Sermon and Worship Resources

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Revelation 21:10-14, 22-23

Sermon

King Duncan

... the drawbacks of living in a city. Comedian Anita Weiss says, “I moved to New York City for my health. I’m paranoid, and it was the only place where my fears were justified.” In a standup routine about traffic in Boston, Massachusetts comedian Lewis Black said, “The last person to get across that town in under three hours was yelling, ‘The British are coming! The British are coming!’” A lot of us would agree with comedian Jason Love’s opinion of Las Vegas: “All the amenities of modern ...

2. Love

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Sermon

Will Willimon

... law. He goes to Mississippi, Robeson County, anywhere to defend people without money or friends. He has defended communists against the Klan, Native Americans against the sheriff, blacks against blacks or whites. In an old car, living from hand to mouth, death threats a virtual everyday occurrence -- what made him do it? I wondered. So I asked him, "Lewis, what turned you into a radical lawyer with no money, no establishment friends except for me?" And you know how he explained himself? "God is love and ...

3. Persistence And Prayer

Luke 18:1-8

Sermon

Richard Hasler

... mine, has never left me.”[4] Now let us look at World War II from a different perspective, namely from the point of view of a German officer who participated in this horrible war. Lewis B. Smedes who taught at Fuller Theological Seminary for many years called our attention to Michael Christopher’s powerful play called The Black Angel. The story was about a former German officer who tried to rebuild his life after World War II by hiding in the woods just outside a small French village. He had already ...

4. Swimming With The Sharks

Mark 9:2-13

Sermon

King Duncan

... I saw a monster, not a human being . . . My soul seemed to shrivel up and collapse in on itself, to be sucked into a black hole of despair. I was left with an indescribable and terrifying emptiness. I was alone in the way the souls in hell must feel ... Yes, Marcellus, I have changed; he changed me!" (4) To see Christ as he really is is to experience personal transformation. C. S. Lewis put it quite pointedly: "He (Jesus) never talked vague, idealistic gas. When he said, Be perfect, He meant it. He meant that we ...

5. Saintly Citizenship - Earthly Responsibilities

Philippians 3:1-11

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... happened and the consequences, I would not have asked you to come. Please forgive me." Judge Oliver wrote back and said to the black pastor, "For me to participate in the Maundy Thursday service at your church was more important than a Chief Justiceship in Apartheidsville. ... is exactly what Paul is sharing in this letter to the Philippians about the nature of our God. I believe C. S. Lewis is absolutely right when he shares: "Aim at Heaven and you will have the Earth `thrown in.'' Aim at earth and you will ...

6. Day-Timers or Begging Bowls

Matthew 14:22-33

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... about them than that. At mid-afternoon, I decided to go out for a cold drink. As I walked out the door, I met a lanky black man wearing a black suit with a priest's collar a prison chaplain, I figured, on his way out at the end of a day's work of grace. I ... when I came home. "Oh yeah? What did he say to you?" "He told me I was a Pharisee. Have eyes. Don't see" (Lewis B. Smedes, A Pretty Good Person: What It Takes to Live With Courage, Gratitude and Integrity [San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990], 137-38.). What ...

7. Moving At The Speed Of Light

Ephesians 3:1-13

Sermon

Frank Luchsinger

... in a darkened cave with miners' helmets shining, or a water craft's navigation lamps quietly passing in the night, or a black forest with the searching beams of rescuers seeking a lost child -- Light on the move as it has always been since Jesus walked ... with a rope. Ignoring peril to herself from weak and rotten ice, she pulled one, then the other to safety. All told, Ida Lewis personally saved something like 25 people in fifty-plus years of keeping the light. Her last reported rescue came at age 63 when ...

8. By D Grace of God

Luke 6:27-38

Sermon

King Duncan

... on social media that you suspected was a scam? It’s a pretty common occurrence. I read an excellent story on the blog Now I Know! by Dan Lewis that I’d like to share with you. It’s about a potential Internet scammer. A few years ago, a man from Utah named Ben Taylor got ... for his support of racist “Jim Crow” laws and his opposition to integration and equality for Black citizens. In 1972, George Wallace was shot and paralyzed in a failed assassination attempt. He was taken by surprise when ...

9. Holy Monday

Matthew 21:1-11

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... are like that. Most of the time, anger is not a very pleasant thing to behold. In Sinclair Lewis’ famous novel BABBITT, which is a study of small-town life, Lewis gave us the description of an angry woman whose “face was wrinkled like the Medusa, her voice was ... history because someone got angry. The Civil Rights movement in our own country got a major boost back in December, 1955, when a black seamstress named Rosa Parks, weary from her hard day’s work, got angry when asked to move to the back of the ...

10. The Day Jesus Asked the Question: The Fourth Word

Matthew 27:45-46

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... joy and suffering are integral parts of the Christian journey. You cannot know one without the other. C.S. Lewis discovered, along with Malcolm Muggeridge, that pain and suffering, rather than being something to be avoided, are basic elements ... in the days of apartheid, resigns as headmaster of the Newcastle High School to protest his government''s racial policies. Emmanuel Nene, a black man who also opposes apartheid, visits Robert to encourage him. At one point Mr. Nene says, "When I go (to heaven), which is ...

11. The Problem With Finding The Kingdom

Matthew 13:44-46

Sermon

William J. Carl

... the kingdom is something that happens when you’re not even looking for it. That’s the way it was for C. S. Lewis. One day he just stumbled onto the kingdom. In fact, instead of seeking the kingdom, he was doing his best to try to avoid ... here is not of treasures in fields or pearls of great price, but a gospel net that catches all of us, fish of every kind, red and yellow, black and white, whether we like it or not in our town and in this country, and the good are gathered into the boat and the bad are ...

12. Finding Our Roots in God and Country

2 Samuel 5:1-5, 6-10

Sermon

William J. Carl, III

... district that I felt very much at home. So many professors and students walk or ride bicycles through town dressed in their black robes that walking through Oxford one Sunday morning in mine didn't look out of place at all. Everywhere you turn in Oxford ... Oxford, whose 300th anniversary they were celebrating while I was there. Then you stroll down the street to Magdalene College where C. S. Lewis was cornered by God one day and converted. He wrote to a friend, "I have just passed on from believing in God to ...

13. A Faith that Will Transform You

Luke 19:1-10

Sermon

King Duncan

... Man came to seek and to save the lost.” It makes no difference if your home is a mansion or a rescue mission if your skin is black, brown, yellow or white. It doesn’t even matter if you are a saint or a sinner, if your heart is empty, and you will let him, Jesus ... feeling lost this day, whatever that may mean to you, won’t you open yourself to his love? 1. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity 2. Edwin Orr, “Playing the Good News Off‑Key,” Christianity Today, January 1, 1982, 24‑25. Cited in Robert ...

14. Everything You Need to Know about Love

John 15:9-17

Sermon

King Duncan

... and enhance the person whom we love rather than to extract value from them. “Gift love moves out to bless and to increase rather than to acquire or to diminish. Gift love is more like a bountiful, artesian well that continues to overflow than a vacuum or a black hole.” Lewis concludes that is what God’s love is all about. In other words, God’s love is gift love, not need love. (2) This, of course, is the meaning of agape love. Are we capable of agape love--that is, loving as God loves? To a certain ...

15. Loving Like God Loves

Matthew 5:43-48

Sermon

Phil Thrailkill

... help I will give is help to become perfect. You may want something less: but I will give you nothing less.’”5 Lewis also wrote: “The command ‘be ye perfect’ is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going ... cordiality and conviviality in fraternities and sororities, hunt clubs, Tupperware parties, family reunions, whites with whites at Country Clubs, blacks with blacks at nightclubs. After all, what could be easier than to love those who love us and extend greetings to ...

16. Negative Responses to Jesus

Luke 11:33-36, Luke 11:29-32, Luke 11:14-28

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... Those who make all moral choices into black and white issues do reduce moral life to absurdity. But Christians who turn away from biblical moral absolutes altogether are also foolish. With no black or white there is only uniform, unbroken, ... Jesus’s authority is to misunderstand his work. Quote: “The World’s Last Night,” by C. S. Lewis. In this essay (1952) about the second coming of Christ, Lewis writes, He [God] could, if He chose, repair our bodies miraculously without food; or give us food without ...

17. Misunderstanding Jesus

John 6:25-59

Sermon

... man simply smiled and walked out. As the young man walked back to the bar in a very cocky fashion the bartender asked him if he had recognized the black man. The young man said: "No! Why?" "Well I just thought you might have. That’s Joe Lewis, the World Heavyweight Champion!" I don’t know whether the young man fainted or not. But don’t we judge too much by externals, like those Jews listening to Jesus did? The Jews listening to Jesus also were arguing among themselves. Jesus said to them: "Do not ...

18. Mary AND Martha, Heart AND Home

Luke 10:38-42

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... 25% to 45% of the people in only four years. Venice, the only Italian city to keep accurate death records, reveals that the Black Death killed 60% of its population. In fact, the plague was so virulent that it was said that one might have breakfast with one ... all remember that the twenty first century did not invent, nor has it perfected, stress. It was in 1865 that Lewis Carroll (aka Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) published his fantasy “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” Although the story was first told to ...

19. Where God Can Be Seen

John 15:1-17

Sermon

King Duncan

... outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of love. . . is Hell." In his own eloquent way, Lewis is saying to us that, where there is no love, there is no happiness. Jesus says to his disciples, "These things ... of Queen Victoria, and she had a four-year-old son whom she loved very much. When he contracted the disease known as "black diphtheria," Alice was devastated. The disease was highly contagious and very deadly. Not being in the best of health herself, the nurses continually ...

20. Nightline

Matthew 2:1-12

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... Luther King, Jr., was shot while standing on the balcony of a downtown motel. I learned of the shooting when our black custodian interrupted the finance committee meeting by shouting, "Dr. King has been shot, Dr. King has been shot!" The next morning ... , scholarly but yet spiritually powerful explanation of the realities of evil in human life and the beguiling ways of Satan. C. S. Lewis warns about two dangers we will encounter as we address the demonic: "There are two equal and opposite errors in which our ...

21. He's Everything I Need

Psalm 23:1

Sermon

James Merritt

... the chips are down, times are tough, the going is rough, the news is bad, your world has collapsed and the sky is black, there is a natural yearning for and turning to this psalm because it gives “good vibrations.” Reading this psalm brings healing for ... Jefferson did something never before done in the history of this country, and never done since. He provided a letter of credit for Lewis, authorizing him to draw on any agency of the U.S. Government anywhere in the world for anything he needed. Here’s ...

22. The Power to Forgive

Matthew 18:21-35

Sermon

King Duncan

... defeat of apartheid in South Africa, it was Bishop Tutu who set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission by which black persons in that country publicly forgave those who had done them serious harm. It was one of the most stunning ... found, after a week or so it all had to be attempted over again. But this time I feel sure it is the real thing.” (4) Lewis was one of the most influential Christian writers of the twentieth century, yet he was a human being. He struggled to forgive this headmaster. But he knew ...

23. Trick Questions

Matthew 22:15-22

Sermon

Steve Molin

... then we can’t believe we missed it! Some riddles – especially those we learn in childhood – are rather simple. For example, “What’s black and white and read all over?” (A newspaper). Or how about this one, “I am a wealthy doctor, I have a wealthy son ... , so they kept Jesus at a distance with their legalistic questions. In his book The Screwtape Letters, author C.S. Lewis described two of the devil’s angels. Screwtape is the seasoned veteran, and Wormwood, his nephew, is the novice. Throughout ...

24. Shepherding One Another in a Collapsing World

Romans 9:1-29

Sermon

Robert G. Tuttle

... very talented black boy. The spirit of love and caring was experienced very deeply in these three days. God was present. In one sharing session the young black said, "I’ve been asking myself, ‘Why am I black?’ I’ve found the answer And, I’m glad I am black." There is ... of Rome, our topless and bottomless bars with the Roman banquet, our pornography with that of Pompeii. Listen! C. S. Lewis has Caspian whisper in the Narnia Chronicles, "Wouldn’t it be dreadful if some day in our own world, men ...

25. Emptying and Exalting (Part XI)

Philippians 1:1-11

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... help of a dermatologist in New Orleans he was officially declared the status of a black man. His findings and writings eventually were published under the title, "Black Like Me." The book and subsequent television drama helped to break down the barriers that ... , misunderstanding, hurt, pain, and even the greatest enemy, which is death. He felt all of these and much more. C. S. Lewis is absolutely correct when he so beautifully writes: "God could, had He pleased, have been incarnate in a man of iron ...

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