Sermon Illustrations for Proper 27 | OT 32 (2016)
Illustration
Object:
Haggai 1:15b--2:9
The exile is no more. The people have returned to Jerusalem, but their excitement at having achieved freedom has dissipated. The older generation continues to voice their disappointment at how things are not as well as they were before the exile. The younger generation laments that they have no memory of those pre-exilic glory days. The people have drifted into that species of apathy that grows from discouragement.
An attempt had been made a couple decades previously to begin construction on a new temple, but that effort has been mostly abandoned. This generation of construction workers lacks the building skills of the pre-exilic generation. The nation lacks the monetary resources to match the quality of the grand Temple of Solomon. Discouragement transforms to hopelessness and begins to slide toward despair.
Enter Haggai, a combination of God’s prophet and the nation’s cheerleader. He reminds the people that God is in control and that God will provide the resources necessary for moving into the future. The people, however, must play a role in renewal. The nation needs to take responsibility for pushing through its emotional paralysis. There needs to be collaboration between the civil and religious sectors. The nation needs to address its class and generational control issues and jettison its internal differences. The entire community needs to pull together. With God’s help combined with human collaboration, great things can be achieved.
Is it not interesting that Haggai, a man who lived more than 2,500 years ago and about whom we know little or nothing, could have such an apropos message for this nation that nears Election Day? Although some might dismiss this relevance as serendipitous, “providential” seems a more apt adjective.
R. Robert C.
Haggai 1:15b--2:9
Haggai wrote at a time when great national hopes had been dashed -- not unlike America on the eve of the 2016 election. A June 2016 Rasmussen poll indicated that only 26% of us think America is moving in the right direction. We are a nation divided -- whites from blacks, immigrants from native-born, Muslims from Christians and Jews. The Trump campaign has helped make that even clearer (Annette Lareau, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life). Even white Americans are more divided by economics and social class than ever before (see statistics on the impact of class differences on marriage, delinquency, and place of residence in Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010). Martin Luther King Jr. well describes why we remain in our present mess: “The great majority of Americans... are uneasy with injustice, but unwilling yet to pay a significant price to eradicate it” (Religion and Labor [May 1963], pp. 3-4).
Our lesson and famed 20th-century ethicist H. Richard Niebuhr offer insight about how things might get resolved. Niebuhr writes: “Responsibility affirms that God is acting in all actions upon you as to respond to action” (The Responsible Self, p. 126).
Responsible action with an awareness that God is at work in what we do can go a long way toward getting America working together, because you don’t offend and divide people as readily when your actions are responsible.
Mark E.
Haggai 1:15b--2:9
When Dennis Green was the coach of the Arizona Cardinals in 2006, the team was having a difficult season. Their most humiliating game came against the Chicago Bears, who rallied from a 20-point deficit to win the contest. Green, who was known to be soft-spoken, was not quite so after the frustrating game, famously yelling to the press: “The Bears are who we thought they were!” He then ended with an emphatic line that to this day remains associated with Green’s name: “And we let them off the hook!”
Application: Haggai talks about the importance of being inspiring, which is something Green demonstrated after his team’s loss to the Bears.
Ron L.
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
We wonder, as followers of Christ, when Jesus will return. Clearly this wondering is not new, for this letter to the church at Thessalonica reminds the people not to be alarmed or worried about when the day will come. Rather, we are reminded to stand firmly in what we have been taught, to live our lives as people of faith.
As a lifetime Girl Scout I am reminded of our motto, the same as the Boy Scout motto: “Be prepared.” The issue is never about trying to anticipate when something will happen or how, but rather to be prepared for what may occur. I remember a camping trip with a Girl Scout troop, the first one where I had let them be completely responsible for the supply list. Of course, something was forgotten: garbage bags. I noticed it before our trip -- but rather than bringing some myself, I used the omission as a lesson. How would we dispose of our trash without garbage bags?
The girls came up with some ingenious solutions: using packing from foodstuffs as trash containers, wrapping some things in torn newspaper pages which we found, burying the compostable materials. I could have “rescued” them by bringing trash bags, but we all learned so much more through our striving to solve the problem. Being prepared is a good thing, and we all learned a little bit about preparing ourselves that weekend. What experiences teach you to be prepared for whatever life throws our way?
Bonnie B.
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
Panic surged through his body. He’d overslept. What should have been a leisurely time of getting ready for the day had become a maddening rush. The bus stop was just outside the house, and he could see it from the living room window. He’d run through the shower as fast as he could. Clothes were thrown on with little regard for compatibility. He filled his backpack with the books scattered on his bedroom floor. He grabbed a toaster pastry for breakfast and quickly glanced out of the window. In the distance he saw the blinking lights of the school bus as it crested the hill. He knew his time was short. He grabbed his shoes and jammed his feet in without even untying and tying the laces. He didn’t know if he’d make it. He was sure he’d miss the bus.
That sounds like a dramatic retelling of a rather ordinary situation. After all, most of us have missed the bus at least one time or another. Think back, though, to how you felt as you thought you were going to miss the bus. It was a nervous time. You were likely upset, angry, and frustrated. Seeing the bus that you were supposed to be on drive away is a terrible feeling. There were some in Paul’s day who were thinking they’d missed more than a bus. Imagine the feeling of thinking you’d missed the day of the Lord’s coming. Paul’s words in this passage were, no doubt, a comfort to them. They are a reminder to us. The Lord is coming back. Don’t miss it. Are you ready?
Bill T.
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
Paul had a couple of choices when he wrote about “the lawless one, the one destined for destruction.” He could have named Antiochus IV Epiphanes -- who, though long dead, was remembered with horror because of his desecration of the Jewish Temple nearly two centuries before, remembered in the words of both Daniel and Jesus as the “abomination of desolation.” Or he could have named the mad emperor Caligula, who proclaimed himself divine and in 39 AD commanded that a statue in his honor be erected in the Jewish Temple. (Fortunately the governor of the Syria province, Publius Petronius, stalled for over a year until Herod Antipas talked Caligula out of it.) But Paul did not assign a name to this figure of horror, perhaps because in so doing people would have not have realized that in every age, in every lifetime, someone attempts to usurp God’s place in our lives by claiming for themselves a godlike status. We might have ceased to be on our guard. Paul’s words are cautionary, so that people will not be too quick to name the sign that Jesus must return immediately. Although God has no equal, or opposite number, there will always, until the Lord’s return, be monsters whose loss of their humanity leads them to commit horrors and atrocities.
Frank R.
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
At the end of the last century there were many -- even church groups -- who were telling us the end was coming in the new year. Some did not stop to think that according to the record, Jesus’ day was historically three or four days before the end of the century. I guess they are still waiting. So often some -- even good Christians -- are reading all kinds of things into verses of the Bible that they have imagined, or they may just want to scare someone.
It sounds like we will not look forward to the day of the Lord. Some said that that man of lawlessness was Hitler or Stalin (or Obama or Trump?). They want to scare you and make you think they are interpreting scripture with some magical power. Maybe they don’t pretend to be God, but they sure claim to be one who has had things revealed to them.
We all want to serve God, but most want to do it in an advisory capacity!
One of those who claimed to have the inside word of the Lord was a fellow named Muhammad. (I’d better be careful who reads this or it might be the end of me!)
So hold on to the words we are reading this morning at service, and through the pastor discover many of the hidden meanings in scripture. God’s words are encouragement! They are not threats of what might happen tomorrow. “God does not bring a spirit of fear but of hope and love and a sound mind.”
One of the reasons we come to church is to find encouragement and hope.
Bob O.
Luke 20:27-38
A group of Sadducees approaches Jesus with what strikes our modern sensibility as an ancient shaggy-dog story -- i.e., a long, rambling joke that is amusing only because it is absurdly complex, unnecessarily convoluted, and borderline inconsequential. Certainly we could understand if Jesus had simply ignored the question. Our Lord, however, doesn’t do that. Instead, he listens carefully and responds thoughtfully.
I suggest Jesus did this for two reasons. First, even though he had some serious theological differences with Sadducees, Jesus considered them part of the family of God. Consequently, they deserved to be treated with the respect accorded family members.
Second, Jesus must have also concluded that the Sadducees really wanted a serious answer. This odd query about the implications of marriage and the resurrection was not a trick question to them. Sadducees thought constantly about these things. They really wanted to know what Jesus had to say.
We live in a time of polarized divisiveness. Racially, socially, and politically, we have gotten to a point where we really don’t much care for those don’t look, think, or vote the way we do. Research shows that we increasingly associate only with those who earn, think, and look like us. Some even say that contempt best describes today’s attitudes toward those who differ.
Consequently, there is much for us to learn from our Lord’s example. Like Jesus we need to value those with whom we differ. Rather than rejecting out-of-hand those not in our socio-economic group, race, or political persuasion, we need to open our ears, our hearts, and our minds to whomever we consider today’s Sadducees. Rather than with contempt, we need to deal with one another in ways that are fair, respectful, and even friendly.
R. Robert C.
Luke 20:27-38
Bill Jones was known for his specialty of photographing African-American celebrities. Yet as a black man himself, he had difficulty gaining access to his subjects. Racism and prejudice on the part of event sponsors kept him away from the red carpet in the 1970s. Jones said, “It was tough to get a space in what we call ‘the line,’ meaning the line of photographers taking shots of celebrities.” It took Jones three years before he started to get a place in the line, until he was able to encourage celebrities to come to him.
Application: It took several years for Bill Jones to know that he was not dead but a part of the land of the living.
Ron L.
Luke 20:27-38
What will our resurrected bodies be like? How will resurrected life be like and different from what we know it to be now? How about marriage and the special relations with our families?
A significant theologian of the early church, Justin Martyr, claims that there is no tension between bodily resurrection and the apparent abolition of marriage in heaven. He claims that it is just a matter of the parts of the body not having the same function in eternal life that they did on earth (Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1, p. 295). All the body parts and looks so integral to happy marriages will be there; it is just that they and sexual bonding will not be the same -- likely no more mating and conceiving children in heaven. St. Augustine elaborated further on the difference between our bodies now and in the end times: “...but because it [the resurrected body] is subject to the spirit with a perfect and marvelous readiness of obedience, and responds in all things to the will that has entered on immortality -- all reluctance, all corruption, and all slowness being removed” (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 2, p. 254). “And thus the body, being the source of uneasiness because it can feel no want, shall be animated by a spirit perfectly pure and happy, and shall enjoy unbroken peace” (Ibid., pp. 255-256).
Sexual relationships will be different in heaven. There will be no need for new relations (giving in marriage), and the reasons for them will be different. They will no longer be about desire, selfish pleasure, marred with conflict -- just pure joy and peace (like we’ll have with other members of the Body).
Does heaven really put an end to marriage? Seventeenth-century French scholar Blaise Pascal powerfully explains how time and the future change things, an insight that also helps us understand the implications of the election this week for our nation, where America is headed in the future: “Time heals pain and quarrels because we change. We are no longer the same persons; neither the offender nor the offended are themselves any more. It is as if one angered a nation and came back to see them after two generations. They are still Frenchmen, but not the same ones” (Pensees, p. 269).
The marriage of faithful couples cannot be the same in heaven; the partners will be different, all the quarrels and hurts will be gone, the reasons for being family and its tasks will have changed, and yet will still be family. And so as we vote this coming Tuesday, be aware that the policies of the new president will change America. Our nation will not be the same after we vote. How do we want America to look with time? Pascal advises us not to vote for what we want America to be just now.
Mark E.
The exile is no more. The people have returned to Jerusalem, but their excitement at having achieved freedom has dissipated. The older generation continues to voice their disappointment at how things are not as well as they were before the exile. The younger generation laments that they have no memory of those pre-exilic glory days. The people have drifted into that species of apathy that grows from discouragement.
An attempt had been made a couple decades previously to begin construction on a new temple, but that effort has been mostly abandoned. This generation of construction workers lacks the building skills of the pre-exilic generation. The nation lacks the monetary resources to match the quality of the grand Temple of Solomon. Discouragement transforms to hopelessness and begins to slide toward despair.
Enter Haggai, a combination of God’s prophet and the nation’s cheerleader. He reminds the people that God is in control and that God will provide the resources necessary for moving into the future. The people, however, must play a role in renewal. The nation needs to take responsibility for pushing through its emotional paralysis. There needs to be collaboration between the civil and religious sectors. The nation needs to address its class and generational control issues and jettison its internal differences. The entire community needs to pull together. With God’s help combined with human collaboration, great things can be achieved.
Is it not interesting that Haggai, a man who lived more than 2,500 years ago and about whom we know little or nothing, could have such an apropos message for this nation that nears Election Day? Although some might dismiss this relevance as serendipitous, “providential” seems a more apt adjective.
R. Robert C.
Haggai 1:15b--2:9
Haggai wrote at a time when great national hopes had been dashed -- not unlike America on the eve of the 2016 election. A June 2016 Rasmussen poll indicated that only 26% of us think America is moving in the right direction. We are a nation divided -- whites from blacks, immigrants from native-born, Muslims from Christians and Jews. The Trump campaign has helped make that even clearer (Annette Lareau, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life). Even white Americans are more divided by economics and social class than ever before (see statistics on the impact of class differences on marriage, delinquency, and place of residence in Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010). Martin Luther King Jr. well describes why we remain in our present mess: “The great majority of Americans... are uneasy with injustice, but unwilling yet to pay a significant price to eradicate it” (Religion and Labor [May 1963], pp. 3-4).
Our lesson and famed 20th-century ethicist H. Richard Niebuhr offer insight about how things might get resolved. Niebuhr writes: “Responsibility affirms that God is acting in all actions upon you as to respond to action” (The Responsible Self, p. 126).
Responsible action with an awareness that God is at work in what we do can go a long way toward getting America working together, because you don’t offend and divide people as readily when your actions are responsible.
Mark E.
Haggai 1:15b--2:9
When Dennis Green was the coach of the Arizona Cardinals in 2006, the team was having a difficult season. Their most humiliating game came against the Chicago Bears, who rallied from a 20-point deficit to win the contest. Green, who was known to be soft-spoken, was not quite so after the frustrating game, famously yelling to the press: “The Bears are who we thought they were!” He then ended with an emphatic line that to this day remains associated with Green’s name: “And we let them off the hook!”
Application: Haggai talks about the importance of being inspiring, which is something Green demonstrated after his team’s loss to the Bears.
Ron L.
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
We wonder, as followers of Christ, when Jesus will return. Clearly this wondering is not new, for this letter to the church at Thessalonica reminds the people not to be alarmed or worried about when the day will come. Rather, we are reminded to stand firmly in what we have been taught, to live our lives as people of faith.
As a lifetime Girl Scout I am reminded of our motto, the same as the Boy Scout motto: “Be prepared.” The issue is never about trying to anticipate when something will happen or how, but rather to be prepared for what may occur. I remember a camping trip with a Girl Scout troop, the first one where I had let them be completely responsible for the supply list. Of course, something was forgotten: garbage bags. I noticed it before our trip -- but rather than bringing some myself, I used the omission as a lesson. How would we dispose of our trash without garbage bags?
The girls came up with some ingenious solutions: using packing from foodstuffs as trash containers, wrapping some things in torn newspaper pages which we found, burying the compostable materials. I could have “rescued” them by bringing trash bags, but we all learned so much more through our striving to solve the problem. Being prepared is a good thing, and we all learned a little bit about preparing ourselves that weekend. What experiences teach you to be prepared for whatever life throws our way?
Bonnie B.
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
Panic surged through his body. He’d overslept. What should have been a leisurely time of getting ready for the day had become a maddening rush. The bus stop was just outside the house, and he could see it from the living room window. He’d run through the shower as fast as he could. Clothes were thrown on with little regard for compatibility. He filled his backpack with the books scattered on his bedroom floor. He grabbed a toaster pastry for breakfast and quickly glanced out of the window. In the distance he saw the blinking lights of the school bus as it crested the hill. He knew his time was short. He grabbed his shoes and jammed his feet in without even untying and tying the laces. He didn’t know if he’d make it. He was sure he’d miss the bus.
That sounds like a dramatic retelling of a rather ordinary situation. After all, most of us have missed the bus at least one time or another. Think back, though, to how you felt as you thought you were going to miss the bus. It was a nervous time. You were likely upset, angry, and frustrated. Seeing the bus that you were supposed to be on drive away is a terrible feeling. There were some in Paul’s day who were thinking they’d missed more than a bus. Imagine the feeling of thinking you’d missed the day of the Lord’s coming. Paul’s words in this passage were, no doubt, a comfort to them. They are a reminder to us. The Lord is coming back. Don’t miss it. Are you ready?
Bill T.
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
Paul had a couple of choices when he wrote about “the lawless one, the one destined for destruction.” He could have named Antiochus IV Epiphanes -- who, though long dead, was remembered with horror because of his desecration of the Jewish Temple nearly two centuries before, remembered in the words of both Daniel and Jesus as the “abomination of desolation.” Or he could have named the mad emperor Caligula, who proclaimed himself divine and in 39 AD commanded that a statue in his honor be erected in the Jewish Temple. (Fortunately the governor of the Syria province, Publius Petronius, stalled for over a year until Herod Antipas talked Caligula out of it.) But Paul did not assign a name to this figure of horror, perhaps because in so doing people would have not have realized that in every age, in every lifetime, someone attempts to usurp God’s place in our lives by claiming for themselves a godlike status. We might have ceased to be on our guard. Paul’s words are cautionary, so that people will not be too quick to name the sign that Jesus must return immediately. Although God has no equal, or opposite number, there will always, until the Lord’s return, be monsters whose loss of their humanity leads them to commit horrors and atrocities.
Frank R.
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
At the end of the last century there were many -- even church groups -- who were telling us the end was coming in the new year. Some did not stop to think that according to the record, Jesus’ day was historically three or four days before the end of the century. I guess they are still waiting. So often some -- even good Christians -- are reading all kinds of things into verses of the Bible that they have imagined, or they may just want to scare someone.
It sounds like we will not look forward to the day of the Lord. Some said that that man of lawlessness was Hitler or Stalin (or Obama or Trump?). They want to scare you and make you think they are interpreting scripture with some magical power. Maybe they don’t pretend to be God, but they sure claim to be one who has had things revealed to them.
We all want to serve God, but most want to do it in an advisory capacity!
One of those who claimed to have the inside word of the Lord was a fellow named Muhammad. (I’d better be careful who reads this or it might be the end of me!)
So hold on to the words we are reading this morning at service, and through the pastor discover many of the hidden meanings in scripture. God’s words are encouragement! They are not threats of what might happen tomorrow. “God does not bring a spirit of fear but of hope and love and a sound mind.”
One of the reasons we come to church is to find encouragement and hope.
Bob O.
Luke 20:27-38
A group of Sadducees approaches Jesus with what strikes our modern sensibility as an ancient shaggy-dog story -- i.e., a long, rambling joke that is amusing only because it is absurdly complex, unnecessarily convoluted, and borderline inconsequential. Certainly we could understand if Jesus had simply ignored the question. Our Lord, however, doesn’t do that. Instead, he listens carefully and responds thoughtfully.
I suggest Jesus did this for two reasons. First, even though he had some serious theological differences with Sadducees, Jesus considered them part of the family of God. Consequently, they deserved to be treated with the respect accorded family members.
Second, Jesus must have also concluded that the Sadducees really wanted a serious answer. This odd query about the implications of marriage and the resurrection was not a trick question to them. Sadducees thought constantly about these things. They really wanted to know what Jesus had to say.
We live in a time of polarized divisiveness. Racially, socially, and politically, we have gotten to a point where we really don’t much care for those don’t look, think, or vote the way we do. Research shows that we increasingly associate only with those who earn, think, and look like us. Some even say that contempt best describes today’s attitudes toward those who differ.
Consequently, there is much for us to learn from our Lord’s example. Like Jesus we need to value those with whom we differ. Rather than rejecting out-of-hand those not in our socio-economic group, race, or political persuasion, we need to open our ears, our hearts, and our minds to whomever we consider today’s Sadducees. Rather than with contempt, we need to deal with one another in ways that are fair, respectful, and even friendly.
R. Robert C.
Luke 20:27-38
Bill Jones was known for his specialty of photographing African-American celebrities. Yet as a black man himself, he had difficulty gaining access to his subjects. Racism and prejudice on the part of event sponsors kept him away from the red carpet in the 1970s. Jones said, “It was tough to get a space in what we call ‘the line,’ meaning the line of photographers taking shots of celebrities.” It took Jones three years before he started to get a place in the line, until he was able to encourage celebrities to come to him.
Application: It took several years for Bill Jones to know that he was not dead but a part of the land of the living.
Ron L.
Luke 20:27-38
What will our resurrected bodies be like? How will resurrected life be like and different from what we know it to be now? How about marriage and the special relations with our families?
A significant theologian of the early church, Justin Martyr, claims that there is no tension between bodily resurrection and the apparent abolition of marriage in heaven. He claims that it is just a matter of the parts of the body not having the same function in eternal life that they did on earth (Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1, p. 295). All the body parts and looks so integral to happy marriages will be there; it is just that they and sexual bonding will not be the same -- likely no more mating and conceiving children in heaven. St. Augustine elaborated further on the difference between our bodies now and in the end times: “...but because it [the resurrected body] is subject to the spirit with a perfect and marvelous readiness of obedience, and responds in all things to the will that has entered on immortality -- all reluctance, all corruption, and all slowness being removed” (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 2, p. 254). “And thus the body, being the source of uneasiness because it can feel no want, shall be animated by a spirit perfectly pure and happy, and shall enjoy unbroken peace” (Ibid., pp. 255-256).
Sexual relationships will be different in heaven. There will be no need for new relations (giving in marriage), and the reasons for them will be different. They will no longer be about desire, selfish pleasure, marred with conflict -- just pure joy and peace (like we’ll have with other members of the Body).
Does heaven really put an end to marriage? Seventeenth-century French scholar Blaise Pascal powerfully explains how time and the future change things, an insight that also helps us understand the implications of the election this week for our nation, where America is headed in the future: “Time heals pain and quarrels because we change. We are no longer the same persons; neither the offender nor the offended are themselves any more. It is as if one angered a nation and came back to see them after two generations. They are still Frenchmen, but not the same ones” (Pensees, p. 269).
The marriage of faithful couples cannot be the same in heaven; the partners will be different, all the quarrels and hurts will be gone, the reasons for being family and its tasks will have changed, and yet will still be family. And so as we vote this coming Tuesday, be aware that the policies of the new president will change America. Our nation will not be the same after we vote. How do we want America to look with time? Pascal advises us not to vote for what we want America to be just now.
Mark E.
