[Propertalk] Fw: Sermon Resources for September 19 - Part 2

[Joe Parrish]

A Shrewd Example

First-century culture was organized and orchestrated by strict social rules. The rules of reciprocal hospitality were in no way optional. Rather they were the supporting ligaments that bound together status and honor, safeguarding roles and responsibilities through right relationships. The dishonest manager has no doubts that he will be able to collect on the favors owed him when the time comes. He will get by, despite his looming unemployment, because he knows how to work the system, or in the more contemporary terms of network, because he knows how to make the net work.

Jesus doesn't admire the thorns that bar the manager's dubious situation. Neither does Jesus concern himself with the man's self-serving character. What Jesus focuses on is the fruit that results from the manager's shrewdness (machinations?). Jesus sees a man unafraid to push the accepted limits in order to bring about a needed change. And he sees in this shrewdness something that his disciples might well learn from.

Leonard Sweet, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com

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Play It Safe or Take a Risk

Rev. Mark Trotter tells of a mission in Mexico, sponsored by Mercy Hospital, in San Diego, and by Rotary International. Thirteen doctors from San Diego, and twice that number of nurses and other support staff, total of about fifty-five persons, paid their own way to go down as a surgical team to minister to poor children in Tehuacan, in the southern part of Mexico. He says, 

"The call went out through the Rotary Club in that city for all those who do not have the means for medical attention to bring children with birth defects and crippling diseases to the clinic.  It was amazing. They came by the hundreds, mostly the very, very poor, carrying their children. Some teenagers, as well, some of whom have spent their life with their hand held over their face because they were ashamed of the way they looked. Some had been hidden by their parents because they did not want their neighbors to see what they believed was a curse upon their family. After an hour, or less, in surgery their appearance was changed, and they received new hope and a new life. 

If you are hard-headed, you might conclude that the thousands of dollars that were spent last week in Tehuacan was just a drop in the bucket. It's not going to make any difference. I mean, the enormous suffering in this world, just wave after wave. It's not going to make any difference. 
I talked to one of those Rotarians in Tehuacan who spent two years setting up this project. It's a complex business establishing this kind of a clinic in Mexico. I said, "Why did you do it?" He said, "We believe that we can change the world, and we are going to start right here." 

It sounds naive. It is naive, when you compare it with the problems that exist, even the problems in his own state. But you are confronted with a choice in this life. That's the point of these parables. You are confronted with a choice. You can do nothing, and play it safe. Or, you can take a risk." 

Adapted from Mark Trotter, The Model of Success

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Humor: You Took Me In 

Henry Ford was known for both his frugality and his philanthropy. He was visiting his family's ancestral village in Ireland when two trustees of the local hospital found out he was there, and they managed to get in to see him.

They talked him into giving the hospital $5,000 dollars (this was the 1930's, so $5,000 dollars was a great deal of money). The next morning, at breakfast, he opened his newspaper to read the banner headline: "American Millionaire Gives Fifty Thousand to Local Hospital."

Ford wasted no time in summoning the two hospital trustees. He waved the newspaper in their faces. "What does this mean?" he demanded. The trustees apologized profusely. "Dreadful error," they said. They promised to get the editor to print a retraction the very next day, stating that the great Henry Ford hadn't given $50,000, but only $5,000. Well, hearing that, Ford offered them the other $45,000, under one condition: that the trustees erect a marble arch at the entrance of the new hospital, with a plaque that read, "I walked among you and you took me in."

Billy D. Strayhorn, Let's Make a Deal
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Looking Past Oneself

An enormously rich man complained to a psychiatrist that despite his great wealth which enabled him to have whatever he wanted, he still felt miserable. The psychiatrist took the man to the window overlooking the street and asked, "What do you see?" The man replied, "I see men, women, and children."

The psychiatrist then took the man to stand in front of mirror and asked, "Now what do you see?"

The man said, "I see only myself."

The psychiatrist then said, "In the window there is a glass and in the mirror there is glass, and when you look through the glass of the window, you see others, but when you look into the glass of the mirror you see only yourself. The reason for this, "said the psychiatrist, "is that behind the glass in the mirror is a layer of silver. When silver is added, you cease to see others. You only see yourself."

Whenever your devotion to money and material things causes you to be self centered, you in essence deny God's intention for your life. It is also a denial of the Christ, for Jesus came into the world so that we might be in union with God.

Maxie Dunnam, Turn in an Account of Your Stewardship

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Living As If There is No Future

A man bought a parrot. He taught that bird to say one word. That word was, "Today." When he got up in the morning and when he came home at night it was beaten into his eardrums: "Today." There was no procrastination around that bird. "Today, today, today," he screamed. 

About six months later the man bought another parrot. He taught that bird to say one word. That word was "Tomorrow." He said, "I have been living as if there were no future. Today is all there is, and I've found it isn't so." The two birds together helped him keep his mind on the realities of life: today and tomorrow. Would that the steward could have heard both voices. Tomorrow is God's judgment on today. 

Carveth Mitchell, The Sign in the Subway, CSS Publishing Company, Inc.

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Shrewdness in Business

There was once a young businessman in Germany named Neckerman who had a burning ambition to build his small retail store into a large chain of department stores. His problem was that no one knew his name. He couldn't attract customers. He had only limited capital.

This was shortly after World War II. As you might imagine there were shortages in Germany of almost everything. Thus, the existing big department stores saw no reason to cut prices. They sold whatever they could get at healthy margins. Neckerman saw this as an opportunity. If only he could position his store as the low-cost, high-value leader, he could build the enterprise of his dreams.

As it happened, Neckerman managed to acquire a large shipment of spools of thread. Thread was in great demand in those days. Clothes also were in short supply. Women were constantly repairing their families' old garments. The obvious step for Neckerman would have been to sell these spools of thread in his own store. It would undoubtedly attract more business.

Instead he offered the whole shipment of thread to the buyer for the largest department store chain in Germany at only a slight profit. The buyer for this chain jumped at the opportunity and in only a few weeks had sold all the thread at a much more substantial profit.

It usually takes several months to use up a whole spool of thread. Thus, the whole transaction was forgotten by the time the executives of this large chain started to notice crowds of people shopping at Neckerman's. Soon the reason became apparent. It was the spools of thread the large chain had purchased so eagerly from this young upstart. As German housewives finished their spools of thread, a piece of paper that had been wrapped about the spool under the thread fluttered out. It read like this: IF YOU HAD BOUGHT THIS THREAD AT NECKERMAN'S, IT WOULD HAVE LASTED TWICE AS LONG. Overnight, everyone knew the name Neckerman. From then on, the firm had no trouble attracting customers. 

Shrewd. Even a little sneaky. Sometimes in business the line between ethical and unethical, shrewd and outright dishonest, is a little blurred. And nice guys, or gals, don't always finish first.



Peter Engel, The Exceptional Individual (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998), pp. 63-64, adapted by King Duncan 

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When the Tigers Circle

A Zen story characterizes life as a Buddhist monk fleeing from a hungry tiger. The monk comes to the edge of a cliff cutting off any hope of escape from the pursuing tiger. Fortunately for the monk, a vine happens to be growing over the edge. He grabs hold of it and begins to climb down the cliff, out of the tiger's reach, who is by now glaring at him from above. But alas, as the monk is climbing down, he spies another tiger waiting for him below; circling impatiently at the bottom of the cliff. To make matters worse, out of the corner of his eye he notices a mouse on a ledge above him already beginning to gnaw through the vine.

The conclusion to this illustration and for many additional illustrations and sermons for the Proper 20 can be accessed at www.Sermons.com. 
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