Sermon and Worship Resources

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1. Jesus Brings Life

Mark 5:21-43

Illustration

Will Willimon

With whom do you most identify in today's gospel? There are plenty of characters here who are being stung by death. There is a woman whose whole life has been caught, dominated by a terrible, life-demanding illness. There is a distraught father. A little girl whose young life is being cut short. There are the baffled disciples, the crowd who doesn't know what to think of all this. Where are you? ...

2. A God Who Hears, Cares, and Acts

Mark 4:35-41

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Will Willimon

Stephen Crane wrote a poem: A man said to the universe, "I exist." "That may be true," said the universe, "however that has never created in me a sense of obligation to you." How many, like Crane, have cried out in their pain and despair, and have received nothing in reply? Is there anyone "out there" who cares about us "down here?" Or, in time of pain, are we mostly left to our own devices? When...

3. A Good Name

Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9

Sermon

Will Willimon

“A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold." Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9 Do you believe that? It's from the book of Proverbs. You get this sort of moral platitude there. "A good name is better than silver or gold." Sounds a little quaint, this talk of "a good name." But this is typical of Proverbs. Here is ethics done the old-fashioned (600 B.C.) way ...

4. A Second Look

Matthew 5:27-48

Sermon

Will Willimon

"But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you....You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." Matthew 5:27-48 Some of you remember the uproar when President Jimmy Carter admitted to Playboy that he had committed "adultery of the heart." Big deal. Show me a man who has never once "looked at a woman lustfully" and thereby committed, in Jesus' w...

5. A Violent Week

Mark 14:1-2 · Luke 22:14-23:56

Sermon

Will Willimon

“And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth, and kill him...” Only a few minutes from where we worship, nuclear warheads are pointed in our direction. All this could be obliterated in a nuclear moment. We don't think about that much. We can't think about it much. Robert J. Lifton named it "nuclear numbness." If you're exposed to violence or the threat of it fo...

6. A Woman Dancing

Exodus 15:20, 21

Sermon

Will Willimon

"Then Miriam, the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and dancing. And Miriam sang to them: 'Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea."' (Exodus 15:20, 21) The serious, white, Western reporter commented, ''Here in South Africa, funerals of slain black South Afri...

7. Advice

Romans 12:2, 9-20; 13:8-9

Sermon

Will Willimon

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, there is the scene where old Polonius, an aging, sentimental blowhard, gives advice to his son, Laertes. Laertes is preparing to leave for France and old Polonius, knowing what sometimes happens to eighteen year olds in Paris, does what fathers do -- he offers advice. Most of his advice is rather innocuous. In those days, before dreaded social diseases, there wasn't really...

8. Amazing Grace

Luke 18:9-14

Sermon

Will Willimon

''My son is a good kid. He's quite a remarkable, wonderful young man," the mother said to me on your first day here. ''I'll be the judge of that," I thought to myself. Yet she is probably right. After all, he got in Duke. And our Office of Admissions makes certain that no slouch gets in Southgate. 1300 on your SAT, 198 of you were number one in your high school class. God I thank thee that I don...

9. An Exalted Christology

John 6:1-15

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Will Willimon

John's account of the miraculous feeding is curious, when compared to the synoptic gospels, for a number of reasons. John links the feeding to the story of Jesus' walking on water, and to Peter's confession of faith. Probably, John means thereby to make a strong point regarding the identity of Jesus as the exalted Christ. Moreover, we should take note that this feeding is set by John in the conte...

10. Behold, the One Who Betrays Me Is With Me

Luke 22:14-34

Sermon

Will Willimon

“But see, the one who betrays me is with me, and his hand is on the table ....Then they began to ask one another, which one of them it could be who would do this.” This professor revealed to me, the other day, the rather seedy etiology of two human activities which I had heretofore considered congenial. Why do we shake hands when we meet? A show of friendliness and warmth? Not so. The handshake or...

11. Being Good

Matthew 5:17-20

Sermon

Will Willimon

Let's say that we're all here today because we want to be better people. We are here to be good, to become more righteous. After all, surely this is one of the main functions of religion, the Christian or any other, to make us better than we would have been if we had not gotten up on a cold February morning and gone to Chapel And let's agree that, even if we have not arrived, we are at least on ou...

12. Beware! Angels

Matthew 1:18-25

Sermon

Will Willimon

''Angels are big this Christmas," said the florist as he placed yet another cherub on the tree. An outburst of bestselling books testify to our current infatuation with angels. Why does the whole world seem so interested in angels, and at this time in human history? The word ''angel'' means, in the Greek, ''messenger." Angels are messengers of God. That's why artists portrayed them with wings. An...

13. Choices

Philippians 1:12-14, 19-24

Sermon

Will Willimon

"Why do you enjoy preaching at Duke chapel," the interviewer asked. And I heard myself reply, "Because it's a great privilege to be with young adults, students, who are making so many important decisions in their lives. The way I see it, of the five or six most important choices we make choices about career, education, marriage -- many will be made right here at Duke. And I enjoy preaching to, cou...

14. Church, Interrupted

Mark 1:21-28

Sermon

Will Willimon

I know a Methodist preacher who, on his very first Sunday at a church in a small southern town, made it to the end of his very first sermon in his new parish, and then asked the congregation stand for the last hymn. As was their custom he said, ''Now during the singing of the last hymn, if there are those who would unite with our church, or those who, in response to the sermon would simply like to...

15. Clean Hands

Psalm 26:1-12

Sermon

Will Willimon

Here is someone whom you would not want for a roommate. Here is someone whom your mother might pick for your roommate, but even your mother wouldn't want to live next door to the person who wrote Psalm 26. Hell would be an entire Saturday night in the presence of this person. Would you listen to him pray? "I have walked in my integrity, I have trusted in the LORD without wavering… I walk in faith...

16. Consuming Fire

Hebrews 12:18-29

Sermon

Will Willimon

Some of you are new here. If you are...welcome! If you are a new student, a particular welcome to you. After all, this is your Chapel. I want you to feel...what is it I want you to feel? I almost said, "This is your Chapel and I want you all to feel right at home." That's what I almost said. "I want you to make yourself at home, comfortable." But it's hard to feel that way in Duke Chapel. The pl...

17. Count the Cost

Luke 14:25-33

Sermon

Will Willimon

''Whoever of you does not renounce all that he or she has cannot be my disciple." How many of you were here last Sunday? Don't raise your hands. Well, even if you were not here, I can give you a quick summary of the sermon. We were at a party at a Pharisee's house with Jesus. Jesus, we noted, just loves to party. The gospel he brings is good news that God wants to invite everyone to a great party...

18. Darkness

Mt 27:45 · Jn 1:5 · 1 Jn 1:5

Sermon

Will Willimon

Elizabeth's husband had died a horrible, painful death after a long illness. And when he died, it was as if a light had gone out in her soul, so deep and dark was her grief. Why had a good man like that had to suffer so, she wondered. Her grief was made worse by her having been taken on as a project by a fundamentalist Christian church on the edge of town. The guy she had dated in high school had ...

19. Depart from Me

Luke 5:1-11 · Isaiah 6:1-8

Sermon

Will Willimon

I enjoy watching people enter this Chapel. Nearly half a million each year, enter that portal, as you did moments ago. And (if they are here for the first time) I like to watch their eyes turn upward, their mouths drop open, overwhelmed by the glory, the majesty of this place. And that's exactly what the Gothic architect intended--that these soaring arches and brilliant windows should overwhelm us...

20. Divine Divestment

Mark 10:17-27

Sermon

Will Willimon

The Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, came home after church one Sunday and wrote of his disgust at what happened there. ''In the magnificent cathedral the Honourable and Right Reverend Gehei111e-General Ober-Hof Pradikant, the elect favourite of the fashionable world, appears before an elect company and preaches with emotion upon the text he himself elected: 'God hath elected the base thing...

21. Do You Think That I Have Come To Bring Peace?

Luke 12:49-56

Sermon

Will Willimon

What did you do this summer? We did nothing special. Made a number of trips to the lake in a new family boat. Went here and there. But isn't that the way summers are supposed to be? Peaceful. So for us it was a restful summer, peaceful. On Sunday, May 7, the day of Panama's presidential elections, Nicholas Van Kleef, a priest working in the David Diocese of Panama, was shot. Van Kleef was stopped ...

22. Dying, We Live

1 Corinthians 15:51-58

Sermon

Will Willimon

"O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?" It was a familiar story. A nice person like me with much work to do, trapped on a four hour flight from Denver to Durham, cornered like a caged animal, seated next to a person who is determined to set me straight before we land. Where does American Airlines get these people? Hardly had our wheels left the ground than she informed me t...

23. Easter Fear

Mark 16:1-8

Sermon

Will Willimon

At the end of this service last Easter, after the glorious music, the majesty of it all, throngs of people were surging forth after having sung their ''Alleluias'' and their ''Hosannas," shaking my hand, telling me how beautiful everything was, how well I did, how great it was to be here. And then there was this young man, surely a student, who filed through the door, shaking my hand, saying only...

24. Easter Is True

Luke 24:13-35 · 1 Peter 1:17-23

Sermon

Will Willimon

"By His great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,... without having seen Him you love him: though you do not now see him you believe in him and rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy." I still remember, as vividly as if yesterday, sitting in a service in my home church during Easter vacation of my sophomore year. I had dutifully...

25. Easter Power

Acts 14:8-18

Sermon

Will Willimon

We're now four Sundays beyond Easter. The Sunday crowd is smaller. We have no trumpets today and the music is not as stupendous as that we sang on Easter. Yet, if you put your ear to the ground, you can still hear it rumbling, even as the earth heaved on that first Easter mom. Beneath the somewhat sedate rhythms of today's service, you can still sense the throb of the Easter tempo when the stone w...

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