Pride
Sermon
SEASONINGS FOR SERMONS
The story is told of a proud woodpecker who was tapping away at a dead tree when the sky unexpectedly turned black and the thunder began to roll. Undaunted, he went right on working. Suddenly a bolt of lighting struck the old tree, splintering it into hundreds of pieces. Startled but unhurt, the haughty bird flew off, screeching to his feathered friends, "Hey, everyone, look what I did! Look what I did."
This old woodpecker reminds us of people who think more highly of themselves than they should, who take credit that belongs elsewhere and fail to recognize God as the source of all their abilities.
The legend in Greek mythology of Icarus, the craftsman, has special meaning for us. After he was taken prisoner, he made wings out of feathers and fastened them together with wax. As he flew away to freedom he was warned not to fly too close to the sun lest the wax in the wings would melt. But when he was at a safe distance, he got to thinking about how clever was his escape and what a brilliant future he had. With bursting pride he soared high in the heavens until the sun melted the wax and he fell to destruction in the sea.
Priorities
The story is told of a woman at the spring doing her week's washing. Suddenly she looked up from her washboard to see her home engulfed in flames. She dropped her washing, hurried into the house and brought out an armful of quilts. Back she went to drag out some pillows. Next she lugged out a bed. Then the house reeled, staggered and cracked into ruins. But louder than the crash of the falling building was the wail of the woman as she realized too late her little child was asleep in the house.
It was surely no harm for this woman to have saved quilts, pillows, and beds but for her to become so absorbed in such a task as to forget her child was sheer tragedy. How often we allow the best to be crowded out by the second best. "And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit."
Often we keep the oyster and throw away the pearl.
Purpose
In the movie, "Bonnie and Clyde," the two have been on the run for some time when Bonnie Parker says to Clyde Barrow, "When we started out, I thought we were going somewhere but we are just going."
In one of George Moore's novels, he tells of Irish peasants in the period of the great depression who were put to work building roads. For a time the men worked well, sang their songs, and were glad to have jobs. But little by little they discovered the roads they were building led nowhere, ran out in dreary bogs, and stopped. As the truth dawned on them they had been put to work solely to provide employment and as an excuse for feeding them, the men grew listless and stopped singing. Commenting on the incident, George Moore said, "The roads to nowhere are difficult to make. For a man to work well and sing, there must be an end in view."
He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.
- Nietzsche
Realism
Blessed are the realistic for they shall be called - and often.
How deaf and stupid I have been, he thought, walking on quickly. When anyone reads anything which he wishes to study, he does not despise the letters and punctuation marks, and call them illusion, chance, and worthless shells, but he reads them, he studies them, letter by letter. But I, who wished to read the book of the world and the book of my own nature, did presume to despise the letters and signs. I called the world of appearances, illusion. I called my eyes and tongue, chance. Now it is over; I have awakened. I have indeed awakened and have only been born today.
- Herman Hesse, Siddhartha, p. 32.
Reason
He that will not reason is a bigot.
He that cannot reason is a fool
He that does not reason is a slave.
- Anonymous
Reconciliation
I am amazed but not amused that church people have little theology of reconciliation. For many, church is preaching, singing, taking up a collection, and attending meetings. Reconciliation talk will be tolerated if it's across the world kind but when you speak of building bridges across chasms that separate people in the same church communion, you've quit preachin' and gone to meddlin'.
In the London Museum there is the painting of a World War I soldier on the ground attempting to splice two ends of a communication line. The painting is entitled, "Through." The business of the church is to get people "through" to each other.
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had been at odds for eleven years. On September 10, 1816, in the twilight of life, Adams wrote Jefferson a letter in which he said, "You and I ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other."
In a book issued to Army non-coms, there is an item telling how to bring two men together who have quarreled. It's delightfully simple - just put both to washing the same window, one inside, the other outside. Looking at each other, they soon have to laugh, and the quarrel is forgotten.
Redemption
There is a Hasidic story of a rabbi who moved to Palestine to be right on the spot in case the Messiah should come while he lived. Sure enough, on a certain day, the rabbi heard the sound of a trumpet from the Mount of Olives, which is the traditional signal for the Messiah's coming. What the rabbi didn't know is the trumpet had been blown by a prankster playing a joke. The rabbi rushed to his window to look upon a redeemed world, only to see a man in the street beating his donkey. He sighed, "False alarm. As long as people still beat their donkeys, the world cannot be redeemed." If we punish our environment, our fellows, ourselves, are we redeemed?
I saw a cartoon of young George Washington alongside a whole forest of cherry tree stumps. The caption:
"I know you admit it
but when are you going to quit it?"
Confession is admitting it; redemption is quitting it.
Relationship
In Herman Hesse's Beneath the Wheel, there is one who lives in the dormitory, a little fellow named Hiridinger. It was said he was so quiet that only his departure made people take notice of him, and then not for long. The world is full of people who go unnoticed unless we deposit that bit of honey in their lives that is relationship.
- Herman Hesse, Beneath the Wheel, p. 103
I guess I'd rather be famous than infamous, but actually money and fame and the rest of it don't impress me much. About all that really impresses me is human kindness and warm relationships with good friends.
- Robert Frost
Elizabeth O'Conner, in Journey Inward, Journey Outward, speaks of our need for three types of relationships. We need those who are further along the way, who give us hints of the next step. We need those who are our peers, with whom we share mutual discovery. We need those who are not so advanced, friends we can nourish and sustain.
- Elizabeth O'Connor, Journey Inward, Journey Outward, p. 110
Dismayed by the size of the Great Dane given him for his birthday, a small boy asked, "Is he for me or am I for him?" My fellow pilgrims, we are for one another.
Søren Kierkegaard implored us to have an absolute relationship to the absolute and a relative relationship to all else.
Repentance
After the betrayal if Judas had turned to Jesus in repentance, I believe we now would call him Saint Judas, and be glad to name our children after him. Have you ever known anyone named Judas?
Resurrection
Shakespeare is dust, and will not come
To question from his Avon tomb.
And Socrates and Shelley keep
An Attic and Italian sleep.
They see not. But, O Christians who
Throng Holborn and Fifth Avenue,
May you not meet, in spite of death
A traveler from Nazareth?
- John Drinkwater
Reichel, the famous conductor, was rehearsing the Berlin Symphonic Orchestra and Choir, performing Handel's magnificent oratorio, "The Messiah." A vocal soloist had just finished the lovely aria, "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth." Her tones were clear, the enunciation distinct, and technically she was flawless.
But the conductor was dissatisfied for something was lacking. He said kindly, "My dear, do you really know that your Redeemer lives?"
"Why, yes," - she stammered, "I think I do."
"You think you do. Don't you know it? If you do, sing it as though you were sure of it, so everyone who hears it will know it."
She sang again, this time with her whole soul, in an ecstasy of heavenly bliss. Beautiful beyond the singing of the birds were her heart and voice lifted in sheer joy.
Hushed were the choir and the orchestra and Reichel, with tears in his eyes, said, "My dear, thank you. You do know that your Redeemer lives, for you have told us so! Bless you!"
The Resurrection is not a doctrine that grew up in the church but a belief around which the church grew up.
We do not believe in the Resurrection because it is reported by the apostles but because the Resurrected One encounters us in a living way.
Revelation
Somewhere George Buttrick said the Resurrection rock rises up out of history more impregnably than any Gibralter up out of the sea.
God raised Jesus not just as an invitation for us to come to heaven but as a declaration he had come to earth.
It (the Resurrection) was the recovery of a treasured personal relationship which had seemed broken forever. It was also reinstatement after failure in the hour of testing. Now they were new men in a new world, confident, courageous, enterprising, the leaders of a movement which made an immediate impact and went forward with an astonishing impetus.
- C. H. Dodd, The Founder of Christianity, p. 170.
I am sick of slick presentations that evade the issue. They keep saying, whether Resurrection is so or not, we have this, and this, and this, and moral incentive as an effect of whatever resurrection was or was not, is or is not. Piffle! I want it all! Let us trust our future as well as our origins. Let us buy the whole package.
I believe in the Resurrection of the dead! I believe in the Resurrection from among the bodily dead!
- Carlyle Marney, The Coming Faith, p. 134.
Revival
They tell me revival is only temporary; so is a bath, but it does you good.
- Billy Sunday
Habakkuk lived and served six hundred years before Christ. He dwelt in the midst of a sinful people whose attitude was despair. When it looked as if all hope were gone of a recovery of righteousness, Habbakuk climbs the ladder of faith, looks into the eyes of God and says, "O Lord, revive thy work."
Revolution
No revolution is the last revolution until the Kingdom of God comes.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is revolutionary but that gospel's church is often reactionary.
The basis of real revolution is 2 Corinthians 5:17. "Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; old things are passed away and behold, all things are become new."
Saint
One of the signs of sainthood is the conviction of its absence.
It's easy to be an angel when nobody ruffles your feathers.
Salvation
Christianity is a salvation religion. Its chief function is to bring people to God.
We were saved; we are being saved; we will be saved. Salvation is sharing in what has happened, is happening, and will happen.
Seeking
From the juke box of the nearest hamburger stand to the ferment at work among some of Russia's most famous physicists, mathematicians, and astronomers; from the findings of psychology to the hunger of our souls, we hear echoes of the ancient cry, "Oh, that I knew where I might find him ..."
- Everett W. Palmer, The Glorious Imperative, p. 33
The philosopher Lessing declared if God came to him offering in his right hand the whole of truth and in his left hand the search for truth with all the trouble of the search, he would choose the contents of the left hand. Not the finished product but the adventure of seeking.
This old woodpecker reminds us of people who think more highly of themselves than they should, who take credit that belongs elsewhere and fail to recognize God as the source of all their abilities.
The legend in Greek mythology of Icarus, the craftsman, has special meaning for us. After he was taken prisoner, he made wings out of feathers and fastened them together with wax. As he flew away to freedom he was warned not to fly too close to the sun lest the wax in the wings would melt. But when he was at a safe distance, he got to thinking about how clever was his escape and what a brilliant future he had. With bursting pride he soared high in the heavens until the sun melted the wax and he fell to destruction in the sea.
Priorities
The story is told of a woman at the spring doing her week's washing. Suddenly she looked up from her washboard to see her home engulfed in flames. She dropped her washing, hurried into the house and brought out an armful of quilts. Back she went to drag out some pillows. Next she lugged out a bed. Then the house reeled, staggered and cracked into ruins. But louder than the crash of the falling building was the wail of the woman as she realized too late her little child was asleep in the house.
It was surely no harm for this woman to have saved quilts, pillows, and beds but for her to become so absorbed in such a task as to forget her child was sheer tragedy. How often we allow the best to be crowded out by the second best. "And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit."
Often we keep the oyster and throw away the pearl.
Purpose
In the movie, "Bonnie and Clyde," the two have been on the run for some time when Bonnie Parker says to Clyde Barrow, "When we started out, I thought we were going somewhere but we are just going."
In one of George Moore's novels, he tells of Irish peasants in the period of the great depression who were put to work building roads. For a time the men worked well, sang their songs, and were glad to have jobs. But little by little they discovered the roads they were building led nowhere, ran out in dreary bogs, and stopped. As the truth dawned on them they had been put to work solely to provide employment and as an excuse for feeding them, the men grew listless and stopped singing. Commenting on the incident, George Moore said, "The roads to nowhere are difficult to make. For a man to work well and sing, there must be an end in view."
He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.
- Nietzsche
Realism
Blessed are the realistic for they shall be called - and often.
How deaf and stupid I have been, he thought, walking on quickly. When anyone reads anything which he wishes to study, he does not despise the letters and punctuation marks, and call them illusion, chance, and worthless shells, but he reads them, he studies them, letter by letter. But I, who wished to read the book of the world and the book of my own nature, did presume to despise the letters and signs. I called the world of appearances, illusion. I called my eyes and tongue, chance. Now it is over; I have awakened. I have indeed awakened and have only been born today.
- Herman Hesse, Siddhartha, p. 32.
Reason
He that will not reason is a bigot.
He that cannot reason is a fool
He that does not reason is a slave.
- Anonymous
Reconciliation
I am amazed but not amused that church people have little theology of reconciliation. For many, church is preaching, singing, taking up a collection, and attending meetings. Reconciliation talk will be tolerated if it's across the world kind but when you speak of building bridges across chasms that separate people in the same church communion, you've quit preachin' and gone to meddlin'.
In the London Museum there is the painting of a World War I soldier on the ground attempting to splice two ends of a communication line. The painting is entitled, "Through." The business of the church is to get people "through" to each other.
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had been at odds for eleven years. On September 10, 1816, in the twilight of life, Adams wrote Jefferson a letter in which he said, "You and I ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other."
In a book issued to Army non-coms, there is an item telling how to bring two men together who have quarreled. It's delightfully simple - just put both to washing the same window, one inside, the other outside. Looking at each other, they soon have to laugh, and the quarrel is forgotten.
Redemption
There is a Hasidic story of a rabbi who moved to Palestine to be right on the spot in case the Messiah should come while he lived. Sure enough, on a certain day, the rabbi heard the sound of a trumpet from the Mount of Olives, which is the traditional signal for the Messiah's coming. What the rabbi didn't know is the trumpet had been blown by a prankster playing a joke. The rabbi rushed to his window to look upon a redeemed world, only to see a man in the street beating his donkey. He sighed, "False alarm. As long as people still beat their donkeys, the world cannot be redeemed." If we punish our environment, our fellows, ourselves, are we redeemed?
I saw a cartoon of young George Washington alongside a whole forest of cherry tree stumps. The caption:
"I know you admit it
but when are you going to quit it?"
Confession is admitting it; redemption is quitting it.
Relationship
In Herman Hesse's Beneath the Wheel, there is one who lives in the dormitory, a little fellow named Hiridinger. It was said he was so quiet that only his departure made people take notice of him, and then not for long. The world is full of people who go unnoticed unless we deposit that bit of honey in their lives that is relationship.
- Herman Hesse, Beneath the Wheel, p. 103
I guess I'd rather be famous than infamous, but actually money and fame and the rest of it don't impress me much. About all that really impresses me is human kindness and warm relationships with good friends.
- Robert Frost
Elizabeth O'Conner, in Journey Inward, Journey Outward, speaks of our need for three types of relationships. We need those who are further along the way, who give us hints of the next step. We need those who are our peers, with whom we share mutual discovery. We need those who are not so advanced, friends we can nourish and sustain.
- Elizabeth O'Connor, Journey Inward, Journey Outward, p. 110
Dismayed by the size of the Great Dane given him for his birthday, a small boy asked, "Is he for me or am I for him?" My fellow pilgrims, we are for one another.
Søren Kierkegaard implored us to have an absolute relationship to the absolute and a relative relationship to all else.
Repentance
After the betrayal if Judas had turned to Jesus in repentance, I believe we now would call him Saint Judas, and be glad to name our children after him. Have you ever known anyone named Judas?
Resurrection
Shakespeare is dust, and will not come
To question from his Avon tomb.
And Socrates and Shelley keep
An Attic and Italian sleep.
They see not. But, O Christians who
Throng Holborn and Fifth Avenue,
May you not meet, in spite of death
A traveler from Nazareth?
- John Drinkwater
Reichel, the famous conductor, was rehearsing the Berlin Symphonic Orchestra and Choir, performing Handel's magnificent oratorio, "The Messiah." A vocal soloist had just finished the lovely aria, "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth." Her tones were clear, the enunciation distinct, and technically she was flawless.
But the conductor was dissatisfied for something was lacking. He said kindly, "My dear, do you really know that your Redeemer lives?"
"Why, yes," - she stammered, "I think I do."
"You think you do. Don't you know it? If you do, sing it as though you were sure of it, so everyone who hears it will know it."
She sang again, this time with her whole soul, in an ecstasy of heavenly bliss. Beautiful beyond the singing of the birds were her heart and voice lifted in sheer joy.
Hushed were the choir and the orchestra and Reichel, with tears in his eyes, said, "My dear, thank you. You do know that your Redeemer lives, for you have told us so! Bless you!"
The Resurrection is not a doctrine that grew up in the church but a belief around which the church grew up.
We do not believe in the Resurrection because it is reported by the apostles but because the Resurrected One encounters us in a living way.
Revelation
Somewhere George Buttrick said the Resurrection rock rises up out of history more impregnably than any Gibralter up out of the sea.
God raised Jesus not just as an invitation for us to come to heaven but as a declaration he had come to earth.
It (the Resurrection) was the recovery of a treasured personal relationship which had seemed broken forever. It was also reinstatement after failure in the hour of testing. Now they were new men in a new world, confident, courageous, enterprising, the leaders of a movement which made an immediate impact and went forward with an astonishing impetus.
- C. H. Dodd, The Founder of Christianity, p. 170.
I am sick of slick presentations that evade the issue. They keep saying, whether Resurrection is so or not, we have this, and this, and this, and moral incentive as an effect of whatever resurrection was or was not, is or is not. Piffle! I want it all! Let us trust our future as well as our origins. Let us buy the whole package.
I believe in the Resurrection of the dead! I believe in the Resurrection from among the bodily dead!
- Carlyle Marney, The Coming Faith, p. 134.
Revival
They tell me revival is only temporary; so is a bath, but it does you good.
- Billy Sunday
Habakkuk lived and served six hundred years before Christ. He dwelt in the midst of a sinful people whose attitude was despair. When it looked as if all hope were gone of a recovery of righteousness, Habbakuk climbs the ladder of faith, looks into the eyes of God and says, "O Lord, revive thy work."
Revolution
No revolution is the last revolution until the Kingdom of God comes.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is revolutionary but that gospel's church is often reactionary.
The basis of real revolution is 2 Corinthians 5:17. "Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; old things are passed away and behold, all things are become new."
Saint
One of the signs of sainthood is the conviction of its absence.
It's easy to be an angel when nobody ruffles your feathers.
Salvation
Christianity is a salvation religion. Its chief function is to bring people to God.
We were saved; we are being saved; we will be saved. Salvation is sharing in what has happened, is happening, and will happen.
Seeking
From the juke box of the nearest hamburger stand to the ferment at work among some of Russia's most famous physicists, mathematicians, and astronomers; from the findings of psychology to the hunger of our souls, we hear echoes of the ancient cry, "Oh, that I knew where I might find him ..."
- Everett W. Palmer, The Glorious Imperative, p. 33
The philosopher Lessing declared if God came to him offering in his right hand the whole of truth and in his left hand the search for truth with all the trouble of the search, he would choose the contents of the left hand. Not the finished product but the adventure of seeking.
