Sermon and Worship Resources

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1 Corinthians 3:1-23

Sermon

King Duncan

... , sad story. Robert Howard had no sense of personal identity. He did not know who he was. He tried to live his life through the fictional Conan. In the real world, he was a man who couldn’t cope. Contrast Robert Howard with the twelve-year-old girl in Flannery O’Connor’s short story. This girl is moved by the idea that she is the dwelling place of God. What a healthy idea to grab a young woman’s brain. This idea gave her a heightened sense of her own worth. St. Paul writes, “Don’t you know that ...

2. The Call of the Trumpet

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Sermon

George Bass

... through the Holy Spirit so that we may "grow in grace" and make the most we can of the lives given us by the Lord. Misuse of the gifts of God may endanger our lives and jeopardize our claim to his gift in Christ. In "The Enduring Chill," Flannery O’Connor tells the story of the return of Asbury Fox to his mother’s home to die. He is a young man, a frustrated artist and intellectual, who is "above" the sort of life lived in rural America. Asbury is convinced that nothing and no one - and certainly not ...

3. Two Parables about Prayer

Luke 18:9-14, Luke 18:1-8

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... God to deliver him from pretentiousness. At one point the poet prays, “Lord of the narrow gate and needle’s eye, / Take from me all my trumpery lest I die.”2 Story: “Revelation,” by Flannery O’Connor. Few writers expose the heart of pride and hypocrisy as does American author Flannery O’Connor (1925–64). In this story (published posthumously in 1965) a very self-absorbed, proud, middle-class, Southern woman, Ruby Turpin, is always thanking God that he has made her who she is, “a neat clean ...

4. Church Divisions and Confusion of Allegiance

1 Corinthians 1:10-17

Teach the Text

Preben Vang

... is a mere undeserving servant. Illustrating the Text Personal agendas and cliques must give way to a community centered on Christ. Literature: “Revelation,” by Flannery O’Connor. In this posthumously published short story, the great American writer O’Connor (1925–64) points out with dark, ironic humor the problem of grouping people. O’Connor was more concerned with pride than anything else. Her short stories, which appear bizarre to some readers, insightfully examine our need to be important ...

5. Time Taken, Life Restored

Mark 5:21-43

Sermon

William G. Carter

... sleeping." They laughed at him, because he didn't seem to know what kind of world this is. Yet Jesus had the last laugh. He took the child by the hand and said, "Get up!" Immediately she got up, alive and well, and she began to walk. In one of Flannery O'Connor's short stories, there is a character who speaks a great line. He says, "Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead, and He shouldn't have done it. He has thrown everything off balance."1 Indeed he has. A sick woman pushed through the crowd to ...

6. Thank God, We're Already Dead

Romans 6:1b-11

Sermon

William G. Carter

... by her loving parents. Two Sundays from today, a lot of people are going to be thrilled and delighted when she is baptized. I have only one request to make. After we baptize her, would somebody please tell her what she has gotten herself into? 1. Flannery O'Connor; "The River," A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), p. 44. 2. Garry Wills, Certain Trumpets: The Call of Leaders (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), p. 41. 3. T. S. Eliot, "The Gift of the Magi ...

7. I Went Down to the River to Pray

Mark 1:4-11

Sermon

Robert J. Elder

... first time I ever heard the song, "Down To The River To Pray," that has since been arranged as a choral anthem.2 Seeing the river baptism scene in the movie, or any baptism on any given Sunday, we might be given to wonder, why does baptism matter? In Flannery O'Connor's short story, "The River,"3 a woman named Mrs. Connin is employed to care for the son of some wealthy but uncaring parents. The boy's mother is sick one day, and so Mrs. Connin takes the boy off to a riverside baptismal service of her church ...

8. He Could Have Called Ten Thousand Angels

Luke 23:26-43

Sermon

King Duncan

... thing?” (1) I suspect that is a pertinent question for many people when they come to the cross: “How do you work this thing?” We see crosses hung around people’s necks, adorning the walls of the homes of devout people, even worn as tattoos. What does it mean? Writer Flannery O’Connor says that when she was young her family would occasionally visit a nearby convent. One of the sisters would come out to hug her. Each time the sister held ...

9. From a Distance

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-19

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... given within a year, would the clan of Abraham have retained its singular identity and purpose? Hazel Motes (a man) is the central character of one of Flannery O'Connor's novels. After he lost his eyesight, he insisted that blind people see more. "If there's no bottom to your eyes, they hold more," he once told his faithful landlady (O'Connor, Wise Blood [New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1962], 222). [Warning: Hazel Mote's usefulness in the illustration ends with this quote. His career as an evangelist ...

10. Jesus’s Fallible Followers

Luke 9:51-56, Luke 9:46-50, Luke 9:37-45

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... break.”2Similarly, in their self-preoccupation, the disciples were not ready or able to comprehend Jesus’s message. In the face of the disciples’ quarreling, Jesus attacks conventional notions of what is important. Literature: “Revelation,” by Flannery O’Connor. O’Connor (1925–64) was a renowned American writer and essayist whose Christian faith shone through her work. In this wry tale published posthumously in 1965, Ruby Turpin, the protagonist, is a very self-assured woman who is convinced ...

11. Epiphany: The Tragedy of Rejection

Luke 4:14-30

Sermon

J. Ellsworth Kalas

... to cut Jesus down to size. Specifically, their size. They wanted to be able to "manage" him, by remembering that he was the boy they had seen through the years in the carpenter shop. Our culture still tries to make Jesus manageable. Flannery O'Connor, that perceptive modern novelist, observed one very painful thing about writing as a Christian that which is the ultimate reality for the Christian, the Incarnation, is something which nobody in her reading audience believed. Her readers, she said, were largely ...

12. A Glimpse of God

John 14:5-14

Sermon

George Bass

... , so unreal, so impossible’ - yet the fact is that in another ten minutes the course of one’s life on the earth is going to come to an end. The finality of the whole thing is a little vulgar." He continues: "There’s a story in Flannery O’Connor’s Everything that Rises Must Converge - ‘Greenleaf’ - (that shows this)." Greenleaf is a white tenant farmer with two sons. His bull escapes to the property of the woman who employs him. Much of the story describes how she had spent her life setting her ...

13. Making Compassion a Verb

Mark 6:30-44

Sermon

David G. Rogne

... capable needs cultivating if it is to find expression. Following Christ is one way to nurture that characteristic. Flannery O'Connor, the insightful Roman Catholic writer, lifted up the Christian dimension when she wrote: "You will have found ... never to risk your life," he says to himself. "(Go ahead), utter the words that for years have never ceased echoing through my nights ... 'O young woman, throw yourself into the water again so that I may have a second chance of saving both of us!' " When we fail ...

14. A Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

Acts 9:1-19a

Sermon

George Bass

... the other hand, fought against that assertion; he denied the resurrection until he was struck down outside Damascus. The risen Lord confronted him, and he could not deny Christ’s Lordship any longer. In her story, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," Flannery O’Connor writes about a kind of secular Saul named The Misfit who obviously cannot believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Just before he murders an elderly grandmother, he says: "Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead, ... and he shouldn ...

15. Out of the Wilderness Comes New Life

Mark 1:9-13

Sermon

George Bass

... ; with you I am well pleased," but also to drive him into physical isolation for an extended period of time during which he could reflect on the meaning of what happened when John baptized him at the river. Father Finn’s admonition to Asbury, in the Flannery O’Connor story, "The Enduring Chill," in the previous sermon, does not hold up in the light of this gospel. Father Finn had said, "God does not send the Holy Ghost to those who don’t ask for Him. Ask Him to send the Holy Ghost." Jesus, according ...

16. Can We Really Trust God?

Romans 4:1-25

Sermon

King Duncan

... situation, our choices would seem clearer. For every day we live, we are being tested. Do we live according to the best that we know or do we settle for something less? Let's face it, most people today are settling for something less. The great novelist Flannery O'Connor, has written these words in one of her novels, "You shall know and do the truth . . . and the truth will make you odd." We may feel odd in today's world when we live truthfully. In 1998, for example, 20,000 middle-and high-schoolers were ...

17. Justification By Grace Through Faith

Galatians 2:11-21

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... we’re trying to deal with sin in any other way but by confessing it, repenting of it, and pleading the mercy of God. And remember, sin is not just those glaring acts of immorality we usually label such, though it is that. A character in one of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories said, “Did you ever look inside yourself and see what you are not? Well did you? Did you ever look inside yourself and see what you are not?” That’s sin. That’s sin. Denying or neglecting who God is calling us to be. Sin ...

18. The Dayspring From On High

Luke 1:5-25

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... through judges , kings, prophets. Zachariah knew the story. He knew that God acted -- that God intervened and sometimes that intervention was dramatic -- sometimes very personal. Yet, here the Angel was speaking to him, and he was startled. It is no less true with us. Flannery O'Connor, the South Georgia novelist, was a semi-invalid. She was confined to her home and she raised peacocks. One day a repairman came to her farm and she invited him to stop his work to watch his peacocks in the barnyard. She was ...

19. You Are Somebody!

Galatians 3:26--4:7

Sermon

King Duncan

... . Unbelievably, some of these people have parents who care for them, a spouse who adores them, children who look up to them. But somehow they have had something happen in their lives that has convinced them that they are unworthy, unloved, unfit to dwell in society. Flannery O'Connor once wrote a story about a boy who went up in the attic and drew a circle with a big “F” in the middle. He drew this circle with the big “F” in the middle because he hadn't been doing well in school. Then this young ...

20. Can't Help Dreaming

Acts 2:1-21

Sermon

Mark Trotter

... we know that when he appears we shall be like him." To be a Christian means we pattern our life after Christ. We are to be like him. He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." He is the life that we are supposed to emulate. Flannery O'Connor wrote, paraphrasing Jesus's statement, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free," said, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd." Like Don Quixote. But those who have seen the vision know what life is all about now. Life is ...

21. Feeling the Suffering of Others

Mark 6:30-44

Illustration

David G. Rogne

Flannery O'Connor, the insightful Roman Catholic writer, lifted up the Christian dimension when she wrote: "You will have found Christ when you are concerned with other people's sufferings and not your own." The beginning of compassion involves becoming aware of the suffering of others. But it is not enough simply to ...

22. All Who Share This Hope

Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon

Chris Ewing

... from the world at large, so we need to keep looking to each other and to our predecessors in the faith — to the communion, or community of saints — to keep from getting worn down and eroded in our Christian living. I think it was Flannery O'Connor, the American novelist, who paraphrased Jesus to say, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you ... odd."6 Nowhere is the oddness of the Christian outlook more clearly displayed than in the Beatitudes, which we read today from Matthew. Blessed ...

23. The Mystery and Mercy of God

Romans 11:25-32

Teach the Text

C. Marvin Pate

... inexplicable transfer from one location to another for evangelism is found in Acts 8. And in Jude 5–16 Satan’s contention for Moses’ body with the archangel Michael (v. 9), which is used as an example of worlds colliding. Quote: Writer Flannery O’Connor (1925–64) believed that Southern authors were “Christ-haunted”—by implication, a better way to be. She said, We find that the writer has made alive some experience which we are not accustomed to observe every day. . . . If the writer believes ...

24. Good for Nothing

Luke 13:1-9

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... of us who creep into the world to eat and sleep and know no reason why we are born Save only to consume the corn, Devour the cattle, flesh and fish and leave behind an empty dish. That kind of unfruitfulness is not allowed in God’s vineyard. Flannery O’Connor puts it in a graphic way. She asks the question, “Have you ever looked inside yourself and see what you are not.” Think about that. What we are not that we should be is what will bring judgment upon us. Now a second focus of truth. What does ...

25. God Has No Grandchildren

John 3:1-21

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

... new birth. You need the new birth. Anyone of us who has not yet come back from our “East of Eden” sojourn away from God, we need the new birth, and we can be “East of Eden” in a lot of different ways. A character in one of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories asked the question, “Have you ever looked inside yourself and seen what you are not?” Well, have you? Have you ever looked inside yourself and seen what you are not? That’s sin—denying or neglecting who God is calling us to be. Sin is ...

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