[Propertalk] Fw: Sermons Resources for Nov. 29th - Part 1

[Joe Parrish]

Sermons for Advent 1:
 

     Luke 21:25-36 - "Lift Up Your Heads" 

     1 Thessalonians 3:9-13 - "If This Is Your Faith, Tell Me Your Stories" by Leonard Sweet

 

Luke 21 - sermon titled "Lift Up Your Heads"] 

 

A. J. Gordon was the great Baptist pastor of the Clarendon Church in Boston, Massachusetts. One day he met a young boy in front of the sanctuary carrying a rusty cage in which several birds fluttered nervously. Gordon inquired, "Son, where did you get those birds?" The boy replied, "I trapped them out in the field." "What are you going to do with them?" "I'm going to play with them, and then I guess I'll just feed them to an old cat we have at home." When Gordon offered to buy them, the lad exclaimed, "Mister, you don't want them, they're just little old wild birds and can't sing very well." Gordon replied, "I'll give you $2 for the cage and the birds." "Okay, it's a deal, but you're making a bad bargain." The exchange was made and the boy went away whistling, happy with his shiny coins. Gordon walked around to the back of the church property, opened the door of the small wire coop, and let the struggling creatures soar into the blue. The next Sunday he took the empty cage into the pulpit and used it to illustrate his sermon about Christ's coming to seek and to save the lost -- paying for them with His own precious blood. "That boy told me the birds were not songsters," said Gordon, "but when I released them and they winged their way heavenward, it seemed to me they were singing, 'Redeemed, redeemed, redeemed!'"

This is Advent. And the message of these times is the song of those wild birds. It's the song sung in every carol this season: Redeemed! It's the meaning behind every gift given under the tree: Redeemed! It's the Word the shepherds heard: Redeemed! It's the assurance Mary received: Redeemed! It's the star the Wisemen followed: Redeemed! [Depending on your style you might omit the repetition of "Redeemed" at the end of each sentence but allowing it at the end of this paragraph.] You and I have been trapped by sin, but Christ has purchased our pardon. He who has this hope in his heart will sing, and you know the song: "Redeemed, redeemed, redeemed!"

Will YOU hear the song this season? Will YOU see the signs this Christmas? You can, if you will stand up and lift up your heads. It is all around. Don't you know that.

1. Our Redemption Is Written in the Heavens.
2. Our Redemption Is Witnessed on Earth.
3. Our Redemption Is Wrapped in Our Hearts.

 

The rest of this sermon following the outline above can be obtained by joining www.eSermons.com.

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1 Thessalonians - sermon titled "If This Is Your Faith, Tell Me Your Stories" 

 

We are used to dividing time into two different eons: "B.C." and "A.D." or as the secular world now calls them, "BCE" and "CE." To say we live in 2009 A.D. or C.E. gives us a sense of the passage of time, a feeling of where we stand in the flow of events. But such designations don't distinguish much else about the changes the centuries have brought. 

 

After a fearsome November storm season across North America it seems one designation that might help describe the changes time has brought is to divide life "B.E." and "A.E." - "Before Electricity" and "After Electricity." There is nothing like an extended power outage to remind us just how dependent we are on the power grid for our life-styles and livelihoods.

 

When the power goes out everything is work. Making a cup of coffee requires a fire, a cast iron kettle, a lot of time, and gives sad, gritty results.  Creating a whole meal can take a whole day. 

 

But there are other changes that occur when the power is out that aren't all bad. Without the TV, computer, video games, and music downloads, families who are hunkered down against a storm have to find something else to do. Off-the-grid days are the days when we drag out the old board games, find a deck of cards, start a giant jigsaw puzzle. As soon as the batteries run out on the iPod and the cell phone, talking to each other are the only voices that we have to listen to.

 

That is why in "B.E." time the most important members of a community were the storytellers. The storytellers were revered for their wisdom and honored for their knowledge. The storytellers were responsible for telling people who they were, where they stood in the world, how they came to be, and what they should be doing.

 

Even in these "A.E." days, the things we learn as stories stick with us become a part of us, far more than any lesson we learn by rote. Read a paragraph about unemployment and poverty rates and you might nod off. Hear the story of "The Grasshopper and the Ant," and you never forget why we all must work for a living. 

 

But stories only live on when they are told and re-told. Each new generation must learn the stories of its people, its family, its nation, and its faith, or the stories are lost forever.

 

Just inside the main entrance to Harrods, the great London department store, there is a statue of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed (whose father owns Harrods). As my twelve-year-old daughter and I stood in front of it, Soren innocently asked, "Who is Princess Diana?" The woman who had been the most recognized icon of the eighties and nineties was a complete mystery to her, an unknown nobody, because Soren had never heard her story.

 

In the same way all of the Christian faith is always just one generation away from extinction--unless we tell our stories. No one is "born" a Christian. Christians can only be "born again" after they hear and inhabit the stories that tell of God's love for the world.

 

The rest of Leonard Sweet's sermon can be obtained by joining www.Sermons.com 

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An Advent Promise: Goodness and Mercy Will Win

 

As some of you know, Fiorello LaGuardia was mayor of New York during the Depression, and he was quite a character. He would ride the city fire trucks, take entire orphanages to baseball games and whenever the city newspapers went on strike, he would get on the radio and read the Sunday "funnies" to the children.

At any rate, one bitter cold winter's night in 1935, Mayor LaGuardia turned up in a night court that served the poorest ward in the city, dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself. After he heard a few cases, a tattered old woman was brought before him, accused of stealing a loaf of bread.

She told LaGuardia that her daughter's husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick and her grandchildren were starving. But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, insisted on pressing charges. "My store is in a very bad neighborhood, your honor," he said. "She's got to be punished in order to teach other people a lesson."

The mayor sighed. He turned to the old woman and said, "I've got to punish you," he said. "The law makes no exception - ten dollars or ten days in jail."

But even as he spoke, LaGuardia was reaching into his pocket and pulling out a ten dollar bill. "Here is the woman's fine," he said, "and furthermore, I'm going to fine everyone in this court room fifty cents for living in a city where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr. Baliff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant."

The following day, the New York Times reported that $47.50 was turned over to the bewildered old woman. It was given by the red-faced store owner, some seventy petty criminals, people with traffic violations and city policemen - and they all gave their mayor a standing ovation as they handed over their money.

That's how it will be with God's world. Just when it seems that all hope is lost, and goodness and mercy shall never win, the Great Judge will come to set things right, deciding for the hungry and the meek of the earth. Yes, there is also an Advent promise for the nations of the world in perplexity and distress: "Look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."
 
Erskine White, Together in Christ, CSS Publishing Company 


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A Bit of Contrast

 

A bit of a contrast, isn't it? The sweet strains of "Away in a Manger" followed by "...distress among nations...the roaring of the sea...People will faint from fear and foreboding...the powers of the heavens will be shaken." Ho, ho, ho! Where is Santa when we need him? So why in the world would the church choose a Gospel lesson such as this to begin Advent and our preparation for the coming of the Christ child? 

Good reason. The sad truth that all of us who are old enough knows is we do not live in a "Santa Claus" world. Children's visions of sugar plums are washed away with the hot tears of grown-up disappointment and despair. Disease and death are constant companions. The fear and foreboding of which Jesus spoke greet us at every turn. Somehow we need to be reminded that this misery is not the end of the story. 

 

David E. Leininger, Eyes Up!

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The Hope of a New Birth

 

Unfortunately, our gospel lesson doesn't at first seem to instill us with any sense of hope at all. In fact, after reading this passage, we can be overwhelmed with a sense of hopelessness. This passage sounds a bit like the one we heard two Sundays ago, only this one has more doom and gloom, more destruction, more chaos and catastrophe. We hear of these mysterious signs in the sun, moon and stars. There are images of people fainting. Heaven and earth pass away, there is talk of a trap, and our hope for escape, and by the end of the reading, it seems the walls are closing in on us. 

 

And yet, in the midst of the chaos of this reading, if you look closely enough, calmly enough, there are some words of hope in the midst of the confusion. Jesus says, "when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near . . . when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near." He speaks of fig trees, an image which may not communicate much to us, but his hearers in that time knew that the fig tree was a symbol of life out of death, a symbol of the hope that comes after the winter, the hope of new birth.

 

Beth Quick, Ready or Not..

 
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