Showing 1 to 25 of 56 results
Sermon
Maurice A. Fetty
Teachers and teaching have existed as long as humankind. Early man taught his children how to survive -- how to hunt, how to plant and harvest, how to provide shelter and protection, how to fight, how to raise his family in the tribal ways. Learning and teaching took a great stride forward in classical Greece 450 years before Christ with the arrival of Socrates and his brilliant student, Plato. Th...
Sermon
Maurice A. Fetty
A lot of people don't believe it -- but there's a new kingdom coming. Often, like a phoenix bird, it arises out of the ashes of the old. As a young sapling is germinated by forest fire, so the new kingdom is sprouted in the desolation of despair. Like tundra flowers and crab grass the new kingdom has irresistible life impulses and grows anywhere. There is a new kingdom coming. You may wonder wher...
3. A New Kingdom Coming
Illustration
Maurice A. Fetty
John Wycliffe had a vision of a Bible in the common English tongue, but dogmatists anchored to the past killed him for it. John Huss dreamed a dream of a responsible Christian life guided by the scriptures. Traditionalists burned him at the stake. Martin Luther was awakened to a new reality of God's grace -- an awakening not shared by contemporaries profiting from the status quo. Consequently, h...
4. A New Kingdom Coming
Illustration
Maurice A. Fetty
John Wycliffe had a vision of a Bible in the common English tongue. But dogmatists anchored to the past killed him for it. John Huss dreamed a dream of a responsible Christian life guided by the scriptures. Traditionalists burned him at the stake. Martin Luther was awakened to a new reality of God's grace an awakening not shared by contemporaries profiting from the status quo. Consequently, he was...
5. A Time for Us
Ephesians 1:3-14
Sermon
Maurice A. Fetty
In the musical, West Side Story, Leonard Bernstein's modern paraphrase of Romeo and Juliet, Tony and Maria, the two lovers, confidently sing that there will be "a time for us," a time when their day for true love will arrive, a time when all the pieces will fit together, a time when the fulfillment they dream of will be realized, a time when human life will make sense, a time when the mysteries an...
Sermon
Maurice A. Fetty
It had been a long time. History seemed more moribund and leaden than ever. Hope was either frozen or fanatic. Cynicism was the daily fare and optimism the dream of fools. So it was in those days of long ago. But now there was a stirring in history's corridors -- not in the throne rooms of Rome or Alexandria, not in the libraries of Athens or the armies of Caesar -- but in little backwater towns o...
Sermon
Maurice A. Fetty
I must confess that for years I have tried my hand at fishing, but the Izaak Walton League would be sure to look the other way if I applied for membership. To be sure, growing up in Wisconsin I did try my luck at some of those beautiful trout streams. But you would have been unwise to wait with a hearty appetite while I tried to catch our dinner. And, yes, my friends and I did go fishing on the ne...
8. Are You a Taker or a Giver?
2 Corinthians 8:7-15
Sermon
Maurice A. Fetty
It was quite a picture — on the front of the New York Times magazine. There were the "Little Big People" as the cover article names them — "little big people" who are precocious, even out of control, with affluent parents who have only themselves to blame. The picture shows a yuppie- dressed eight- or nine-year-old boy, stylish, cool with his own cellular phone in hand. In the center is a modishl...
Sermon
Maurice A. Fetty
It is not easy to promote someone else. Human nature rises up against it. If we believe in our self-worth and capabilities, why should we try to sell someone else? Yes, and why should we seek to gain acceptance of a religious leader, who will eventually cause us trouble. For example, Jesus for some was not only an irritant; he was an anathema as well. As usual, Saint Paul is not much interested i...
Sermon
Maurice A. Fetty
Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Garasenes asked him to depart from them; for they were seized with great fear; so he got into the boat and returned. — Luke 8:37 In polite society we have not wanted to talk much of demons and the demonic. In our liberal, educated culture, we believe that sin was due mostly to ignorance and that evil could be eradicated by education. In our ps...
Sermon
Maurice A. Fetty
Religious leaders have had varying attitudes regarding dinner parties. Take John the Baptist, for instance. It is unlikely you would ever have gotten him inside a fine house around a beautiful table of exquisite crystal and china and gourmet food. That rustic, ascetic outdoorsman probably would have thought it a waste of time and money, an unnecessary frill to the essentials of life. Many men tod...
Sermon
Maurice A. Fetty
Leave the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God. — Luke 9:60 It was Thomas Wolfe who made the saying famous: "You can't go home again." He said these words that have been repeated and quoted thousands of times since. It has some affinity with another saying, "You cannot step into the same river twice." Life, like a river, is an ever-flowing and ever-chang...
13. Discipleship Occurs Only In Community
Illustration
Maurice A. Fetty
Very few people are expert in anything all by themselves. They need a supporting community. Do you know a good musician who was not trained, nurtured and sustained by the music community? Show me an athlete who achieves excellence all alone, apart from the athletic community. Very few wise men become so without the accumulated wisdom of the centuries as expressed in colleges and universities and l...
14. Don’t Deny the Existence of Trouble
Mark 4:35-41
Illustration
Maurice A. Fetty
Any daily newspaper recounts tragic story after story of premature deaths, fractured relationships, and broken dreams. Indeed, we need not turn to any newspaper for an accounting of the world's troubles and sorrows. We have only to look at our own friends and neighbors and families. We have only to look into our own lives and hearts. Jesus, the healer and power-giver, never insulted people by tell...
Sermon
Maurice A. Fetty
One of the continuing delights of life is the joy of the unexpected. Highly scheduled as we are, and rigorously regimented, occasionally we are extraordinarily pleased with interruption and variation. When out-of-town friends turn up unannounced, rather than having scheduled themselves weeks in advance, we experience a certain excitement. How pleasant to have a business deal grow into undreamed pr...
Sermon
Maurice A. Fetty
My friend remembers it well. It was Advent season and he and his wife had decided to invite all their church board members and their spouses to their home for an Advent Supper. The invitations went out and 110 responded! Gathering in their home in a festive mood, people were everywhere. After the Doxology and Grace, my friend's wife served the multitude with her usual aplomb. People were sitting o...
17. Football Fanatics and Religious Fanatics
Mark 1:14-20
Illustration
Maurice A. Fetty
A man in one church recalled how during football season he and his son watched football on television the whole weekend. On Saturdays it was college football, on Sundays professional football, and then to cap it off professional football on Monday evenings. This same father was uncomfortable with his son being away for a weekend religious retreat, fearing his son might turn into a religious fanati...
Sermon
Maurice A. Fetty
One of the most significant steps in our growth as human beings is the discovery that our earthly parents, contrary to our childish notions, are imperfect. A friend remembered well an incident in that process of discovery in his own life. He always thought his father was the perfect driver and that he was absolutely safe riding with him until one day he almost hit the side of a bridge. His father ...
Sermon
Maurice A. Fetty
And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another counselor, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you. — John 14:16-17 The truth is hard to find these days. Perhaps it has been hard to find in any day. Do you remember ancient Diogenes who walked about ...
Sermon
Maurice A. Fetty
The truth is hard to find these days. Perhaps it has been hard to find in any day. Do you remember ancient Diogenes who walked about with a lamp, shining it in men's faces, saying he was looking for an honest man. Diogenes felt he could never find the truthful person. A little later in history Pontius Pilate reflected a similar skepticism, when at the trial of Jesus he asked cynically, "What is tr...
21. Here I Stand
Mark 1: 21-28
Illustration
Maurice A. Fetty
When Martin Luther began publishing abroad his new teaching, the time came for him to take a stand and he took it. The gentle and scholarly Erasmus advocated many of the same ideas as Luther, but he had not the courage to take his stand so boldly. Scholars sometimes quip, somewhat inaccurately, that Luther hatched the egg Erasmus laid. Nevertheless, when Luther was called before all the ecclesiast...
22. How to Get the Job Done
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
Sermon
Maurice A. Fetty
And [Jesus] said to them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest." — Luke 10:2 It's a startling fact but true — Jesus and politicians have a lot in common. This no doubt comes as a surprise to those who regard politics as a dirty business, or who think of politicians essentially as liars and who believe ste...
Sermon
Maurice A. Fetty
Many would claim the profit motive to be one of the stronger motives of our humanity. Though purists may snub their noses at it, and socialists may sneer at it, capitalists say profit and the profit motive are the driving force of any successful economy. Welfare recipients might criticize the high profits of some persons and businesses. But those same persons and businesses would gladly quote form...
Sermon
Maurice A. Fetty
It's a dramatic scene when you think about it -- I mean -- a funeral procession halted and the trip to the cemetery interrupted. Of course it was not anything like our scene -- a black Cadillac hearse, followed by one or more black Cadillac limousines, followed perhaps by several cars, lights on, concerned not to lose their place in the line in the traffic. No, this scene was at once more primiti...
25. Is It A Devil or a Disease?
Luke 8:26-39
Illustration
Maurice A. Fetty
In polite society we have not wanted to talk much of demons and the demonic. In our liberal, educated culture, we have believed that sin was due mostly to ignorance and that evil could be eradicated by education. In our psychologically enlightened times we have avoided the more ancient religious and mythological language of devils and evil. We have instead preferred words like repression, impulses...
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