Glory All Around Me
Stories
Object:
It was back in 1986, as I recall, that I felt the power of God as I was enshrouded in what seemed to be glory all around me. A Catholic priest whom I considered to be a good friend had given me an audiotape to listen to. The tape contained the personal testimony of Father John Bertolucci, the man who was apparently instrumental in starting the charismatic movement within the Roman Catholic Church. Naturally I was very curious, having been a practicing Catholic myself for over 47 years before finding the truth about Christ through a home Bible study. I had been born again and was hungry for God's word. I was also glad to hear that this charismatic movement was gaining great ground within the fertile hearts of so many Catholics.
As I listened to his testimony, I began to feel a powerful presence within myself. On the tape, he was relating his experience at a home Bible study where another priest laid his hands on Father Bertolucci's head and prayed for him. At that point he was overcome by what he believed was the power of God, and he felt a spiritual cleansing which he had never before in his life received.
It was at exactly that same point in the tape when I felt the same thing. I was mesmerized! I felt unable to move and I felt so peaceful as I fell to my knees and sobbed and laughed. All that I was able to utter was “Jesus, I love you.” Over and over again I continued to sob, laugh, and praise my savior, the result being that I felt so spiritually cleansed and at peace with God myself that it took me most of that night to settle back and realize what had happened.
From that day on, I have had a continuing love for God's word, and certainly an ever-increasing love for Jesus.
Jim Schlosser, a native of West Bend, Wisconsin, served three years in the military, then settled in his hometown to serve his community in the field of public works. He leads a weekly Bible Study group in his home. Jim and his wife Loxley attend a local non-denominational church.
Good Stories
Where You Do Not Wish to Go
by John Sumwalt
“Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.”
John 21:18
Wilma Peterson chaired the social concerns committee in her church. She also headed an action group that lobbied the state legislature on senior citizen issues; she served on the regional Commission on Aging and was secretary of a city task force that was seeking a government grant to build low-income housing. When the doctor told her she needed gall bladder surgery, the first thing she said was, “How long will I be laid up?” When she was assured it would only be four to six weeks, she said, “Oh, that won't be so bad. I can write letters and make phone calls while I'm recovering.” The doctor frowned, but he didn't say anything; he didn't think it would do any good. Wilma was a determined woman. It would take a lot more than a doctor's warning and a little thing like gall bladder surgery to slow her down.
Ten weeks later, Wilma was feeling worse than she had before the operation. She couldn't understand why she wasn't getting better. The doctor suggested that she come in for tests. When the results came back, he came immediately into her room and broke the news as gently as he could.
“Wilma, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but the blood tests show that you have AIDS.”
Wilma couldn't believe her ears. How could a 70-year-old woman get AIDS? “It was in the blood transfusion you received during your surgery,” he said. Wilma just couldn't believe it. What was she going to do?
It wasn't that she was afraid of dying. Wilma was prepared for death, even a slow, painful death, if that's the way it came. That was the way of the world. She had seen enough of death to know that no one was spared. Her husband had died of lung cancer and she had lost a son to polio. It was the thought of telling her family and friends. What would they think... that she had been indiscreet?
She didn't tell anyone at first, but as the disease progressed she decided that people had the right to know. It was an incident with a needle that convinced her to tell. A nurse in the doctor's office had been about to give her an injection one day when the needle slipped and she pricked her own finger. The fact that it occurred before the injection spared the nurse any danger of infection, but Wilma could see that it had been very upsetting to her. The nurse knew she had AIDS. Wilma decided that everyone else who came into contact with her had a right to know, too.
The word spread fast. There were many expressions of caring; phone calls, cards, letters, and quiet conversations with neighbors and friends. People were horrified for her and sympathetic at the same time -- or so it seemed. She felt no sense of rejection until the following Sunday morning when she went to church. She sat in her usual pew, but the people who always sat beside her, or in the pews around her, sat elsewhere. She was beginning to think no one was going to sit near her at all, when Kevin Holmstead, that nice young man from the bank who usually sat near the back, came in and sat beside her on the end of the pew next to the aisle in the same spot her husband Frank had always sat when he was alive. Kevin greeted her pleasantly, as if nothing had changed. “Maybe he hasn't heard yet,” she thought to herself, but something about his manner told her that he sat beside her because he had heard. That was the beginning of their special friendship. From then on Kevin sat beside her every Sunday that she was able to go to church.
Wilma lived just three years from the time her AIDS was diagnosed -- and much of the last few months of her life she was in bed at home or in the hospital, too weak to move around on her own. During that time her family members and several volunteers, organized by Kevin, took care of all of her bodily needs. They bathed and fed her and helped her with her toilet, changed her diapers when there was a need. They took turns pushing her around in her wheelchair and carrying her from the bed to the couch and back again. But during the first two-and-a-half years of her illness, before she was bedridden, Wilma was very much the crusader that she had been all of her life. She organized a support group for persons like herself who were living with AIDS. She visited AIDS patients in their homes, in hospitals and hospices. Many of them told how they had been forsaken by family and friends, how they had lost their homes and their jobs, how difficult it was to get the medical treatment they needed, and how insurance companies and the government denied them financial assistance. She wrote to congresspersons and state legislators about the needs of persons with AIDS. She lobbied the city council to pass an ordinance which would prevent landlords and employers from discriminating against persons with AIDS. She spoke to church and civic groups, pleading with them to support the human rights of all persons.
On the day that she died, Wilma asked Kevin if he would help to carry on her work. He promised her that he would, and he thanked her for all that she had done. He said, “It will be easier for me because of you.”
On the Sunday following Wilma's funeral, Kevin stood up in church during the time for expressing prayer concerns and said, “You all know how important Wilma's work has been in this community. Will you help me to continue what she has started? There are many persons with AIDS among us who need our love and support. A great many of them are members of the gay and lesbian community, as I am. Will you stand with us in our time of need?”
Scrap Pile
Feed My Sheep
by John Sumwalt
John 21:1-19
We had sheep when I was a kid on the farm, and it was my job to feed them because they were my sheep. It wasn't difficult work. It meant carrying a couple of pails of water and distributing a little hay and a little grain. The only hard part about it was that it had to be done every day. There were some days when I would have rather done what Peter and Thomas and Nathaniel and James and John were doing in this resurrection story -- gone fishing -- especially this time of year.
Where I come from the opening day of trout fishing season was always the second Saturday in May. It was practically a religious holiday -- second only to Christmas in the excitement and anticipation we felt. My brothers and I couldn't wait to go fishing. We cut our willow poles well in advance, stripped the bark, attached a new line, a bobber, and a sinker, carved our initials on the butt end, and we were set for another fishing season. There was nothing like the thrill of catching a 14-inch rainbow trout -- or the satisfaction of watching Mom fry our catch in butter. The fellowship of fisher boys in this case, as we ate our fish breakfast and told our fish stories about the bigger ones that got away, was divine, one of my favorite memories of spring.
Peter and the boys were fishing when Jesus appeared to them early that morning by the sea. It was after the first resurrection appearances:
• ...after that first Sunday night in the upper room when Jesus had suddenly stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” While in their joy they were still disbelieving and wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence (Luke 24:36-43).
• ...and after he had breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22).
• ...and after Thomas had seen the wounds in his hands and in his side, and let go of his doubt and believed (John 20:28).
• ...after all they had gone through with Jesus from the beginning of his ministry, watching him heal the sick, raise the dead, and drive out demons, learning to heal the sick, raise the dead, and drive out demons themselves, going with him to Jerusalem, praying with him in the Garden of Gethsemane, deserting him and denying him at the time of his arrest and crucifixion. After having encountered him alive, raised from the dead -- what do the disciples do? They go fishing! They return to doing what they were doing before Christ came into their lives. As one commentator said, “They got the Holy Spirit, but apparently the Holy Spirit had not got them.” They were beginning to believe that Jesus was alive, but their belief had not resulted in any kind of action.
Many of us who gather in Christian churches on Easter Sunday to sing “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” are just like these disciples. We don't really believe what we are singing. Yes, we believe Christ arose from the tomb back then in biblical times when they had crosses and angels -- but not today. Yet what we sing is “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today.” If we really believed that Christ is risen today, then our worship attendance wouldn't trickle off on the Sundays after Easter and our churches wouldn't be empty in the summertime. We go back to our everyday lives unchanged by Easter.
The disciples went fishing.
But Jesus does not give up on them. The risen Christ seeks them out once again. He does not abandon them. He came to them as they fished, there in the middle of their everyday lives, and he blessed them in a most extraordinary way. They had been fishing all night and caught nothing. Jesus called to them from the beach and said, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat and you will find fish.” They did not recognize him, but they did as he had directed -- and the net was so full of fish they were not able to haul it in! It was then that they recognized Jesus, and Peter put on some clothes (for he was naked, the text says) and jumped into the sea. The rest of the disciples followed, dragging the netload of fish with them, for they were only about a hundred yards from shore. When they came up on the shore they saw a fire burning and fish cooking and bread broken. Jesus was fixing breakfast for them, and he must have been wondering, “Will they get it this time? How many times do I have to appear to them before they understand?”
In defense of the disciples, think about how difficult it must have been to tell people that Jesus was alive when everybody in Jerusalem had seen him die, and only a handful of his friends had seen him risen.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, one of the foremost authorities on death and dying, who has written several successful books on the subject, once wrote about spiritual guides who came to give her counsel. We would call them angels. She received severe criticism from the academic community, which had lauded her previous work. Some thought she had gone off the deep end.
That was the reaction of most of the world when the disciples first began to tell about seeing the resurrected Christ. Everybody thought they were crazy. They said the disciples were seeing things, that they were deluded by grief. Dead men don't come back to life. It was just wishful thinking, the hopeful imaginings of a few dreamers who were lost without their leader.
After all, no one outside that tiny group of disciples had seen him risen. Jesus did not show himself to the temple authorities, to the scribes or the Pharisees, to Herod or to Pilate. No one in the Roman army saw the risen Christ. Jesus appeared to those who loved him at the tomb, in the upper room, on the road to Emmaus, and here, at the lakeshore.
The world would not begin to believe until these faithful few rose up and began to do what Jesus had taught them. But how to get them to understand? Jesus gave them breakfast, broke the bread and passed the cup, just as he had done at their last supper together in the upper room.
Then, after the meal, Jesus said to Peter, the one who had denied him three times, “Simon Peter, son of John, do you love me more than these?”
“Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” A second time he said to him, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”
“Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him a third time, “Do you love me?”
Peter felt hurt because he said to him a third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.”
Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.”
Do you see the pattern? Peter, who had denied Jesus three times, is asked three times if he loves Jesus. Do you think the Gospel writer is trying to convey some kind of message here?
People of Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church, do you love Jesus? Feed his lambs!
...take your turn -- help in the nursery
...send your children to camp -- family, grandparent/grandchild, elementary
...teach Sunday school for all ages
...attend worship every Sunday -- you must be nurtured
...bring your children to worship, as you promised on the day of their baptisms
And when you go on vacation this summer, when you are on your way to Disney World or the cottage at the lake, make sure that you stop somewhere on Sunday morning to worship, to be with the risen Christ!
People of Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church, do you love Jesus? Tend his sheep!
Will you open your doors and your hearts to all of Christ's people in this community, the sinners and the saints? Will you sit down at coffee hour with those who are outcast, those considered to be unclean, unholy, as Jesus did? Will you go out and visit those who come to us hungry, looking for a church home, and let them know that they are welcome here? Will you be a part of Bible study and fellowship groups and invite others to join you? Will you seek leadership training and share your gifts in some way that will help to nurture this Christian community? Will you tend his sheep?
Don't answer too quickly. It is much easier to sleep in on Sunday mornings, to come to church when you feel like it, to leave the leading to others, to go shopping on Saturday afternoon instead of preparing a Sunday school lesson, to watch TV instead of helping at a soup kitchen. Jesus doesn't ask us to do anything easy.
Billy Graham, who has been feeding sheep for a long time all over the world, went to Oklahoma City this week, along with President Clinton and others, for a memorial service for the victims of the bomb blast at the Federal building. And he said to the thousands of mourners who were gathered there:
“the Bible tells us that evil is real and that the human heart is capable of almost limitless evil when it is cut off from God and from the moral law.... That is one reason we each need God in our lives -- for only God can change our hearts and give us the desire and power to do what it right and keep us from wrong.”
Evil comes among us when someone forgets to feed the sheep.
People of Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church, do you love Jesus?
From the text of a sermon preached at Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in Milwaukee, April 28, 1995.
**********************************************
StoryShare, April 25, 2004, issue.
Copyright 2004 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
As I listened to his testimony, I began to feel a powerful presence within myself. On the tape, he was relating his experience at a home Bible study where another priest laid his hands on Father Bertolucci's head and prayed for him. At that point he was overcome by what he believed was the power of God, and he felt a spiritual cleansing which he had never before in his life received.
It was at exactly that same point in the tape when I felt the same thing. I was mesmerized! I felt unable to move and I felt so peaceful as I fell to my knees and sobbed and laughed. All that I was able to utter was “Jesus, I love you.” Over and over again I continued to sob, laugh, and praise my savior, the result being that I felt so spiritually cleansed and at peace with God myself that it took me most of that night to settle back and realize what had happened.
From that day on, I have had a continuing love for God's word, and certainly an ever-increasing love for Jesus.
Jim Schlosser, a native of West Bend, Wisconsin, served three years in the military, then settled in his hometown to serve his community in the field of public works. He leads a weekly Bible Study group in his home. Jim and his wife Loxley attend a local non-denominational church.
Good Stories
Where You Do Not Wish to Go
by John Sumwalt
“Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.”
John 21:18
Wilma Peterson chaired the social concerns committee in her church. She also headed an action group that lobbied the state legislature on senior citizen issues; she served on the regional Commission on Aging and was secretary of a city task force that was seeking a government grant to build low-income housing. When the doctor told her she needed gall bladder surgery, the first thing she said was, “How long will I be laid up?” When she was assured it would only be four to six weeks, she said, “Oh, that won't be so bad. I can write letters and make phone calls while I'm recovering.” The doctor frowned, but he didn't say anything; he didn't think it would do any good. Wilma was a determined woman. It would take a lot more than a doctor's warning and a little thing like gall bladder surgery to slow her down.
Ten weeks later, Wilma was feeling worse than she had before the operation. She couldn't understand why she wasn't getting better. The doctor suggested that she come in for tests. When the results came back, he came immediately into her room and broke the news as gently as he could.
“Wilma, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but the blood tests show that you have AIDS.”
Wilma couldn't believe her ears. How could a 70-year-old woman get AIDS? “It was in the blood transfusion you received during your surgery,” he said. Wilma just couldn't believe it. What was she going to do?
It wasn't that she was afraid of dying. Wilma was prepared for death, even a slow, painful death, if that's the way it came. That was the way of the world. She had seen enough of death to know that no one was spared. Her husband had died of lung cancer and she had lost a son to polio. It was the thought of telling her family and friends. What would they think... that she had been indiscreet?
She didn't tell anyone at first, but as the disease progressed she decided that people had the right to know. It was an incident with a needle that convinced her to tell. A nurse in the doctor's office had been about to give her an injection one day when the needle slipped and she pricked her own finger. The fact that it occurred before the injection spared the nurse any danger of infection, but Wilma could see that it had been very upsetting to her. The nurse knew she had AIDS. Wilma decided that everyone else who came into contact with her had a right to know, too.
The word spread fast. There were many expressions of caring; phone calls, cards, letters, and quiet conversations with neighbors and friends. People were horrified for her and sympathetic at the same time -- or so it seemed. She felt no sense of rejection until the following Sunday morning when she went to church. She sat in her usual pew, but the people who always sat beside her, or in the pews around her, sat elsewhere. She was beginning to think no one was going to sit near her at all, when Kevin Holmstead, that nice young man from the bank who usually sat near the back, came in and sat beside her on the end of the pew next to the aisle in the same spot her husband Frank had always sat when he was alive. Kevin greeted her pleasantly, as if nothing had changed. “Maybe he hasn't heard yet,” she thought to herself, but something about his manner told her that he sat beside her because he had heard. That was the beginning of their special friendship. From then on Kevin sat beside her every Sunday that she was able to go to church.
Wilma lived just three years from the time her AIDS was diagnosed -- and much of the last few months of her life she was in bed at home or in the hospital, too weak to move around on her own. During that time her family members and several volunteers, organized by Kevin, took care of all of her bodily needs. They bathed and fed her and helped her with her toilet, changed her diapers when there was a need. They took turns pushing her around in her wheelchair and carrying her from the bed to the couch and back again. But during the first two-and-a-half years of her illness, before she was bedridden, Wilma was very much the crusader that she had been all of her life. She organized a support group for persons like herself who were living with AIDS. She visited AIDS patients in their homes, in hospitals and hospices. Many of them told how they had been forsaken by family and friends, how they had lost their homes and their jobs, how difficult it was to get the medical treatment they needed, and how insurance companies and the government denied them financial assistance. She wrote to congresspersons and state legislators about the needs of persons with AIDS. She lobbied the city council to pass an ordinance which would prevent landlords and employers from discriminating against persons with AIDS. She spoke to church and civic groups, pleading with them to support the human rights of all persons.
On the day that she died, Wilma asked Kevin if he would help to carry on her work. He promised her that he would, and he thanked her for all that she had done. He said, “It will be easier for me because of you.”
On the Sunday following Wilma's funeral, Kevin stood up in church during the time for expressing prayer concerns and said, “You all know how important Wilma's work has been in this community. Will you help me to continue what she has started? There are many persons with AIDS among us who need our love and support. A great many of them are members of the gay and lesbian community, as I am. Will you stand with us in our time of need?”
Scrap Pile
Feed My Sheep
by John Sumwalt
John 21:1-19
We had sheep when I was a kid on the farm, and it was my job to feed them because they were my sheep. It wasn't difficult work. It meant carrying a couple of pails of water and distributing a little hay and a little grain. The only hard part about it was that it had to be done every day. There were some days when I would have rather done what Peter and Thomas and Nathaniel and James and John were doing in this resurrection story -- gone fishing -- especially this time of year.
Where I come from the opening day of trout fishing season was always the second Saturday in May. It was practically a religious holiday -- second only to Christmas in the excitement and anticipation we felt. My brothers and I couldn't wait to go fishing. We cut our willow poles well in advance, stripped the bark, attached a new line, a bobber, and a sinker, carved our initials on the butt end, and we were set for another fishing season. There was nothing like the thrill of catching a 14-inch rainbow trout -- or the satisfaction of watching Mom fry our catch in butter. The fellowship of fisher boys in this case, as we ate our fish breakfast and told our fish stories about the bigger ones that got away, was divine, one of my favorite memories of spring.
Peter and the boys were fishing when Jesus appeared to them early that morning by the sea. It was after the first resurrection appearances:
• ...after that first Sunday night in the upper room when Jesus had suddenly stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” While in their joy they were still disbelieving and wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence (Luke 24:36-43).
• ...and after he had breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22).
• ...and after Thomas had seen the wounds in his hands and in his side, and let go of his doubt and believed (John 20:28).
• ...after all they had gone through with Jesus from the beginning of his ministry, watching him heal the sick, raise the dead, and drive out demons, learning to heal the sick, raise the dead, and drive out demons themselves, going with him to Jerusalem, praying with him in the Garden of Gethsemane, deserting him and denying him at the time of his arrest and crucifixion. After having encountered him alive, raised from the dead -- what do the disciples do? They go fishing! They return to doing what they were doing before Christ came into their lives. As one commentator said, “They got the Holy Spirit, but apparently the Holy Spirit had not got them.” They were beginning to believe that Jesus was alive, but their belief had not resulted in any kind of action.
Many of us who gather in Christian churches on Easter Sunday to sing “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” are just like these disciples. We don't really believe what we are singing. Yes, we believe Christ arose from the tomb back then in biblical times when they had crosses and angels -- but not today. Yet what we sing is “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today.” If we really believed that Christ is risen today, then our worship attendance wouldn't trickle off on the Sundays after Easter and our churches wouldn't be empty in the summertime. We go back to our everyday lives unchanged by Easter.
The disciples went fishing.
But Jesus does not give up on them. The risen Christ seeks them out once again. He does not abandon them. He came to them as they fished, there in the middle of their everyday lives, and he blessed them in a most extraordinary way. They had been fishing all night and caught nothing. Jesus called to them from the beach and said, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat and you will find fish.” They did not recognize him, but they did as he had directed -- and the net was so full of fish they were not able to haul it in! It was then that they recognized Jesus, and Peter put on some clothes (for he was naked, the text says) and jumped into the sea. The rest of the disciples followed, dragging the netload of fish with them, for they were only about a hundred yards from shore. When they came up on the shore they saw a fire burning and fish cooking and bread broken. Jesus was fixing breakfast for them, and he must have been wondering, “Will they get it this time? How many times do I have to appear to them before they understand?”
In defense of the disciples, think about how difficult it must have been to tell people that Jesus was alive when everybody in Jerusalem had seen him die, and only a handful of his friends had seen him risen.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, one of the foremost authorities on death and dying, who has written several successful books on the subject, once wrote about spiritual guides who came to give her counsel. We would call them angels. She received severe criticism from the academic community, which had lauded her previous work. Some thought she had gone off the deep end.
That was the reaction of most of the world when the disciples first began to tell about seeing the resurrected Christ. Everybody thought they were crazy. They said the disciples were seeing things, that they were deluded by grief. Dead men don't come back to life. It was just wishful thinking, the hopeful imaginings of a few dreamers who were lost without their leader.
After all, no one outside that tiny group of disciples had seen him risen. Jesus did not show himself to the temple authorities, to the scribes or the Pharisees, to Herod or to Pilate. No one in the Roman army saw the risen Christ. Jesus appeared to those who loved him at the tomb, in the upper room, on the road to Emmaus, and here, at the lakeshore.
The world would not begin to believe until these faithful few rose up and began to do what Jesus had taught them. But how to get them to understand? Jesus gave them breakfast, broke the bread and passed the cup, just as he had done at their last supper together in the upper room.
Then, after the meal, Jesus said to Peter, the one who had denied him three times, “Simon Peter, son of John, do you love me more than these?”
“Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” A second time he said to him, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”
“Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him a third time, “Do you love me?”
Peter felt hurt because he said to him a third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.”
Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.”
Do you see the pattern? Peter, who had denied Jesus three times, is asked three times if he loves Jesus. Do you think the Gospel writer is trying to convey some kind of message here?
People of Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church, do you love Jesus? Feed his lambs!
...take your turn -- help in the nursery
...send your children to camp -- family, grandparent/grandchild, elementary
...teach Sunday school for all ages
...attend worship every Sunday -- you must be nurtured
...bring your children to worship, as you promised on the day of their baptisms
And when you go on vacation this summer, when you are on your way to Disney World or the cottage at the lake, make sure that you stop somewhere on Sunday morning to worship, to be with the risen Christ!
People of Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church, do you love Jesus? Tend his sheep!
Will you open your doors and your hearts to all of Christ's people in this community, the sinners and the saints? Will you sit down at coffee hour with those who are outcast, those considered to be unclean, unholy, as Jesus did? Will you go out and visit those who come to us hungry, looking for a church home, and let them know that they are welcome here? Will you be a part of Bible study and fellowship groups and invite others to join you? Will you seek leadership training and share your gifts in some way that will help to nurture this Christian community? Will you tend his sheep?
Don't answer too quickly. It is much easier to sleep in on Sunday mornings, to come to church when you feel like it, to leave the leading to others, to go shopping on Saturday afternoon instead of preparing a Sunday school lesson, to watch TV instead of helping at a soup kitchen. Jesus doesn't ask us to do anything easy.
Billy Graham, who has been feeding sheep for a long time all over the world, went to Oklahoma City this week, along with President Clinton and others, for a memorial service for the victims of the bomb blast at the Federal building. And he said to the thousands of mourners who were gathered there:
“the Bible tells us that evil is real and that the human heart is capable of almost limitless evil when it is cut off from God and from the moral law.... That is one reason we each need God in our lives -- for only God can change our hearts and give us the desire and power to do what it right and keep us from wrong.”
Evil comes among us when someone forgets to feed the sheep.
People of Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church, do you love Jesus?
From the text of a sermon preached at Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in Milwaukee, April 28, 1995.
**********************************************
StoryShare, April 25, 2004, issue.
Copyright 2004 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
