[Propertalk] Fw: SermonWriter: May 16 (Easter 7C) John 17:20-26

[Joe Parrish]

The following are SermonWriter materials for May 16 (Easter 7C). They focus 
on the Gospel lesson, John 17:20-26, where Jesus prays, "As you, Father are 
in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, that the world may believe 
that you have sent me."


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Microsoft Word file:
http://www.lectionary.org/SW/05-16ew/John.17.20-26.doc

HTML file (web page):
http://www.lectionary.org/SW/05-16ew/John.17.20-26.htm

WordPerfect file:
http://www.lectionary.org/SW/05-16ew/John.17.20-26.wpd


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Dick Donovan


A THOUGHT ON PREACHING:  Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, 
abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact. (George Eliot)


TITLE:  What Jesus Is Praying For


SERMON IN A SENTENCE:  Jesus calls Christians to a unity that enables us to 
witness effectively and to challenge the divisions that fracture the world 
in which we live.


SCRIPTURE:  John 17:20-26


FOR MORE SERMONS ON THIS TEXT, GO TO:

http://www.lectionary.org/SermLinks/NT/NT04john.htm

Scroll down to John 17.  There is a link to one sermon on this text posted 
there.


TRUE STORY:

A clergyman once remarked to Sir John Barbirolli how he wished he could fill 
his church building the way Sir John and the Halle Orchestra filled every 
seat of a large concert hall.  The conductor replied, "You could, if you had 
a hundred members who worked together as well as the members of this 
orchestra."


THOUGHT PROVOKERS:

Weak things united
become strong.

Thomas Fuller

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Form all together one choir,
so that, with the symphony of your feelings
and having all taken the tone of God,
you may sing with one voice to the Father through Jesus Christ,
that He may listen to you and know you from your chant
as the canticle of His only Son.

Ignatius of Antioch

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

We don't reach Christian unity
by riding roughshod over sincere convictions
and trying to create, with all possible speed,
a superchurch to confront the Goliaths of the modern world.

David H.C. Read

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

In spite of the existing difficulties,
there is still very much common ground.
Why then may we not believe that the Holy Spirit
will lead to some unexpected solution?
We all believe in the one Pentecost,
why should we not expect a second one to come?

Hamilcar Alivisatos

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

How can the church call men to the worship of one God,
if it calls them to rival shrines?

William Temple

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
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HYMN STORY:  In Christ, There Is No East or West

In 1889, Rudyard Kipling published his poem, "The Ballad of East and West," 
which begins, "Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall 
meet."

Those lines sound as if Kipling is saying that there is no hope that people 
from East and West can ever come together, but the opposite is true.  The 
poem tells of Kamal, a man of India who steals an English Colonel's horse. 
The Colonel's son rides off in pursuit.  The two men end up in a place where 
Kamal has a soldier behind every rock, but he respects the young 
Englishman's courage and spares his life.  The young Englishman, in turn, 
passes up a chance to use a hidden pistol with which he could have killed 
Kamal.  The poem ends as it began with these lines:

Oh, East is East, and West is West,
and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently
at God's great Judgment Seat;

But there is neither East nor West,
Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face,
though they come from the ends of the earth!

Kipling's poem celebrates the possibility of mutual respect between people 
who are very different from each other.

Nine years later after Kipling's poem was published, William Arthur Dunkerly 
(using the pen name John Oxenham) wrote this hymn, "In Christ There Is No 
East or West."  The occasion was a great missionary exhibition sponsored by 
the London Missionary Society.

The hymn, which gets its inspiration from Kipling's poem, takes Kipling's 
idea a step farther.  It reminds us that Christ brings all sorts of people 
together "in one great fellowship of love."

NOTE:  See other hymn stories at http://www.lectionary.org/hymnstories.htm

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Richard Niell Donovan