Romans 6: 12-23 (links validated 5/24/23)
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Sermon Starters (Proper 8A)(2023)
If you need any indication of how well known Paul’s final words from Romans 6 are, you need look no further than a New Yorker cartoon from some years back. The cartoon shows a highway toll station with three toll booths. The booth on the far left is labeled “CASH”, the center toll booth is for “EZ-PASS,” and the one on far right “WAGES OF SIN.” But that toll booth did not feature the usual window through which to pay the attendant but was clearly a curtained Confessional Booth from a Catholic church. And it was the only “toll booth” to which a car was headed! Even the secular world well outside the church has some sense that there is such a thing as sin, that it does have some kind of consequences, and that sooner or later we each of us needs to deal with that fact. CASH and EZ-PASS will only get you so far.
Resources from 2020 to 2022
Sermon Starters (Proper 8A)(2020)
The more mundane good life for which God made us may look at least a little like that of two men who worked in a park in Fon du Lac, Wisconsin. Every day, 82-year-old Bud Caldwell visited a park bench that he bought and dedicated to his late wife, Betty, after she died. He’d tell her about his day and deliver two gifts: a penny and a daisy. The gifts are tributes to songs the couple had loved during their 56 years together: “Daisy a Day,” and “Pennies From Heaven.” But when snow covered the walkway that led to Betty’s bench that became too dangerous for Caldwell, he still made the trip but stayed in his car. Two park employees noticed his new routine, and moved by his devotion to his wife, decided to shovel the walkway to Betty’s bench. They vowed to keep the path clear all through the winter.
Resources from 2017 to 2019
Proper 8A (2017)
If you need any indication of how well known Paul’s final words from Romans 6 are, you need look no further than a recent New Yorker cartoon that had been featured on my page-a-day New Yorker calendar back on February 2. The cartoon shows a highway toll station with three toll booths. The booth on the far left is labeled “CASH”, the center toll booth is for “EZ-PASS,” and the one on far right “WAGES OF SIN.” But that toll booth did not feature the usual window through which to pay the attendant but was clearly a curtained Confessional Booth from a Catholic church. And it was the only “toll booth” to which a car was headed! Even the secular world well outside the church has some sense that there is such a thing as sin, that it does have some kind of consequences, and that sooner or later we each of us needs to deal with that fact. CASH and EZ-PASS will only get you so far.