[Propertalk] Fw: Sermon Resources for September 5 - Part 2

[Joe Parrish]

How Will the Church Be Lighted?

Several centuries ago in a mountain village in Europe, a wealthy nobleman wondered what legacy he should leave to his townspeople. He made a good decision. He decided to build them a church. No one was permitted to see the plans or the inside of the church until it was finished. At its grand opening, the people gathered and marveled at the beauty of the new church. Everything had been thought of and included. It was a masterpiece.

But then someone said, "Wait a minute! Where are the lamps? It is really quite dark in here. How will the church be lighted?" The nobleman pointed to some brackets in the walls, and then he gave each family a lamp, which they were to bring with them each time they came to worship.

"Each time you are here'" the nobleman said, "the place where you are seated will be lighted. Each time you are not here, that place will be dark. This is to remind you that whenever you fail to come to church, some part of God's house will be dark"

That's a poignant story, isn't it? And it makes a very significant point about the importance of our commitment and loyalty to the church. The poet Edward Everett Hale put it like this:

I am only one,
but still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something I can do.

What if every member of your church supported the church just as you do? What kind of church would you have? What if every single member served the church, attended the church, loved the church, shared the church, and gave to the church exactly as you do? What kind of church would you be?

James W. Moore, Some Things Are Too Good Not To Be True, Dimensions: Nashville, 1994. pp. 117-118.

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Breaking Away to Follow Christ

A while back Will Willimon, Dean of the Chapel down at Duke University, got a call from an upset parent, a VERY upset parent. "I hold you personally responsible for this," he said. 

"Me?" Will asked. 

The father was hot, upset because his graduate school bound daughter had just informed him that she was going to chuck it all ("throw it all away" was the way the father described it) and go do mission work with the Presbyterians in Haiti. "Isn't that absurd!" shouted the father. "A BS degree in mechanical engineering from Duke and she's going to dig ditches in Haiti." 

"Well, I doubt that she's received much training in the Engineering Department here for that kind of work, but she's probably a fast learner and will probably get the hang of ditch-digging in a few months," Will said. 

"Look," said the father, "this is no laughing matter. You are completely irresponsible to have encouraged her to do this. I hold you personally responsible," he said. 

As the conversation went on, Dr. Willimon pointed out that the well-meaning but obviously unprepared parents were the ones who had started this ball rolling. THEY were the ones who had her baptized, read Bible stories to her, took her to Sunday School, let her go with the Presbyterian Youth Fellowship to ski in Vail. Will said, "You're the one who introduced her to Jesus, not me." 

"But all we ever wanted her to be was a Presbyterian," said the father, meekly. Hmm. 

David E. Leininger, Collected Sermons, Adapted from William Willimon, Pulpit Resources, September 10, 1995, p. 45.

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The Right Stuff

"The right stuff" describes the qualities of character, competence, and temperament possessed by the early astronauts. They had "the right stuff" for the job and all of us admired them for this. In terms of American history, they are kin to those sturdy folk who first settled this nation, as well as those who later broke out of the confines of the eastern seaboard and courageously headed into the western wilderness. Some years ago there was a book about these latter heroes titled Men to Match My Mountains, telling the story of those who had the tough, "right stuff" to stretch this country from coast to coast.

Jesus is certainly talking about having "the right stuff" in this passage. He is telling us what it would take then, and what it takes now, to be his follower. There is no soft sentimentalism in these words of his. He says that the disciple must be prepared to part with family, to endure suffering, to face enormity of the task, and to give up everything for the sake of the Kingdom. Here, compressed in these brief verses, is the delineation of the "right stuff" required of anyone who accepts Jesus' offer to follow him.


Wallace H. Kirby, If Only..., CSS Publishing Company

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Are You God's Wife?

A little boy about 10 years old was standing before a shoe store on the roadway, barefooted, peering through the window, and shivering with cold. A lady approached the boy and said, "My little fellow, why are you looking so earnestly in that window?" "I was asking God to give me a pair of shoes," was the boys reply. The lady took him by the hand and went into the store and asked the clerk to get half a dozen pairs of socks for the boy. She then asked if he could give her a basin of water and a towel. He quickly brought them to her. She took the little guy to the back part of the store and removing her gloves, knelt down, washed his little feet, and dried them with a towel. By this time the clerk returned with the socks. Placing a pair upon the boy's feet, she purchased him a pair of shoes. She tied up the remaining pairs of socks and gave them to him. She patted h im on the head and said, "No doubt, my little fellow, you feel more comfortable now?" As she turned to go, the astonished lad caught her by the hand, and looking up in her face, said, "Are you God's wife?"

Traditional

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Unexpected Cost

When I was in college I was one of several young men who decided to go to work on the section gang of the railroad during the summer vacation. At that time, there was very little automation on the railroad, and most of the work was done by manual labor. Many people warned us about the job. It was a hot job ... very, very hot. It was difficult. Everything out there was heavy. It was a dirty job, and to some extent, it was dangerous. But the pay was most attractive. None of us could make as much money doing anything else in the summer. So we went to work on the railroad, and only one of the five of us lasted the first week. It was too tough or we were too weak. We thought we were ready for this tough job, but we were not. We had not accurately counted the cost.


Thomas C. Short, Good News for the Multitudes, CSS Publishing 

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The demand for absolute liberty brings men to the depths of slavery.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Cost of Discipleship

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There are three conversions necessary: the conversion of the heart, the mind and the purse. Of these three, it may well be that we moderns find the conversion of the purse the most difficult.

Martin Luther

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The Word Hate

"If anyone comes after me and does not hate ..." "Hate" is not primarily a feeling word in the Aramaic language, the language Jesus spoke. It is primarily a priority word. It means to abandon or to leave aside; the way a sailor needs to abandon a sinking ship or the way a general needs to leave aside distracting things to win his battle.

John G. Lynch, Troubled Journey, CSS Publishing Company.

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Knowing Our Business

Some of us had the joy of listening to one of our generation's truly great preachers, Fred Craddock when he was chaplain at Chautauqua for a week. One morning he told a story from the early years of his ministry in Custer City, Oklahoma, a town of about 450 souls. There were four churches there, a Methodist church, a Baptist church, a Nazarene church, and a Christian church (where Fred served). Each had its share of the population on Wednesday night, Sunday morning, and Sunday evening. Each had a small collection of young people, and the attendance rose and fell according to the weather and whether it was time to harvest the wheat. 

But the most consistent attendance in town was at the little café where all the pickup trucks were parked, and all the men were inside discussing the weather, and the cattle, and the wheat bugs, and the hail, and the wind, and is there going to be a crop. All their wives and sons and daughters were in one of those four churches. The churches had good attendance and poor attendance, but the café had consistently good attendance, better attendance than some of the churches. They were always there - not bad men, but good men, family men, hard-working men. 

Fred says the patron saint of the group that met at the café was named Frank. Frank was seventy-seven when they first met. He was a good, strong man, a pioneer, a rancher and farmer, and a prospering cattle man too. He had been born in a sod house; he had his credentials, and all the men there at the café considered him their patron saint. "Ha! Old Frank will never go to church." 

Fred says, "I met Frank on the street one time. He knew I was a preacher, but it has never been my custom to accost people in the name of Jesus, so I just was shaking hands and visiting with him, but he took the offensive. He said, "I work hard, I take care of my family and I mind my own business. Far as I'm concerned, everything else is fluff." You see what he told me? "Leave me alone, I'm not a prospect." I didn't bother Frank. That's why the entire church, and the whole town were surprised, and the men at the café church were absolutely bumfuzzled when old Frank, seventy-seven years old, presented himself before me one Sunday morning for baptism. I baptized Frank. Some of the talk in the community was, "Frank must be sick. Guess he's scared to meet his maker. They say he's got heart trouble. Going up there and being baptized, well, I never thought ol' Frank would do that, but I guess when you get scared..." All kinds of stories. 
Dr. Craddock goes on: "We were talking the next day after his baptism, and I said, 'Uh, Frank, you remember that little saying you used to give me so much: "I work hard, I take care of my family, I mind my own business?"' .

The conclusion to this illustration and for many additional illustrations and sermons for the Proper 18 can be accessed at www.Sermons.com. 
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