Sermon Illustrations for Proper 25 | Ordinary Time 30 (2019)
Illustration
Joel 2:23-32
In addition to his writing and recording career that reflected love relationships and ballads, John Denver was a political activist. In 1985 when he toured the Soviet Union he was moved greatly by a visit to the Piskaryovka Memorial Cemetery where literally hundreds of thousands of victims of the Siege of Leningrad are buried. He also met Alexander Gradsky, the leading singer-songwriter in Russia. The following year at the Melodiya Studios in Moscow, they recorded an anti-war number, from both the United States and Soviet perspectives. The title of the song was Let Us Begin. This is believed to have been the first time an American and Soviet artist had performed together in a music video. As well as sharing the vocals with Gradsky, the recording included the Red Army Chorus. This song precipitated a split between Denver and his record company RCA, which had recently been acquired by General Electric, whose military contracts could not have an artist singing about the issues of war in that song. Denver himself said this was simply the best piece of work that he had ever produced in his career. The song runs over six minutes, but several prominent verses are:
What are we making weapons for
Why keep on feeding the war machine
We take it right out of the mouths of our babies
Take it away from the hands of the poor
Tell me, what are we making weapons for
For the first time in my life I feel like a prisoner
A slave to the ways of the powers that be
And I fear for my children, as I fear for the for the future I see
Tell me how can it be we're still fighting each other
What does it take for a people to learn
If our song is not sung as a chorus, we surely will burn
Have we forgotten
All the lives that were given
All the vows that were taken
Saying never again
Now for the first time
This could be the last time
If peace is our vision
Let us begin
Ron L.
* * *
Joel 2:23-32
Joel speaks of “...the cutting locust, the swarming locust, the hopping locust, and the devouring locust has eaten...(Joel 3:25)” a natural catastrophe that could devastate a year’s crop within hours. Normally locusts, a form of grasshopper, are solitary insects who do limited crop damage but under stressful conditions such as drought and famine they morph into herd like insects that act in concert to lay waste crops. They are not an ancient phenomenon. Swarms still form in modern times.
Humans generally function as rational individuals within small family groups but under pressure and a belief (whether founded in reality or not) that there is scarcity or danger the same people may swarm in dangerous panic at Black Friday sales or crush together in public transit. Nations may turn into murderous, unreasoning hordes as well, whether in Nazi Germany, Rwanda, or in post 9/11 America. Swarm mentality can alter human behavior as surely as it does to locusts.
Frank R.
* * *
Joel 2:23-32
I read this story in Chuck Swindoll’s book, The Quest for Character and thought it connected to this text.
A few years ago, an angry man rushed through the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam until he reached Rembrandt's famous painting "Nightwatch." Then he took out a knife and slashed it repeatedly. A short time later, a distraught, hostile man slipped into St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome with a hammer and began to smash Michelangelo's beautiful sculpture, “The Pieta.” Two cherished works of art were severely damaged. What did officials do? Throw them out and forget about them? Absolutely not. Using the best experts, who worked with the utmost care and precision, they made every effort to restore the treasures.
Valuable things ought to be restored. Paintings, sculptures, nations and especially, people. In Joel we read of God’s promise to Judah. The promise of restoration is powered by the outpouring of God’s spirit. In the near future, Israel will return to its land; restoration is in the offing.
Bill T.
* * *
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
Chapman University conducts a yearly study on what Americans fear most. For last year, the big “winners” were: Corruption of government officials; Pollution of the environment; Having enough money; and Fear of the death of loved ones. Add to this the debt crisis from living above our means or paying off the college loans, and American life is not a very happy way to live. It is not what Jesus or the writer of our lesson wants for us. Martin Luther made that point once in a sermon:
You should learn that God does not want you to be sad and frightened but joyous and confident in view of the certain and positive promise of His grace which is proclaimed to you by the Holy Spirit Himself. And He tells you that what you feel in your heart and imagine... is not the truth but your own erroneous, foolish notion... (What Luther Says, p.512)
And then in 1532 he offers even more comfort in a letter written to Valentine Hausmann which could just as well have been written to all of us:
I have heard how you are troubled because of your fear. But you should not be greatly worried about this; for God deals with us in an extraordinary way so that what always seems evil and harmful to us is, after all, very useful even if we do not recognize this... Therefore you should under no circumstances be impatient because your faith is not so strong. (Ibid., p.323)
Mark E.
* * *
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
The end of this letter is about triumph, about success, about finishing well. I can remember several years ago, I walked my first 5K. The terrain was hilly, the day was warm, but I walked. My son walked with me carrying a 50 lb. rucksack. He could probably have run the course, but he stayed with me, encouraging me, slowing his pace when I slowed mine. I came in last, but I finished. I finished the race. Paul writes with joy about his finishing the race, about his keeping the faith. In spite of all the challenges in the life of Paul, he kept the faith. My son had faith that I would finish the 5K. I’m not sure I had that much faith, but on that day he lent me his faith for me to lean on. Paul reminds us that the path may be difficult and challenging, but that we can finish the race; we can keep the faith. May it be so.
Bonnie B.
* * *
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
We who worked hard for the Lord should be the first to benefit from our work. We may have done some planting, but it is God who brings the crop out of the ground for us. We can’t push up the seeds.
The story of Jesus goes all the way back to David. The Old Testament has paved the way. God’s plans go way back even before the world was created.
We should not produce Godless chatter as some do from their endless imagination when they have created imaginary Gods out of their mind.
I hear some scientists who have created their own God and proclaim that they have the only logical message.
There are several “churches” that have been created even by movie stars. Some famous people have created faiths that fit their imagination.
It is one of the duties of church members to help these inventors find Jesus — and salvation.
Be ready to talk with others about their faith and don’t judge them immediately. We love them by God’s command.
Bob O.
* * *
Luke 18:9-14
Samuel Morse was born into a preacher’s home in New England just two years after George Washington became president of the United States. After finishing his education at Yale, he went to England to improve his painting skill. Upon his return to America, he was recognized as a gifted artist and was soon in much demand. Morse’s first wife died while he was away from home painting in Washington, DC. He did not receive the news until it was too late. In his heartbreak, he abandoned painting and began trying to develop a means of rapid communication over great distances. This eventually led to his discovery of the telegraph.
Despite his fame and the many honors that came his way, Morse wasn’t proud or arrogant. In a letter to his second wife he wrote, “The more I contemplate this great undertaking, the more I feel my own littleness, and the more I perceive the hand of God in it, and how he has assigned to various persons their duties, he being the great controller, all others his honored instruments.... Hence our dependence first of all on God, then on each other.”
Humility is clearly seen and stressed in the text for today. We’d do well to remember our position in relation to God. Perhaps this John Bunyan poem can help us remember.
He that is down needs fear no fall,
He that is low, no pride;
He that is humble ever shall
Have God to be his guide.
Bill T.
* * *
Luke 18:9-14
In order to understand the epilogue, the closing song of the play Les Misérables, with the original novel being written by Victor Hugo, we must first review the lives of two major characters. Les Misérables is set in early 19th-century France. It is the story of Jean Valjean, a French peasant, and his desire for redemption after serving nineteen years in jail for having stolen a loaf of bread for his sister's starving child. Valjean decides to break his parole and start his life anew after a bishop inspires him by a tremendous act of mercy, but he is relentlessly tracked down by a police inspector named Javet. Along the way, Valjean and a slew of characters are swept into a revolutionary period in France, where a group of peasants attempt to overthrow the government at a street barricade.
The second character is Fantine. Although all of Fantine’s misfortunes are caused by the callousness or greed of others, society always holds her accountable for her behavior. In this sense, she embodies Hugo’s view that French society demands the most from those to whom it gives the least. Fantine is a poor, working-class girl from the desolate seacoast town of Montreuil-sur-mer, an orphan who has almost no education and can neither read nor write. Fantine is inevitably betrayed by the people she does trust: Tholomyès gets her pregnant and then disappears; the Thénardiers take Cosette and use the child to extort more money; and Fantine’s coworkers have her fired for indecency. In his descriptions of Fantine’s life and death, Hugo highlights the unfair attitude of French society toward women and the poor. Fantine’s fellow citizens criticize her for her behavior and depravity, but they also take every opportunity to make her circumstances even more desperate. Fantine eventually dies from her abuse by society.
As the play ends, Valjean awaits his death at a convent, having nothing left to live for. The spirit of Fantine appears to him and tells him that he has been forgiven and will soon be with God. As he dies, the spirits of Fantine guide him to heaven reminding him that “to love another person is to see the face of God.”
The simple line “to love another person is to see the face of God” brings forth the meaning of truth revealed in the form of love.
The closing chorus proclaims God’s love for the oppressed as Fantine and Valjean are joined by the spirits of those who died at the barricades, who now sing that in the next world. God has laid low all tyranny and frees all the oppressed people from their shackles. In a heavenly chorus they sing:
Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Somewhere beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?
Do you hear the people sing?
Say, do you hear the distant drums?
It is the future that they bring
When tomorrow comes!
Ron L.
In addition to his writing and recording career that reflected love relationships and ballads, John Denver was a political activist. In 1985 when he toured the Soviet Union he was moved greatly by a visit to the Piskaryovka Memorial Cemetery where literally hundreds of thousands of victims of the Siege of Leningrad are buried. He also met Alexander Gradsky, the leading singer-songwriter in Russia. The following year at the Melodiya Studios in Moscow, they recorded an anti-war number, from both the United States and Soviet perspectives. The title of the song was Let Us Begin. This is believed to have been the first time an American and Soviet artist had performed together in a music video. As well as sharing the vocals with Gradsky, the recording included the Red Army Chorus. This song precipitated a split between Denver and his record company RCA, which had recently been acquired by General Electric, whose military contracts could not have an artist singing about the issues of war in that song. Denver himself said this was simply the best piece of work that he had ever produced in his career. The song runs over six minutes, but several prominent verses are:
What are we making weapons for
Why keep on feeding the war machine
We take it right out of the mouths of our babies
Take it away from the hands of the poor
Tell me, what are we making weapons for
For the first time in my life I feel like a prisoner
A slave to the ways of the powers that be
And I fear for my children, as I fear for the for the future I see
Tell me how can it be we're still fighting each other
What does it take for a people to learn
If our song is not sung as a chorus, we surely will burn
Have we forgotten
All the lives that were given
All the vows that were taken
Saying never again
Now for the first time
This could be the last time
If peace is our vision
Let us begin
Ron L.
* * *
Joel 2:23-32
Joel speaks of “...the cutting locust, the swarming locust, the hopping locust, and the devouring locust has eaten...(Joel 3:25)” a natural catastrophe that could devastate a year’s crop within hours. Normally locusts, a form of grasshopper, are solitary insects who do limited crop damage but under stressful conditions such as drought and famine they morph into herd like insects that act in concert to lay waste crops. They are not an ancient phenomenon. Swarms still form in modern times.
Humans generally function as rational individuals within small family groups but under pressure and a belief (whether founded in reality or not) that there is scarcity or danger the same people may swarm in dangerous panic at Black Friday sales or crush together in public transit. Nations may turn into murderous, unreasoning hordes as well, whether in Nazi Germany, Rwanda, or in post 9/11 America. Swarm mentality can alter human behavior as surely as it does to locusts.
Frank R.
* * *
Joel 2:23-32
I read this story in Chuck Swindoll’s book, The Quest for Character and thought it connected to this text.
A few years ago, an angry man rushed through the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam until he reached Rembrandt's famous painting "Nightwatch." Then he took out a knife and slashed it repeatedly. A short time later, a distraught, hostile man slipped into St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome with a hammer and began to smash Michelangelo's beautiful sculpture, “The Pieta.” Two cherished works of art were severely damaged. What did officials do? Throw them out and forget about them? Absolutely not. Using the best experts, who worked with the utmost care and precision, they made every effort to restore the treasures.
Valuable things ought to be restored. Paintings, sculptures, nations and especially, people. In Joel we read of God’s promise to Judah. The promise of restoration is powered by the outpouring of God’s spirit. In the near future, Israel will return to its land; restoration is in the offing.
Bill T.
* * *
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
Chapman University conducts a yearly study on what Americans fear most. For last year, the big “winners” were: Corruption of government officials; Pollution of the environment; Having enough money; and Fear of the death of loved ones. Add to this the debt crisis from living above our means or paying off the college loans, and American life is not a very happy way to live. It is not what Jesus or the writer of our lesson wants for us. Martin Luther made that point once in a sermon:
You should learn that God does not want you to be sad and frightened but joyous and confident in view of the certain and positive promise of His grace which is proclaimed to you by the Holy Spirit Himself. And He tells you that what you feel in your heart and imagine... is not the truth but your own erroneous, foolish notion... (What Luther Says, p.512)
And then in 1532 he offers even more comfort in a letter written to Valentine Hausmann which could just as well have been written to all of us:
I have heard how you are troubled because of your fear. But you should not be greatly worried about this; for God deals with us in an extraordinary way so that what always seems evil and harmful to us is, after all, very useful even if we do not recognize this... Therefore you should under no circumstances be impatient because your faith is not so strong. (Ibid., p.323)
Mark E.
* * *
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
The end of this letter is about triumph, about success, about finishing well. I can remember several years ago, I walked my first 5K. The terrain was hilly, the day was warm, but I walked. My son walked with me carrying a 50 lb. rucksack. He could probably have run the course, but he stayed with me, encouraging me, slowing his pace when I slowed mine. I came in last, but I finished. I finished the race. Paul writes with joy about his finishing the race, about his keeping the faith. In spite of all the challenges in the life of Paul, he kept the faith. My son had faith that I would finish the 5K. I’m not sure I had that much faith, but on that day he lent me his faith for me to lean on. Paul reminds us that the path may be difficult and challenging, but that we can finish the race; we can keep the faith. May it be so.
Bonnie B.
* * *
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
We who worked hard for the Lord should be the first to benefit from our work. We may have done some planting, but it is God who brings the crop out of the ground for us. We can’t push up the seeds.
The story of Jesus goes all the way back to David. The Old Testament has paved the way. God’s plans go way back even before the world was created.
We should not produce Godless chatter as some do from their endless imagination when they have created imaginary Gods out of their mind.
I hear some scientists who have created their own God and proclaim that they have the only logical message.
There are several “churches” that have been created even by movie stars. Some famous people have created faiths that fit their imagination.
It is one of the duties of church members to help these inventors find Jesus — and salvation.
Be ready to talk with others about their faith and don’t judge them immediately. We love them by God’s command.
Bob O.
* * *
Luke 18:9-14
Samuel Morse was born into a preacher’s home in New England just two years after George Washington became president of the United States. After finishing his education at Yale, he went to England to improve his painting skill. Upon his return to America, he was recognized as a gifted artist and was soon in much demand. Morse’s first wife died while he was away from home painting in Washington, DC. He did not receive the news until it was too late. In his heartbreak, he abandoned painting and began trying to develop a means of rapid communication over great distances. This eventually led to his discovery of the telegraph.
Despite his fame and the many honors that came his way, Morse wasn’t proud or arrogant. In a letter to his second wife he wrote, “The more I contemplate this great undertaking, the more I feel my own littleness, and the more I perceive the hand of God in it, and how he has assigned to various persons their duties, he being the great controller, all others his honored instruments.... Hence our dependence first of all on God, then on each other.”
Humility is clearly seen and stressed in the text for today. We’d do well to remember our position in relation to God. Perhaps this John Bunyan poem can help us remember.
He that is down needs fear no fall,
He that is low, no pride;
He that is humble ever shall
Have God to be his guide.
Bill T.
* * *
Luke 18:9-14
In order to understand the epilogue, the closing song of the play Les Misérables, with the original novel being written by Victor Hugo, we must first review the lives of two major characters. Les Misérables is set in early 19th-century France. It is the story of Jean Valjean, a French peasant, and his desire for redemption after serving nineteen years in jail for having stolen a loaf of bread for his sister's starving child. Valjean decides to break his parole and start his life anew after a bishop inspires him by a tremendous act of mercy, but he is relentlessly tracked down by a police inspector named Javet. Along the way, Valjean and a slew of characters are swept into a revolutionary period in France, where a group of peasants attempt to overthrow the government at a street barricade.
The second character is Fantine. Although all of Fantine’s misfortunes are caused by the callousness or greed of others, society always holds her accountable for her behavior. In this sense, she embodies Hugo’s view that French society demands the most from those to whom it gives the least. Fantine is a poor, working-class girl from the desolate seacoast town of Montreuil-sur-mer, an orphan who has almost no education and can neither read nor write. Fantine is inevitably betrayed by the people she does trust: Tholomyès gets her pregnant and then disappears; the Thénardiers take Cosette and use the child to extort more money; and Fantine’s coworkers have her fired for indecency. In his descriptions of Fantine’s life and death, Hugo highlights the unfair attitude of French society toward women and the poor. Fantine’s fellow citizens criticize her for her behavior and depravity, but they also take every opportunity to make her circumstances even more desperate. Fantine eventually dies from her abuse by society.
As the play ends, Valjean awaits his death at a convent, having nothing left to live for. The spirit of Fantine appears to him and tells him that he has been forgiven and will soon be with God. As he dies, the spirits of Fantine guide him to heaven reminding him that “to love another person is to see the face of God.”
The simple line “to love another person is to see the face of God” brings forth the meaning of truth revealed in the form of love.
The closing chorus proclaims God’s love for the oppressed as Fantine and Valjean are joined by the spirits of those who died at the barricades, who now sing that in the next world. God has laid low all tyranny and frees all the oppressed people from their shackles. In a heavenly chorus they sing:
Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Somewhere beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?
Do you hear the people sing?
Say, do you hear the distant drums?
It is the future that they bring
When tomorrow comes!
Ron L.
