Fourth Sunday Of Easter
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VI, Cycle C
Object:
COMMENTARY ON THE LESSONS
Lesson 1: Acts 9:36-43 (C)
This passage is something of a puzzler. Peter is reported to have resuscitated Tabitha (Dorcas), apparently after she had been dead for some time, inasmuch as he was not present at her death and had to be summoned. There are several possible explanations for this report. One, of course, is that it happened exactly as reported. I would like to believe that, but it raises some difficult questions: Why didn't they revive everyone who died? Is death, after all, a terrible thing, that Dorcas wasn't allowed to go on to what is next? Are we to expect such things today? In which case, why doesn't it seem to happen anymore?
Other explanations are possible. Dorcas could have been in a coma. The report could be an exaggeration. I have consulted several of my favorite commentaries and none of them comes to the point of saying what they think happened. Perhaps Theodore Parker Ferris said it as well as we can hope to do in his eisegesis on the passage in The Interpreter's Bible: "The miracles as we have them in the New Testament are the signs of the tremendous surplus and overflow of divine energy that had come into the world through Jesus and was being communicated to men through channels chosen by him. It was a sign of the language of its own day. The language of our day may differ, but the sign is the same -- new life as the result of the resurrection power."
That sort of begs the question as regards the question of whether Peter really brought Dorcas back from earthly death. Each of us is thrown back on our own faith, our own theology if you will. What we can say is that even though we have been taught that death is a friend at the right time, new life of a profound sort results when we accept Jesus as our Lord.
Lesson 1: Acts 13:14, 43-52 (RC); Acts 13:15-16, 26-33 (34-39) (E)
Paul and Barnabas make a failing attempt to persuade the Jewish people of Antioch of the salvation which could be theirs through Jesus Christ, whom they presented as the fulfillment of the Jewish messianic expectations. Rejected, Paul saw this as a calling to carry the word to the Gentiles. Despite the rejection and the threats which this rejection entailed, the Gentiles were filled with joy. One possible direction for a sermon would be to preach on the way the Holy Spirit sometimes either thwarts one set of plans in order to send us in a better direction, or at least the way in which the Holy Spirit uses our defeats to find yet better ways to achieve worthy goals.
Lesson 2: Revelation 7:9-17 (C, E); Revelation 7:9, 14-17 (RC)
This is profoundly beautiful poetry, perhaps an imaginative effort by the author to depict the promise of a marvelous eternity which is promised to everyone, people of all nations and ethnic origin. Two preaching themes occur to me. One is the emphasis on the final equality of all people. If, in the eyes of God, there are no differences among the people of creation, then we who claim the Christian faith as our own must surely rid ourselves of our prejudices as much as we can.
Having said that, I want to say that I'm writing this as the shocking savagery of the Albanians against the Kosovars is being brought to light. The oppressive regime of Milosovic has sickened the civilized world. Innocent people are being executed, women and children are forced to leave their homes, to walk endless miles through frigid mountain passes, making their way into Macedonia, going for days without food, without medical care. And this is only one of many places in the world where various forms of "ethnic cleansing" are taking place. It takes a lot of processing of one's Christian faith to find a rationale which could allow one to equate our Christian faith with the hateful value system of those people. But somewhere in there is a sermon.
A second sermon possibility is to struggle with the question of eternity. However, grand, generalized expressions of Christian expectations are of little help. A passage like this, while impressive poetry, says little as compared to the concrete promises of Jesus. I would at least couple this passage with something Jesus said about life after death.
Gospel: John 10:22-30 (C, E); John 10:27-30 (RC)
Jesus responds to the Jews when they ask for some clear and unequivocal claim that he is the messiah by refusing, by telling them that he has already been heard on the subject, and that if they truly wish to know who and what he is they have only to look at the "works" he has done. He further assures them that those who believe and follow him will be assured of the promise of eternal life.
This passage could be combined with the passage from Revelation 7:9-17. The subject could be eternity. By that I would be referring to life after death, since the idea of eternity is rather beyond me. It raises many philosophical questions for which we have no answers. Does it mean one lives forever? Is eternity a form of endless existence? Does the word describe a quality of conscious existence rather than mere duration? When does it start for the individual? Now? At time of death? At some future time when all will start together?
My choice for a sermon would be to use verse 25b: "The works that I do in my Father's name testify to me ..." So with us. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said something like this: "What you are speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say you are." Our claims to be Christians are far less convincing than are our actions and our attitudes. As one song puts the matter, "They will know we are Christians by our love."
SERMON SUGGESTIONS
Title: "Jesus, And The Newness Of Life"
Text: Acts 9:36-43
Theme: We can't know what, precisely, happened to explain this report. However, our own experience tells us that when Jesus is allowed to enter into our life experiences, newness of life is the unfailing result.
1. Jesus can bring new life into our marriages. Marriage, in truth, is difficult for nearly everyone. Once the euphoria of sexual attraction has settled down into its important but far from central role in a marriage, other matters like compatibility, values, personality differences, attitudes toward social life, family, the importance of vocation, plus the essential sex differences between men and women require a great deal of negotiation and compromise. Socrates once said that every man should marry. If it is a good marriage, he will be happy. If it is not, he will become a philosopher." (If that sounds politically incorrect, we could substitute "person" for "man.") Prayer, worship, and the values of our faith can make a great difference in marriage.
2. Jesus can bring new life to our inner life. I myself, when a young man, was troubled by anxiety attacks. Nothing helped until the night I turned the whole thing over to the Holy Spirit. I never had another attack. Depression, fear, anxiety, low self-esteem, loneliness, bitterness, all are responsive to the Holy Spirit's healing power.
3. Jesus can bring new life into our vocation. Every human being has a mission given by God. There are no bit players on the stage of life. My mission may be specific, as in the calling to the church ministry. Other people may take years to find where their skills, their talents, and their limitations best fit them. Once a person believes he or she is fulfilling a life mission, however humble it may be as the world measures such things, that person will begin to love what he does.
Title: "We Are One In The Spirit"
Text: Revelation 7:9-17
Theme: This fanciful depiction of a scene of gathering in which delegates of all human groupings join with angelic beings reminds us that God makes no distinction among the people of His creation. Blacks, Asians, Islanders, Caucasians, Jews, Muslims -- all of us are as one to God. This, then, is a call to root out prejudice from our own hearts. So far, we humans have found this an almost impossible undertaking. I have already said I simply can't make a place in my philosophy for any religion that would treat women like Muslims do, or for people like the Albanians at the moment, or African tribes which seek to destroy each other with no sign of compassion. But I have not lived where they lived, nor been imbued with hatred and unforgiveness. I do not pretend to know whether we Christians are just light years advanced beyond these people, or whether God is carrying out a variety of purposes by putting us all here. I do know that the ethic of love and compassion and forgiveness rings true for me, so the role of a Christian in trying to love and accept people whose ways are diametrically opposed to everything we believe is a challenging sermon opportunity indeed.
Title: "I Am What I Do"
Text: John 10:25b.
Theme: As suggested, my conduct and the motives which sponsor my conduct are the best indicators of my religious faith. Jesus once said, "Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord, will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of my Father." Indeed, one wishes it weren't true, but there are more than a few folks around who make great show of their Christianity while showing petty and unforgiving faces to the world. I have no right to make such a judgment of any one individual, but I know and you know it's true of many. I like something Victor Frankl wrote in his incomparable little book Man's Search For Meaning. Perhaps the reader will recall that Frankl spent three years in Auschwich concentration camp in Germany during the Nazi regime. His loved ones all died there. He survived, and began a new Theory of Psychology based on his observations while a prisoner. He observed that those who survived longest, were not the hardy, healthy people. They often died soonest. It was the people who had found a sense of meaning in life, people who retained feelings of love for others. He wrote this: "A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth -- that love is the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love." Amen.
1. The overriding ethic of the teachings of Jesus is love.
2. Love calls forth forgiveness.
3. Love always sacrifices and does not insist on its own way.
4. Love brings life which never will end.
ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS
In her memorable Gift From The Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh has many very practical words to speak to those who would have a happy marriage. While it's true that Jesus can bring new life to an endangered marriage, he does it by showing us how to make love practical. She writes: "How the table at home has grown! And how distracting it is, with four or five children, a telephone ringing in the hall, two or three school buses to catch, not to speak of the commuter's train. How all this separates one from one's husband and clogs up the pure relationship. But sitting at a table alone opposite each other, what is there to separate one? Nothing but a coffee pot, corn muffins and marmalade. A simple enough pleasure, surely, to have breakfast alone with one's husband, but how seldom we married people in the midst of life achieve it."
She then quotes the poet Auden on the natural human sin:
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
____________
Bruce Larson illustrated the way some people are interested only in themselves by telling of the time he went swimming off the coast of Florida and was swept out by the tide during some bad weather. He was unable to swim back to shore and only by frantic and exhausting effort was he able to tread water for a matter of hours, when finally someone saw him and rescued him. A day or so later, he ran into an acquaintance who asked Bruce what was new in his life. Bruce replied about like this: "Well, yesterday, I was swept out to sea and was almost drowned." "Really?" the other man replied, then proceeded to describe some mundane experience of his own. Many people are like this. No sincere interest in other people unless they have something to gain from them. True Christian spirit and true love involves genuinely listening to other people, trying to sense what they're feeling as well as what they're saying.
____________
Leslie Weatherhead told of the time he was invited to share a meal with a farm family outside London during a time of food scarcity during World War II. When the meal was over, Weatherhead commended the wife for the wonderful meal, which included fresh trout from a nearby stream. "My husband never says things like that," the wife replied with a smile. Weatherhead, embarrassed, feared the husband would be upset with him. But the husband seemed unperturbed. He merely said, "Ay, luv, I would soon tell ye if I didn't like it." (re: the way some people take loved ones for granted, never telling them how much they are loved and appreciated)
____________
The following appeared in Christian Century: "Her obituary failed to give the cause of death. But it was slow as time moves for the old. We watched it from the start, the gradual change brought on when family visits slowed, and friends began to find it difficult to come. Some cards were sent, but dwindled to a few. And she began to spend the time she had in rearranging tissues, brush, and comb in the small table standing near her bed. We guessed she just ran out of things to do with trinkets she moved back and forth, in and out. Because at last, she sighed and closed her eyes as if it didn't matter all that much, one day, just after visiting hours were over."
____________
The History Of A Lie
First somebody told it.
Then the room wouldn't hold it.
So the busy tongues rolled it
Till they got it outside.
Then the crowd came across it,
And never once lost it,
But tossed it and tossed it,
Till it grew long and wide.
This lie brought forth others,
Evil sisters and brothers,
And fathers and mothers,
A terrible crew.
As headlong they hurried,
The people they flurried,
And troubled and worried,
As lies always do.
So evil-boded,
This monstrous lie goaded,
Till at last it exploded
In sin and in shame.
But from mud and from mire,
The pieces flew higher,
Till they hit the sad liar
And killed his good name.
____________
Psalm Of The Day
Psalm 23 -- "The Lord is my shepherd."
Prayer Of The Day
Guard me from the hypocrisy of pretending to be something I am not, O God. Help me find the strength within to live by what I claim to believe, to emulate the life of Jesus as much as in me lies. And forgive my failures I pray, as I try to grow into my Christian faith. Amen.
Lesson 1: Acts 9:36-43 (C)
This passage is something of a puzzler. Peter is reported to have resuscitated Tabitha (Dorcas), apparently after she had been dead for some time, inasmuch as he was not present at her death and had to be summoned. There are several possible explanations for this report. One, of course, is that it happened exactly as reported. I would like to believe that, but it raises some difficult questions: Why didn't they revive everyone who died? Is death, after all, a terrible thing, that Dorcas wasn't allowed to go on to what is next? Are we to expect such things today? In which case, why doesn't it seem to happen anymore?
Other explanations are possible. Dorcas could have been in a coma. The report could be an exaggeration. I have consulted several of my favorite commentaries and none of them comes to the point of saying what they think happened. Perhaps Theodore Parker Ferris said it as well as we can hope to do in his eisegesis on the passage in The Interpreter's Bible: "The miracles as we have them in the New Testament are the signs of the tremendous surplus and overflow of divine energy that had come into the world through Jesus and was being communicated to men through channels chosen by him. It was a sign of the language of its own day. The language of our day may differ, but the sign is the same -- new life as the result of the resurrection power."
That sort of begs the question as regards the question of whether Peter really brought Dorcas back from earthly death. Each of us is thrown back on our own faith, our own theology if you will. What we can say is that even though we have been taught that death is a friend at the right time, new life of a profound sort results when we accept Jesus as our Lord.
Lesson 1: Acts 13:14, 43-52 (RC); Acts 13:15-16, 26-33 (34-39) (E)
Paul and Barnabas make a failing attempt to persuade the Jewish people of Antioch of the salvation which could be theirs through Jesus Christ, whom they presented as the fulfillment of the Jewish messianic expectations. Rejected, Paul saw this as a calling to carry the word to the Gentiles. Despite the rejection and the threats which this rejection entailed, the Gentiles were filled with joy. One possible direction for a sermon would be to preach on the way the Holy Spirit sometimes either thwarts one set of plans in order to send us in a better direction, or at least the way in which the Holy Spirit uses our defeats to find yet better ways to achieve worthy goals.
Lesson 2: Revelation 7:9-17 (C, E); Revelation 7:9, 14-17 (RC)
This is profoundly beautiful poetry, perhaps an imaginative effort by the author to depict the promise of a marvelous eternity which is promised to everyone, people of all nations and ethnic origin. Two preaching themes occur to me. One is the emphasis on the final equality of all people. If, in the eyes of God, there are no differences among the people of creation, then we who claim the Christian faith as our own must surely rid ourselves of our prejudices as much as we can.
Having said that, I want to say that I'm writing this as the shocking savagery of the Albanians against the Kosovars is being brought to light. The oppressive regime of Milosovic has sickened the civilized world. Innocent people are being executed, women and children are forced to leave their homes, to walk endless miles through frigid mountain passes, making their way into Macedonia, going for days without food, without medical care. And this is only one of many places in the world where various forms of "ethnic cleansing" are taking place. It takes a lot of processing of one's Christian faith to find a rationale which could allow one to equate our Christian faith with the hateful value system of those people. But somewhere in there is a sermon.
A second sermon possibility is to struggle with the question of eternity. However, grand, generalized expressions of Christian expectations are of little help. A passage like this, while impressive poetry, says little as compared to the concrete promises of Jesus. I would at least couple this passage with something Jesus said about life after death.
Gospel: John 10:22-30 (C, E); John 10:27-30 (RC)
Jesus responds to the Jews when they ask for some clear and unequivocal claim that he is the messiah by refusing, by telling them that he has already been heard on the subject, and that if they truly wish to know who and what he is they have only to look at the "works" he has done. He further assures them that those who believe and follow him will be assured of the promise of eternal life.
This passage could be combined with the passage from Revelation 7:9-17. The subject could be eternity. By that I would be referring to life after death, since the idea of eternity is rather beyond me. It raises many philosophical questions for which we have no answers. Does it mean one lives forever? Is eternity a form of endless existence? Does the word describe a quality of conscious existence rather than mere duration? When does it start for the individual? Now? At time of death? At some future time when all will start together?
My choice for a sermon would be to use verse 25b: "The works that I do in my Father's name testify to me ..." So with us. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said something like this: "What you are speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say you are." Our claims to be Christians are far less convincing than are our actions and our attitudes. As one song puts the matter, "They will know we are Christians by our love."
SERMON SUGGESTIONS
Title: "Jesus, And The Newness Of Life"
Text: Acts 9:36-43
Theme: We can't know what, precisely, happened to explain this report. However, our own experience tells us that when Jesus is allowed to enter into our life experiences, newness of life is the unfailing result.
1. Jesus can bring new life into our marriages. Marriage, in truth, is difficult for nearly everyone. Once the euphoria of sexual attraction has settled down into its important but far from central role in a marriage, other matters like compatibility, values, personality differences, attitudes toward social life, family, the importance of vocation, plus the essential sex differences between men and women require a great deal of negotiation and compromise. Socrates once said that every man should marry. If it is a good marriage, he will be happy. If it is not, he will become a philosopher." (If that sounds politically incorrect, we could substitute "person" for "man.") Prayer, worship, and the values of our faith can make a great difference in marriage.
2. Jesus can bring new life to our inner life. I myself, when a young man, was troubled by anxiety attacks. Nothing helped until the night I turned the whole thing over to the Holy Spirit. I never had another attack. Depression, fear, anxiety, low self-esteem, loneliness, bitterness, all are responsive to the Holy Spirit's healing power.
3. Jesus can bring new life into our vocation. Every human being has a mission given by God. There are no bit players on the stage of life. My mission may be specific, as in the calling to the church ministry. Other people may take years to find where their skills, their talents, and their limitations best fit them. Once a person believes he or she is fulfilling a life mission, however humble it may be as the world measures such things, that person will begin to love what he does.
Title: "We Are One In The Spirit"
Text: Revelation 7:9-17
Theme: This fanciful depiction of a scene of gathering in which delegates of all human groupings join with angelic beings reminds us that God makes no distinction among the people of His creation. Blacks, Asians, Islanders, Caucasians, Jews, Muslims -- all of us are as one to God. This, then, is a call to root out prejudice from our own hearts. So far, we humans have found this an almost impossible undertaking. I have already said I simply can't make a place in my philosophy for any religion that would treat women like Muslims do, or for people like the Albanians at the moment, or African tribes which seek to destroy each other with no sign of compassion. But I have not lived where they lived, nor been imbued with hatred and unforgiveness. I do not pretend to know whether we Christians are just light years advanced beyond these people, or whether God is carrying out a variety of purposes by putting us all here. I do know that the ethic of love and compassion and forgiveness rings true for me, so the role of a Christian in trying to love and accept people whose ways are diametrically opposed to everything we believe is a challenging sermon opportunity indeed.
Title: "I Am What I Do"
Text: John 10:25b.
Theme: As suggested, my conduct and the motives which sponsor my conduct are the best indicators of my religious faith. Jesus once said, "Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord, will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of my Father." Indeed, one wishes it weren't true, but there are more than a few folks around who make great show of their Christianity while showing petty and unforgiving faces to the world. I have no right to make such a judgment of any one individual, but I know and you know it's true of many. I like something Victor Frankl wrote in his incomparable little book Man's Search For Meaning. Perhaps the reader will recall that Frankl spent three years in Auschwich concentration camp in Germany during the Nazi regime. His loved ones all died there. He survived, and began a new Theory of Psychology based on his observations while a prisoner. He observed that those who survived longest, were not the hardy, healthy people. They often died soonest. It was the people who had found a sense of meaning in life, people who retained feelings of love for others. He wrote this: "A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth -- that love is the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love." Amen.
1. The overriding ethic of the teachings of Jesus is love.
2. Love calls forth forgiveness.
3. Love always sacrifices and does not insist on its own way.
4. Love brings life which never will end.
ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS
In her memorable Gift From The Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh has many very practical words to speak to those who would have a happy marriage. While it's true that Jesus can bring new life to an endangered marriage, he does it by showing us how to make love practical. She writes: "How the table at home has grown! And how distracting it is, with four or five children, a telephone ringing in the hall, two or three school buses to catch, not to speak of the commuter's train. How all this separates one from one's husband and clogs up the pure relationship. But sitting at a table alone opposite each other, what is there to separate one? Nothing but a coffee pot, corn muffins and marmalade. A simple enough pleasure, surely, to have breakfast alone with one's husband, but how seldom we married people in the midst of life achieve it."
She then quotes the poet Auden on the natural human sin:
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
____________
Bruce Larson illustrated the way some people are interested only in themselves by telling of the time he went swimming off the coast of Florida and was swept out by the tide during some bad weather. He was unable to swim back to shore and only by frantic and exhausting effort was he able to tread water for a matter of hours, when finally someone saw him and rescued him. A day or so later, he ran into an acquaintance who asked Bruce what was new in his life. Bruce replied about like this: "Well, yesterday, I was swept out to sea and was almost drowned." "Really?" the other man replied, then proceeded to describe some mundane experience of his own. Many people are like this. No sincere interest in other people unless they have something to gain from them. True Christian spirit and true love involves genuinely listening to other people, trying to sense what they're feeling as well as what they're saying.
____________
Leslie Weatherhead told of the time he was invited to share a meal with a farm family outside London during a time of food scarcity during World War II. When the meal was over, Weatherhead commended the wife for the wonderful meal, which included fresh trout from a nearby stream. "My husband never says things like that," the wife replied with a smile. Weatherhead, embarrassed, feared the husband would be upset with him. But the husband seemed unperturbed. He merely said, "Ay, luv, I would soon tell ye if I didn't like it." (re: the way some people take loved ones for granted, never telling them how much they are loved and appreciated)
____________
The following appeared in Christian Century: "Her obituary failed to give the cause of death. But it was slow as time moves for the old. We watched it from the start, the gradual change brought on when family visits slowed, and friends began to find it difficult to come. Some cards were sent, but dwindled to a few. And she began to spend the time she had in rearranging tissues, brush, and comb in the small table standing near her bed. We guessed she just ran out of things to do with trinkets she moved back and forth, in and out. Because at last, she sighed and closed her eyes as if it didn't matter all that much, one day, just after visiting hours were over."
____________
The History Of A Lie
First somebody told it.
Then the room wouldn't hold it.
So the busy tongues rolled it
Till they got it outside.
Then the crowd came across it,
And never once lost it,
But tossed it and tossed it,
Till it grew long and wide.
This lie brought forth others,
Evil sisters and brothers,
And fathers and mothers,
A terrible crew.
As headlong they hurried,
The people they flurried,
And troubled and worried,
As lies always do.
So evil-boded,
This monstrous lie goaded,
Till at last it exploded
In sin and in shame.
But from mud and from mire,
The pieces flew higher,
Till they hit the sad liar
And killed his good name.
____________
Psalm Of The Day
Psalm 23 -- "The Lord is my shepherd."
Prayer Of The Day
Guard me from the hypocrisy of pretending to be something I am not, O God. Help me find the strength within to live by what I claim to believe, to emulate the life of Jesus as much as in me lies. And forgive my failures I pray, as I try to grow into my Christian faith. Amen.
