"I am content with persecutions for Christ’s sake ..." 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 Characters: Lector Announcer Antagonist Protagonist Participants enter and take their places in the chancel. As they come forward, the congregation sings the hymn "In the Cross of Christ I Glory." When the hymn is completed, the drama begins. LECTOR: I am most happy ... to be proud of any weaknesses, in order to feel the protection of Christ’s power over me. I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and ...
Matthew 24:36-51, Mark 13:1-31, Mark 13:32-37, Luke 21:5-38
Drama
Dave Marsh
Director's Notes: Why is it that the idea of meeting or knowing a celebrity (actor, musician, writer, etc.) something that we as people find so compelling? While they may have talents or money that we may not possess, they are still just like us, human beings. If I were to tell you that Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts were going to come visit you for a month, declare their undying friendship to you, shower you with gifts and always love you, chances are you might just faint or die of a heart attack, overcome ...
The last week of the life of our Lord, the time that we refer to as Holy Week, was the most significant of his life. For the past three Sundays we have been examining in some detail the events that occurred during that period. We have looked at Sunday, the day of celebration, Monday, the day of emotion, and Tuesday, the day of questions. Continuing this morning I would like to examine Wednesday, the day of transition, and Thursday, the day of fellowship. Jesus’ final week can be divided into three phases. ...
Geoff Burch is a sales trainer in England. He tells about a man named Fred he met in the course of his research into sales methods. Back in the 1950s Fred had been a traveling salesman hawking washing machines. This job was on commission only, but included a valuable and unusual perk: the then almost unheard of luxury of a vehicle. At the beginning of each week Fred was sent off in his van with five washing machines; so long as all five were sold each week, Fred could keep the van. This he succeeded in ...
A judge in New York City was mugged. Later he called a press conference. He made the following statement to reporters, "This mugging will in no way affect my decisions in adjudicating matters of this kind." An elderly woman stood up in the back of the room and said, "Then mug him again!" She wanted to make sure the judge got the message about what is happening in the streets of our cities. An old man was trying to lead a contrary donkey down the road. A passer-by stopped him and commented on the way the ...
No one deserves a special day all to herself more than today's Mom. A cartoon showed a psychologist talking to his patient: "Let's see," he said, "You spend 50 percent of your energy on your job, 50 percent on your husband and 50 percent on your children. I think I see your problem." Some of you can identify with that. I like the story about the fouryearold and the sixyearold who presented their Mom with a house plant. They had used their own money and she was thrilled. The older of them said with a sad ...
Thirty years ago, in 1964, State Senator Bobby Rowan of Georgia rose to his feet to make a motion before the state assembly. "Mr. President," Senator Rowan began, "I move that the proposed Georgia election code be amended as follows: No person may vote, either in the Democratic primary or in the general election in the State of Georgia, who has been deceased more than three years." The amendment was completely serious. A lively debate followed. On the floor of the state senate legislators argued over the ...
After tucking in his six-year-old son Chris one night, Robert O'Brien tapped his son's chest and asked, "Do you know what you have in there?" Chris looked puzzled and responded, "My guts?" "No, you have a piece of God," his father replied. After a brief silence Chris responded, "God is in my guts?" "No," said his Dad, "we have a piece of God inside of us; it is God's gift to each of us." Chris smiled, tapped his Dad's chest, and asked whether his Dad had a piece of God in his guts. They laughed and ...
"What are a Redneck's famous last words?" asks Redneck expert Jeff Foxworthy. "Simple," he says. The Redneck's last words are, "Y'all watch this!" "Whatever the foolhardy act," says Foxworthy, "his friends always oblige. In fact, they probably put the poor guy up to no good in the first place, just for a laugh. Not that he minds. Men know that their friends," Foxworthy continues, "are going to get them into trouble. They expect it. That's why they're called friends. Have you ever heard a guy describe ...
In the movie The Truman Show, Truman Burbank believes his life is no different from anyone else's. He has one life to live, just like the rest of us. But one day he begins to notice peculiar things happening. For example he notices things that happen exactly the same way every day. This causes him to get suspicious that something strange is going on. What he doesn't realize is that every second of his life from the day he was born has been telecast live to the entire planet. He is the star of The Truman ...
An Italian newspaper recently carried a story about a young couple in Milan who seemed particularly devoted in their worship. The priest at a cathedral there reported that the pair spent an hour or more on a regular basis sitting before a statue of the Virgin Mary. Naturally, he assumed they were praying. Turns out, this young couple was recharging their cell phone. They had noticed a stray electric cable sticking out of the wall behind the statue of the Virgin Mary. Whenever their phone's power supply ...
When Jenny was four, she asked her mother, “Does heaven have a floor?” Surprised, her mother said, “Well, Jenny, what do you think heaven is like?” Jenny looked up at the sky and clouds and replied, “Well, I can’t see any floor, so I guess people are just up there on coat hangers!" One mother told her nine-year-old, Heather, that in heaven we will have glorified bodies. Heather asked, “Do you think we’ll look like Barbie?” One Sunday school classroom had several glass prisms hanging from the ceiling. As ...
In a certain city in Romania is a burying ground called the "Mary Cemetery." The crosses that serve as tombstones are ornamented with carvings, paintings in bright colors and even amusing epitaphs. They express, of course, the Christian''s belief in the resurrected life. The Communist government, which wrote the travel folders describing this cemetery and its unique tombstones, until recently described the Christian hope expressed on the tombstones as merely "the expression of a certain philosophy ...
In the year 1739 a strange scene was enacted before the House of Commons in London. A ship’s captain by the name of Jenkins was brought before that august body, and he showed them a bottle which contained a small, shriveled-up object, which he claimed was his ear. He said that it had been cut off by Spanish coast-guards when his ship was searched on the high seas. “What did you do?” he was asked. And he is supposed to have replied, “I commended my soul to God and my cause to my country.” In his epic ...
A certain middle-aged couple from the rural area of Tennessee received a registered letter from the Internal Revenue Service. On the outside of the large manila envelope in large letters was the message--FINAL NOTICE. "Praise the Lord," said the wife to her husband. "This is the last time the government is going to badger us about our overdue taxes." Just when we thought that James was going to stop making us squirm in our pews, he forces us to "Tackle the Tough Tasks" of racism and classism in the body of ...
Long ago on a high mountaintop three trees were speaking about their future dreams. The first tree said, "I would really like to be made into a cradle so that a newborn baby might rest comfortably and I could support that new life." The second tree looked down at a small stream that was flowing into a big river and said, "I want to be made into a great ship so I can carry useful cargo to all corners of the world." The third tree viewed the valley from its mountaintop and said, "I don't want to be made into ...
There are two actors in this scene of John's gospel: Jesus and Nicodemus. Nicodemus is not a popular figure in the gospels. He appears only a couple of other times in John's record. The last picture of him is in John 19. He and Joseph of Arimathea asked for the body of Jesus after He was crucified in order that He might have a decent burial. One of Rembrandt's most famous etchings portrays that scene. The limp, dead body of Jesus was slowly taken down from the cross. Joseph of Arimathea, dressed as the ...
There are some experiences or encounters that are so solidly lodged in our memory that they continue to invade our consciousness – to haunt us – to help or to hinder our Christian walk, to call and challenge us to be more than we are. John Birkbeck is a person around whom for me a whole cluster of memories are gathered – memories that invade my immediate awareness now and then. John was a Scot Presbyterian preacher. During a part of my tenure as the World Editor of The Upper Room, he was the editor of the ...
There is a popular story going around about a husband and wife who are discussing their living wills. The husband is adamant about his desires. “Just so you know,” he says, “I would never want to live in a vegetative state, dependent on some machine and fluids from a bottle. If I ever get to that state, I just want you to pull the plug.” His wife thought about this for a moment, got up, unplugged the TV and threw out all his beer. Some of us know somebody who’s in that kind of vegetative state. We want to ...
As the movie Contact opens, the audience sees a precocious girl named Eleanor learning how to use a ham radio. Nicknamed "Sparks" by her father, she has reached a man in Florida, and is excited that her radio lets her speak with someone so far away. In a later scene she asks her father wistfully if she can call her deceased mother on the radio. He responds sadly that no antenna is big enough. As the movie progresses, the audience learns that Sparks' beloved father died of a heart attack when she was nine ...
We all know about famous last words. They are collected because they are supposed to be important. We expect something deep and profound from someone as their last words, the distillation of the wisdom of a lifetime. We also know about the last words of Jesus. Every gospel writer records his own version of the last words of Jesus. They are all different, his words from the cross. And every Good Friday, some place around the world, some church is commemorating the cross by meditating on the seven last words ...
In the fall of 1971, I visited Leo Tolstoy's home in Moscow. There, tied in bundles and stacked against the wall, were his handwritten manuscripts for all of his great novels - War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and Resurrection. For an hour I leafed through the mountain of paper, observing the man's handwriting, his strikeovers, and even the doodles he made in the margins. An elderly Russian woman, the curator of the museum, noticed my deep interest in Tolstoy and began to talk to me. "He was a friend of the ...
It's that holiday season again. Friends and loved ones are making plans for a visit. Christmas decorations are out in the store windows. Once again people's hearts are swelling with optimism. Jack Frost has left his calling card. The smell of wood fires curls from the chimneys, and inside, mothers work their magic as fathers are heard to say, "Make some of those sugar cookies that you made last year, the ones with the sprinkles." Yes, it's Thanksgiving week, and I'm supposed to preach on gratitude. And you ...
Have you noticed that grandmothers have changed? For one thing they seem so much younger than they used to. Some anonymous bard celebrated this truth in a little poem you may have encountered on the Internet. It’s titled, “Where Have All the Grandmas Gone?” In the dim and distant past; When life’s tempo wasn’t so fast Grandma used to rock and knit, Crochet, tat, and baby sit. When the kids were in a jam, They could always call on Gram. But today she’s in the gym Exercising to keep slim. She’s checking the ...
Psalm 100:1-5, Ezekiel 34:1-31, Ephesians 1:15-23, Matthew 25:31-46
Sermon Aid
Marion L. Soards, Thomas B. Dozeman, Kendall McCabe
OLD TESTAMENT TEXTS Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24 is a description of God as a good shepherd. Psalm 100 is a song of praise. Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24 - "God as the Good Shepherd" Setting. There are two central images in Ezekiel 34, shepherds and sheep. The image of a shepherd is used in this chapter to refer to kings and the power of monarchs to lead the people of Israel, their sheep. The imagery of this chapter, therefore, relates well to the Reign of Christ Sunday. Structure. An overview of Ezekiel 34 is ...