Sermon Illustrations for Epiphany 4 (OT 4) Cycle C (2025)
Illustration
Jeremiah 1:4-10
There are plenty of things in contemporary American society which could use a prophetic voice to challenge them. We think of all the ugliness in our public discourse and on the net. There is the rising tide of anti-semitism. Reuters reported a 268.1 times wage gap in 2023 between the salary of the median employed worker and CEO pay. Racism is hardly vanishing given legislation passed in a number of state legislatures against teaching Critical Race Theory. John Calvin well described an important aspect of the sort of prophecy we need. He wrote:
... but God set himself in opposition to all men... We hence see that due honor is then conceded to God, when being content with gis defense we disregard the fury of man and haste not to contend with all the ungodly, yea, though they may rise up in mass against us. (Calvin's Commentaries, Vol.lX/1, p.42)
Martin Luther's reflections on prophecy and reminder that it is all about hearing God's Word and not the voices of the world are profound. He wrote:
First and foremost, the prophet... must be heard; that is, our salvation begins, not with any work of ours but with the hearing of the word of life... But when the heart is inwardly justified and at peace through faith in the Spirit, then outward actions soon follow in various ways. (Luther's Works, Vol.9, p.184)
When this sort of prophecy transpires, Luther adds, then without realizing it we prophets receive from our Lord the gift of courage to make things happen:
Therefore such a believer is so filled with joy and happiness that he does not allow himself to be terrified by any by any creature and is the master of all things... he is afraid of nothing that might happen to him. (quoted in Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, p.111)
Mark E.
* * *
Jeremiah 1:4 10
I’m not sure how I would have felt as a young teen if God had ordained that I be a prophet. I am fairly sure Jeremiah was pretty nervous about becoming a prophet. How would I have understood that calling? As it is, I have my own battles with when to be prophetic and when to be pastoral. Yet, if I focus on the words of God found in scripture, I can preach the prophetic message. And I am prepared that the message, prophetic or pastoral, is not always what people want to hear.
Yet, I proceed. I move forward into the role God has prepared for me — sometimes pastoral and sometimes prophetic. In these days when interpretations of scripture are used to defend mass deportations, anti-LGBTQAI legislation, and white Christian nationalism, it is even more difficult to be prophetic. And if we cling to the prophesies of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, we will find the words form God that we are to share. May it be so for all of us.
Bonnie B.
* * *
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
“Love never ends” (vs. 8). The apostle Paul is writing this in what has become known as the “love chapter.” It is thirteen verses tucked neatly into a discussion about spiritual gifts. Love is the “more excellent way” (12:31). There is no greater example of that than Jesus. I found a picture of the enduring nature of love.
A somber military funeral took place in California in December of 2013. The Los Angeles Times, on December 28, 2013, wrote about the funeral of Sgt. First Class Joseph Gantt, who fought in both World War II and the Korean War. He had been captured in Korea in 1950 and died the following year. But his body was not returned for many years, and his death was never confirmed by the North Koreans.
His wife, Clara, waited for decades for her husband to come back. She regularly went to meetings with government officials seeking information about what had happened. She longed for the day when he would come bounding off of the airplane. Clara even bought a house and had it professionally landscaped so all Joseph would have to do when he came home was go fishing. She was 94 years old when his remains were finally brought home. It wasn’t the homecoming she dreamed of, but it was closure. Clara told a reporter who interviewed her, “He told me if anything happened to him, he wanted me to remarry. And I told him ‘No, no.’ Here I am, still his wife, and I’m going to remain his wife until the day the Lord calls me home.’”
“And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love” (vs. 13)
Bill T.
* * *
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
When I was in high school, I read and reread my copy of Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land innumerable times, until it felt like the paperback was about to fall apart. It’s about Michael Valentine Smith, raised from infancy by Martians, who has to learn human language as an adult. There’s one observation by Smith regarding the English language I still recall: “Long human words (the longer the better) were easy, unmistakable, and rarely changed their meanings . . . but short words were slippery, unpredictable, changing their meanings without any pattern.”
In other words, short words are the toughest to define. Like God, for instance. And, of course, love.
In English we have “like” and “love,” but we use them interchangeably, for everything from love for spouses, children, and family pets to ketchup. When we say “love” what do we really mean?
Even if we’re just talking about that love reserved for special people, are we talking about that giddy, silly feeling we call “falling in love,” or that solid and even unspectacular love those of us married for decades share that weathers every storm?
Greek has four words for love and that’s a bit more helpful. Storge (love for things), eros (hubba hubba), philos (friendship, family, strong attachment love), and agape, the sort of love the apostle in writing about in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, the famous “love chapter.”
So, what is agape? First of all, Paul has in mind the Hebrew word chesed, sometimes translated as “steadfast love,” the kind of love that doesn’t demand love in return but is faithful and true, like God’s love for us and Ruth’s love for her mother-in-law.
One thing the apostle does in this chapter is that he tells us what agape love is not – it is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude, does not insist on its own way, keeps no record of wrongs, does not rejoice in wrong-doing. He tells us that love is essential – speaking with the tongues of human and of angels, possessing prophetic powers and understanding of all mysteries and knowledge, having faith to move mountains, and the winningness to give always all one’s possessions and even life itself are all empty and useless if we do not have love.
Only after establishing these things does he tell us what love is – patient, kind, doesn’t insist on having one’s way all the time, rejoicing in the truth, bearing, believing, hoping all things, and never ending.
Not that I think Shakespeare is scriptural, but I love these words from Sonnet 116 –
Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass comes.
Love varies not with his brief hours and weeks
But bears it out even to the edge of doom….
Well, if short words really do require the longest definitions, I’m glad Paul took the time and the words necessary to tell us what, according to the Bible, real love is.
(FYI — I adapted this Emphasis installment from my column, In Context, that appears in “The Farmer’s Exchange,” a small agricultural weekly published in New Paris, Indiana, every other week.)
Frank R.
* * *
Luke 4:21-30
Daniel Bush writes for PBS about the death of former First Lady Barbara Bush’s death. He notes, “Former President George W. Bush said Thursday that his mother remained feisty and high-spirited the last time he saw her in person, a week before the former first lady passed away. Barbara Bush died Wednesday at age 92. In an interview for the PBS show In Principle, Bush told Amy Holmes and Michael Gerson, one of his former speechwriters, that his mother teased him when he and his wife, former first lady Laura Bush, visited the family matriarch at her hospital room in Houston earlier this month. When a doctor stopped by, Bush said his mother asked, ‘Do you want to know why George W. is the way he is, doctor?’’ Before the doctor could answer, Bush said his mother replied, ‘Because I drank and smoked when I was pregnant with him.’”
Those who knew about Barbara Bush and the Bush family can laugh at that. It is a jab from a feisty matriarch to one of her successful sons. However, there is truth in the idea that it is harder to serve and minister to those who we know best.
Jesus experienced that, too. After explaining God’s judgment to them in the synagogue, those in Nazareth did not respond well. “When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way” (vs. 28-30). Jesus was rejected by those with whom he grew up. That must’ve been hard. I’m guessing it is still hard when people reject him today.
Bill T.
* * *
Luke 4:21-30
Neurobiology and history indicate that we are a lot more comfortable hanging around with and helping "our own kind." It seems that when encountering people with a genetic pool markedly distinct from our own (members of other races), our emotional center in the brain (the amygdala) is activated, leading to discomfort or fear (E. A. Phelps, in Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 12 [SJ: 729-738) This is why those different from us seem not quite up to our standards (they make us uncomfortable), and also amygdala activity accounts for why we tend not to be as comfortable with those not belonging to our own social class. In fact, our gospel indicates, that we are all in this together in the church, that no one is disqualified from leadership or our help because of low rank or poverty.
Martin Luther's comments on how God draws on people of all backgrounds and that your background does not matter is most relevant:
Differences of rank and position in human society are entirely in agreement with God's will; but any ungodly incumbent or ever so honorable a position will not find his position a help in the attainment of salvation. A believing cobbler will be saved just as well as a believing king or a great emperor. (Luther's Works, Vol.22, p.187)
In the same homiletical context, he adds:
Even now, when Christ accepts the lowliest and chooses those whom the world rejects as foolish and unfit... even now it is hard to grasp that Christ's kingdom is also for the poor. (Ibid. p.190)
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (2446) cites the famed early church preacher John Chrysostom to explain the church's commitment to the poor and oppressed. He claimed that "Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and to deprive them of life. The goods we possess are not ours, but theirs." What we think is ours belongs to those not like us.
Mark E.
* * *
Luke 4:21-30
Last week’s gospel reading ended in a good spot. Jesus began his Galilean ministry and preached in many synagogues, drawing praise from everyone. Finally, he came home to Nazareth and spoke in the synagogue, as was the custom. Although he was raised from his middling childhood years in Nazareth, he’d been gone long enough to have made folks curious, so that his turn as a guest speaker was inevitable.
The Isaiah scroll was a ponderous thing, as we know from the nearly complete scroll preserved from the Dead Sea people. It’s twenty-four feet in length, written across seventeen parchment sheets. There are 54 columns of text. It’s magnificently unwieldy. I don’t know if these verses from the beginning of Isaiah 61 were part of a lectionary, meaning that the scroll might have been nearly open to that passage, or from what spot it was randomly opened to, causing Jesus to take several minutes to unroll it to that passage, but this is the passage Jesus wanted read — calling to mind not only the words of the prophet but also the promise of the Jubilee year when debts are cancelled and land that was lost to debt or mishap is restored. It’s a big moment, and when last week’s lection closed, it felt like we had reached a fairy tale moment – And they lived happily ever after. Jesus spoke to the hometown folks. All is well.
I’m reminded of the musical Into the Woods, where several fairy tales all work out in Act 1 and we’ve reached the happily ever after and the curtain falls.
Unfortunately, in the musical there’s still an Act 2 and things get more complicated and by the time we reach the end the survivors are traumatized and scarred but determined to endure.
And unfortunately, this lectionary passage continues. People begin to question Jesus, who challenges them with stories from the Hebrew scriptures that demonstrate that if the hometown folks aren’t going to believe God is going to bless outsiders, which is never a popular message to preach, kind of like preaching God Loves All Nations on Fourth of July Sunday.
Why didn’t they like his message? Don’t forget Jesus is not really a hometown boy. His mother was from Nazareth, but was Joseph? They went to Bethlehem to be registered for the census, after all. And then they stayed there for a couple years, so he was a Judean by birth and his initial upbringing. Then the family fled as refugees to Egypt, and I’m certain when the family resettled in Nazareth Jesus spoke with an Egyptian accent (there were plenty of Jews near the Nile), and was considered an outsider, regardless of his mother’s ancestry. Small town folks can have long memories. (I’m from LA and I’m living out my life in a small Indiana town called Nappanee. People are friendly with me, but there’s no question I’m an outsider).
Jesus is not really one of them, and they don’t need him to speak prophetically. So, he leaves.
Churches are like this sometimes. You may have been a member for decades, served on boards or commissions, actively participated and supported the church’s work, but churches can define outsiders rigidly.
Frank R.
* * *
Luke 4:21-30
Is it worth preaching and teaching? Jesus thought so. Even when he was chastised, even when his life was threatened for the words he spoke, Jesus persevered in the role of rabbi, teacher, that he had been born for. Jesus was certain that he wouldn’t be heard or appreciated, recognized in his hometown, and yet, he persisted. He read and preached and taught. No matter how uncomfortable it was for him, Jesus preached and persevered.
Where are the places where your faith is challenged? Who are the people you cannot seem to share your faith with? How do you build up the courage to continue sharing your faith and your learnings with others? For me, it is prayer that anchors my sharing. I know that God is with me always, but the act of prayer, of listening for the leadership and direction of God, calms me, prepares me to share faith lessons, faith hopes, and faith knowledge with others. Jesus often went off alone to pray and I try to emulate that practice as well. Therein is the strength to follow the path God has laid before me. What about you? What strengthens your faith?
Bonnie B.
There are plenty of things in contemporary American society which could use a prophetic voice to challenge them. We think of all the ugliness in our public discourse and on the net. There is the rising tide of anti-semitism. Reuters reported a 268.1 times wage gap in 2023 between the salary of the median employed worker and CEO pay. Racism is hardly vanishing given legislation passed in a number of state legislatures against teaching Critical Race Theory. John Calvin well described an important aspect of the sort of prophecy we need. He wrote:
... but God set himself in opposition to all men... We hence see that due honor is then conceded to God, when being content with gis defense we disregard the fury of man and haste not to contend with all the ungodly, yea, though they may rise up in mass against us. (Calvin's Commentaries, Vol.lX/1, p.42)
Martin Luther's reflections on prophecy and reminder that it is all about hearing God's Word and not the voices of the world are profound. He wrote:
First and foremost, the prophet... must be heard; that is, our salvation begins, not with any work of ours but with the hearing of the word of life... But when the heart is inwardly justified and at peace through faith in the Spirit, then outward actions soon follow in various ways. (Luther's Works, Vol.9, p.184)
When this sort of prophecy transpires, Luther adds, then without realizing it we prophets receive from our Lord the gift of courage to make things happen:
Therefore such a believer is so filled with joy and happiness that he does not allow himself to be terrified by any by any creature and is the master of all things... he is afraid of nothing that might happen to him. (quoted in Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, p.111)
Mark E.
* * *
Jeremiah 1:4 10
I’m not sure how I would have felt as a young teen if God had ordained that I be a prophet. I am fairly sure Jeremiah was pretty nervous about becoming a prophet. How would I have understood that calling? As it is, I have my own battles with when to be prophetic and when to be pastoral. Yet, if I focus on the words of God found in scripture, I can preach the prophetic message. And I am prepared that the message, prophetic or pastoral, is not always what people want to hear.
Yet, I proceed. I move forward into the role God has prepared for me — sometimes pastoral and sometimes prophetic. In these days when interpretations of scripture are used to defend mass deportations, anti-LGBTQAI legislation, and white Christian nationalism, it is even more difficult to be prophetic. And if we cling to the prophesies of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, we will find the words form God that we are to share. May it be so for all of us.
Bonnie B.
* * *
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
“Love never ends” (vs. 8). The apostle Paul is writing this in what has become known as the “love chapter.” It is thirteen verses tucked neatly into a discussion about spiritual gifts. Love is the “more excellent way” (12:31). There is no greater example of that than Jesus. I found a picture of the enduring nature of love.
A somber military funeral took place in California in December of 2013. The Los Angeles Times, on December 28, 2013, wrote about the funeral of Sgt. First Class Joseph Gantt, who fought in both World War II and the Korean War. He had been captured in Korea in 1950 and died the following year. But his body was not returned for many years, and his death was never confirmed by the North Koreans.
His wife, Clara, waited for decades for her husband to come back. She regularly went to meetings with government officials seeking information about what had happened. She longed for the day when he would come bounding off of the airplane. Clara even bought a house and had it professionally landscaped so all Joseph would have to do when he came home was go fishing. She was 94 years old when his remains were finally brought home. It wasn’t the homecoming she dreamed of, but it was closure. Clara told a reporter who interviewed her, “He told me if anything happened to him, he wanted me to remarry. And I told him ‘No, no.’ Here I am, still his wife, and I’m going to remain his wife until the day the Lord calls me home.’”
“And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love” (vs. 13)
Bill T.
* * *
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
When I was in high school, I read and reread my copy of Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land innumerable times, until it felt like the paperback was about to fall apart. It’s about Michael Valentine Smith, raised from infancy by Martians, who has to learn human language as an adult. There’s one observation by Smith regarding the English language I still recall: “Long human words (the longer the better) were easy, unmistakable, and rarely changed their meanings . . . but short words were slippery, unpredictable, changing their meanings without any pattern.”
In other words, short words are the toughest to define. Like God, for instance. And, of course, love.
In English we have “like” and “love,” but we use them interchangeably, for everything from love for spouses, children, and family pets to ketchup. When we say “love” what do we really mean?
Even if we’re just talking about that love reserved for special people, are we talking about that giddy, silly feeling we call “falling in love,” or that solid and even unspectacular love those of us married for decades share that weathers every storm?
Greek has four words for love and that’s a bit more helpful. Storge (love for things), eros (hubba hubba), philos (friendship, family, strong attachment love), and agape, the sort of love the apostle in writing about in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, the famous “love chapter.”
So, what is agape? First of all, Paul has in mind the Hebrew word chesed, sometimes translated as “steadfast love,” the kind of love that doesn’t demand love in return but is faithful and true, like God’s love for us and Ruth’s love for her mother-in-law.
One thing the apostle does in this chapter is that he tells us what agape love is not – it is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude, does not insist on its own way, keeps no record of wrongs, does not rejoice in wrong-doing. He tells us that love is essential – speaking with the tongues of human and of angels, possessing prophetic powers and understanding of all mysteries and knowledge, having faith to move mountains, and the winningness to give always all one’s possessions and even life itself are all empty and useless if we do not have love.
Only after establishing these things does he tell us what love is – patient, kind, doesn’t insist on having one’s way all the time, rejoicing in the truth, bearing, believing, hoping all things, and never ending.
Not that I think Shakespeare is scriptural, but I love these words from Sonnet 116 –
Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass comes.
Love varies not with his brief hours and weeks
But bears it out even to the edge of doom….
Well, if short words really do require the longest definitions, I’m glad Paul took the time and the words necessary to tell us what, according to the Bible, real love is.
(FYI — I adapted this Emphasis installment from my column, In Context, that appears in “The Farmer’s Exchange,” a small agricultural weekly published in New Paris, Indiana, every other week.)
Frank R.
* * *
Luke 4:21-30
Daniel Bush writes for PBS about the death of former First Lady Barbara Bush’s death. He notes, “Former President George W. Bush said Thursday that his mother remained feisty and high-spirited the last time he saw her in person, a week before the former first lady passed away. Barbara Bush died Wednesday at age 92. In an interview for the PBS show In Principle, Bush told Amy Holmes and Michael Gerson, one of his former speechwriters, that his mother teased him when he and his wife, former first lady Laura Bush, visited the family matriarch at her hospital room in Houston earlier this month. When a doctor stopped by, Bush said his mother asked, ‘Do you want to know why George W. is the way he is, doctor?’’ Before the doctor could answer, Bush said his mother replied, ‘Because I drank and smoked when I was pregnant with him.’”
Those who knew about Barbara Bush and the Bush family can laugh at that. It is a jab from a feisty matriarch to one of her successful sons. However, there is truth in the idea that it is harder to serve and minister to those who we know best.
Jesus experienced that, too. After explaining God’s judgment to them in the synagogue, those in Nazareth did not respond well. “When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way” (vs. 28-30). Jesus was rejected by those with whom he grew up. That must’ve been hard. I’m guessing it is still hard when people reject him today.
Bill T.
* * *
Luke 4:21-30
Neurobiology and history indicate that we are a lot more comfortable hanging around with and helping "our own kind." It seems that when encountering people with a genetic pool markedly distinct from our own (members of other races), our emotional center in the brain (the amygdala) is activated, leading to discomfort or fear (E. A. Phelps, in Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 12 [SJ: 729-738) This is why those different from us seem not quite up to our standards (they make us uncomfortable), and also amygdala activity accounts for why we tend not to be as comfortable with those not belonging to our own social class. In fact, our gospel indicates, that we are all in this together in the church, that no one is disqualified from leadership or our help because of low rank or poverty.
Martin Luther's comments on how God draws on people of all backgrounds and that your background does not matter is most relevant:
Differences of rank and position in human society are entirely in agreement with God's will; but any ungodly incumbent or ever so honorable a position will not find his position a help in the attainment of salvation. A believing cobbler will be saved just as well as a believing king or a great emperor. (Luther's Works, Vol.22, p.187)
In the same homiletical context, he adds:
Even now, when Christ accepts the lowliest and chooses those whom the world rejects as foolish and unfit... even now it is hard to grasp that Christ's kingdom is also for the poor. (Ibid. p.190)
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (2446) cites the famed early church preacher John Chrysostom to explain the church's commitment to the poor and oppressed. He claimed that "Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and to deprive them of life. The goods we possess are not ours, but theirs." What we think is ours belongs to those not like us.
Mark E.
* * *
Luke 4:21-30
Last week’s gospel reading ended in a good spot. Jesus began his Galilean ministry and preached in many synagogues, drawing praise from everyone. Finally, he came home to Nazareth and spoke in the synagogue, as was the custom. Although he was raised from his middling childhood years in Nazareth, he’d been gone long enough to have made folks curious, so that his turn as a guest speaker was inevitable.
The Isaiah scroll was a ponderous thing, as we know from the nearly complete scroll preserved from the Dead Sea people. It’s twenty-four feet in length, written across seventeen parchment sheets. There are 54 columns of text. It’s magnificently unwieldy. I don’t know if these verses from the beginning of Isaiah 61 were part of a lectionary, meaning that the scroll might have been nearly open to that passage, or from what spot it was randomly opened to, causing Jesus to take several minutes to unroll it to that passage, but this is the passage Jesus wanted read — calling to mind not only the words of the prophet but also the promise of the Jubilee year when debts are cancelled and land that was lost to debt or mishap is restored. It’s a big moment, and when last week’s lection closed, it felt like we had reached a fairy tale moment – And they lived happily ever after. Jesus spoke to the hometown folks. All is well.
I’m reminded of the musical Into the Woods, where several fairy tales all work out in Act 1 and we’ve reached the happily ever after and the curtain falls.
Unfortunately, in the musical there’s still an Act 2 and things get more complicated and by the time we reach the end the survivors are traumatized and scarred but determined to endure.
And unfortunately, this lectionary passage continues. People begin to question Jesus, who challenges them with stories from the Hebrew scriptures that demonstrate that if the hometown folks aren’t going to believe God is going to bless outsiders, which is never a popular message to preach, kind of like preaching God Loves All Nations on Fourth of July Sunday.
Why didn’t they like his message? Don’t forget Jesus is not really a hometown boy. His mother was from Nazareth, but was Joseph? They went to Bethlehem to be registered for the census, after all. And then they stayed there for a couple years, so he was a Judean by birth and his initial upbringing. Then the family fled as refugees to Egypt, and I’m certain when the family resettled in Nazareth Jesus spoke with an Egyptian accent (there were plenty of Jews near the Nile), and was considered an outsider, regardless of his mother’s ancestry. Small town folks can have long memories. (I’m from LA and I’m living out my life in a small Indiana town called Nappanee. People are friendly with me, but there’s no question I’m an outsider).
Jesus is not really one of them, and they don’t need him to speak prophetically. So, he leaves.
Churches are like this sometimes. You may have been a member for decades, served on boards or commissions, actively participated and supported the church’s work, but churches can define outsiders rigidly.
Frank R.
* * *
Luke 4:21-30
Is it worth preaching and teaching? Jesus thought so. Even when he was chastised, even when his life was threatened for the words he spoke, Jesus persevered in the role of rabbi, teacher, that he had been born for. Jesus was certain that he wouldn’t be heard or appreciated, recognized in his hometown, and yet, he persisted. He read and preached and taught. No matter how uncomfortable it was for him, Jesus preached and persevered.
Where are the places where your faith is challenged? Who are the people you cannot seem to share your faith with? How do you build up the courage to continue sharing your faith and your learnings with others? For me, it is prayer that anchors my sharing. I know that God is with me always, but the act of prayer, of listening for the leadership and direction of God, calms me, prepares me to share faith lessons, faith hopes, and faith knowledge with others. Jesus often went off alone to pray and I try to emulate that practice as well. Therein is the strength to follow the path God has laid before me. What about you? What strengthens your faith?
Bonnie B.
