Sermon Illustrations For Easter 4 (2020)
Illustration
Psalm 23
This psalm is the one everyone knows, people who are churched and unchurched. Unfortunately, we most often hear it at funerals. I wonder why we don’t rely on its words every day? I always need to know God is with me. So many moments of my busy life, I am striving for green pastures, still waters, spaces to renew and refresh my soul. Reading this psalm reminds me that no matter what else is happening in my life, God fills me, when I let it happen, with comfort, goodness, mercy and love every single day. When I have had a difficult conversation or an argument or had to make tough decision, I am reminded that God places for me — and for that other person too — a table so we can commune together in a place of safety and grace. That is good, and often enough to bridge the distance. God is good. God is present. The cup of my soul does overflow. Praise God it is so!
Bonnie B.
* * *
Acts 2:42-47
Trust Without Fear
When I took a group of students on a pilgrimage tour in Israel last month, our guide led us past his kibbutz. The kibbutz movement, he explained, was integral to the foundation of the state of Israel. Usually founded by young European Jewish intellectuals, these wide-eyed idealists began emigrating to the Middle East with a dream of one day building a new Jewish homeland. The only problem was that few of them had any knowledge of how to grow food in a desert. In the end they pooled all their resources together and formed communities who worked together “each according to his ability” and received from the community “each according to his need.”
“How many of you,” our guide asked, after explaining this arrangement, “would be willing to give up everything you owned and settle down with a group of your friends?” A few hands raised.
“What if you weren’t allowed to own your own car, but had to share one with all your friends?” He continued. Some hands lowered.
“What about if you were paid an equal amount no matter how much you worked? Let’s say you were a doctor and you would bring home all your wages and put them in the communal pot and received back the same as someone who spent the day working in the garden?” Barely any hand remained.
“That doesn’t seem fair,” a student remarked. “If I worked for that money, why don’t I get to keep it?”
And yet, it is exactly this situation that Acts 2:42-47 describes. All who joined this new movement of Jesus-followers “had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”
It is often easy to read this passage quickly as an idealistic story about sharing what you have with the needy, but it’s far more revolutionary than that. What the early church does is embark on a radical––almost superhuman––mission of trust. They had to trust that their fellow believers would be honest about their needs. They had to trust that the apostles were wise and could fairly apportion everything fairly. But most of all, they had to trust that Jesus the Messiah had inaugurated a new reality where trusting others to be good and fair and compassionate was not foolishness, but faith.
When I think about the impossible amount of trust it must have taken these people to leave behind their entire way of thinking and join a group where trusting each other was at the core of their identity, I’m reminded of a quote from my favorite movie of last year, Jojo Rabbit. Set in Nazi Germany, the movie follows the story of a young boy whose mother has decided to help hide a teenage Jewish girl in their attic. At one point, the mother, Rosie, consoles the Jewish girl, Elsa, by telling her that she is glad to have the opportunity to watch Elsa grow up from a girl to a woman.
Elsa: I don’t know anything about being a woman. Is that what it is? You do things like drink wine?
Rosie: Sure. You drink champagne if you’re happy. Champagne if you’re sad. You drive a car. You gamble if you want. Own diamonds. Learn how to fire a gun. You travel to Morocco. Take up lovers, and make them suffer. You look a tiger in the eye. And trust without fear. That’s what it is to be a woman.
Elsa: How do you do that? How do you know you can trust someone?
Rosie: You trust them.
What I find so inspiring about this quote is what Rosie doesn’t say in answer to Elsa’s question, “How do you know you can trust someone?” She doesn’t tell her about how to spot if someone is trustworthy, or even that it’s impossible to know if someone is trustworthy. “You trust them,” she says, because knowing whether or not you can trust someone is beside the point. All trust is a leap of faith; but it is exactly this ability within human beings — women and men — to take this leap of faith without fear that makes us who we are.
M T.
* * *
Acts 2:42-47
In early September 2019 the U.S. Census Bureau released its most recent data on poverty, showing that the poverty rate in 2018 was 11.8 percent, half a percent down. Even in the Trump economy, one in ten of us is still in poverty. Obviously, this Lesson on the sharing of all goods by early Christians seems relevant for us today, including in our thinking about the upcoming elections. Two famous American Christian thinkers had strong feelings that the Biblical witness mandates more sharing of property. Nineteenth century social gospel leader Walter Rauschenbusch offered advice to the politicians and business leaders of his day that we should perhaps heed:
A much lower but perhaps more decisive expression of love is the surrender of any opportunity to exploit men. No social group or organization can claim to be clearly within the Kingdom of God which drains others for its own ease, and resists the effort to abate this fundamental evil. This involves the redemption of social from private property in the natural resources of the earth, and from any condition in industry which makes monopoly profits possible. (A Theology for the Social Gospel, pp.339-342)
Martin Luther King, Jr. made a related point later in the 20th century as he called for a guaranteed annual income:
I’m speaking of a guaranteed annual wage as a minimum income for every American family, so that there is an economic floor, and nobody falls beneath that. And of course, there are definitely going to be people all along, people who are unemployable... Certainly they have a right to have an income. If one has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then he has a right to have an income. (A Testament of Hope, p.409)
It comes as a surprise to some, but such thinking is in line with a number of America’s founders. James Madison once wrote:
It has been said that America is a country for the poor, not for the rich. It is a a country for both, but proportionally, more for the former than for the latter.
And Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter:
I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable, but the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property... Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right...
If for the encouragement of industry, we allow it [the land] to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be provided to those excluded from appropriation. (Writings, pp.841-842)
Mark E.
* * *
1 Peter 2:19-25
“For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.”
Having sheep go astray would have been a common enough experience for people in Jesus’ day. Sheep, essential to the economy of the biblical people, and in our own time as well, can be frustrating indeed. When Jesus told the parable of the lost sheep he was not speaking theoretically. His audience knew exactly what he was talking about.
No one loved the outdoors, the birds, insects, plants, trees, and animals, more than the pioneering environmentalist John Muir (1838-1914), but even he could not help expressing his frustration with sheep. Here are a few quotes from his book, My First Summer in the Sierra.
“Sheep, like people, are ungovernable when hungry. Excepting my guarded lily gardens, almost every leaf that the hoofed locusts can reach within a radius of a mile or two from camp has been devoured. Even the bushes are stripped bare, and in spite of dogs and shepherds the sheep scatter to all points of the compass and vanish in dust I fear some are lost, for one of the sixteen black ones are missing.” (56)
“Sheep brain must surely be poor stuff. …A sheep can hardly be called an animal; an entire flock is required to make one foolish individual.” (114)
Frank R.
* * *
1 Peter 2:19-25
Margaret Atwood wrote the dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, which was published in 1985. The story take place in the future, and the setting of the story is Cambridge, Massachusetts. A military coup has overthrown the United States government, killing the president and all the members of congress. The country is now ruled by theocratic regime who have renamed the country the Republic of Gilead. The new country is hierarchical, with strong class, race and gender distinctions. The book pivots on the theme of how women are subjugated to men. One catalyst for the coup was the low birth rate in the country. This was due to pollution and radiation poisoning. Because of the need to repopulate the country, and because there are so few fertile women, those who can bear children are taken into custody by the state. The females who lost their ability to reproduce are called “unwomen.” These women are sent to the colonies to work in the polluted and radiated land. In these conditions they can only live a few years. Women who are still fertile are called “handmaids.” They are assigned to a commander, a member of the ruling class who will inseminate them, as their wives are infertile. A handmaid no longer has her own name, no longer has her own identity, and is not permitted to read or write. A handmaid takes on the name of the commander to whom she is assigned. The central character of the book is Offred, which means she is “Of Fred.” She has been assigned to Frederick R. Waterford. The reader never learns of Offred’s real name, but it is name that she cherishes. She reflects on the sanctity of her birth name with these thoughts that she shares with the reader: “I want to be held and told my name. I want to valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. I repeat my former name, remind myself of what I once could do, how others saw me.”
Ron L.
* * *
1 Peter 2:19-25
Allegedly, someone once asked C.S. Lewis, “Why do the righteous suffer?” “Why not?” he replied. “They're the only ones who can take it.” I’m a baseball fan and was struck by a brief article about Kirk Gibson. Gibson is a baseball player who played mostly for the Tigers and Dodgers, but also played for the Pirates and, my hometown team, the Royals.
Gibson was an “old-school” ballplayer who could play with pain. In 1980, he tore the cartilage in his wrist. Two years later, he had a sore left knee, a strained left calf muscle, and a severe left wrist sprain. In 1983, he was out for knee surgery, and in 1985 he required 17 stitches after getting hit in the mouth with a wild pitch. In addition, he bruised a hamstring muscle, injured his right heel, and suffered a sore left ankle. His worst injury involved severe ligament damage to his ankle in 1986, a year predicted to be his best. In the 1988 World Series, while with the Dodgers, Gibson hit a walk-off Game 1 winning two-run homer off Dennis Eckersley. He could barely walk when he hit the memorable homerun. When asked about pain, Gibson was quoted as saying, “There are pluses and minuses in everything we do in life…But the pluses for my career, myself, and my family make it worth it. It's the path I chose.”
Did you catch that? “The pluses for my career and my family make it worth it.” If the injuries, pain and suffering were worth it for a ballplayer, how much more worth it is suffering for doing right for those who follow Jesus? “If you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval.” (vs. 20) Let us never give up in doing what God wants us to do, no matter what the cost.
Bill T.
* * *
John 10:1-10
As long ago as the late twentieth century, social analysts were noting that our era is characterized by the mad chase for self-fulfillment (see Robert Bellah, Richard Madson, et al, Habits of the Heart, pp.75-76,82-83). But more recent analyses of younger generations by psychologists like Jean Twenge indicate that this mad chase for self-fulfillment is still very much the agenda for today (iGen, pp.94,169). But this agenda is not making the computer/ millennial generation happy. They are more uncertain and anxious than their elders, it seems (Ibid., p.310).
To all of us caught up in finding fulfillment and meaning, Christ the Good Shepherd comes. Preaching on this text Martin Luther compellingly explains why all our uncertainty and anxiety is now addressed:
Hereby He [Christ] shows that God also has in His flock the weak, the wounded, the erring, aye, even the lost. Still He recognizes these as His sheep, and will not have them rejected, but nurtured, bound up and restored. (Complete Sermons, Vol.2/1, p.70)
St. Augustine made a similar point while preaching on the parable, as he claimed that the sheep are led to an abundant garden where there is no want or needs (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol.7, p.255). Christians who have all they will ever need in Christ no longer need to be searching so much for meaning and fulfillment.
Mark E.
* * *
John 10:1-10
Have you ever watched sheep? When I was in India, I saw many herds of long eared sheep, which at first I thought were goats. The Anglo-Nubian sheep have long ears. They are herded much like our North American Sheep, moved along by a shepherd, sticking together in groups. Yet, often one doesn’t even see the shepherd for some time. The sheep stick together and one wonders how they know where they are going.
I think we can be like these long-eared sheep. At least I know I can. I need to be moved along sometimes, and yet, I know where home is — I know the voice of the shepherd. I know the gate that leads me home. Jesus’ voice is the one I listen for in my daily life. Sometimes I hear him in prayer. Sometimes I hear him in the words and prayers of others. But Jesus knows my name, and he calls me by name, to be one of the flock following him.
Bonnie B.
This psalm is the one everyone knows, people who are churched and unchurched. Unfortunately, we most often hear it at funerals. I wonder why we don’t rely on its words every day? I always need to know God is with me. So many moments of my busy life, I am striving for green pastures, still waters, spaces to renew and refresh my soul. Reading this psalm reminds me that no matter what else is happening in my life, God fills me, when I let it happen, with comfort, goodness, mercy and love every single day. When I have had a difficult conversation or an argument or had to make tough decision, I am reminded that God places for me — and for that other person too — a table so we can commune together in a place of safety and grace. That is good, and often enough to bridge the distance. God is good. God is present. The cup of my soul does overflow. Praise God it is so!
Bonnie B.
* * *
Acts 2:42-47
Trust Without Fear
When I took a group of students on a pilgrimage tour in Israel last month, our guide led us past his kibbutz. The kibbutz movement, he explained, was integral to the foundation of the state of Israel. Usually founded by young European Jewish intellectuals, these wide-eyed idealists began emigrating to the Middle East with a dream of one day building a new Jewish homeland. The only problem was that few of them had any knowledge of how to grow food in a desert. In the end they pooled all their resources together and formed communities who worked together “each according to his ability” and received from the community “each according to his need.”
“How many of you,” our guide asked, after explaining this arrangement, “would be willing to give up everything you owned and settle down with a group of your friends?” A few hands raised.
“What if you weren’t allowed to own your own car, but had to share one with all your friends?” He continued. Some hands lowered.
“What about if you were paid an equal amount no matter how much you worked? Let’s say you were a doctor and you would bring home all your wages and put them in the communal pot and received back the same as someone who spent the day working in the garden?” Barely any hand remained.
“That doesn’t seem fair,” a student remarked. “If I worked for that money, why don’t I get to keep it?”
And yet, it is exactly this situation that Acts 2:42-47 describes. All who joined this new movement of Jesus-followers “had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”
It is often easy to read this passage quickly as an idealistic story about sharing what you have with the needy, but it’s far more revolutionary than that. What the early church does is embark on a radical––almost superhuman––mission of trust. They had to trust that their fellow believers would be honest about their needs. They had to trust that the apostles were wise and could fairly apportion everything fairly. But most of all, they had to trust that Jesus the Messiah had inaugurated a new reality where trusting others to be good and fair and compassionate was not foolishness, but faith.
When I think about the impossible amount of trust it must have taken these people to leave behind their entire way of thinking and join a group where trusting each other was at the core of their identity, I’m reminded of a quote from my favorite movie of last year, Jojo Rabbit. Set in Nazi Germany, the movie follows the story of a young boy whose mother has decided to help hide a teenage Jewish girl in their attic. At one point, the mother, Rosie, consoles the Jewish girl, Elsa, by telling her that she is glad to have the opportunity to watch Elsa grow up from a girl to a woman.
Elsa: I don’t know anything about being a woman. Is that what it is? You do things like drink wine?
Rosie: Sure. You drink champagne if you’re happy. Champagne if you’re sad. You drive a car. You gamble if you want. Own diamonds. Learn how to fire a gun. You travel to Morocco. Take up lovers, and make them suffer. You look a tiger in the eye. And trust without fear. That’s what it is to be a woman.
Elsa: How do you do that? How do you know you can trust someone?
Rosie: You trust them.
What I find so inspiring about this quote is what Rosie doesn’t say in answer to Elsa’s question, “How do you know you can trust someone?” She doesn’t tell her about how to spot if someone is trustworthy, or even that it’s impossible to know if someone is trustworthy. “You trust them,” she says, because knowing whether or not you can trust someone is beside the point. All trust is a leap of faith; but it is exactly this ability within human beings — women and men — to take this leap of faith without fear that makes us who we are.
M T.
* * *
Acts 2:42-47
In early September 2019 the U.S. Census Bureau released its most recent data on poverty, showing that the poverty rate in 2018 was 11.8 percent, half a percent down. Even in the Trump economy, one in ten of us is still in poverty. Obviously, this Lesson on the sharing of all goods by early Christians seems relevant for us today, including in our thinking about the upcoming elections. Two famous American Christian thinkers had strong feelings that the Biblical witness mandates more sharing of property. Nineteenth century social gospel leader Walter Rauschenbusch offered advice to the politicians and business leaders of his day that we should perhaps heed:
A much lower but perhaps more decisive expression of love is the surrender of any opportunity to exploit men. No social group or organization can claim to be clearly within the Kingdom of God which drains others for its own ease, and resists the effort to abate this fundamental evil. This involves the redemption of social from private property in the natural resources of the earth, and from any condition in industry which makes monopoly profits possible. (A Theology for the Social Gospel, pp.339-342)
Martin Luther King, Jr. made a related point later in the 20th century as he called for a guaranteed annual income:
I’m speaking of a guaranteed annual wage as a minimum income for every American family, so that there is an economic floor, and nobody falls beneath that. And of course, there are definitely going to be people all along, people who are unemployable... Certainly they have a right to have an income. If one has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then he has a right to have an income. (A Testament of Hope, p.409)
It comes as a surprise to some, but such thinking is in line with a number of America’s founders. James Madison once wrote:
It has been said that America is a country for the poor, not for the rich. It is a a country for both, but proportionally, more for the former than for the latter.
And Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter:
I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable, but the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property... Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right...
If for the encouragement of industry, we allow it [the land] to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be provided to those excluded from appropriation. (Writings, pp.841-842)
Mark E.
* * *
1 Peter 2:19-25
“For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.”
Having sheep go astray would have been a common enough experience for people in Jesus’ day. Sheep, essential to the economy of the biblical people, and in our own time as well, can be frustrating indeed. When Jesus told the parable of the lost sheep he was not speaking theoretically. His audience knew exactly what he was talking about.
No one loved the outdoors, the birds, insects, plants, trees, and animals, more than the pioneering environmentalist John Muir (1838-1914), but even he could not help expressing his frustration with sheep. Here are a few quotes from his book, My First Summer in the Sierra.
“Sheep, like people, are ungovernable when hungry. Excepting my guarded lily gardens, almost every leaf that the hoofed locusts can reach within a radius of a mile or two from camp has been devoured. Even the bushes are stripped bare, and in spite of dogs and shepherds the sheep scatter to all points of the compass and vanish in dust I fear some are lost, for one of the sixteen black ones are missing.” (56)
“Sheep brain must surely be poor stuff. …A sheep can hardly be called an animal; an entire flock is required to make one foolish individual.” (114)
Frank R.
* * *
1 Peter 2:19-25
Margaret Atwood wrote the dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, which was published in 1985. The story take place in the future, and the setting of the story is Cambridge, Massachusetts. A military coup has overthrown the United States government, killing the president and all the members of congress. The country is now ruled by theocratic regime who have renamed the country the Republic of Gilead. The new country is hierarchical, with strong class, race and gender distinctions. The book pivots on the theme of how women are subjugated to men. One catalyst for the coup was the low birth rate in the country. This was due to pollution and radiation poisoning. Because of the need to repopulate the country, and because there are so few fertile women, those who can bear children are taken into custody by the state. The females who lost their ability to reproduce are called “unwomen.” These women are sent to the colonies to work in the polluted and radiated land. In these conditions they can only live a few years. Women who are still fertile are called “handmaids.” They are assigned to a commander, a member of the ruling class who will inseminate them, as their wives are infertile. A handmaid no longer has her own name, no longer has her own identity, and is not permitted to read or write. A handmaid takes on the name of the commander to whom she is assigned. The central character of the book is Offred, which means she is “Of Fred.” She has been assigned to Frederick R. Waterford. The reader never learns of Offred’s real name, but it is name that she cherishes. She reflects on the sanctity of her birth name with these thoughts that she shares with the reader: “I want to be held and told my name. I want to valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. I repeat my former name, remind myself of what I once could do, how others saw me.”
Ron L.
* * *
1 Peter 2:19-25
Allegedly, someone once asked C.S. Lewis, “Why do the righteous suffer?” “Why not?” he replied. “They're the only ones who can take it.” I’m a baseball fan and was struck by a brief article about Kirk Gibson. Gibson is a baseball player who played mostly for the Tigers and Dodgers, but also played for the Pirates and, my hometown team, the Royals.
Gibson was an “old-school” ballplayer who could play with pain. In 1980, he tore the cartilage in his wrist. Two years later, he had a sore left knee, a strained left calf muscle, and a severe left wrist sprain. In 1983, he was out for knee surgery, and in 1985 he required 17 stitches after getting hit in the mouth with a wild pitch. In addition, he bruised a hamstring muscle, injured his right heel, and suffered a sore left ankle. His worst injury involved severe ligament damage to his ankle in 1986, a year predicted to be his best. In the 1988 World Series, while with the Dodgers, Gibson hit a walk-off Game 1 winning two-run homer off Dennis Eckersley. He could barely walk when he hit the memorable homerun. When asked about pain, Gibson was quoted as saying, “There are pluses and minuses in everything we do in life…But the pluses for my career, myself, and my family make it worth it. It's the path I chose.”
Did you catch that? “The pluses for my career and my family make it worth it.” If the injuries, pain and suffering were worth it for a ballplayer, how much more worth it is suffering for doing right for those who follow Jesus? “If you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval.” (vs. 20) Let us never give up in doing what God wants us to do, no matter what the cost.
Bill T.
* * *
John 10:1-10
As long ago as the late twentieth century, social analysts were noting that our era is characterized by the mad chase for self-fulfillment (see Robert Bellah, Richard Madson, et al, Habits of the Heart, pp.75-76,82-83). But more recent analyses of younger generations by psychologists like Jean Twenge indicate that this mad chase for self-fulfillment is still very much the agenda for today (iGen, pp.94,169). But this agenda is not making the computer/ millennial generation happy. They are more uncertain and anxious than their elders, it seems (Ibid., p.310).
To all of us caught up in finding fulfillment and meaning, Christ the Good Shepherd comes. Preaching on this text Martin Luther compellingly explains why all our uncertainty and anxiety is now addressed:
Hereby He [Christ] shows that God also has in His flock the weak, the wounded, the erring, aye, even the lost. Still He recognizes these as His sheep, and will not have them rejected, but nurtured, bound up and restored. (Complete Sermons, Vol.2/1, p.70)
St. Augustine made a similar point while preaching on the parable, as he claimed that the sheep are led to an abundant garden where there is no want or needs (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol.7, p.255). Christians who have all they will ever need in Christ no longer need to be searching so much for meaning and fulfillment.
Mark E.
* * *
John 10:1-10
Have you ever watched sheep? When I was in India, I saw many herds of long eared sheep, which at first I thought were goats. The Anglo-Nubian sheep have long ears. They are herded much like our North American Sheep, moved along by a shepherd, sticking together in groups. Yet, often one doesn’t even see the shepherd for some time. The sheep stick together and one wonders how they know where they are going.
I think we can be like these long-eared sheep. At least I know I can. I need to be moved along sometimes, and yet, I know where home is — I know the voice of the shepherd. I know the gate that leads me home. Jesus’ voice is the one I listen for in my daily life. Sometimes I hear him in prayer. Sometimes I hear him in the words and prayers of others. But Jesus knows my name, and he calls me by name, to be one of the flock following him.
Bonnie B.
