Images are highly influential. They become emblazoned on the wall of our minds and they evoke a wide range of responses. Millions of people will remember the fireman carrying the baby out of the ruins of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. World War II veterans, particularly the ones who served in the South Pacific, will always remember Mount Surabachi and the Marines who raised an American flag at its summit, as well as the image of General MacArthur returning to the Philippines. Neil Armstrong ...
The young girl was asked in Sunday school, “would you rather be good or would you rather be beautiful?” “I’d rather be beautiful,” she declared, “and repent!” You probably know someone with that philosophy. A teenage boy and his grandfather were out fishing. The grandfather began talking about how times have changed. The teenager, who had a close relationship with his grandfather, asked, “Grandad, they didn’t have much trouble with sexually transmitted diseases when you were young, did they?” The ...
I came upon Jesus quite by accident. We didn't travel in the same circles, so it was unlikely that we would ever have met socially. I was passing through the marketplace in Jerusalem one day when I heard him speaking to a handful of people who had stopped to listen. "Just another wandering street-preacher," I thought to myself. But as I passed by I heard him talking about the Kingdom of God, and about God himself, in such unsophisticated terms, uncluttered with a lot of theology, that I could see he was ...
Last fall the phone rang in my study. It was a newspaper pollster doing a survey on church and society. His main question was, "What would your city be like without the church?" I was tempted to be funny in my reply. Like the cartoon that shows a pack of wolves howling at the moon. A wolf on the back row is looking worried and asks another fanged friend, "Do you think we're doing any good?" Sometimes I feel like that when the church seems to be ignored or irrelevant. Yet anytime one feels he is small and ...
You and I are "gifted" people. We live in a "gifted" country. We gather in a "gifted" institution. Regardless of our relative weaknesses, relative status, and relative talents, we are "gifted" by any reasonable definition of human success. We live in an industrialized nation and our lives are hardly struggling to survive. We enjoy sophisticated imaginations and privileged circumstances. Our talents are many. We do not struggle to survive. We have options -- we can speak the truth; we can grow and mature; ...
Realtors tell us that an empty house is difficult to sell. Regardless of its physical beauty, a home "shows" better when it is furnished. Sellers are advised to have the home cleaned, have a fire going in the fireplace, turn on lamps, have soft music playing in the background, and place fresh flowers on tables and cabinets. The aura and smells that are presented to the customer are important. In major shopping malls the smells of baked cookies are sometimes injected into the ventilation system to lure ...
A young college graduate embarked on what he hoped would be a promising career in sales. He was outgoing, witty, and enthusiastic. His company assigned him his territory. It was a rural area in the Midwest. His responsibility was to sell the latest in farm equipment to the farmers in the area. With great fervor he memorized the strategy sales pitch and left his office to spread his message of "better farming through better equipment." His first two visits had not resulted in a sale. But he could sense that ...
A popular series of movies has been the Lethal Weapon series. You might remember that in the series Mel Gibson plays a semi-unbalanced police officer named Riggs. Riggs is a capable detective but occasionally he goes berserk and mentally flips out. He's called a lethal weapon because you never know when he's going to go off. Each of us has the potential to become a "lethal weapon." We possess within ourselves a weapon against which there is little insurance others can take out. This weapon enables us to ...
Many Americans have become very familiar with courtroom settings. This familiarity has been made possible by the O. J. Simpson trial and such programs as Judge Judy, Judge Brown, and the popular Court TV Channel. In a sense, Americans are afforded an opportunity to become involved in the legal and judicial profession simply by pushing the correct button on their remote control. Here they can listen to the evidence, predict the outcome of various trials, and practice law without a license. Isaiah, the ...
A man was sitting in a psychiatrist’s office. He was complaining about an obsession that was ruining his life. “It’s baseball, Doctor,” he said. “Please help me. Baseball is destroying me. I can’t even get away from it in my sleep. As soon as I close my eyes, I’m out there chasing a fly ball or running around the bases. When I wake up, I’m more tired than I was when I went to bed. What am I going to do? The psychiatrist sat back and folded her hands. “First of all,” she said, “you have to make a conscious ...
A couple came to their local police department, wanting to dispose of some ammunition. They handed the desk officer a wooden box and explained that it contained two bullets an uncle had given them as souvenirs from World War II. "We didn't know what to do with them," the woman explained. "So all these years, we've kept the bullets in the bottom drawer of the china cabinet, away from our children." The officer assured the couple he'd dispose of the bullets safely. But when he took one out of the box the top ...
Today we honor our fathers. And that's good. Dads don't get much respect nowadays. A doting father used to sing his little children to sleep. He even learned a few lullabies to lend some variety to the task. This was something he could do at night to help his wife out. And he kept up this task until one night he overheard his four-year-old give her younger sibling this advice, "If you pretend you're asleep," she said, "he stops." That was the end of the lullabies. Garrison Keillor, on his "Writer’s Almanac ...
As most of you know, I don't always preach a thematic sermon for special secular holidays such as the Fourth of July Sunday, Memorial Day, Mother's or Father's Day. It's also rare that I preach a sermon on a single theme, such as racism, war, abortion, pornography, poverty. But, hopefully, my sermons address all these pressing issues in the context of Scripture, as that scripture presents itself in the order of my preaching. For you who wonder about that approach to preaching and the fact that we don't ...
In his book, The Gospel For The Person Who Has Everything, William Willimon tells of a young friend, age 4, who was asked on the occasion of his 5th birthday what kind of party he wanted to have. I want everybody to be a king and queen, Clayton said. So, he and his mother went to work, fashioning a score of silver crowns – cardboard and aluminum foil, purple robes – crepe paper, and royal scepters – sticks painted gold. On the day of the party, as the guests arrived, they were each given a royal crown, a ...
Almost everything began in the Garden of Eden. As Adam and Eve were leaving that paradise, driven from it because of their disobedience, Adam’s assessment of the situation was, honey, we live in a time of change. Prior to that, non-scriptural tradition has it that as Eve was coaxing Adam to eat of the apple, she asked, “Adam, do you love me?” His response was, “Who else?” The rest of you’ll get that in a minute. That was the beginning – the beginning of male-female relationships, the beginning of marriage ...
The power of the purpose. Paul had laid down the flail of the persecutor and took up the torch of the evangel on the Damascus Road. There he began the course of a great adventure, an adventure that sent him trudging through the then-known world – through the deserts and over the mountains, through blinding blizzard and blistering sun, traveling in peril of his own life, shipwrecked, beaten by the Romans, stoned by the Jew. Yet, throwing back his great cloak to show the scars of his beatings there saying, ‘ ...
Our scripture lesson is taken from the 10th chapter of the Gospel of John, beginning with the 7th and reading through the 18th verses. I’m reading from the Revised Standard Version. This is the word of the Lord. “So Jesus again said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not heed them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and ...
Persons are always asking impossible questions of the Bible. Questions like "Where did God come from?" "Did God create the Devil?" "Where did Cain get his wife?" Well you know how the question derives. Adam and Eve were the first persons in the world. They had two sons, Cain and Abel. And when you get to the 17th verse of Chapter 4 of the Genesis story, you have this word:"Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch; and he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son, ...
Lewis Grizzard is one of my favorite columnists. He isn't as vulgar in his writing as he is in his speaking. Even in his speaking, if you can abide his vulgarity, you can come out with a pearl worth the risk of dirtying your own mind. A few years ago he wrote of missing the family Thanksgiving dinner. It was at an uncle's house out in the country. Country folks like to eat dinner early in the middle of the day. Grizzard slept late and missed it. At 1 P.M., Thanksgiving, he got a call from B.A. (Now I don't ...
Today we begin a new series of sermons on the Epistle of James. If I were to give a subtitle to this epistle, I would call it "A Manual of Practical Christianity." All of us should be able to identify with the thought. We are always asking that everything be made practical. Speakers are admonished to use the "kiss principle": "Keep it simple, stupid." There is a sense in which the Epistle of James is a "how to" book, and any bookstore has a large section of such books, from How To Build a Patio to How to ...
Last Sunday, we talked about John's message of repentance as the "no" that becomes a "yes." We talked about the fact that the call to repentance is a call to repent of our sins, but it's also a call to repent of trying to hide from our sins. We never repent of our sins until we quit hiding from them. Also, repentance is more than a feeling. It is a mind-change -- a mind-change that involves admitting we have been wrong in supposing we can manage our life as if we were God. A second aspect of the mind- ...
As most of you know, I don't always preach a thematic sermon for special secular holidays such as the Fourth of July Sunday, Memorial Day, Mother's or Father's Day. It's also rare that I preach a sermon on a single theme, such as racism, war, abortion, pornography, poverty. But, hopefully, my sermons address all these pressing issues in the context of Scripture, as that scripture presents itself in the order of my preaching. For you who wonder about that approach to preaching and the fact that we don't ...
Somewhere along the way I read a piece entitled "What is a Person" written by a little boy in West Virginia who was asked to write an essay on that subject. This is what he wrote. "When you are a person...your head is kind of round and hard and your brains are in it and your hair is on it. Your face is in the front of your head where you eat and make faces. Your neck is what keeps your head out of your collar, and it's hard to keep clean. Your shoulders are sort of shelves where you hook on your suspenders ...
“Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy Name.” It is the prayer of the Christian Church, prayed more often in public worship than any other prayer, and known personally by heart by more individuals than perhaps any other passage of Scripture. So, what will I do with a sermon on such a familiar text? I could take the easy way out and do as a young man who had come to a monastery and asked for admission to the order. “He told the abbot that he would accept any task, no matter how menial, if only he ...
In his book, The Gospel For The Person Who Has Everything, William Willimon tells of a young friend, age 4, who was asked on the occasion of his 5th birthday what kind of party he wanted to have. I want everybody to be a king and queen, Clayton said. So, he and his mother went to work, fashioning a score of silver crowns – cardboard and aluminum foil, purple robes – crepe paper, and royal scepters – sticks painted gold. On the day of the party, as the guests arrived, they were each given a royal crown, a ...