Sermon Illustrations for Proper 24 | Ordinary Time 29 (2021)
Illustration
Job 38:1-7 (34-41)
There are a total of 39 questions in Job chapter 38, more than any other chapter of the Bible. It is God’s reply to Job’s situation and addresses his sovereignty.
Paul Harvey told a story of God’s providential care over thousands of allied prisoners during World War II, many of whom were Christians. A US bomber took off from Guam headed for Kokura, Japan, with a deadly cargo. Because clouds covered the target area, the sleek B-29 circled for nearly an hour until its fuel supply reached the danger point. The captain and crew, frustrated because they were right over the primary target yet not able to fulfill their mission, finally decided they had better go for the secondary target. Changing course, they found that the sky was clear. The command was given, “Bombs away!” and the B-29 headed for its home base.
Later an officer received some startling information from military intelligence. Just one week before that bombing mission, the Japanese had transferred one of their largest concentrations of captured Americans to the city of Kokura. Upon reading this, the officer exclaimed, “Thank God for that protecting cloud! If the city hadn’t been hidden from the bomber, it would have been destroyed and thousands of American boys would have died.”
God is in control, even when we don’t see it or understand. Joni Eareckson Tada once wrote, “Nothing is a surprise to God; nothing is a setback to his plans; nothing can thwart his purposes; and nothing is beyond his control. His sovereignty is absolute. Everything that happens is uniquely ordained by God. Sovereignty is a weighty thing to ascribe to the nature and character of God. Yet if he were not sovereign, he would not be God. The Bible is clear that God is in control of everything that happens.”
Bill T.
* * *
Job 38:1-7 (34-41)
In this section, God is describing the natural universe. God makes it clear that there are great stretches of history without humanity – “Where were you when…?“ God asks at several points, describing the creation of the world. It’s a reminder that God was there, and we weren’t. Indeed, the more we study the universe, from the interior of the atom to the galaxies most distant in both distance and time, the greater appreciation we have for the gap between ourselves and our Creator.
Some people interpret these questions as part of a series of running insults God addresses to Job. But when God speaks out of the whirlwind God neither challenges Job’s claim for innocence, nor does God condemn Job.
But when God addresses Job with the words sometimes translated “Gird up your loins like a man....(38:3) he is addressing Job as a gabor, a warrior, one who is strong enough to take this awe-inspiring vision of “the whole infinity of the universe” and his place in it. “Gird up your loins like a warrior.” (See Job 38:3 and 40:7) Instead of using simpler terms for a man, ish or enosh in Hebrew, God addresses Job as a gabor, a warrior. God is saying Job is up to confronting reality. God has, in effect, told him to pull up his big girl panties, as the saying goes, and after seeing the big picture, “the whole infinity of the universe,” Job emerges with a new perspective.
God’s speech about creation includes thirty nouns and verbs used by Job in the third chapter, when he calls out God and claims he is innocent. This demonstrates that God has been listening!
God is also stating that we’re capable of understanding what is being said, and as we plumb the heighth, depth, and width of the universe, we can share the awe Job must have felt as God invited him to look beyond himself to the great universe God has created.
When we are in a precarious state, when we hover between life and death, we are being asked to consider that we have been, and are, part of something magnificently greater than ourselves.
Frank R.
* * *
Hebrews 5:1-10
“Every high priest chosen from among mortals is put in charge of things pertaining to God on their behalf, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He is able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward since he himself is subject to weakness; and because of this he must offer sacrifice for his own sins as well as for those of the people.” The passage continues to call Jesus the high priest, the one whose heart and actions align most clearly with God. As a judicatory pastor in the United Church of Christ, I often have conversations with local church pastors who are struggling to deal gently with those who are antagonistic or hostile to them or others within the congregation. They struggle to emulate Jesus in their actions. We talk and pray together as we strive and move as closely as we can with the will of God. We speak truth in love, using all our kindness, compassion, and generosity in these situations. We fall short, of course, but we learn much in the striving.
Bonnie B.
* * *
Hebrews 5:1-10
Christians have someone who risked his life for us! What an awesome way of thinking about Christ’s death and resurrection. Martin Luther reveled in this amazing love that God in Christ has for us:
Let us therefore, open our eyes and behold Christ our high priest, in his proper priestly garment and at his proper priestly work... His other ornament is that great love he has for us which makes him care so little about his [own] life, His sufferings, almost forgetting them in the heartfelt interest he takes in our condition and in our need and praying for us rather than himself. (Sermons on the Passion of Christ, pp.178-179)
This first reformer added elsewhere that all our works and deeds are like little sparks. But by contrast the love of God is like an immeasurable sea. The little sparks have no chance to survive in that ocean. (Luther’s Works, Vol.17, p.223)
Mark E.
* * *
Mark 10:35-45
Gary Inrig, in his book A Call to Excellence, writes about the humility of the great evangelist Dwight L. Moody.
A large group of European pastors came to one of D. L. Moody’s Northfield Bible Conferences in Massachusetts in the late 1800’s. Following the European custom of the time, each guest put his shoes outside his room to be cleaned by the hall servants overnight. This was, however, America and there were no hall servants.
Walking the dormitory halls that night, Moody saw the shoes and determined not to embarrass his brothers. He mentioned the need to some ministerial students who were there but met with only silence. Then, Moody, himself, returned to the dorm, gathered up the shoes, and began to clean and polish them. Only the unexpected arrival of a friend in the midst of the work revealed the secret.
When the foreign visitors opened their doors the next morning, their shoes were shined. They never knew by whom. Moody told no one, but his friend told a few people, and during the rest of the conference, different men volunteered to shine the shoes in secret.
In this text, Jesus makes it clear to his squabbing disciples just who is great. “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all” (vs. 43-44).
Bill T.
* * *
Mark 10:35-45
In 108 AD, Ignatius, the overseer of the congregation of Christians in Antioch, was arrested and condemned to be cast to the wild beasts for the entertainment of the cheering crowds in the coliseum in Rome. The cruelty of his sentence was intensified by the long wait before its implementation during his journey from Asia Minor to Rome via a ship which made several stops along the way to his fatal destination. Along the way, his guards tormented him.
During those several stops, Ignatius was able to meet delegations of Christians, to whom he would later write letters of encouragement.
Ignatius also wrote ahead to the Christians in Rome, asking not for rescue but entreating them to pray for him to be strong enough to endure his bloody execution. “This one thing — pray for me to be strong inwardly and outwardly, in order that I not only speak, but have the will, so that I will not only be called a Christian but be found one.” (Ignatius to the Romans 3:2)not sure what this reference is talking about?
In today’s passage, Jesus scolds the apostles who thought the trip to Jerusalem would end with him on a worldly throne and wished to sit at his right and left hand. “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with (10:38)?”
Are we?
Frank R.
There are a total of 39 questions in Job chapter 38, more than any other chapter of the Bible. It is God’s reply to Job’s situation and addresses his sovereignty.
Paul Harvey told a story of God’s providential care over thousands of allied prisoners during World War II, many of whom were Christians. A US bomber took off from Guam headed for Kokura, Japan, with a deadly cargo. Because clouds covered the target area, the sleek B-29 circled for nearly an hour until its fuel supply reached the danger point. The captain and crew, frustrated because they were right over the primary target yet not able to fulfill their mission, finally decided they had better go for the secondary target. Changing course, they found that the sky was clear. The command was given, “Bombs away!” and the B-29 headed for its home base.
Later an officer received some startling information from military intelligence. Just one week before that bombing mission, the Japanese had transferred one of their largest concentrations of captured Americans to the city of Kokura. Upon reading this, the officer exclaimed, “Thank God for that protecting cloud! If the city hadn’t been hidden from the bomber, it would have been destroyed and thousands of American boys would have died.”
God is in control, even when we don’t see it or understand. Joni Eareckson Tada once wrote, “Nothing is a surprise to God; nothing is a setback to his plans; nothing can thwart his purposes; and nothing is beyond his control. His sovereignty is absolute. Everything that happens is uniquely ordained by God. Sovereignty is a weighty thing to ascribe to the nature and character of God. Yet if he were not sovereign, he would not be God. The Bible is clear that God is in control of everything that happens.”
Bill T.
* * *
Job 38:1-7 (34-41)
In this section, God is describing the natural universe. God makes it clear that there are great stretches of history without humanity – “Where were you when…?“ God asks at several points, describing the creation of the world. It’s a reminder that God was there, and we weren’t. Indeed, the more we study the universe, from the interior of the atom to the galaxies most distant in both distance and time, the greater appreciation we have for the gap between ourselves and our Creator.
Some people interpret these questions as part of a series of running insults God addresses to Job. But when God speaks out of the whirlwind God neither challenges Job’s claim for innocence, nor does God condemn Job.
But when God addresses Job with the words sometimes translated “Gird up your loins like a man....(38:3) he is addressing Job as a gabor, a warrior, one who is strong enough to take this awe-inspiring vision of “the whole infinity of the universe” and his place in it. “Gird up your loins like a warrior.” (See Job 38:3 and 40:7) Instead of using simpler terms for a man, ish or enosh in Hebrew, God addresses Job as a gabor, a warrior. God is saying Job is up to confronting reality. God has, in effect, told him to pull up his big girl panties, as the saying goes, and after seeing the big picture, “the whole infinity of the universe,” Job emerges with a new perspective.
God’s speech about creation includes thirty nouns and verbs used by Job in the third chapter, when he calls out God and claims he is innocent. This demonstrates that God has been listening!
God is also stating that we’re capable of understanding what is being said, and as we plumb the heighth, depth, and width of the universe, we can share the awe Job must have felt as God invited him to look beyond himself to the great universe God has created.
When we are in a precarious state, when we hover between life and death, we are being asked to consider that we have been, and are, part of something magnificently greater than ourselves.
Frank R.
* * *
Hebrews 5:1-10
“Every high priest chosen from among mortals is put in charge of things pertaining to God on their behalf, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He is able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward since he himself is subject to weakness; and because of this he must offer sacrifice for his own sins as well as for those of the people.” The passage continues to call Jesus the high priest, the one whose heart and actions align most clearly with God. As a judicatory pastor in the United Church of Christ, I often have conversations with local church pastors who are struggling to deal gently with those who are antagonistic or hostile to them or others within the congregation. They struggle to emulate Jesus in their actions. We talk and pray together as we strive and move as closely as we can with the will of God. We speak truth in love, using all our kindness, compassion, and generosity in these situations. We fall short, of course, but we learn much in the striving.
Bonnie B.
* * *
Hebrews 5:1-10
Christians have someone who risked his life for us! What an awesome way of thinking about Christ’s death and resurrection. Martin Luther reveled in this amazing love that God in Christ has for us:
Let us therefore, open our eyes and behold Christ our high priest, in his proper priestly garment and at his proper priestly work... His other ornament is that great love he has for us which makes him care so little about his [own] life, His sufferings, almost forgetting them in the heartfelt interest he takes in our condition and in our need and praying for us rather than himself. (Sermons on the Passion of Christ, pp.178-179)
This first reformer added elsewhere that all our works and deeds are like little sparks. But by contrast the love of God is like an immeasurable sea. The little sparks have no chance to survive in that ocean. (Luther’s Works, Vol.17, p.223)
Mark E.
* * *
Mark 10:35-45
Gary Inrig, in his book A Call to Excellence, writes about the humility of the great evangelist Dwight L. Moody.
A large group of European pastors came to one of D. L. Moody’s Northfield Bible Conferences in Massachusetts in the late 1800’s. Following the European custom of the time, each guest put his shoes outside his room to be cleaned by the hall servants overnight. This was, however, America and there were no hall servants.
Walking the dormitory halls that night, Moody saw the shoes and determined not to embarrass his brothers. He mentioned the need to some ministerial students who were there but met with only silence. Then, Moody, himself, returned to the dorm, gathered up the shoes, and began to clean and polish them. Only the unexpected arrival of a friend in the midst of the work revealed the secret.
When the foreign visitors opened their doors the next morning, their shoes were shined. They never knew by whom. Moody told no one, but his friend told a few people, and during the rest of the conference, different men volunteered to shine the shoes in secret.
In this text, Jesus makes it clear to his squabbing disciples just who is great. “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all” (vs. 43-44).
Bill T.
* * *
Mark 10:35-45
In 108 AD, Ignatius, the overseer of the congregation of Christians in Antioch, was arrested and condemned to be cast to the wild beasts for the entertainment of the cheering crowds in the coliseum in Rome. The cruelty of his sentence was intensified by the long wait before its implementation during his journey from Asia Minor to Rome via a ship which made several stops along the way to his fatal destination. Along the way, his guards tormented him.
During those several stops, Ignatius was able to meet delegations of Christians, to whom he would later write letters of encouragement.
Ignatius also wrote ahead to the Christians in Rome, asking not for rescue but entreating them to pray for him to be strong enough to endure his bloody execution. “This one thing — pray for me to be strong inwardly and outwardly, in order that I not only speak, but have the will, so that I will not only be called a Christian but be found one.” (Ignatius to the Romans 3:2)not sure what this reference is talking about?
In today’s passage, Jesus scolds the apostles who thought the trip to Jerusalem would end with him on a worldly throne and wished to sit at his right and left hand. “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with (10:38)?”
Are we?
Frank R.
