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Hating Enough To Love Completely

Children's sermon
Illustration
Preaching
Sermon
Worship
Proper 18 | Ordinary Time 23 - C
Luke 14:25-33
Philemon 1:1-21
Jeremiah 18:1-11
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
Mary Austin
Kate Murphy
George Reed
Ron Love
Jesus stuns us this week with some words that seem at first hearing to denigrate the role of the family when he says that "whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple." Of course, he is really trying to give his followers an unvarnished look at the steep cost of discipleship -- but given how the family unit is a basic pillar of our society (especially in our congregations), these words may strike many of our people as tin-eared and even borderline heretical.
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Object: Two small containers or boxes and several pieces of paper. I used two shoe boxes with lids and about fifty pieces of used printer paper. Label one box “Judge” and the other box “Not Judge.”

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I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. (v. 4)

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Those two words warn us not to read, listen, or watch any further. Something crucial about a book, show, film, or fact is about to be revealed, and we’re being told if we want to be surprised when we finally get around to reading or watching we’d better stop listening right now.

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Frank Ramirez
Mark Ellingsen
Bill Thomas
Bonnie Bates
Genesis 45:3-11, 15
Christal Berns wrote, in a May 23, 2023, article for Christian Learning, about Jacksonville, FL police officer Ike Brown. On May 27, 2002, Brown received heartbreaking news from his colleagues. His sergeant, lieutenant, chief, and chaplain came to his home and told him his son had lost his life in a shooting incident.
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We all believe in justice; we all cry out to have our rights protected. Yet the power of revenge eventually takes us beyond where any of us truly want to go, for two reasons.

First of all, because of sin, we tend to be more zealous in our vindictiveness than we are in our love. I am much quicker to strike out at someone else and seek revenge against him for what he’s done to me, than I am to be that righteous myself.

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Some years back, there was a best-selling book that got a lot of attention in the church, one written by a rabbi, Harold Kushner. The book was called When Bad Things Happen to Good People (HarperCollins, 1982). It is an honest attempt to grapple with the problem of evil. Why is it, Rabbi Kushner wants to know, that good and faithful people sometimes have to suffer?

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Sibling rivalry. It's the pits. It has been around as long as there have been siblings around. Beginning with Cain and Abel, we see one brother disgruntled because God likes the other brother's sacrificial offering better. We remember, too, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Rachel and Leah, the prodigal son and his older brother. Life is not fair.
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When a person enters into any society or any fellowship, he takes upon himself the obligations to live a certain way, by certain standards. If the person fails to live the kind of life necessary, he hinders the purpose of the society.

Once we make the claim that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true then a claim is put on our lives. In today's Scripture lesson, Jesus sets down behavior patterns for kingdom people.

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