Sermon Illustrations For Proper 9 | Ordinary Time 14 (2020)
Illustration
Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67 or Song of Solomon 2:8-13
I love Rivka (the Hebrew pronunciation of “Rebecca”). Every Rivka I’ve ever known was fearless, passionate, whip-smart, and spunky as anything. I’ve never met a submissive or wishy-washy Rivka, and it’s no wonder. Although the story of Rivka and Yitzhak’s betrothal is recounted in Genesis from the point of view of Abraham’s slave as if it were divine happenstance that brought Rivka to the well, I don’t believe it for a minute. I bet that Rivka had seen Abraham’s slave come and swear the oath to God and decided she was going to take her life into her own hands. Just as Song of Songs 2:8-13 recalls the lover hearing her beloved summon her, I think Rivka heard Abraham’s slave’s vow and recognized that God was giving her the opportunity to be the lover (note the active voice) responding to the summons of her beloved.
In a patriarchal society, where women were seen as property, Rivka acts with consistent confidence and self-assurance. After she has watered Abraham’s slave’s camels, the slave asks, “Whose daughter are you?” (Genesis 24:47) She knows what he means. She understands the importance and power her culture puts on men. She knows that what the slave is really asking is, “Who is your father?” But she answers with a fair amount of sass, “The daughter of Bethuel, son of Nahor, whom Milcah bore to him.” She names her mother, proudly and unashamed. She even phrases the answer in a way that emphasizes that ultimately, it was her mother who graciously bequeathed her child upon her father. Even more, Milcah in Hebrew means “Queen.” So, she names herself “daughter of Bethuel son of Nahor, whom a Queen bore to him.” It is as if she is saying, Yes, I am treated as the property of my father, but I am the descendant of a queen!
Then, on top of all that, it is Rivka who chooses to leave with Abraham’s slave over the protests of her family and Rivka who recognizes Yitzhak and decides that she will marry him by wrapping herself in her veil. Rivka is no quiet and submissive wallflower, content to have her future decided for her by men. She knows exactly who she is and who God has chosen her to be, one of the great matriarchs (in Hebrew, literally “mothers”) of Israel, the daughter of a queen, who herself will bear the queens of a nation!
M T.
* * *
Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67
Pew Research Center reported in 2018 that only half of U.S. adults today are married, down 9 percent over the past quarter century and dramatically different from the peak of 72 percent in 1960. Marriage and its popularity have fallen on hard times. This Lesson can be the antidote. Data from the General Social Survey in 2018 indicated nearly twice the number of those married are happy in comparison to those never married or divorced. Martin Luther offers a realistic assessment of what makes marriage good and how to make it better:
The affection with which we love our wives pleases God, although this is difficult for our depraved nature... to love a wife is not characteristic of our corrupt nature, but it is characteristic of our renewed and restored nature. (Luther’s Works, Vol.4, p.299)
Christians have some advantages in marriage. Billy Graham’s wife Ruth also had some sound advice: “A good marriage in the union of two good forgivers.” American Founder Benjamin Franklin offered similar wisdom, when he wrote, “You can bear your own faults, and why not a fault in your Wife.” (Writings, p.1259)
Mark E.
* * *
Song of Solomon 2:8-13
The illustrations above on marriage are valid for this text if it is used to inspire sermons on Christian marriage. But if you construe this text as its author probably did, as a testimony to our intimate union with God, then observations from Christian mystics beautifully illustrate the point. St. Teresa of Avila profoundly depicted her intimacy with our Lord:
The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it, even a large one. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God of his goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying.
Bernard of Clairvaux even yearned for more intimacy:
It is not given to everyone to say, “Let Him kiss me with the kiss of His Mouth” (1:2); but he who has but once received the spiritual kiss from the Mouth of Christ is urged by the experience most ardently to seek its repetition, and longs to taste the hidden manna once again. (Hugh Kerr, ed., Readings in Christian Thought, p.96)
How wonderful to yearn for and feel such intimacy with our loving Savior, to experience like Bernard Christ’s “entering into us.” Then like him we could speak of how the mind is drawn along by the ineffable sweetness of the word and, as it were, it is stolen from itself or better, it is rapt and remains out of itself there to enjoy the word. (Elmer O’Brien, ed., Varieties of Mystic Experience, p.106)
Mark E.
* * *
Zechariah 9:9-12, Psalm 145:8-14
The steadfast nature of God is present in both these readings. How have you experienced the steadfast love of God in your life? Today I am tormented by fear that my husband will not fully recover from a major circulatory problem. I am afraid he may lose a finger or his hand. I am worried that he will choose to go into hospice and renal failure rather than seek treatment. I am at the edge of tears and having trouble even drawing a deep breath. Yet, I read these passages and I know God is good. I now I am not alone. I know that God loves me and loves my husband. Whatever comes I can rest on God. Maybe I will be able to breathe now.
Bonnie B.
* * *
Romans 7:15-25
In the comic strip Peanuts, we see Linus sitting in front of the TV and Lucy, his older sister, standing behind him. At the top of her voice she screams, literally screams, “All right I give up!” She continues, with her mouth wide open as she continues to holler, “I can’t get along with my family!!” With an angry scowl, she turns and walks away yelling, “I give up!!” Linus, still sitting in front of the television, with a questionable look on his face, thinks to himself, and to the reader, “Where do you go to give up?”
Ron L.
* * *
Romans 7:15-25a
There are times Paul drives me crazy. I have to admit, however, I see myself and many of my fellow Christians in his confession about his inability to be who he wants to be, and his struggles that end up with him doing what he doesn’t want to do,
One magazine I read cover to cover is The New Yorker. I often clip articles that speak to me. The October 28, 2019 issue had one such article, “The Resistance,” by Jerome Groopman. Groopman had become a slave to his cell phone. Though he’d prided himself on his self-discipline, evidenced through his medical training, he couldn’t help constantly checking his email . How could he create better habits? Was will power enough?
Groopman reviewed several books on the subject of willpower. He learned that “To go about our lives, we need to make some behaviors automatic.” For instance, much of what’s involved in starting up a car is habit. He discovered that it’s not just a matter of resolving to do better, but altering our environment. As he put it, “…if we can make bad habits more inconvenient, then inertia can carry us in the direction of virtue, without ever requiring us to be strong.” He linked the decline in smoking, for instance, with the ban on smoking in most public places, the escalating cost of cigarettes, and the removal of cigarette ads from TV and radio, all of which made smoking harder.
The key “…lies not in breaking a habit through will power but in replacing one habit with another.” Identifying the trigger for a bad habit and replacing it with a different kind of reward can help us succeed.
My problem is eating and weight control, but evidently the lessons he learned apply to all the things we do that we don’t want to do. Will power may not be enough. We need to create circumstances that make it possible to succeed.
Frank R.
* * *
Romans 7:15-25a
Why do we do the things we don’t want to do? The seven-year-old child was asked by her mother, “Why did you push your little brother down?” Her answer? “I don’t know.” The student was asked by his teacher why he cheated on the math test. His answer? “I don’t know.” The young woman was questioned by her boss about why she was late for work. Her answer? “I don’t know.” The executive was asked by the press why he embezzled so much of the company’s profits. His answer? “I don’t know.”
“I don’t know why I do this.” It’s a statement used more often than we’d care to admit. Paul addressed that it’s a question with which he, too, wrestles. He does, though conclude that sin is responsible. (vs. 20) He also points to the remedy for the struggle. “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (vs. 24-25)
Bill T.
* * *
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
I must admit, I have never understood Jesus’s parable of the children in the marketplace, and every explanation I have read has a tendency to exhibit a kind of colonialist paternalism that I find distasteful. So, I want to set aside verses 16-18 and focus instead on 18-19, “For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!’” Here, Jesus points out the double-standard people in power adopt as a means of ignoring the cries of the oppressed.
There are numerous examples of this double-standard, some of which have surfaced recently. But, perhaps, the most common example of this double-standard can be seen through the proliferation of “whataboutism.” This logical fallacy and propaganda tactic, also known classically as a “tu quoque” or “the hypocrisy fallacy” was perfected by the former Soviet Union during the Cold War as a means of diffusing anti-Soviet criticism. For example, an American who criticized Soviet human rights abuses would be challenged with a “What about Americans lynching black people?” Similarly, an American official who spoke against Russian interference in Afghanistan would be met with a “Oh yeah? What about Nicaragua?” The point of these “what about” statements is to shut down conversation while preserving the status quo. There is no indication that Soviet officials are actually concerned about American racism or American interference in South and Central America. Rather, whataboutism is a tactic of neutralizing criticism by deflecting it.
A 2013 Atlantic article by Ogla Khazan includes an example of whataboutism in a Russian cartoon from 1967, so this phenomenon is hardly new. The problem with whataboutism, as Jesus explains in his own speech is that whataboutism has nothing to do with actually engaging the problem one brings up. It is only a means of a deflection. So, people who criticize John the Baptist for his ascetic practices and Jesus for his open-table policy aren’t actually interested in John’s diet or the guests at Jesus’s table. Rather, they point to these behaviors only in order to deflect criticism from themselves. This passage in Matthew gives us the opportunity to reflect on our own behavior and ask, “Am I really concerned about something I’m criticizing, or is my objection simply a way to deflect from my own guilt?”
M T.
* * *
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
We are never without sin on this side of the Second Coming. Famed preacher of the early Church John Chrysostom made that clear:
For as one can never see the sea without waves, so neither such a soul without anxiety, despondency, and fear, and disturbance; yea, the second overtakes the first. (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol.10, p.254)
Martin Luther refers to the comfort that Jesus brings us, much like that of a friend:
Moreover, He [Christ] not only refreshes us in the anxiety and assaults of sin, but He will be with us in all other troubles; in hunger, war, famine, and whatever other tribulations which may come He will not leave us. (Luther’s Works, Vol.51, p.130)
Writer Elbert Hubbard says that, “A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.” Jesus is that kind of friend. Luther puts these words in Christ’s mouth:
If things go badly, I will give you the courage even to laugh about it; and if even though you walk on fiery coals, the torment shall nevertheless not be... so bad and you will rather feel that you are walking on roses. I will give you the heart to laugh. (Luther’s Works, Vol.51, p.392)
Mark E.
* * *
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
There is joy in having faith that does not try to explain everything – that does not try to prove God’s presence and love. I think about the faith of children – those who are not trying to prove anything but simply feel the joy of love and God’s presence. Visit a Sunday School class. Listen to the children sing “Jesus Loves Me” or “This Little Light of Mine.” Feel the joy. Feel the confidence. Feel the certainty that God hears the song and is present. Oh, that we adults would simplify our faith and just know God hears us, loves us, and blesses us.
Bonnie B.
I love Rivka (the Hebrew pronunciation of “Rebecca”). Every Rivka I’ve ever known was fearless, passionate, whip-smart, and spunky as anything. I’ve never met a submissive or wishy-washy Rivka, and it’s no wonder. Although the story of Rivka and Yitzhak’s betrothal is recounted in Genesis from the point of view of Abraham’s slave as if it were divine happenstance that brought Rivka to the well, I don’t believe it for a minute. I bet that Rivka had seen Abraham’s slave come and swear the oath to God and decided she was going to take her life into her own hands. Just as Song of Songs 2:8-13 recalls the lover hearing her beloved summon her, I think Rivka heard Abraham’s slave’s vow and recognized that God was giving her the opportunity to be the lover (note the active voice) responding to the summons of her beloved.
In a patriarchal society, where women were seen as property, Rivka acts with consistent confidence and self-assurance. After she has watered Abraham’s slave’s camels, the slave asks, “Whose daughter are you?” (Genesis 24:47) She knows what he means. She understands the importance and power her culture puts on men. She knows that what the slave is really asking is, “Who is your father?” But she answers with a fair amount of sass, “The daughter of Bethuel, son of Nahor, whom Milcah bore to him.” She names her mother, proudly and unashamed. She even phrases the answer in a way that emphasizes that ultimately, it was her mother who graciously bequeathed her child upon her father. Even more, Milcah in Hebrew means “Queen.” So, she names herself “daughter of Bethuel son of Nahor, whom a Queen bore to him.” It is as if she is saying, Yes, I am treated as the property of my father, but I am the descendant of a queen!
Then, on top of all that, it is Rivka who chooses to leave with Abraham’s slave over the protests of her family and Rivka who recognizes Yitzhak and decides that she will marry him by wrapping herself in her veil. Rivka is no quiet and submissive wallflower, content to have her future decided for her by men. She knows exactly who she is and who God has chosen her to be, one of the great matriarchs (in Hebrew, literally “mothers”) of Israel, the daughter of a queen, who herself will bear the queens of a nation!
M T.
* * *
Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67
Pew Research Center reported in 2018 that only half of U.S. adults today are married, down 9 percent over the past quarter century and dramatically different from the peak of 72 percent in 1960. Marriage and its popularity have fallen on hard times. This Lesson can be the antidote. Data from the General Social Survey in 2018 indicated nearly twice the number of those married are happy in comparison to those never married or divorced. Martin Luther offers a realistic assessment of what makes marriage good and how to make it better:
The affection with which we love our wives pleases God, although this is difficult for our depraved nature... to love a wife is not characteristic of our corrupt nature, but it is characteristic of our renewed and restored nature. (Luther’s Works, Vol.4, p.299)
Christians have some advantages in marriage. Billy Graham’s wife Ruth also had some sound advice: “A good marriage in the union of two good forgivers.” American Founder Benjamin Franklin offered similar wisdom, when he wrote, “You can bear your own faults, and why not a fault in your Wife.” (Writings, p.1259)
Mark E.
* * *
Song of Solomon 2:8-13
The illustrations above on marriage are valid for this text if it is used to inspire sermons on Christian marriage. But if you construe this text as its author probably did, as a testimony to our intimate union with God, then observations from Christian mystics beautifully illustrate the point. St. Teresa of Avila profoundly depicted her intimacy with our Lord:
The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it, even a large one. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God of his goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying.
Bernard of Clairvaux even yearned for more intimacy:
It is not given to everyone to say, “Let Him kiss me with the kiss of His Mouth” (1:2); but he who has but once received the spiritual kiss from the Mouth of Christ is urged by the experience most ardently to seek its repetition, and longs to taste the hidden manna once again. (Hugh Kerr, ed., Readings in Christian Thought, p.96)
How wonderful to yearn for and feel such intimacy with our loving Savior, to experience like Bernard Christ’s “entering into us.” Then like him we could speak of how the mind is drawn along by the ineffable sweetness of the word and, as it were, it is stolen from itself or better, it is rapt and remains out of itself there to enjoy the word. (Elmer O’Brien, ed., Varieties of Mystic Experience, p.106)
Mark E.
* * *
Zechariah 9:9-12, Psalm 145:8-14
The steadfast nature of God is present in both these readings. How have you experienced the steadfast love of God in your life? Today I am tormented by fear that my husband will not fully recover from a major circulatory problem. I am afraid he may lose a finger or his hand. I am worried that he will choose to go into hospice and renal failure rather than seek treatment. I am at the edge of tears and having trouble even drawing a deep breath. Yet, I read these passages and I know God is good. I now I am not alone. I know that God loves me and loves my husband. Whatever comes I can rest on God. Maybe I will be able to breathe now.
Bonnie B.
* * *
Romans 7:15-25
In the comic strip Peanuts, we see Linus sitting in front of the TV and Lucy, his older sister, standing behind him. At the top of her voice she screams, literally screams, “All right I give up!” She continues, with her mouth wide open as she continues to holler, “I can’t get along with my family!!” With an angry scowl, she turns and walks away yelling, “I give up!!” Linus, still sitting in front of the television, with a questionable look on his face, thinks to himself, and to the reader, “Where do you go to give up?”
Ron L.
* * *
Romans 7:15-25a
There are times Paul drives me crazy. I have to admit, however, I see myself and many of my fellow Christians in his confession about his inability to be who he wants to be, and his struggles that end up with him doing what he doesn’t want to do,
One magazine I read cover to cover is The New Yorker. I often clip articles that speak to me. The October 28, 2019 issue had one such article, “The Resistance,” by Jerome Groopman. Groopman had become a slave to his cell phone. Though he’d prided himself on his self-discipline, evidenced through his medical training, he couldn’t help constantly checking his email . How could he create better habits? Was will power enough?
Groopman reviewed several books on the subject of willpower. He learned that “To go about our lives, we need to make some behaviors automatic.” For instance, much of what’s involved in starting up a car is habit. He discovered that it’s not just a matter of resolving to do better, but altering our environment. As he put it, “…if we can make bad habits more inconvenient, then inertia can carry us in the direction of virtue, without ever requiring us to be strong.” He linked the decline in smoking, for instance, with the ban on smoking in most public places, the escalating cost of cigarettes, and the removal of cigarette ads from TV and radio, all of which made smoking harder.
The key “…lies not in breaking a habit through will power but in replacing one habit with another.” Identifying the trigger for a bad habit and replacing it with a different kind of reward can help us succeed.
My problem is eating and weight control, but evidently the lessons he learned apply to all the things we do that we don’t want to do. Will power may not be enough. We need to create circumstances that make it possible to succeed.
Frank R.
* * *
Romans 7:15-25a
Why do we do the things we don’t want to do? The seven-year-old child was asked by her mother, “Why did you push your little brother down?” Her answer? “I don’t know.” The student was asked by his teacher why he cheated on the math test. His answer? “I don’t know.” The young woman was questioned by her boss about why she was late for work. Her answer? “I don’t know.” The executive was asked by the press why he embezzled so much of the company’s profits. His answer? “I don’t know.”
“I don’t know why I do this.” It’s a statement used more often than we’d care to admit. Paul addressed that it’s a question with which he, too, wrestles. He does, though conclude that sin is responsible. (vs. 20) He also points to the remedy for the struggle. “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (vs. 24-25)
Bill T.
* * *
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
I must admit, I have never understood Jesus’s parable of the children in the marketplace, and every explanation I have read has a tendency to exhibit a kind of colonialist paternalism that I find distasteful. So, I want to set aside verses 16-18 and focus instead on 18-19, “For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!’” Here, Jesus points out the double-standard people in power adopt as a means of ignoring the cries of the oppressed.
There are numerous examples of this double-standard, some of which have surfaced recently. But, perhaps, the most common example of this double-standard can be seen through the proliferation of “whataboutism.” This logical fallacy and propaganda tactic, also known classically as a “tu quoque” or “the hypocrisy fallacy” was perfected by the former Soviet Union during the Cold War as a means of diffusing anti-Soviet criticism. For example, an American who criticized Soviet human rights abuses would be challenged with a “What about Americans lynching black people?” Similarly, an American official who spoke against Russian interference in Afghanistan would be met with a “Oh yeah? What about Nicaragua?” The point of these “what about” statements is to shut down conversation while preserving the status quo. There is no indication that Soviet officials are actually concerned about American racism or American interference in South and Central America. Rather, whataboutism is a tactic of neutralizing criticism by deflecting it.
A 2013 Atlantic article by Ogla Khazan includes an example of whataboutism in a Russian cartoon from 1967, so this phenomenon is hardly new. The problem with whataboutism, as Jesus explains in his own speech is that whataboutism has nothing to do with actually engaging the problem one brings up. It is only a means of a deflection. So, people who criticize John the Baptist for his ascetic practices and Jesus for his open-table policy aren’t actually interested in John’s diet or the guests at Jesus’s table. Rather, they point to these behaviors only in order to deflect criticism from themselves. This passage in Matthew gives us the opportunity to reflect on our own behavior and ask, “Am I really concerned about something I’m criticizing, or is my objection simply a way to deflect from my own guilt?”
M T.
* * *
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
We are never without sin on this side of the Second Coming. Famed preacher of the early Church John Chrysostom made that clear:
For as one can never see the sea without waves, so neither such a soul without anxiety, despondency, and fear, and disturbance; yea, the second overtakes the first. (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol.10, p.254)
Martin Luther refers to the comfort that Jesus brings us, much like that of a friend:
Moreover, He [Christ] not only refreshes us in the anxiety and assaults of sin, but He will be with us in all other troubles; in hunger, war, famine, and whatever other tribulations which may come He will not leave us. (Luther’s Works, Vol.51, p.130)
Writer Elbert Hubbard says that, “A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.” Jesus is that kind of friend. Luther puts these words in Christ’s mouth:
If things go badly, I will give you the courage even to laugh about it; and if even though you walk on fiery coals, the torment shall nevertheless not be... so bad and you will rather feel that you are walking on roses. I will give you the heart to laugh. (Luther’s Works, Vol.51, p.392)
Mark E.
* * *
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
There is joy in having faith that does not try to explain everything – that does not try to prove God’s presence and love. I think about the faith of children – those who are not trying to prove anything but simply feel the joy of love and God’s presence. Visit a Sunday School class. Listen to the children sing “Jesus Loves Me” or “This Little Light of Mine.” Feel the joy. Feel the confidence. Feel the certainty that God hears the song and is present. Oh, that we adults would simplify our faith and just know God hears us, loves us, and blesses us.
Bonnie B.
