Illustrations, Quotes and Lectionary Reflections
by Various Authors

Sermon Starter
Looking at the World through the Eyes of God

I can't think of a greater condemnation to be levied against a people than this: 
They loved darkness instead of light. I would never want that to be said of me. 
But that is the way God sees the world. You and I see the world as it is right now. 
Most of the people around us try and do the right thing and when we are wrong 
hopefully we apologize. So we tend to think well of most people. 
But look out on the passage of time. 

The Ancient World of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Hellenism, Rome, Persia, India, 
and East Asia was filled with the ignorance of hundreds of thousands of gods, magic, 
rituals, superstitions, human sacrifice, conquests, sewage(refuse was mostly 
thrown into the streets for the rats and dogs), disease (priests attempted to foretell 
the course of a disease by examining the livers of sacrificed animals). 
And the list doesn't end there: ethnic bigotry, civil wars, persecutions, despots, 
tyrants, class rule, and the systematic murders of tens of thousands.

The Middle Ages of Persia, Constantinople, Islam, Britain, China, India, Genghis Khan 
and the Mongols, Timur and the Turks, Europe, African Empires and the Americas. 
All of them covered in the darkness of man's inhumanity to man: Revolutions, 
expansionism, Mohammad's Conquest and Christianity's Crusades, warlords, heretics, 
witchcraft, increased trade bringing death and plagues to millions, 
and the crowding in the cities spreading the misery all the more. 
And on top of this misery wars fought for every ridiculous reason known to man.

The Enlightenment and the Modern world also have fared no better. 
We too have loved the darkness instead of the light. Europe, Africa, Mid-East, India
and the Americas have all dipped their finger into the cesspool of sin: Guns, germs, 
slavery, the need for women's suffrage, massacres, socialism, resistance to democracy, 
religious fundamentalism's resistance to progress, Fascism, Communism, The Holocaust, 
the Ku Klux Klan, greed, the market crash, The Depression, world wars, 
The Bomb, terrorism, the crisis in Africa.

I can't tell you what a short list this is. And this says nothing of the millions of women 
and children who have suffered throughout the ages at the hands of ruthless men. 
There is no way to write that history because it is hidden from the pages of history.

Yes! Men have loved darkness rather than light. There is a morbid destructive tendency in all of us. 
We dabble in the diabolical. We revel in revenge. And we hate in our hearts. 
My, how we love to live in the shadows! What must God think of us?

Here is his verdict, as true today as it was when it was pronounced 2000 years ago: 
Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light, 
because their deeds were evil. This is Jesus' description of mankind. And can any of us argue with him?

For a few moments let's look at the world through the eyes of God. What does he see? He sees that....

 There are those who acknowledge not the darkness.
 There are those who acknowledge the darkness.
 There are those who acknowledge their need for forgiveness.




Born of the Spirit

Windborne! That's a far better moniker for Christians than that mistaken term "born again". 
That's a phrase we picked up from Nicodemus' misunderstanding of entering a second time 
into the mother's womb rather than Jesus' terminology "born from above" or "born of the Spirit". 
"No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and wind - Spirit - pneumatos."

Windborne speaks of being carried along by the wind of the Spirit of God. Here is a lifestyle 
that is not bogged down with the how questions, but a life that soars among the clouds powered 
by the mystery of God. "The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, 
but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes." Ours is a life filled with mystery 
and the unexplainable.

Science has taught us to ask the how questions. Our contemporary culture seems to be obsessed 
with the tangible, the explainable, and the measurable. And we are tempted to believe 
that the only reality is that which we can see and touch. But Jesus calls us to a life of the spirit. 
It's a life lifted by the invisible power of the wind.

(by Mickey Anders from Windborne)



God Is Seeking You in Love

Fred Craddock tells the story of his father, who spent years of his life hiding from the God who was seeking him out:

"When the pastor used to come from my mother's church to call on him, my father would say, 
'You don't care about me. I know how churches are. You want another pledge, another name, right? 
Another name, another pledge, isn't that the whole point of church? Get another name, another pledge.'

My nervous mother would run to the kitchen, crying, for fear somebody's feelings would be hurt. 
When we had an evangelistic campaign the pastor would bring the evangelist, introduce him to my father 
and then say, 'Sic him, get him! Sic him, get him!' My father would always say the same thing. 
'You don't care about me! Another name, another pledge. Another name, another pledge! I know about churches.'

I guess I heard it a thousand times. One time he didn't say it. He was at the Veteran's Hospital. 
He was down to 74 pounds. They had taken out the throat, put in a metal tube, and said, 
'Mr. Craddock, you should have come earlier. But this cancer is awfully far advanced. 
We'll give radium, but we don't know.'

I went in to see him. In every window-potted plants and flowers. Everywhere there was a place 
to set them - potted plants and flowers. Even in that thing that swings out over your bed they put food on, 
there was a big flower. There was by his bed a stack of cards 10 or 15 inches deep. 
I looked at the cards sprinkled in the flowers. I read the cards beside his bed. And I want to tell you, 
every card, every blossom, every potted plant from groups, Sunday School classes, women's groups, 
youth groups, men's bible class, of my mother's church - every one of them. My father saw me reading them. 
He could not speak, but he took a Kleenex box and wrote something on the side from Shakespeare's Hamlet. . . . 
He wrote on the side, 'In this harsh world, draw your breath in pain to tell my story'. 
I said, 'What is your story, Daddy?' And he wrote, 'I was wrong.'" 

It is not until you know God is seeking you in love, not in condemnation; it is not until that moment 
that the gospel becomes Good News for you.

(by Fred Craddock adapted by James Fitzgerald in Serpents, Penguins, and Crosses)



God Can Make Something Out of You

Some years ago, the great boxer, Mohammed Ali, was asked by a ghetto youth how he could quit school 
and start a boxing career since he had bad grades. Ali smiled at the young man and said in his poetic fashion: 

"Stay in college and get the knowledge,
And stay there! Til you're through
Cause if God can make penicillin out of moldy bread,
He can make something out of you."

This is the good news of John 3. Because God so loved the world, 
He SENT His only son to make something out of us; when we accept Him into our lives 
and commit our hearts to Him, then He gives us new life in this world - 
and new life in the world to come. 

(by James W. Moore from Encounters with Christ, www.Sermons.com)



We Become His Son

There is a story that comes out of the Bedouin culture. "Bedouin" is the Aramaic name 
for "desert dwellers." These people live much as the characters of the Old Testament did. 
During a heated argument, according to this story, a young Bedouin struck and killed a friend of his. 
Knowing the ancient, inflexible customs of his people, the young man fled, 
running across the desert under the cover of darkness, seeking safety. 

He went to the black tent of the tribal chief in order to seek his protection. 
The old chief took the young Arab in. The chief assured him that he would be safe 
until the matter could be settled legally. 

The next day, the young man's pursuers arrived, demanding the murderer be turned over to them. 
They would see that justice would prevail in their own way. "But I have given my word," protested the chief. 

"But you don't know whom he killed!" they countered. 

"I have given my word," the chief repeated. 

"He killed your son!" one of them blurted out. The chief was deeply and visibly shaken with his news. 
He stood speechless with his head bowed for a long time. The accused and the accusers 
as well as curious onlookers waited breathlessly. What would happen to the young man? 
Finally the old man raised his head. "Then he shall become my son," he informed them, 
"and everything I have will one day be his." 

The young man certainly didn't deserve such generosity. And that, of course, is the point. 
Love in its purest form is beyond comprehension. No one can merit it. It is freely given. 
It is agape, the love of God. Look to the cross. At the cross we encounter love in its purest form. 

(by King Duncan from Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com)



Rules for Being Human

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.
2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called life. 
Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. 
You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant and stupid.
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error experimentation. 
The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately "works."
4. A lesson is repeated until it is learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms 
until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can then go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. 
If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.
6. "There" is no better than "here." When your "there" has become a "here," 
you will simply obtain another "there" that will, again, look better than "here."
7. Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person 
unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
8. What you make of life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. 
What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9. Your answers lie inside you. The answers to life's questions lie inside you. 
All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
10. You will forget all this.

(by Michael D. Powell from Look, Listen, Love, and Live)



Judgment and Grace

Most preachers have preacher dreams. I am sure every profession has its own particular variation. 
They are often recurring and usually show clearly the preacher's feelings of inadequacy. 
Early in my ministry, I used to put my sermon on the pulpit before worship 
so it would already be in place when I got there to preach. The problem with that 
is the accompanying dream I would have on many Saturday nights. In my dream, 
I would step up to the pulpit and the sermon would not be there. The dream took many shapes and forms, 
but it always came down to the missing sermon and me having nothing to say. Nothing. 
The dream stopped when I started carrying my sermon with me. More recently I had a dream 
that I came by the church and a wedding was beginning. I suddenly realized I should be up there 
performing the wedding, and I was completely unprepared. So you can see a common thread 
in these preacherly dreams...unprepared and unable. It reveals the dark side of us, 
the part of us that really needs the grace. It reveals that even if I sing "God Is Love", 
and "Jesus Loves Me", there is nevertheless that judgment there that haunts me, even in my dreams.

(by Sharon Rhodes-Wickett from God's Promises: Judgment and Grace)



Complain, Complain, Complain

The story is told of a young man who entered a very strict monastic order. 
It was so strict that members were permitted to speak only two words per year to the abbot. 
At the end of year one the young man appeared before the abbot and spoke his two words, 
"bad food." At the end of the second year the young man appeared before the abbot 
and spoke two more words, "hard bed". At the end of year three he came to the abbot 
and spoke his last two words, "I quit." The abbot responded, "Well it is about time. 
Complain, complain, complain - that's all you've done since you came here."

We humans are people of darkness. People who complain, rebel, work against the Kingdom of God. 
Death is all we know. Lives filled with the patterns of sin. However, God does an astonishing thing. 
He brings the light. He erects a cross of death that we might look up and live. 
He leads us out of the darkness. He loves the world and does not condemn it. 
He does not condemn you, if...if you will believe.

(by Brett Blair, www.eSermons.com)



Affirming What We Believe

In his autobiography, actor Alec Guinness tells a story that might keep every pastor 
and church school teacher awake at night. He was a teenager and it was the morning of his confirmation. 
The classes were finished. The students' heads had been filled full of Bible stories and theological doctrines. 
Guinness says Holy Trinity Church in Eastbourne was crammed with confirmation candidates, their parents, 
friends, schoolteachers, and sponsors. At the appropriate moment, he notes, "The girls, mostly in grey uniforms, 
filed up to kneel at the Bishop's left hand and the boys, in blue serge, to his right. 
I remember white episcopal hands and shaggy black eyebrows. A pale, greenish light filtered 
through the window-panes, giving a subaqueous hue to the perspiring congregation." 
Then he adds, "At the age of sixteen, one early summer day, I arose from under the hands 
of the Bishop of Lewes a confirmed atheist ... With a flash I realized I had never really believed what I had been taught."

I don't know about you, but I am troubled by that story. I believe in Christian education. 
God's people are called to teach the Christian faith to children, teenagers, and adults. 
Sunday church school and confirmation classes are important educational activities. 
The church needs to do these things. And yet, here is the story of a bright, intelligent person 
who emerged from those experiences, and he did not believe a word of what he learned. 
As a professional church leader, as a Christian educator, that story bothers me. At a personal level, however, 
that story haunts me for another reason, namely, that it sounds surprisingly familiar. 
On a bright Sunday morning, it is easy to affirm what we believe. As the familiar verse we've heard today puts it, 
"God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish 
but have eternal life." With sunbeams shining through stained glass, I can believe it. But late at night, 
after the lights are dimmed, sometimes I have my doubts, my questions, my lapses of belief. Perhaps I'm not the only one.

(by William G. Carter from Water Won't Quench the Fire, CSS Publishing Company)



All You Need is Love

Tony Campolo tells about a mountaineer from West Virginia who fell in love with the beautiful daughter 
of the town preacher. The gruff and tough man one evening looked deeply into the eyes 
of the preacher's daughter and said, "I love you." It took more courage for him to say those simple words 
than he had ever had to muster for anything else he had ever done. Minutes passed in silence 
and then the preacher's daughter said, "I love you, too." The tough mountaineer said nothing except, 
"Good night." Then he went home, got ready for bed and prayed, "God, I ain't got nothin' against nobody."

Many of us know that feeling. To love and to be loved, what joy that simple emotion brings into our lives. 
Then to realize that the very nature of God is love is almost more than you or I can comprehend.

(by King Duncan from Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com)



Today our clergy group had a rabbi talk with us about the Numbers story. A few things she said caught my attention: 
1. One of the themes of rabbinic commentary on this passage is that rather than God sending the serpents, 
God removes the protection that had kept the them at bay. The serpents were a natural part of the environment, 
but God's presence had protected the people for nearly 40 years up to this point. (This has something to do 
with the tense of the word "send", which, if I'm remembering correctly, can mean "let loose".) 
2. The theme of "what goes around, comes around". That is, the serpent in genesis speaks evil with its tongue 
and is punished. the people in this story speak evil (complain against God), and therefore serpents are sent to punish them. 
3. "Fiery serpents" can be a description of the Egyptian cobra--so these dangerous serpents 
might be suggestive of the dangers of slavery in Egypt.



Yesterday I was bothered by a question in Seasons of the Spirit shown to 
me as part of the worship plan of one of our lay teams. The question 
was something like 'What are the snakes God sends to punish you?"

I suggested that question not be used, because for me it suggests a God 
who sends things to punish us for our sins.

This morning when re-reading the Numbers passage, I looked at the 
footnote that said an alternate translation for 'poisonous snakes' or 
'poisonous serpents' is 'fiery seraphim' or 'fiery seraph'. I thought 
of the seraphim that flew around the temple in Isaiah's vision and the 
one that brought a fiery coal and cleansed Isaiah's lips. That got me 
thinking.

Maybe these snakes/serpents in the numbers story aren't meant to be 
poisonous tiger snakes or brown snakes, but heavenly beings sent to 
discipline the people of Israel for forgetting who is is who has been 
feeding them and protecting them in the wilderness and who seem to have 
forgotten why they are there and what they left in Egypt. Maybe these 
are heavenly beings sent to (if you'll pardon the expression) 'bite them 
on the bum' and bring them to their senses. As we know well from our 
biblical stories, not everyone survives the ministrations of heavenly 
beings, so some Israelites died. But the others seem to have repented, 
so that when Moses intercedes for them, God gives them a remedy for 
their 'sickness' - a reminder of the disciplinary measures God took so 
that they will remain in a healthy relationship with their God in the 
future.



In thinking about this coming Sunday, I noticed the bulletin cover from Word Alive! 

It shows a white dove in flight over a field of wheat with the words:

"You are saved by God's grace because of your faith. This salvation is God's gift. 
It's not something you possessed." - Ephesians 2:8

Couple that with the gospel reading from John 3:14-21, and I find myself in awe of this grace 
which God has on display for us and for all of creation. For if grace is real 
and this grace is from God, then its impact must also be real and not just for us 
or for those 'grace-filled' moments we savor. Indeed, this grace is so much more 
than we've allowed ourselves to experience and far greater still than we've allowed ourselves 
to believe its enhancing the life of others.