Proper 19
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VII Cycle C
Seasonal Theme
Jesus' acts of compassion and his teaching ministry.
Theme For The Day
Wonderful pictures of a God who delights in our prayers and the return of sinners.
Old Testament Lesson
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
God's Judgment
Verses 11 and 12 describe the impending disaster as being like the hot wind from the desert (sirocco) which will be too strong to help with the winnowing or cleaning out of the city. It is only destructive in its violence.
Verses 22-28 describe Yahweh looking down on the land after the disaster. Nature has become an instrument of punishment of Israel. God states its end but he just could not do otherwise but destroy. Verse 27 is the author's comment and I am glad for it. God's judgments are never altogether bad. God brings something worthwhile out of this chaos ... "I will not make a full end."
New Testament Lesson
1 Timothy 1:12-17
Gratitude For Mercy
The argument of Paul is this: If Christ could change the likes of Paul whose sins were great, he can change any of us. There just isn't any limit to his transforming power. This man who was such a persecutor and man of violence is now counted an apostle and faithful!
Verse 14 lays it all to God's grace to cause the conversion. Verse 15 occurs four other places in the Pastoral Epistles and nowhere else in the New Testament. In it we have the basic facts of the Christian faith. Paul never left the idea that Christian salvation was for sinners. Here also is a mark of sincere humility. He calls himself the "foremost" sinner.
Verse 16 also points to the mercy of God and the patience of God.
Verse 17 is a typical Pauline doxology. In it is a wonderful all-absorbing adoration and majesty of God. Romans 1:23 gives us a parallel Pauline saying using the word immortal. The only God comes from an emphatic expression of Jewish monotheism.
The Gospel
Luke 15:1-10
The Parables Of The Lost
It would be a severe shock to the Pharisees and scribes to see Jesus eating with those they called sinners and even with tax collectors! They took satisfaction in the obliteration of a sinner and not in his/her salvation and acceptance. So Jesus told the parable of the lost sheep and of the shepherd's joy.
A shepherd who was personally responsible for his sheep had a tough time keeping track of them, as they ate of the scarce pasture and strayed in all directions. Let's not make too much of the shepherd leaving his 99. Often the flocks were combined in a communal flock and/or fold and there would be others to watch them while the shepherd tried to track the lost one. And, of course, when the shepherd returned with the lost, there would be great joy in the fold.
This is a picture Jesus painted of God. God is as happy about finding one lost sinner as that shepherd is in finding the lost sheep. So we learn that God is like this -- full of joy when a lost one finds his/her way home.
The second parable of the lost being found is in verses 8-10. This coin was worth something. Because the Palestinian house was dark, she would need to provide some candle light for the search. She probably lived on the edge of poverty and thus the find was significant.
This coin may have come from her headdress, which marked her as a married woman -- it was like a wedding ring in our culture.
Jesus said that God is like this. There is great joy when one sinner is found and returns. No Pharisee had ever pictured God that way! Our joy is to know that God is one of seeking love. We could name it theologically the "divine initiative." The joy is like a woman near starvation finding her lost money or a woman long married finding her lost wedding ring.
Preaching Possibilities
A. One could use all these readings under the theme of three pictures of God.
1. Jeremiah pictures a God who judges the people and must punish them, like the hot wind that comes out of the desert.
2. Paul pictures God to Timothy and the Ephesian congregation as one who is full of mercy and a God who wants very much to save sinners using a lot of patience.
3. Jesus pictures God as having great joy over even one sinner being found and returning home.
B. We can also put the Second Lesson and the two parables in Luke together and talk about how different our view of God is than the view of the scribes and Pharisees. Paul and Jesus both teach that God wants most for all of us to be saved and "found."
C. For a treatment of Luke 15:1-10 see my work titled "The Never Lost Ninety-Nine" in The Parables Of Jesus And Their Flip Side (CSS Publishing Company, 2001). The "flip-side" in this story is about those who were never lost at all. We who are securely inside the fold (church) are to support our shepherd's attempts to find the lost. Also don't neglect to say that it is in the seeking the lost that we realize the full joy of being the found.
Possible Outline Of Sermon Moves
Because all three pericopes call for the same readings from Timothy and Luke this Sunday, I'll go with them today.
Title: Delightful Pictures Of God
A. Begin by describing your own pictures of God when you were a young child. (Mine was a grandpa and Santa Claus combination.)
B. Move to calling attention to the fact we have two delightful pictures of God in the Timothy letter and two in Luke reporting of two parables which Jesus told about lost sheep and a lost coin.
C. Talk about Paul's letter to his spiritual son, Timothy, and how he pictured God as:
1. God who is patient and full of grace and mercy.
2. One who wanted everyone to be saved.
D. Move to the Luke account and tell how Jesus pictured God as:
1. filled with joy when the lost are returned and
2. a God whose angels celebrate with all heaven when repentance takes place.
E. Move to your own witness as to what all this meant to you. Begin with, "If all this is a good picture of God, then this means to me that we should ..." Some examples:
1. Be aggressive in our outreach.
2. Be intentional in our in-reach to the inactive.
3. Be happy when those of any category return or come for the first time.
4. Pray for the wisdom to do the above wisely.
F. Tell a story of lost and found and the joy afterwards.
G. Frame your sermon by reviewing the four teachings in reverse order from the two readings.
Prayer For The Day
Help us to know the joy of being the found as we also seek out the lost as part of our discipleship. Move us to including everyone in our invitation to come to you again or for the first time. We pray you will also bless us with a sense of your joy whenever the lost are found. In the name of the greatest finder of all, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
Possible Metaphors And Stories
We who live in California know the desert hot air which is like Jeremiah's. We call them the Santa Ana winds and they are devastating to our countryside. It happens when the wind, instead of blowing its usual cooling direction of west to east off the Pacific Ocean, reverses itself and blows over the dry hot desert out toward the ocean, east to west. Quickly it brings oppressive heat and extremely low humidity to dry out everything to make conditions ripe for a horrid firestorm. It's like Jeremiah's sirocco.
At the Dallas/Fort Worth airport, I saw a bag falling off the baggage cart on the way to an airplane. A supervisor finally came out, placed a red tag on it, and took it to the conveyor loading a plane for the same destination. We were lost and we have been found by the Christ who puts us on our way to our correct destination again.
I saw an old man in the hot parking lot of the hospital. He had lost his car while visiting his wife. I drove him all around the lot but he did not recognize it. When I looked at his ticket, I discovered he was in the wrong lot. We went to the other side of the hospital and there it was. He probably had come out of a different door than he had entered.
There are so many lost in the heat, frustration, and confusion of our lives. We must invite them to come over to the other side.
My outboard boat motor, which had been stolen, was repurchased in a sting operation by the police and I now have it back. My motor has now been twice purchased. So, too, me. Once purchased through my baptism and again on the cross.
January 21, 1991: Helicopters and fighter planes left the security of their airbases to fly into enemy territory in order to rescue just one downed pilot. It's like the story Jesus told of a shepherd who left the field to rescue just one lost sheep.
Jesus' acts of compassion and his teaching ministry.
Theme For The Day
Wonderful pictures of a God who delights in our prayers and the return of sinners.
Old Testament Lesson
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
God's Judgment
Verses 11 and 12 describe the impending disaster as being like the hot wind from the desert (sirocco) which will be too strong to help with the winnowing or cleaning out of the city. It is only destructive in its violence.
Verses 22-28 describe Yahweh looking down on the land after the disaster. Nature has become an instrument of punishment of Israel. God states its end but he just could not do otherwise but destroy. Verse 27 is the author's comment and I am glad for it. God's judgments are never altogether bad. God brings something worthwhile out of this chaos ... "I will not make a full end."
New Testament Lesson
1 Timothy 1:12-17
Gratitude For Mercy
The argument of Paul is this: If Christ could change the likes of Paul whose sins were great, he can change any of us. There just isn't any limit to his transforming power. This man who was such a persecutor and man of violence is now counted an apostle and faithful!
Verse 14 lays it all to God's grace to cause the conversion. Verse 15 occurs four other places in the Pastoral Epistles and nowhere else in the New Testament. In it we have the basic facts of the Christian faith. Paul never left the idea that Christian salvation was for sinners. Here also is a mark of sincere humility. He calls himself the "foremost" sinner.
Verse 16 also points to the mercy of God and the patience of God.
Verse 17 is a typical Pauline doxology. In it is a wonderful all-absorbing adoration and majesty of God. Romans 1:23 gives us a parallel Pauline saying using the word immortal. The only God comes from an emphatic expression of Jewish monotheism.
The Gospel
Luke 15:1-10
The Parables Of The Lost
It would be a severe shock to the Pharisees and scribes to see Jesus eating with those they called sinners and even with tax collectors! They took satisfaction in the obliteration of a sinner and not in his/her salvation and acceptance. So Jesus told the parable of the lost sheep and of the shepherd's joy.
A shepherd who was personally responsible for his sheep had a tough time keeping track of them, as they ate of the scarce pasture and strayed in all directions. Let's not make too much of the shepherd leaving his 99. Often the flocks were combined in a communal flock and/or fold and there would be others to watch them while the shepherd tried to track the lost one. And, of course, when the shepherd returned with the lost, there would be great joy in the fold.
This is a picture Jesus painted of God. God is as happy about finding one lost sinner as that shepherd is in finding the lost sheep. So we learn that God is like this -- full of joy when a lost one finds his/her way home.
The second parable of the lost being found is in verses 8-10. This coin was worth something. Because the Palestinian house was dark, she would need to provide some candle light for the search. She probably lived on the edge of poverty and thus the find was significant.
This coin may have come from her headdress, which marked her as a married woman -- it was like a wedding ring in our culture.
Jesus said that God is like this. There is great joy when one sinner is found and returns. No Pharisee had ever pictured God that way! Our joy is to know that God is one of seeking love. We could name it theologically the "divine initiative." The joy is like a woman near starvation finding her lost money or a woman long married finding her lost wedding ring.
Preaching Possibilities
A. One could use all these readings under the theme of three pictures of God.
1. Jeremiah pictures a God who judges the people and must punish them, like the hot wind that comes out of the desert.
2. Paul pictures God to Timothy and the Ephesian congregation as one who is full of mercy and a God who wants very much to save sinners using a lot of patience.
3. Jesus pictures God as having great joy over even one sinner being found and returning home.
B. We can also put the Second Lesson and the two parables in Luke together and talk about how different our view of God is than the view of the scribes and Pharisees. Paul and Jesus both teach that God wants most for all of us to be saved and "found."
C. For a treatment of Luke 15:1-10 see my work titled "The Never Lost Ninety-Nine" in The Parables Of Jesus And Their Flip Side (CSS Publishing Company, 2001). The "flip-side" in this story is about those who were never lost at all. We who are securely inside the fold (church) are to support our shepherd's attempts to find the lost. Also don't neglect to say that it is in the seeking the lost that we realize the full joy of being the found.
Possible Outline Of Sermon Moves
Because all three pericopes call for the same readings from Timothy and Luke this Sunday, I'll go with them today.
Title: Delightful Pictures Of God
A. Begin by describing your own pictures of God when you were a young child. (Mine was a grandpa and Santa Claus combination.)
B. Move to calling attention to the fact we have two delightful pictures of God in the Timothy letter and two in Luke reporting of two parables which Jesus told about lost sheep and a lost coin.
C. Talk about Paul's letter to his spiritual son, Timothy, and how he pictured God as:
1. God who is patient and full of grace and mercy.
2. One who wanted everyone to be saved.
D. Move to the Luke account and tell how Jesus pictured God as:
1. filled with joy when the lost are returned and
2. a God whose angels celebrate with all heaven when repentance takes place.
E. Move to your own witness as to what all this meant to you. Begin with, "If all this is a good picture of God, then this means to me that we should ..." Some examples:
1. Be aggressive in our outreach.
2. Be intentional in our in-reach to the inactive.
3. Be happy when those of any category return or come for the first time.
4. Pray for the wisdom to do the above wisely.
F. Tell a story of lost and found and the joy afterwards.
G. Frame your sermon by reviewing the four teachings in reverse order from the two readings.
Prayer For The Day
Help us to know the joy of being the found as we also seek out the lost as part of our discipleship. Move us to including everyone in our invitation to come to you again or for the first time. We pray you will also bless us with a sense of your joy whenever the lost are found. In the name of the greatest finder of all, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
Possible Metaphors And Stories
We who live in California know the desert hot air which is like Jeremiah's. We call them the Santa Ana winds and they are devastating to our countryside. It happens when the wind, instead of blowing its usual cooling direction of west to east off the Pacific Ocean, reverses itself and blows over the dry hot desert out toward the ocean, east to west. Quickly it brings oppressive heat and extremely low humidity to dry out everything to make conditions ripe for a horrid firestorm. It's like Jeremiah's sirocco.
At the Dallas/Fort Worth airport, I saw a bag falling off the baggage cart on the way to an airplane. A supervisor finally came out, placed a red tag on it, and took it to the conveyor loading a plane for the same destination. We were lost and we have been found by the Christ who puts us on our way to our correct destination again.
I saw an old man in the hot parking lot of the hospital. He had lost his car while visiting his wife. I drove him all around the lot but he did not recognize it. When I looked at his ticket, I discovered he was in the wrong lot. We went to the other side of the hospital and there it was. He probably had come out of a different door than he had entered.
There are so many lost in the heat, frustration, and confusion of our lives. We must invite them to come over to the other side.
My outboard boat motor, which had been stolen, was repurchased in a sting operation by the police and I now have it back. My motor has now been twice purchased. So, too, me. Once purchased through my baptism and again on the cross.
January 21, 1991: Helicopters and fighter planes left the security of their airbases to fly into enemy territory in order to rescue just one downed pilot. It's like the story Jesus told of a shepherd who left the field to rescue just one lost sheep.
