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The man on the street...

Illustration
Proper 18 | Ordinary Time 23 - B
James 2:1-10 (11-13) 14-17
The man on the street asking for money was easy to ignore. He was not attractive. He was not clean. He was not pushy or obnoxious. He was just there day after day after day.

People passed him by as if he were invisible. In fact, to most people he was invisible because to see him would be to acknowledge that he needed help ... help that almost anyone passing by could have offered.

Dan was new to city life. He grew up in a small town in Iowa. He went to college and got a good job that had brought him to the city. Dan noticed the man of the street his first day
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The Immediate Word

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For June 16, 2019:
  • Lover. Beloved. Love. by Tom Willadsen — The concept of the Trinity is imperfect, incomplete and mysterious. Words can never fully express what it means that God is in “three persons,” as the song goes. Still, there is benefit for Christians to imagine God in this way. (Aren’t you glad Trinity Sunday is only once a year?)

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Who is the God of our congregation? How is this God made known in the community? These two questions get at the core of the existence and operation of any congregation. The texts of Trinity Sunday could be used as an opportunity to explore church history and the creedal controversies. In the congregations that I have served, such deep, doctrinal sermons on the history of the Triune God will result in glassy eyed parishioners who wonder if they will have to confess the Athanasian Creed.
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Wisdom is vividly and dramatically personified as she speaks in this chapter of Proverbs. This is an historically challenging text. Arius used this verse from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, which puts the phrase like this: The Lord created me at the beginning of His way. Arius argued that Jesus is the wisdom of God, and this verse spoke of his creation. If he was created, then he had a beginning and was not eternal, and if not eternal, he was not God.

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“The Spirit’s Guidance” by David O. Bales
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Janice B. Scott
Mary Louise was a little bit lonely. Not completely lonely, but just a little bit. With no brothers or sisters, Mary Louise spent quite a lot of time playing by herself. Although not completely by herself, for Mary Louise had a number of silent companions, who were a great comfort to her.

Every night when she went to bed, Mary Louise would line up her silent companions on the foot of the bed, and give them a big kiss. Then she'd sigh happily, climb into bed and fall asleep very quickly, for she knew her silent companions were looking out for her.

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April Yamasaki
In 1980, NBC introduced a new television game show called Chain Reaction. Since then, the show has appeared in different forms, but the main idea has always been for different teams to fill in a chain of words. For example, the first word in a four-word chain might be "light," the last word "spring," with the team needing to guess the two words in-between. In this case, "light" comes from a light "bulb," and out of the bulb grows a "daffodil," which comes up in the "spring." It's a chain reaction of words, where one word leads to another, and "light" turns into "spring."

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