Third Sunday After The Epiphany
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VI, Cycle C
Object:
COMMENTARY ON THE LESSONS
Lesson 1: Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10 (C); Nehemiah 8:2-6, 8-10 (RC); Nehemiah 8:2-10 (E)
In general, Ezra-Nehemiah had to do with the Jewish wish to exclude non-Jews, and to return to a pure Hebrew community. This passage is probably original with Ezra. But there are so many great preaching opportunities elsewhere in this week's passages that I am going to by-pass this report of the reading of the law and go on to relevant matters for the present.
Lesson 2: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a (C); 1 Corinthians 12:12-30 (RC); 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 (E)
We recall that the Corinthians had something of a bad reputation among Christians in general at this time. They were party animals, carousers. Paul loved them, just as we sometimes love most those who are colorful characters, people who seem to have their own drummer in life. But it's clear that as these people accepted Christ and came into the church, they brought some of their contentious, aggressive ways with them. (Sound familiar?)
Eugene Peterson, in his contemporary language version of the Bible, The Message, puts the issue this way: "Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, 'Get lost, I don't need you?' Or Head telling Foot, 'You're fired, your job has been phased out'?" So Paul is pointing out two important facts to the Corinthians: One, each of them has a part in the Body of Christ based on their gifts and abilities, and two, the Body can only function as God wishes if each part does its proper job and stops trying to appear more important than another. As a matter of fact, Paul points out, treading on indelicate ground, the baser portions of the body as elegant society might see the matter, are of sometimes even greater importance than are those more presentable parts. "You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach" quotes The Message. Likewise, the Body of Christ requires that each one of us find that role which befits us, and that we perform that role to the best of our ability and quit looking over at someone else with envy or jealousy and trying to be something we are not. And of course, there are rewards so long as we are not merely doing our part for reward. There will be "more important gifts," and we are to set our hearts on them.
Gospel: Luke 4:14-21 (C, E); Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21 (RC)
You and I know that the listeners as Jesus announced to them that he was the fulfillment of their historical longings, would be impressed, but as they began to process what they heard, they would also remind themselves that this was that kid from around the corner who used to hang around the grocery store for a piece of candy (or something like that). They would finally decide that what he said here was too presumptuous for words. But if we stop at verse 21, we simply have Jesus making just that claim: their hopes and dreams for one who would bring good news to the nation, news of release for captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, were here fulfilled. Jesus was the One.
This could raise some issues for the theologians who dance on pinheads, but for us, we believe Jesus' claim (I do). As for us, not being part of that gathering yet hearing or reading Jesus' words, we have his promise that for us too, our yearning for freedom and vision can be fulfilled through our relationship with him.
SERMON SUGGESTIONS
Title: "The Body Of Christ"
Text: 1 Corinthians 12:27-31a
Theme: Most of us come into the Church with our faults and foibles intact. After the first euphoria of conversion (or decision) wears off, we are faced with the long term business of recognizing and overcoming our deficiencies. This doesn't mean you and I are bad persons, and it doesn't mean we wish to sow the seeds of neurosis. It does, however, mean that like the rest of humanity, we have work to do. We have quoted the old lady who said, so wisely, "I ain't what I want to be, and I ain't what I ought to be, but thank the good Lord, I ain't what I used to be." Even Paul himself admitted that "I do not understand what I do; for I don't do what I would like to do, but instead I do what I hate" (Romans 7:15).
It's important in these times to remind a congregation of the necessity for self-examination of one's treatment of other people, and of one's ethics. I don't recommend diatribes, or Jeremiads. I expect to include myself in any urging in this regard. But our nation is in need of moral reminding, and of a reminder too that if we think to have the support of the Holy Spirit, we'd better start considering just what kind of individuals we have become. Merely being in a church and calling myself a Christian isn't enough. That honest self-appraisal is the first, and ongoing, responsibility of a member of the church.
The passage, however, calls us to assume responsibility for the Church. Actually, there are two "churches." There is what C. S. Lewis called "The Church ... spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners." But there is also the church on Main Street. My student church, bless their hearts, once nearly split over an argument as to whether the Easter sunrise breakfast was to be a full breakfast or a continental breakfast. And that's where we Christians live out our lives.
1. Each of us is essential to the vitality of our local church. We can't all teach Sunday School (we had to remove a teacher many years ago when she was overheard telling the kindergartners that God was like the Jolly Green Giant, holding the world in his hand like a giant pea). But we are all responsible for something. To Paul's list we can add: ushers, missioners, counselors, people who slip over on weekdays to tend the garden -- we can all add to the list.
2. Each of us is an evangelist. One way or another, I am an advertisement for my church. Last week we were told in worship, by a woman member, that when she and her husband married and settled down, they didn't have time for a church life. This went on for years. Then one day, a neighbor friend invited them to church. They were reluctant, but thought, "What the heck, let's get it over with." (Remember that poetic line: "And fools who came to scoff remained to pray?") When the woman got cancer a few years later, she said her gratitude to those neighbors knew no bounds as the entire congregation rallied around her. But I also recall a clergy friend's report of attending a party and hearing a familiar voice nearby using obscene language in regard to some minority people. Then the man turned and found himself staring into the eyes of his pastor. The man never returned to that church. And he had been its lay leader. My responsibilities to the Body of Christ continue out into the world.
3. Each of us is "a little Christ." That was Martin Luther's phrase. The final measure of my own membership in Christ's body is not whether I work in the church -- though that's important -- nor whether I busily try to bring people into the church -- and that's important -- it is how I treat everyone I meet in each day, my ethics, my loyalty, my sensitivity, my long suffering, my kindnesses -- in a word, my love. Paul immediately followed the passage we consider here with the grand love passage and he would tell us that no matter all of my generosity, all my sacrifices, if I "have not love, I gain nothing."
Title: "Bringer Of Life"
Text: Luke 4:14-21
Theme: I know not how that Bethlehem Babe
Could in the Godhead be;
I only know the Manger Child
Has brought God's life to me.
It can't be explained. We can either accept Jesus' reported claim or not. There is no way to prove the factual truth of this claim by Jesus, that he is the fulfillment of the hopes and dreams of a troubled, lost world. The only way it can be verified is by one's own personal encounter with Christ. I, for one, heard Christians talk about the power of Christ and it never had much effect on me. But one day, something happened in my life which dramatized to me for the first time that I did not have resources necessary to handle my problem. So, based on what I had heard, I prayed. And one day, sitting in the balcony of a local church on a blistering hot August afternoon, mid-week, all alone there, I met Christ. He did what this passage promises: He brought me freedom from my anguish; he brought sight to me as I thereupon found the way to rise above, to transcend my dilemma. It was then I became a Christian, even though I had attended church rather regularly for some years prior to this meeting.
1. Jesus is the bringer of life. He comes with release from all sorts of bondage, with wisdom and insight.
2. Each person must verify this for him or herself. The power of this faith is not an intellectual thing. No amount of argumentation, no earnest insistence, can accomplish one bit of conviction in another. We can, once it has come to us, only then introduce those we love to him who thereafter conducts the pursuit. We can, however, witness to the truth of this.
3. Jesus will make himself known to anyone who is open to him. Granted, because we have differing personalities, it will happen in different ways. Left brain people will experience Christ in quite different ways from right brain people. People whose lives are running smoothly may not be nearly so open as will be those whose lives are in pain. But Jesus understands all of this, accepts us as we are and where we are, and makes himself known to us according to our need.
4. Once Jesus is known to us, he will never leave us. Until he is known to us he will pursue us relentlessly with his love.
I walked alone in darkness,
With my heart torn by despair.
Then I heard a step beside me,
And saw that Christ was there.
I'd never met the man before,
Somehow, though, he knew me.
Nor can I tell what happened
Yet my heart felt strangely free.
Some time has passed since that dark hour,
Yet now my every day
Seems full of light and strange new hope,
Though why, I still can't say.
This much I do know: since we met,
I haven't been the same.
My life which felt so often sad,
Now seems a joyous game.
It's all a mystery how it came
To pass that it could be,
But this I finally now believe,
Christ really does love me.
ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS
C. S. Lewis referred to the Church as a great army, but also recognized the ordinariness of many local churches. You may recall his words in The Screwtape Letters, wherein the senior Devil, Screwtape, gives advice to the junior Devil, Wormwood, who is assigned the job of winning a "convert" to the Devil.
One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is the half finished sham gothic (building) on the building estate. When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather an oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print. When he gets to his pew and looks round him, he sees just that selection of his neighbors whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbors. Make his mind flit to and from between an expression like "the body of Christ," and the actual faces in the next pew. It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that pew really contains. You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy's side. No matter. Your patient, thanks to Our Father Below, is a fool.
____________
News Commentator Paul Harvey told of the time he and his wife were traveling and found it necessary to stay overnight in a small town. The following morning was Sunday and, as was their custom, they decided to go to church. But the only church in the vicinity was a small rural church of a denomination with which he said they were not familiar. Used to a large church, they entered with some misgivings, and their hearts fell as they surveyed the setting. The minister showed very little enthusiasm, the music was about as bad as it gets, the sanctuary was small, the crowd sparse. And yet, Harvey said both he and his wife felt a strange sense of peace as they sat there. Though the preacher was not a good speaker, Harvey said the sheer power of the biblically-based words was unmistakable.
Toward the conclusion of the service, the minister issued an altar call. Now coming from mainstream Protestantism, Harvey said this was really embarrassing for him and Mrs. Harvey. They just didn't do things like that. Then, he said, something strange happened. He felt himself literally lifted up from his seat -- not literally, of course, and yet he said it seemed that he was being gently urged up and forward. Mrs. Harvey said she experienced the same thing. Suddenly it seemed quite natural, they went to the rail, prayed, returned to their seats. When they left the service they both felt a remarkable inner warmth, and both realized that in that small, mundane church, their lives had been richly blessed.
____________
Psalm Of The Day
Psalm 19 -- "The heavens are telling the glory of God."
Prayer Of The Day
Dear God: for all the faith we strive for, doubt still often troubles us. If that is part of the faith journey, if sleepless nights in time of trial are the means to a greater faith at last, we accept this from your hands. But we do pray for open hearts that when the time is right for blessed assurance, we shall be ready. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Lesson 1: Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10 (C); Nehemiah 8:2-6, 8-10 (RC); Nehemiah 8:2-10 (E)
In general, Ezra-Nehemiah had to do with the Jewish wish to exclude non-Jews, and to return to a pure Hebrew community. This passage is probably original with Ezra. But there are so many great preaching opportunities elsewhere in this week's passages that I am going to by-pass this report of the reading of the law and go on to relevant matters for the present.
Lesson 2: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a (C); 1 Corinthians 12:12-30 (RC); 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 (E)
We recall that the Corinthians had something of a bad reputation among Christians in general at this time. They were party animals, carousers. Paul loved them, just as we sometimes love most those who are colorful characters, people who seem to have their own drummer in life. But it's clear that as these people accepted Christ and came into the church, they brought some of their contentious, aggressive ways with them. (Sound familiar?)
Eugene Peterson, in his contemporary language version of the Bible, The Message, puts the issue this way: "Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, 'Get lost, I don't need you?' Or Head telling Foot, 'You're fired, your job has been phased out'?" So Paul is pointing out two important facts to the Corinthians: One, each of them has a part in the Body of Christ based on their gifts and abilities, and two, the Body can only function as God wishes if each part does its proper job and stops trying to appear more important than another. As a matter of fact, Paul points out, treading on indelicate ground, the baser portions of the body as elegant society might see the matter, are of sometimes even greater importance than are those more presentable parts. "You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach" quotes The Message. Likewise, the Body of Christ requires that each one of us find that role which befits us, and that we perform that role to the best of our ability and quit looking over at someone else with envy or jealousy and trying to be something we are not. And of course, there are rewards so long as we are not merely doing our part for reward. There will be "more important gifts," and we are to set our hearts on them.
Gospel: Luke 4:14-21 (C, E); Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21 (RC)
You and I know that the listeners as Jesus announced to them that he was the fulfillment of their historical longings, would be impressed, but as they began to process what they heard, they would also remind themselves that this was that kid from around the corner who used to hang around the grocery store for a piece of candy (or something like that). They would finally decide that what he said here was too presumptuous for words. But if we stop at verse 21, we simply have Jesus making just that claim: their hopes and dreams for one who would bring good news to the nation, news of release for captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, were here fulfilled. Jesus was the One.
This could raise some issues for the theologians who dance on pinheads, but for us, we believe Jesus' claim (I do). As for us, not being part of that gathering yet hearing or reading Jesus' words, we have his promise that for us too, our yearning for freedom and vision can be fulfilled through our relationship with him.
SERMON SUGGESTIONS
Title: "The Body Of Christ"
Text: 1 Corinthians 12:27-31a
Theme: Most of us come into the Church with our faults and foibles intact. After the first euphoria of conversion (or decision) wears off, we are faced with the long term business of recognizing and overcoming our deficiencies. This doesn't mean you and I are bad persons, and it doesn't mean we wish to sow the seeds of neurosis. It does, however, mean that like the rest of humanity, we have work to do. We have quoted the old lady who said, so wisely, "I ain't what I want to be, and I ain't what I ought to be, but thank the good Lord, I ain't what I used to be." Even Paul himself admitted that "I do not understand what I do; for I don't do what I would like to do, but instead I do what I hate" (Romans 7:15).
It's important in these times to remind a congregation of the necessity for self-examination of one's treatment of other people, and of one's ethics. I don't recommend diatribes, or Jeremiads. I expect to include myself in any urging in this regard. But our nation is in need of moral reminding, and of a reminder too that if we think to have the support of the Holy Spirit, we'd better start considering just what kind of individuals we have become. Merely being in a church and calling myself a Christian isn't enough. That honest self-appraisal is the first, and ongoing, responsibility of a member of the church.
The passage, however, calls us to assume responsibility for the Church. Actually, there are two "churches." There is what C. S. Lewis called "The Church ... spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners." But there is also the church on Main Street. My student church, bless their hearts, once nearly split over an argument as to whether the Easter sunrise breakfast was to be a full breakfast or a continental breakfast. And that's where we Christians live out our lives.
1. Each of us is essential to the vitality of our local church. We can't all teach Sunday School (we had to remove a teacher many years ago when she was overheard telling the kindergartners that God was like the Jolly Green Giant, holding the world in his hand like a giant pea). But we are all responsible for something. To Paul's list we can add: ushers, missioners, counselors, people who slip over on weekdays to tend the garden -- we can all add to the list.
2. Each of us is an evangelist. One way or another, I am an advertisement for my church. Last week we were told in worship, by a woman member, that when she and her husband married and settled down, they didn't have time for a church life. This went on for years. Then one day, a neighbor friend invited them to church. They were reluctant, but thought, "What the heck, let's get it over with." (Remember that poetic line: "And fools who came to scoff remained to pray?") When the woman got cancer a few years later, she said her gratitude to those neighbors knew no bounds as the entire congregation rallied around her. But I also recall a clergy friend's report of attending a party and hearing a familiar voice nearby using obscene language in regard to some minority people. Then the man turned and found himself staring into the eyes of his pastor. The man never returned to that church. And he had been its lay leader. My responsibilities to the Body of Christ continue out into the world.
3. Each of us is "a little Christ." That was Martin Luther's phrase. The final measure of my own membership in Christ's body is not whether I work in the church -- though that's important -- nor whether I busily try to bring people into the church -- and that's important -- it is how I treat everyone I meet in each day, my ethics, my loyalty, my sensitivity, my long suffering, my kindnesses -- in a word, my love. Paul immediately followed the passage we consider here with the grand love passage and he would tell us that no matter all of my generosity, all my sacrifices, if I "have not love, I gain nothing."
Title: "Bringer Of Life"
Text: Luke 4:14-21
Theme: I know not how that Bethlehem Babe
Could in the Godhead be;
I only know the Manger Child
Has brought God's life to me.
It can't be explained. We can either accept Jesus' reported claim or not. There is no way to prove the factual truth of this claim by Jesus, that he is the fulfillment of the hopes and dreams of a troubled, lost world. The only way it can be verified is by one's own personal encounter with Christ. I, for one, heard Christians talk about the power of Christ and it never had much effect on me. But one day, something happened in my life which dramatized to me for the first time that I did not have resources necessary to handle my problem. So, based on what I had heard, I prayed. And one day, sitting in the balcony of a local church on a blistering hot August afternoon, mid-week, all alone there, I met Christ. He did what this passage promises: He brought me freedom from my anguish; he brought sight to me as I thereupon found the way to rise above, to transcend my dilemma. It was then I became a Christian, even though I had attended church rather regularly for some years prior to this meeting.
1. Jesus is the bringer of life. He comes with release from all sorts of bondage, with wisdom and insight.
2. Each person must verify this for him or herself. The power of this faith is not an intellectual thing. No amount of argumentation, no earnest insistence, can accomplish one bit of conviction in another. We can, once it has come to us, only then introduce those we love to him who thereafter conducts the pursuit. We can, however, witness to the truth of this.
3. Jesus will make himself known to anyone who is open to him. Granted, because we have differing personalities, it will happen in different ways. Left brain people will experience Christ in quite different ways from right brain people. People whose lives are running smoothly may not be nearly so open as will be those whose lives are in pain. But Jesus understands all of this, accepts us as we are and where we are, and makes himself known to us according to our need.
4. Once Jesus is known to us, he will never leave us. Until he is known to us he will pursue us relentlessly with his love.
I walked alone in darkness,
With my heart torn by despair.
Then I heard a step beside me,
And saw that Christ was there.
I'd never met the man before,
Somehow, though, he knew me.
Nor can I tell what happened
Yet my heart felt strangely free.
Some time has passed since that dark hour,
Yet now my every day
Seems full of light and strange new hope,
Though why, I still can't say.
This much I do know: since we met,
I haven't been the same.
My life which felt so often sad,
Now seems a joyous game.
It's all a mystery how it came
To pass that it could be,
But this I finally now believe,
Christ really does love me.
ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS
C. S. Lewis referred to the Church as a great army, but also recognized the ordinariness of many local churches. You may recall his words in The Screwtape Letters, wherein the senior Devil, Screwtape, gives advice to the junior Devil, Wormwood, who is assigned the job of winning a "convert" to the Devil.
One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is the half finished sham gothic (building) on the building estate. When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather an oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print. When he gets to his pew and looks round him, he sees just that selection of his neighbors whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbors. Make his mind flit to and from between an expression like "the body of Christ," and the actual faces in the next pew. It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that pew really contains. You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy's side. No matter. Your patient, thanks to Our Father Below, is a fool.
____________
News Commentator Paul Harvey told of the time he and his wife were traveling and found it necessary to stay overnight in a small town. The following morning was Sunday and, as was their custom, they decided to go to church. But the only church in the vicinity was a small rural church of a denomination with which he said they were not familiar. Used to a large church, they entered with some misgivings, and their hearts fell as they surveyed the setting. The minister showed very little enthusiasm, the music was about as bad as it gets, the sanctuary was small, the crowd sparse. And yet, Harvey said both he and his wife felt a strange sense of peace as they sat there. Though the preacher was not a good speaker, Harvey said the sheer power of the biblically-based words was unmistakable.
Toward the conclusion of the service, the minister issued an altar call. Now coming from mainstream Protestantism, Harvey said this was really embarrassing for him and Mrs. Harvey. They just didn't do things like that. Then, he said, something strange happened. He felt himself literally lifted up from his seat -- not literally, of course, and yet he said it seemed that he was being gently urged up and forward. Mrs. Harvey said she experienced the same thing. Suddenly it seemed quite natural, they went to the rail, prayed, returned to their seats. When they left the service they both felt a remarkable inner warmth, and both realized that in that small, mundane church, their lives had been richly blessed.
____________
Psalm Of The Day
Psalm 19 -- "The heavens are telling the glory of God."
Prayer Of The Day
Dear God: for all the faith we strive for, doubt still often troubles us. If that is part of the faith journey, if sleepless nights in time of trial are the means to a greater faith at last, we accept this from your hands. But we do pray for open hearts that when the time is right for blessed assurance, we shall be ready. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
