Sermon Illustrations for Proper 27 | OT 32 (2019)
Illustration
Haggai 1:15-2:9
“The good old days.” It’s an expression that is used when people look at what is and remember what was and long for the past. There can be some truth in that feeling. Sometimes things aren’t what they used to be. The problem is, of course, sometimes are memories aren’t quite as accurate as we think.
That’s the situation in this text. The people are discouraged by the inferiority of this temple to Solomon's. Many elders present at the laying of the foundation of the second temple who had seen the first temple in all its glory, wept at the contrast. In this prophecy, they are told, “take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord; work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts.” (Haggai 2:4) They are encouraged to persevere, because God is with them, and this house, by its connection with Messiah's kingdom shall have a glory far above that of gold and silver. The prophet assures them all world powers are to fall before Messiah, who is to be associated with this temple.
It’s probably good to remember that as we walk with the Lord, the best is yet to come.
Bill T.
* * *
Haggai 1:15b--2:9
Haggai’s public ministry as recorded for us is barely fourteen weeks. It is, along with his contemporary Zachariah also the most precisely dated book in scripture. This particularly utterance takes place October 17, 520 BC.
After sixteen years of delay after the return from the Exile the people, thanks to the inspiration and challenge from Haggai and Zechariah, have begun to finally rebuild the Temple, destroyed by the Babylonians 67 years before. The difficulties are not just a matter of brick and mortar, however. Self-appointed critics have sprung up, as happens with all church projects, to assert that nothing we do measures up to what was done before.
It’s easy to miss the significance of Haggai’s response. Somebody is claiming the old Temple was huge and this one is tiny compared to it. But those who claim to remember are probably at least 72 years old. They were only children at the time the First Temple was destroyed. Now everything looks huge to children. How many of us return to the haunts of our childhood and discover to our surprise how small everything is?
Even if some were in their eighties at the time of rebuilding, the years can serve as a filter in which everything was better because we were younger and stronger and happier!
Haggai dismisses the claim that the First Temple was greater. The prophet tells the people to trust to a God living in the present.
The closing of this passage, the admonition to “Be strong,” is reminiscent of what God tells Joshua when he assumes leadership after a living legend, Moses, is taken from their midst. In this case it is not the legacy of Moses that the people of God must overcome, but the memory of the past, which is flawed in itself, and threatens to rule the present.
Frank R.
* * *
Haggai 1:15--2:9
Matthew Ajuogo was a priest with the Anglican Church in Kenya. Kenya at the time was under British colonial rule. In 1953, with a translation of the Bible in the native language of Luo, Ajuogo pointed out that the biblical word hera meant “brotherly love.” Ajuogo went to the English bishops and argued that they were not treating their African counterparts with brotherly love.
For years Ajuogo continued to seek change in the Anglican Church. In the meantime, he began an African renewal movement that he called JoHera, which means “People of Love.” Because of his actions, Ajuogo was demoted by the established Church of England. He then affiliated the JoHera movement with International Council of Christian Churches. Ajuogo was able to lead 16,000 Africans out of the Anglican Church. When Kenya gained its independence in 1963, the JoHera movement spread to other African nations. By 1990 the JoHera movement had over 200,000 participants.
Ron L.
* * *
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5,13-17
American writer H. L. Mencken well described the despair of those uncertain about the future: “Life is a dead-end street.” The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre made a similar point in one of his novels when he claimed that life is “a never ending defeat” (The Plague). This sort of hopelessness about the future is in the music of the millennial generation and our youth. The heritage of Tu Pac Shakur rapping in “16 on Death Row” about how he “was never meant to be... when the ghetto’s where you live,” and so he had “no place to go” lives on in Shawn Mendes signing “in My Blood” that:
Laying on the bathroom floor, feeling nothing
I’m overwhelmed and insecure, give me something...
Help me, it’s like the walls are caving in
Sometimes I feel like giving up
No medicine is strong enough
Sometimes I feel like giving up
Our lesson promises a brighter future than present circumstances, human courage, and intuition can offer. Speaking of what Paul wrote in the lesson John Calvin observed:
... he [Paul] shews clearly enough how little influence exhortations have, unless God inwardly move and affect our hearts. Unquestionably there will be but an empty sound striking upon the ear if doctrine does not receive efficacy from the Spirit. (Calvin’s Commentaries, Vol.XXI/1, p.346)
And when God makes clear the rosier future he has planned for us, it comes as a joyful surprise. Pope Benedict XIV made an insightful comment about that: “He [the Christian] knows that the future is more than he himself can create. ” (Introduction to Christianity, p.358). It is a future
that, according to famed modern theologian Jűrgen Moltmann, makes the world “a world of possibilities.” (Theology of Hope, p.338) The future promised by God opens all sorts of promising possibilities.
Mark E.
* * *
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
For centuries people have been professing to know the time when Jesus will come again. Paul reminds the church that we do not know the time, that rather it is important to live in faith and act with righteousness. We are to hold fast to what we have been taught and not allow ourselves to be led astray. We are to cling to the teachings of Jesus, to reflect those teachings in our actions, and to patiently wait for the times yet to come. We are to be comforted by the lives we live as faithful followers of Jesus. There is joy in following, in the journey without really understanding how long the journey will take. Be steadfast my friends. This journey of faith makes all the difference in our lives and the lives of others.
Bonnie B.
* * *
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
How many times I read that the world might end in 2000 because that was 2000 years after our Lord had come. For one, the anniversary of our Lord’s birthday came about three days earlier. Our church calendar never showed a date for our Lord’s coming.
I feel that he is here now. He is in my heart and has been since my baptism, though I didn’t realize it until almost 30 years later.
Our church can be one of the foremost places that can prepare us for the Lord’s coming. We don’t know when that will be but it is good to be ready.
Scientist are predicting that in our day of climate change, the ocean will rise and flood some areas close to our land. It is better to plan a house further away from the ocean regardless of the cheaper price or the better view nearer the sea.
There are many other natural catastrophes predicted that we can avoid by planning ahead.
We can improve our life style so that, whenever our Lord comes, we will be ready.
Bob O.
* * *
Luke 20:27-38
In a cemetery in Hanover, Germany, is a grave on which were placed huge slabs of granite and marble cemented together and fastened with heavy steel clasps. It belongs to Henriette Juliane Caroline von Rüling, a woman who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. Yet strangely, she directed in her will that her grave be made so secure that if there were a resurrection, it could not reach her. On the marker were inscribed these words: "This burial place must never be opened."
In time, a seed, covered over by the stones, began to grow. Slowly it pushed its way through the soil and out from beneath them. As the trunk enlarged, the great slabs were gradually shifted so that the steel clasps were wrenched from their sockets. A tiny seed had become a tree that had pushed aside the stones. The tomb, meant to be sealed forever, was broken open.
Like the Sadducees and Henriette Juliane Caroline von Ruling, there people who don’t believe in the resurrection. Jesus, though, makes it clear that God is not the God of the dead but the living. (Luke 20:38) There will come a day when every grave will be opened. The resurrection is real.
Bill T.
* * *
Luke 20:27-38
When the Sadducees, self-proclaimed legal experts, thought they could trap Jesus with a convoluted question and make him look foolish, they were practicing the rhetorical device known as reductio ad absurdem, or literally reducing something to an absurdity. As non-believers in the afterlife they decided to show that the idea of resurrection is ridiculous because if you carried out the law of Moses you’d have an exceedingly awkward eternity to spend with multiple spouses. So the case study — since according to scripture if a man died without children his brother was required to marry his sister-in-law, one could imagine a situation in which seven brothers married the same woman. Whose spouse would she be in heaven?
This demonstrates why one should not take a scripture out of context. The law was written to insure that when the people of God took possession of the land that property would remain in families. By the time of Jesus the law was no longer practiced. Centuries had gone by, in which some had been taken off the land and into exile into Babylon, and not everyone had returned when the Persians conquered the conquerors. Families no longer lived on ancestral land. Indeed, after hundreds of years there had been enough intermarriage that who knew who was really who. The whole thing was a dead issue.
Most of us are not worried about wearing clothes made of two different kinds of fabrics, or mixing meat and dairy products together in one dish. Tattoos were once prohibited because they were a means of communicating with the dead. That’s no longer the case. There are reasons for Biblical laws, and sometimes the reasons no longer make sense. Even in Jesus’ day some laws were no longer observed. Dig deeper into a scripture’s meaning when someone tries to use a few words as a clobber verse.
Frank R.
“The good old days.” It’s an expression that is used when people look at what is and remember what was and long for the past. There can be some truth in that feeling. Sometimes things aren’t what they used to be. The problem is, of course, sometimes are memories aren’t quite as accurate as we think.
That’s the situation in this text. The people are discouraged by the inferiority of this temple to Solomon's. Many elders present at the laying of the foundation of the second temple who had seen the first temple in all its glory, wept at the contrast. In this prophecy, they are told, “take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord; work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts.” (Haggai 2:4) They are encouraged to persevere, because God is with them, and this house, by its connection with Messiah's kingdom shall have a glory far above that of gold and silver. The prophet assures them all world powers are to fall before Messiah, who is to be associated with this temple.
It’s probably good to remember that as we walk with the Lord, the best is yet to come.
Bill T.
* * *
Haggai 1:15b--2:9
Haggai’s public ministry as recorded for us is barely fourteen weeks. It is, along with his contemporary Zachariah also the most precisely dated book in scripture. This particularly utterance takes place October 17, 520 BC.
After sixteen years of delay after the return from the Exile the people, thanks to the inspiration and challenge from Haggai and Zechariah, have begun to finally rebuild the Temple, destroyed by the Babylonians 67 years before. The difficulties are not just a matter of brick and mortar, however. Self-appointed critics have sprung up, as happens with all church projects, to assert that nothing we do measures up to what was done before.
It’s easy to miss the significance of Haggai’s response. Somebody is claiming the old Temple was huge and this one is tiny compared to it. But those who claim to remember are probably at least 72 years old. They were only children at the time the First Temple was destroyed. Now everything looks huge to children. How many of us return to the haunts of our childhood and discover to our surprise how small everything is?
Even if some were in their eighties at the time of rebuilding, the years can serve as a filter in which everything was better because we were younger and stronger and happier!
Haggai dismisses the claim that the First Temple was greater. The prophet tells the people to trust to a God living in the present.
The closing of this passage, the admonition to “Be strong,” is reminiscent of what God tells Joshua when he assumes leadership after a living legend, Moses, is taken from their midst. In this case it is not the legacy of Moses that the people of God must overcome, but the memory of the past, which is flawed in itself, and threatens to rule the present.
Frank R.
* * *
Haggai 1:15--2:9
Matthew Ajuogo was a priest with the Anglican Church in Kenya. Kenya at the time was under British colonial rule. In 1953, with a translation of the Bible in the native language of Luo, Ajuogo pointed out that the biblical word hera meant “brotherly love.” Ajuogo went to the English bishops and argued that they were not treating their African counterparts with brotherly love.
For years Ajuogo continued to seek change in the Anglican Church. In the meantime, he began an African renewal movement that he called JoHera, which means “People of Love.” Because of his actions, Ajuogo was demoted by the established Church of England. He then affiliated the JoHera movement with International Council of Christian Churches. Ajuogo was able to lead 16,000 Africans out of the Anglican Church. When Kenya gained its independence in 1963, the JoHera movement spread to other African nations. By 1990 the JoHera movement had over 200,000 participants.
Ron L.
* * *
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5,13-17
American writer H. L. Mencken well described the despair of those uncertain about the future: “Life is a dead-end street.” The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre made a similar point in one of his novels when he claimed that life is “a never ending defeat” (The Plague). This sort of hopelessness about the future is in the music of the millennial generation and our youth. The heritage of Tu Pac Shakur rapping in “16 on Death Row” about how he “was never meant to be... when the ghetto’s where you live,” and so he had “no place to go” lives on in Shawn Mendes signing “in My Blood” that:
Laying on the bathroom floor, feeling nothing
I’m overwhelmed and insecure, give me something...
Help me, it’s like the walls are caving in
Sometimes I feel like giving up
No medicine is strong enough
Sometimes I feel like giving up
Our lesson promises a brighter future than present circumstances, human courage, and intuition can offer. Speaking of what Paul wrote in the lesson John Calvin observed:
... he [Paul] shews clearly enough how little influence exhortations have, unless God inwardly move and affect our hearts. Unquestionably there will be but an empty sound striking upon the ear if doctrine does not receive efficacy from the Spirit. (Calvin’s Commentaries, Vol.XXI/1, p.346)
And when God makes clear the rosier future he has planned for us, it comes as a joyful surprise. Pope Benedict XIV made an insightful comment about that: “He [the Christian] knows that the future is more than he himself can create. ” (Introduction to Christianity, p.358). It is a future
that, according to famed modern theologian Jűrgen Moltmann, makes the world “a world of possibilities.” (Theology of Hope, p.338) The future promised by God opens all sorts of promising possibilities.
Mark E.
* * *
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
For centuries people have been professing to know the time when Jesus will come again. Paul reminds the church that we do not know the time, that rather it is important to live in faith and act with righteousness. We are to hold fast to what we have been taught and not allow ourselves to be led astray. We are to cling to the teachings of Jesus, to reflect those teachings in our actions, and to patiently wait for the times yet to come. We are to be comforted by the lives we live as faithful followers of Jesus. There is joy in following, in the journey without really understanding how long the journey will take. Be steadfast my friends. This journey of faith makes all the difference in our lives and the lives of others.
Bonnie B.
* * *
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
How many times I read that the world might end in 2000 because that was 2000 years after our Lord had come. For one, the anniversary of our Lord’s birthday came about three days earlier. Our church calendar never showed a date for our Lord’s coming.
I feel that he is here now. He is in my heart and has been since my baptism, though I didn’t realize it until almost 30 years later.
Our church can be one of the foremost places that can prepare us for the Lord’s coming. We don’t know when that will be but it is good to be ready.
Scientist are predicting that in our day of climate change, the ocean will rise and flood some areas close to our land. It is better to plan a house further away from the ocean regardless of the cheaper price or the better view nearer the sea.
There are many other natural catastrophes predicted that we can avoid by planning ahead.
We can improve our life style so that, whenever our Lord comes, we will be ready.
Bob O.
* * *
Luke 20:27-38
In a cemetery in Hanover, Germany, is a grave on which were placed huge slabs of granite and marble cemented together and fastened with heavy steel clasps. It belongs to Henriette Juliane Caroline von Rüling, a woman who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. Yet strangely, she directed in her will that her grave be made so secure that if there were a resurrection, it could not reach her. On the marker were inscribed these words: "This burial place must never be opened."
In time, a seed, covered over by the stones, began to grow. Slowly it pushed its way through the soil and out from beneath them. As the trunk enlarged, the great slabs were gradually shifted so that the steel clasps were wrenched from their sockets. A tiny seed had become a tree that had pushed aside the stones. The tomb, meant to be sealed forever, was broken open.
Like the Sadducees and Henriette Juliane Caroline von Ruling, there people who don’t believe in the resurrection. Jesus, though, makes it clear that God is not the God of the dead but the living. (Luke 20:38) There will come a day when every grave will be opened. The resurrection is real.
Bill T.
* * *
Luke 20:27-38
When the Sadducees, self-proclaimed legal experts, thought they could trap Jesus with a convoluted question and make him look foolish, they were practicing the rhetorical device known as reductio ad absurdem, or literally reducing something to an absurdity. As non-believers in the afterlife they decided to show that the idea of resurrection is ridiculous because if you carried out the law of Moses you’d have an exceedingly awkward eternity to spend with multiple spouses. So the case study — since according to scripture if a man died without children his brother was required to marry his sister-in-law, one could imagine a situation in which seven brothers married the same woman. Whose spouse would she be in heaven?
This demonstrates why one should not take a scripture out of context. The law was written to insure that when the people of God took possession of the land that property would remain in families. By the time of Jesus the law was no longer practiced. Centuries had gone by, in which some had been taken off the land and into exile into Babylon, and not everyone had returned when the Persians conquered the conquerors. Families no longer lived on ancestral land. Indeed, after hundreds of years there had been enough intermarriage that who knew who was really who. The whole thing was a dead issue.
Most of us are not worried about wearing clothes made of two different kinds of fabrics, or mixing meat and dairy products together in one dish. Tattoos were once prohibited because they were a means of communicating with the dead. That’s no longer the case. There are reasons for Biblical laws, and sometimes the reasons no longer make sense. Even in Jesus’ day some laws were no longer observed. Dig deeper into a scripture’s meaning when someone tries to use a few words as a clobber verse.
Frank R.
