against their enemy, and the most important ingredient was confidence. They knew that they could have the victory!
Paul writes to the Thessalonians and says that their endurance was inspired by confidence in the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thessalonians 1:3c).
We too can be encouraged because our confidence is also in our general for life... Jesus. Our resources are unused, courage at a low ebb, disheartenment saps the life -- but in comes the commander, Christ, who leads us at once to a more abundant life. Our foundation is the Lord of hosts.
Derl K.
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Paul did not travel alone most of the time, but sometimes he left one of his friends behind and sometimes he sent one back if he himself could not go.
How often do we thank God for all our fellow Christians? We support each other.
As a former prison chaplain I talked often with prisoners, and they told me that they would have a hard time surviving if it weren't for fellow prisoners who are Christian and if it weren't for our church members who are praying for them and looking forward to helping them when they get out.
One pastor here lost a grandson a couple years ago and then lost his son last week. But he is an example by his life of faith to encourage all who have problems in his church. He stands firm and goes on with his work for the Lord. We show our fellow Christians by the life we live after tragedies that our faith in God has not faded. It can encourage others better than many quotes from scripture -- not that they can't be added since that is where our faith came from. Jesus' example in life did most to build the faith of his disciples.
I asked a group in one of the churches I served when they felt closest to the Lord. Almost everyone told the group that they felt closest to our Lord when he brought them through rough times in their life. He was their strength.
Maybe we haven't changed from serving the kind of idols they thought of back then, but our idols may be money and power and intimate relationships.
Bob O.
Matthew 22:15-22
Jesus' words in this lesson could be taken as a biblical authorization for the separation of church and state. But does that marginalize the impact of Christians in the political institutions, relegate the church's influence to a so-called private sphere? In fact, the strengths of the model that is described in this text (with parallels to the American system) have been recognized by some of the great theologians of the past. For one item, the separation of church and state entails that Christians need to become wise in the ways of the world. The Bible does not teach how to govern, how to stimulate the economy, or how to solve the problem of the Ukraine. Martin Luther recognized this nearly 500 years ago: "To be sure, God made the secular government subordinate and subject to reason... For this reason nothing is taught in the gospel about how it is to be maintained..." (Luther's Works, Vol. 13, p. 198).
Famed American social ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr has noted that this in turn makes Christians more realistic and so more effective in politics. For they do not have the right to hide behind the Bible in order to justify their own positions as somehow above and better than everyone else's views. And their view of original sin offers a healthy cynicism about claims politicians make about their intentions and what even a good law can accomplish:
Christians ought to be able to analyze a given situation more realistically than moralists and idealists because they are not under the necessity of having illusions about human nature in order to avert despair and preserve their faith in the meaning of life... but the Christian faith gives him no warrant to lift himself above the world's perplexities and to seek or to claim absolute validity for the stand he takes. It does, instead, encourage him to the charity which is born of humility and contrition.
(Reinhold Niebuhr, p. 130)
You've got a better shot at bringing about justice when you don't hide your politics behind the Bible.
Mark E.
Matthew 22:15-22
When Alfred Hitchcock was asked to sum up his approach to making a movie he replied, "Some films are slices of life, mine are slices of cake."
Application: Caesar may have wanted cake, but Jesus came to give us life.
Ron L.
