My sermon went well this past Sunday evening I think. I haven't listened to the tape yet to make sure I said what I thought I said. This is the first time I preached with a fill-in-the-blank outline. The words I had them fill in are in bold. Here is what my sermon was about, and this will be the short version, hopefully, I don't know, I haven't written it yet...
Sometimes verses and chapters can be a bit distracting because we make mental breaks in gospel stories that where we are not necessarily supposed to. It was in a study with a friend that this idea came to me.
Luke 9:57-10:41
Sometimes verses and chapters can be a bit distracting because we make mental breaks in gospel stories that where we are not necessarily supposed to. It was in a study with a friend that this idea came to me.
Luke 9:57-10:41
There are four stories that were covered, but they all hinge around the greatest command found in 10:25-28. Both the previous 2 stories and the latter 2 illustrate what it means to love the Lord with everything.
9:57-62
There is one person who is willing to follow Jesus, but He warns them that it will be a rough go. Than He calls two others to follow Him, but they have excuses why they can't at the moment. Sometimes we are only willing to follow Jesus when it is convenient. But Jesus isn't convenient. He demands everything, now. Following Jesus is not easy, but it is incredibly wonderful. Choosing anything else is easy, well for now, it will get much harder in the long run because that is not what we were created for. We will find a god anyway, so why chose anyone but The God. He wants us to follow Him with abandon, and nothing, not family, friends, money, spouse, etc. (that etc includes everything) can stand in the way. Love the Lord your God will all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Jesus doesn't want faith to be a part of our lives, He wants faith in Him to be our life.
10:1-24
The 72 disciples followed Jesus with courage and returned contented. They left in faith and went with nothing, but they came back with remarkable stories and they were full of joy. They loved God by going and loved others by preaching the Kingdom and healing. Jesus told them to rejoice that their names were written in heaven.
10:25-29
The teacher of the law asks what it takes to inherit eternal life. It was just illustrated in the previous story, but here it is spelled out. Love the Lord with everything, and love your neighbor. They are really the same command. Loving the Lord means loving His created. But the teacher wants to justify himself. What a ridiculous thing to do in front of Jesus, He won't let you. He nails this guy.
10:30-37
Jesus tells a racially charged story for maximum effect. Samaritans are worse than Gentiles. They are the infidels to the Jewish world. It is like having a person desperately needing help but the local preacher and an elder just walk on by. It's ok, they have to get to church to serve their flock. But someone who is a homosexual activist stops and helps the person. (I said in the sermon it was an atheist and thought of this later that evening. Had I thought of using the activist before the sermon I would have. It would have been offensive to my audience. That is the point of the story.) Or it's a Birmingham cop that is in desperate need of help, two white people walk by, but a black man stops and helps. That is the story that Jesus tells. The oppressed is helping the oppressor, and in some ways that is more offensive than the oppressor hurting the oppressed. The priest and Levite walked by probably not wanting to be unclean. How can they serve their synagogue if they are unclean? They had become complacent in their love for God. They chose piety over people, religious duty over loving the ordainer of the religion. The Samaritan put aside his comfort and cared for his neighbor. It didn't matter who the hurt man was (and I am assuming he was Jewish). He needed help, and the Samaritan went out of his way to love him. After the parable the teacher can't even bring himself to say "Samaritan." He fudges and probably cringing says, "Well, the one that helped the man I guess."
10:38-42
Isn't it interesting that following a story of action the righteous one is the one who is "not doing something useful." But Mary choose the better. Martha was more interested in stuff. Mary communed with Christ, but Martha was conquered by the business of life. People must always come before stuff. Period. So many times we choose the good over the best. But wasting time with Jesus is the best thing we can do. Sitting at Jesus' feet learning from Him is what is most loving. It will allow us to better love our neighbor.
There, that is the gist of what I preached on. I think it probably preached better than my summary. Hopefully you can take something useful from it. I hope I can too.
(written while listening to Mike + the Mechanics-Living Years, the title song reminding us to love now and not later. Later may never happen.)
3 comments:
I'm sure you did a fine job. Sorry I wasn't there to see it. The outline looked good.
Nice alliteration. You could be a Baptist. LaTrisha told me that the major flaw in the sermon I preached a few weeks ago at a Baptist church was that my points did not all start with the same letter. I told her that when I finished writing my sermon I was planning on using the find/replace function to change all the occurances of God to Gawd and Jesus to Jeeezus, but I used the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's life as an illustration, and I don't think it's possible to say "Gawd/Jeeezus" and "Dietrich Bonhoeffer" in the same talk.
Looks good to me.
I would have preferred to hear it rather than read it.
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