Illustrations For November 4, 2007 From The Immediate Word
Children's sermon
Illustration
Preaching
Sermon
Worship
Object:
In Madeleine L'Engle's book, Camilla, Camila becomes upset about her mother's attempt at suicide and also that her mother seems to be having an affair. She meets Frank, and he asks if she wants to talk and they do.
"Listen, Camilla," Frank said, and then he said to me what he had already said, "listen, Camilla, you're alive. As long as you're alive that's the most important thing in the world. People die, young people, who haven't ever had any chance, and it's awful, and they're the ones you cry about because they're dead and they haven't got any more life again, ever. But you're alive and as long as you're alive everything's really all right, in spite of everything else. No matter what happens, as long as you're alive, everything's all right."
-- from Camilla (1965)
* * *
My son-in-law, Alan Jones, told me a story of a Hasidic rabbi, renowned for his piety. He was unexpectedly confronted one day by one of his devoted youthful disciples. In a burst of feeling, the young disciple exclaimed, "My master, I love you!" The ancient teacher looked up from his books and asked his fervent disciple, "Do you know what hurts me, my son?"
The young man was puzzled. Composing himself, he stuttered, "I don't understand your question, Rabbi. I am trying to tell you how much you mean to me, and you confuse me with irrelevant questions."
"My question is neither confusing nor irrelevant," rejoined the rabbi, "for if you do not know what hurts me, how can you truly love me?"
-- Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water
* * *
We stood talking after the memorial service for her mother-in-law. One of the strongest and most faithful people I have ever met, the six months or so which had led up to this morning were incredible stressful, a time when her own mother had died of cancer, and she had just undergone major surgery herself.
"You know what gets me?" she asked. "These people who come up to you and glibly say, 'Remember, God never gives you more than you can bear' don't have a clue as to the lives some of us lead."
"That's right," I gently replied.
"And where in the world do they find that in idea in the Bible?" she asked before getting in the car to go to the cemetery.
-- Thom M. Shuman
* * *
Often our eyes can only see the evil and pain. What would it take for us to see beyond the suffering to see the gold?
William Rathje likes garbage. This Harvard-educated researcher is convinced we can learn a lot from the trash dumps of the world. Archaeologists have always examined trash to study a society. Rathje does the same; he just eliminates the wait.
His organization documented that the average household wastes 10 to 15% of its solid food. The average American produces a half-a-pound of trash per day, and the largest landfill in America, located near New York City, has enough trash to fill the Panama Canal. According to Rathje, trash decomposes more slowly than we thought. He found a whole steak from 1973 and readable newspapers from the Truman presidency.
Rathje finds treasure in the trash. So does Jesus. While others could only see Zacchaeus as some form of human trash, Jesus saw a treasure worth having. Can we see what Jesus sees? Can we see beyond the trash of our lives, our neighbor, our world and see that which God thinks is worth redeeming?
* * *
To have a heart like Jesus is to look into the face of our neighbor and see one who is worthy of God's love -- even someone as despicable as Zacchaeus. This world is a temporary assignment before we face eternity. In the face of our neighbor, do we see eternity or just an ordinary person.
C.S. Lewis wrote: It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as now you meet only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations.
* * *
In response to the suggestions of some that the tragic death of his son, Alex, in an automobile accident was God's will, William Sloane Coffin said this in a sermon: "No one knows enough to say that.... God doesn't go around this world with finger on triggers, his fist around knives, his hands on steering wheels. God is dead set against all unnatural deaths... My own consolation lies in knowing that... when the waves closed over the sinking car, God's heart was the first of all our hearts to break."
***
After walking through a burned-out area following a brush fire, the poet, Robinson Jeffers, penned these lines that express the raw power of such an event -- power that has its own kind of austere beauty:
"Beauty is not always lovely; the fire was beautiful, the terror
Of the deer was beautiful; and when I returned
Down the back slopes after the fire had gone by, an eagle
Was perched on the jag of a burnt pine,
Insolent and gorged..."
Click here for the full text of his poem, "Fire on the Hills."
***
At an international church meeting a few years ago, a small group of Christians from all over the world was engaged in a role-playing game. They were trying to mimic how they came across to each other. A church leader from Africa drew the slip of paper that said, "Act like an American Christian." He put on a cowboy hat and went around to everyone else in the room, saying, "Howdy! Sorry about your problem. Here's my card. I'll send money."
Listen to what he's saying to us: "The money may be there, and that's helpful, but too often the presence is not. We yearn for you rich North Americans to understand what it's like to live as we live, to face the problems we face. We yearn for your presence, not your dollars at arm's length."
Jesus, by contrast, was truly present to Zacchaeus.
***
On the recent California wildfires, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman writes:
"... we do know that the Weather Channel is slowly morphing into the news channel. Local news at 10 p.m. used to be titled, 'News, weather and sports.' I fear that for our kids it's going to be, 'Weather, other news and sports.'
"To probe this shift, I called Dr. Heidi Cullen, the climate expert at the Weather Channel and a scientist formerly with the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
" 'One thing people always loved about the Weather Channel was that it was nobody's fault,' Ms. Cullen explained. 'We didn't point fingers. Our news was not political. And then Katrina came along, and suddenly the weather wasn't the weather anymore. It was something else. Suddenly the weather was potentially our fault.'
"Again, she noted, one should never point to a particular weather event and say, 'That's what global warming looks like.' What you can do, Ms. Cullen said, is look at things like the dikes and levees in New Orleans and say, 'That is what bad infrastructure looks like' in an age when the vast majority of scientists are warning that global warming will make seas rise, storms more powerful, and droughts and heat waves longer and deeper."
-- Thomas Friedman, "Did We Do That?" New York Times, October 28, 2007
"Listen, Camilla," Frank said, and then he said to me what he had already said, "listen, Camilla, you're alive. As long as you're alive that's the most important thing in the world. People die, young people, who haven't ever had any chance, and it's awful, and they're the ones you cry about because they're dead and they haven't got any more life again, ever. But you're alive and as long as you're alive everything's really all right, in spite of everything else. No matter what happens, as long as you're alive, everything's all right."
-- from Camilla (1965)
* * *
My son-in-law, Alan Jones, told me a story of a Hasidic rabbi, renowned for his piety. He was unexpectedly confronted one day by one of his devoted youthful disciples. In a burst of feeling, the young disciple exclaimed, "My master, I love you!" The ancient teacher looked up from his books and asked his fervent disciple, "Do you know what hurts me, my son?"
The young man was puzzled. Composing himself, he stuttered, "I don't understand your question, Rabbi. I am trying to tell you how much you mean to me, and you confuse me with irrelevant questions."
"My question is neither confusing nor irrelevant," rejoined the rabbi, "for if you do not know what hurts me, how can you truly love me?"
-- Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water
* * *
We stood talking after the memorial service for her mother-in-law. One of the strongest and most faithful people I have ever met, the six months or so which had led up to this morning were incredible stressful, a time when her own mother had died of cancer, and she had just undergone major surgery herself.
"You know what gets me?" she asked. "These people who come up to you and glibly say, 'Remember, God never gives you more than you can bear' don't have a clue as to the lives some of us lead."
"That's right," I gently replied.
"And where in the world do they find that in idea in the Bible?" she asked before getting in the car to go to the cemetery.
-- Thom M. Shuman
* * *
Often our eyes can only see the evil and pain. What would it take for us to see beyond the suffering to see the gold?
William Rathje likes garbage. This Harvard-educated researcher is convinced we can learn a lot from the trash dumps of the world. Archaeologists have always examined trash to study a society. Rathje does the same; he just eliminates the wait.
His organization documented that the average household wastes 10 to 15% of its solid food. The average American produces a half-a-pound of trash per day, and the largest landfill in America, located near New York City, has enough trash to fill the Panama Canal. According to Rathje, trash decomposes more slowly than we thought. He found a whole steak from 1973 and readable newspapers from the Truman presidency.
Rathje finds treasure in the trash. So does Jesus. While others could only see Zacchaeus as some form of human trash, Jesus saw a treasure worth having. Can we see what Jesus sees? Can we see beyond the trash of our lives, our neighbor, our world and see that which God thinks is worth redeeming?
* * *
To have a heart like Jesus is to look into the face of our neighbor and see one who is worthy of God's love -- even someone as despicable as Zacchaeus. This world is a temporary assignment before we face eternity. In the face of our neighbor, do we see eternity or just an ordinary person.
C.S. Lewis wrote: It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as now you meet only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations.
* * *
In response to the suggestions of some that the tragic death of his son, Alex, in an automobile accident was God's will, William Sloane Coffin said this in a sermon: "No one knows enough to say that.... God doesn't go around this world with finger on triggers, his fist around knives, his hands on steering wheels. God is dead set against all unnatural deaths... My own consolation lies in knowing that... when the waves closed over the sinking car, God's heart was the first of all our hearts to break."
***
After walking through a burned-out area following a brush fire, the poet, Robinson Jeffers, penned these lines that express the raw power of such an event -- power that has its own kind of austere beauty:
"Beauty is not always lovely; the fire was beautiful, the terror
Of the deer was beautiful; and when I returned
Down the back slopes after the fire had gone by, an eagle
Was perched on the jag of a burnt pine,
Insolent and gorged..."
Click here for the full text of his poem, "Fire on the Hills."
***
At an international church meeting a few years ago, a small group of Christians from all over the world was engaged in a role-playing game. They were trying to mimic how they came across to each other. A church leader from Africa drew the slip of paper that said, "Act like an American Christian." He put on a cowboy hat and went around to everyone else in the room, saying, "Howdy! Sorry about your problem. Here's my card. I'll send money."
Listen to what he's saying to us: "The money may be there, and that's helpful, but too often the presence is not. We yearn for you rich North Americans to understand what it's like to live as we live, to face the problems we face. We yearn for your presence, not your dollars at arm's length."
Jesus, by contrast, was truly present to Zacchaeus.
***
On the recent California wildfires, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman writes:
"... we do know that the Weather Channel is slowly morphing into the news channel. Local news at 10 p.m. used to be titled, 'News, weather and sports.' I fear that for our kids it's going to be, 'Weather, other news and sports.'
"To probe this shift, I called Dr. Heidi Cullen, the climate expert at the Weather Channel and a scientist formerly with the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
" 'One thing people always loved about the Weather Channel was that it was nobody's fault,' Ms. Cullen explained. 'We didn't point fingers. Our news was not political. And then Katrina came along, and suddenly the weather wasn't the weather anymore. It was something else. Suddenly the weather was potentially our fault.'
"Again, she noted, one should never point to a particular weather event and say, 'That's what global warming looks like.' What you can do, Ms. Cullen said, is look at things like the dikes and levees in New Orleans and say, 'That is what bad infrastructure looks like' in an age when the vast majority of scientists are warning that global warming will make seas rise, storms more powerful, and droughts and heat waves longer and deeper."
-- Thomas Friedman, "Did We Do That?" New York Times, October 28, 2007
