I imagine that different letters in the New Testament were written with varying degrees of haste. Paul wrote an angry letter to the church at Corinth. You can tell that as he wrote it he had a lot of things on his mind. On the other hand, the Book of 1st Thessalonians consists almost entirely of prayers and praise. Obviously, there was not a great sense of urgency about the letter. When Paul wrote his brief letter to Philemon, he told his friend and former slave, Onesimus, to personally deliver it. It ...
We need to exercise our sensitivity today as we encounter two old friends, the Pharisee and the Publican. When I first learned this story in my childhood from the Bible storybook and when I told this story in the early years of ministry, the issue was already cut-and-dried. The righteous Pharisee became the scoundrel whom one loves to hate, while the Publican became the hero. Recently, however, in the tenor of the times, there has been a subtle shift of accent. The up-front Pharisee is getting better press ...
It’s good to see that God gets what he wants, once in a while. The events of this text differ from those we’ve heard of the last Sundays. Here there is no rampant trampling on the poor, no idolatrous affluence, no thwarting of justice against which Micah, Zephaniah and Haggai railed. A remnant of people had returned to Israel some eighteen years before from exile, an exile imposed by Darius and then relieved by Cyrus. Eighteen years is not a long time to resettle after your country has been devastated. ...
Two nuns were returning to the hospital where they worked when they ran out of gas. They hailed a passing driver who said he would be happy to give them some - he could siphon it from his tank. The only problem was he had nothing to put the gas in. The nuns looked in their car but they found no container except a bedpan. This will have to do, they decided. So they filled it with gas from the man's car and waved goodbye as he drove away. As the nuns were emptying the bedpan into their gas tank, a trucker ...
Jesus might have been loving, kind, and good, but he wasn’t very practical. As he closes out this first section of the Sermon on the Mount, it is pure Gospel we hear today that supercedes the law of last week. And Jesus shows us just how impractical the Gospel actually is. He instructs the disciples and us, to... ...offer no resistance to wicked people who might hurt or offend you; ...turn the other cheek if someone hits you on one side of the face; ...give your coat as well as your shirt to anyone who ...
There is an ancient Jewish legend that says: A young man asked his Rabbi "Why does your daily prayer say, ‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob? Why does it not simply say, ‘God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?’ " The Rabbi replied, "because, my son, Abraham’s God and Isaac’s God may not have been Jacob’s. Each generation must find God for itself, indeed, each person must find his own God." This legend touches on the passages of our lesson from Exodus 3, but with significant differences, lessons to be ...
Peter's question touches life where we live it, too: "How much forgiving can we be expected to do?" Peter wondered if there was not some cap, which could be imposed in advance, a limit beyond which no reasonable person could be expected to go. In his liberal human generosity, he suggested seven times. Now, if you have been hurt once and again and yet again by another, I think you will understand that forgiving that person seven times is genuinely generous. Even impossibly generous, you might add under your ...
Production Notes "The One Who Made His Cross" may be presented at a worship service of the congregation, or it may be produced in an area of the church building where more elaborate staging is a possibility. In the second case, it may well be that the drama would be offered as a program rather than a worship segment. Characters may costume themselves in first-century attire. While costumes are not required, they will add to the effectiveness of the presentation. Appendix 1 provides a suggested stage ...
Christian unity proclaims security in a personal King, Jesus the Christ! The whole concept of security has taken on new connotations since the Second World War and especially with the news other nations besides the United States have the atomic bomb. Relatively speaking, it has not been too many years that individuals or even nations could cross mountains and/or oceans to gain security from enemies. Our own nation, for generations, was free from direct interference of the ongoing wars and intrigues of ...
If there was freedom of thought at Athens, there was freedom of a different sort in Corinth. Paul’s later letters testify to the moral and legal problems which existed even in the Christian community. Among the pagans, life must have been truly licentious. Corinth was large, powerful, and wealthy. It had a history of military achievement and because of its strategic location and good harbor it was a center of naval and maritime strength. It had joined with Athens in wars against Sparta and later had been a ...
"I will return again to my place, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in their distress they see me, saying, ‘Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn, that he may heal us; he has stricken, and he will bind us up.’ " A woman was filling out an employment application. When she came to the line marked "age," she hesitated a long time. Finally, the personnel manager leaned across his desk and whispered to her, "The longer you wait, the worse it gets!" That’s true of repentance and ...
The sermon is based on the question asked of Solomon by God in the seventh verse of the first chapter of 2 Chronicles: "In that night God appeared to Solomon, and said to him, ‘Ask what I shall give you.’ " Imagine yourself alone at night in your own home. Your wife or the husband is gone for the evening, visiting with family in another city. All the kids are elsewhere. It’s been a strange kind of night for you. You watched a little television but found it silly to watch by yourself. You started into a ...
Two brief Old Testament lessons introduce the sermon for today. The first is from Job 38, the first two verses: "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?’ " The second lesson is from the 55th chapter of Isaiah, verses eight and nine: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." ...
From time to time people will ask, "How long does it take to write a sermon?" Generally, I cannot attach a specific time to the preparation of a particular sermon. Every sermon is a composite of everything a preacher has read and studied on a subject. In the case of this particular sermon, however, I can give at least a general response to that question: This sermon was begun more than twenty years ago. It began when I was in college, and it began under unlikely circumstances. Our professor of English ...
"If poverty is strength, may the good Lord make me weak!" I can hear the idea running around in your head from the time you read the title of today’s sermon. This sermon title sounds every bit as upside down as the Beatitudes that we read as today’s Gospel or as the Second Lesson for today. "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things ...
Emerson once wrote words that sound almost like an invitation to death: And now my chains are to be broken; I shall mount above these clouds and opaque airs in which I live ... Life will no more be a noise; this day shall be better than my birthday; for then I became an animal; now I am invited into the (experience) of the real. - The Poet Recently a college student wrote me, "I think it is probable that the death of the body implies the total cessation of being." This fear is not only a problem for ...
I cannot close this discussion on "What It Is to Be a Christian," without going one step further. In the previous six chapters we have been thinking about the necessary ingredients of the Christian Life: Faith, Obedience, Moral Commitment, Caring, The Abundant Life, and The Assurance of Life After Death. But now it comes to me that I did not in my own life discover and work out these great qualities of living mathematically, mechanically, or by a sheer intellectual approach. Something happened to me! Then ...
This miracle is not simply the story of a mother and her demon-possessed child; it is really an international incident which was to affect the future shape of Christendom. What happened to the Canaanite woman that day affects us today in a most direct and vital way. Like most international incidents it happened at the border between two adversaries. Jesus had traveled to the extreme north end of the Jordan Valley. He was standing at the border line between Syria and Galilee. The inhabitants of Syria were ...
Miriam’s Baby Brother is based on the familiar story that is found in Exodus 1:15--2:9. This play is an historical re-telling of the story-line but has a more modern atmosphere, which is demonstrated through the dialogue and setting. If a more elaborate set decoration is used, the setting is inside the house. There are a table, several chairs, a fireplace, and a cradle; the usual things. A door on stage right leads to another room in the house. Sitting on the table is a large basket. It is big enough to ...
To be in the Spirit’s tether means that we are joined with one another in a unique way, because all of us are bound by a loyalty and love that is greater than any one of us individually. There is a beautiful Communion anthem which describes the evolving process. Draw us in the Spirit’s tether; for when humbly in thy name, two or three are met together, Thou art in the midst of them: Alleluya! TOUCH WE NOW THY GARMENT’S HEM. As the brethren used to gather in the name of Christ to sup, then with thanks to ...
In the early days of New England, it came to be the custom to put five grains of corn beside each plate on Thanksgiving Day. Those five grains of corn were to recall the fast days of the Plymouth settlement when the early colonists were in such drastic and difficult circumstances. In the midst of starvation, food supplies had been so low that only five grains of corn were rationed to an individual at a time, from the common storehouse. But, with five grains of corn, there had been an heroic survival. This ...
In the book of Hebrews there is a fascinating phrase. The writer says, "... let us run with patience the race that is set before us, our eyes fixed on Jesus the author and finisher of our faith ..." There’s an interesting antithesis here: run with patience. Just exactly how do you do that? When we run a foot race, we don’t want to be hampered by anything. The competitor throws off all restraints and eagerly thrusts forward to the goal, unencumbered except with a burning passion to finish first. Is there ...
Hans Lietzmann, noted New Testament scholar, once remarked that no one has correctly understood Jesus except Paul and no one has correctly understood Paul. The attempts to understand Paul are legion. The literature on him is immense and the interpretations of his thought are varied. To Bultmann he is "the founder of Christian theology," while to Morton Enslin he is not a theologian at all but simply a "practical and forthright man" who taught new life in Christ but had little regard for logical consistency ...
The task that remains is to summarize our study of Paul’s theology and to make a specific application of it to the present day. Our point of view has been to regard Paul as the foremost theologian of the early church, the supreme interpreter of Jesus and his gospel to the world of his day. He was not, as liberals at the beginning of the present century thought, the second founder of Christianity who introduced dogma and mysticism to transform Jesus’ simple message of the fatherhood of God and the ...
Christmas is finally here. In the minds of children it has taken forever. For them the last few weeks have moved as slowly as butter in a new frigidaire. This morning they discovered at least some of the items under the tree about which they wrote to Santa some weeks ago. I love children's letters to Santa and collect some of the more interesting ones. Several of my favorites are these: "Dear Santa, I tried to be good this year, but it just didn't work out." Sounds like a Methodist child. "Dear Santa, this ...