[Propertalk] Fw: Sermon Resources for All Saints Day - Part 1 of 2

[Joe Parrish]

Fw: Sermon Resources for All Saints Day - Part 1 of 2


Sermons for All Saints Day:
 

     John 11:32-44 - "Tears Are Our First Words" by Leonard Sweet

 

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John 11, sermon titled "Tears Are Our First Words" 

 

Tears are our first words. 

 

The beginning way we have of communicating is through tears. Is there anything that gets a baby more attention than tears? Is there anything that can command complete, immediate devotion more than a torrent of tears. Is there anything that can makes adults feel more dismal, daunted, desperate than the wailing of an infant?

 

Our baby's tears can bring us to tears as well. 

 

In earlier cultures the tears of mourners were gathered into something called a lachrymatory, or "tear-catcher," a specially created container for human tears of grief or sometimes of joy. In fact, a company is now bringing them back and selling them online. Here is the website with great images of what some of the early ones looked like:

 

http://www.tearcatcher.com/tearbottle.html

 

Mourning tears were believed to have extreme powers--of solace, of sustenance, of spiritual healing. There were beautiful, delicate lachrymatory tear bottles for women and more masculine cigar-shaped tear bottles for men. Traditionally all were designed with an evaporation chamber. When the last of the gathered tears finally evaporated, the official mourning period was over.

 

In Roman times women were paid to cry into tear bottles, so that as many filled bottles as possible could accompany the extensive mourning processions that befitted any important, powerful figure. In typical Roman fashion, more was always better--whether one was dead or alive. 

 

Even the most humble burial ceremony involved the presence of paid mourners. In Jewish culture the bare minimum required two flute players and professional wailing woman. Anything less was an insult to the family name. The grief industry in the first century--like that of the twenty-first century--was big business.

 

Have you noticed that as the economy has fallen, the number of ads for life insurance are on the rise? In the face of an uncertain economic climate, unstable global relationships, catastrophic environmental scenarios, and butt-headed political stalemates, there is always one thing that remains certain . . . death. You can always bank on death showing up. The grief industry never has a down turn.

 

When Jesus finally arrived at Bethany the first-century grief industry was already well represented. "The Jews" who came down from Jerusalem to "console Martha and Mary" (v.19) undoubtedly included many professional mourners, musicians, and trained tear-producers.

 

The rest of Leonard Sweet's sermon can be obtained by joining www.Sermons.com 

 

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The Grief Grinch 

 

We are approaching an exciting time of the year - Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's. Times of celebration. Times for friends and family. Times of joy. And for some, times of incredible sadness. The holidays will be hard because someone with whom previous special days were shared is gone. To paraphrase Tennyson's In Memoriam, "Never Christmas wore to New Year's but some heart did break." If you have never experienced that, I would be tempted to offer congratulations, but I will not. They would probably simply be premature. The name of the Grinch who stole Christmas year-in and year-out is grief.

Perhaps there is an ache inside you this year that intensifies each time you think of turkeys or mistletoe or presents under the tree. Perhaps your wish is, not so much to have HAPPY holidays this year, but just to survive them. You hear the Psalmist say "For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him. He is my rock, my salvation, my fortress, my deliverance..." Hmmm.

[Eyes heavenward] Well, God, deliver me from THIS! Can you arrange it so November 15 will be followed by January 16? If not that, at least give me some SURVIVAL TIPS to help me manage this year.

I have good news. You have been given some survival tips. The lesson from John's gospel this morning provides some - resources for dealing with grief at the holidays or any days. Follow the story and see how it works out.

You remember the situation: Jesus had received word that His good friend Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, had died. By the time Jesus and the disciples got to the family home in Bethany, great numbers had already arrived. After all, Lazarus had been dead for four days by now, and the normal period of intense grief for Jews in first century Palestine was a full week. There was plenty of weeping and wailing going on and plenty more yet to be done, and it was to be done by as many people as possible. It might appear to you and me as a little contrived - all the noise, the really excessive displays of emotion...but if the tables were turned and they had the chance to watch what WE do in the same situation, they might consider our reserved behavior a sign of disrespect for the dead. All the wailing was their way of doing honor to the deceased. At any rate, there is one thing that is common to both cultures: the gathering of friends - a marvelous resource for coping with grief in the first century or the twenty-first.

David E. Leininger, The Grief Grinch, www.Sermons.com

 

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Let Him Go! 

 

During these past twelve years that I've been involved in the ministry, I have had the wonderful experience of watching as Jesus called men and women out of spiritual death into new life. I have never lost the wonder and excitement, the emotion of that kind of resurrection, and I pray that I never will. But then I've also seen loving, caring people reach out and embrace and welcome these strangers in their midst, helping them to meet new friends and develop new habits (like coming to church on a regular basis or coming to Sunday School). I've seen them provide encouragement to find and use their unique gifts in the ministry of the church. Whenever I've seen this happen, I have recalled Jesus' instructions to the crowd of onlookers at the resurrection of Lazarus: "Unbind him, and let him go." When we encourage newly resurrected Christians to become a vital part of the faith community, that's what we're doing. We're taking off the grave clothes, participating in the miracle of new life.

Johnny Dean, Death Stinks, www.Sermons.com 

 

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The Greek philosophers were the ones who talked most about the immortality of the soul, and they used a beautiful analogy to explain it. They saw the soul like a homing pigeon taking to a far land and when it is release, it always instinctively and unerringly returns to its true home. The soul they say is like that bird. In this life, we're living in a foreign land or in a cage, death, therefore, in this view is a release - freeing the soul to return instinctively and unerringly to its true home. Now that's beautiful, but it's not Christian. It's in much of our poetry and in much of our hymnody, you get some hints of it in the Bible, but that's not primarily the teaching of the Bible. The primary teaching of scripture is not the immortality of the soul, but the resurrection of the body and eternal life. The Bible does not affirm that immortality is part and parcel of what it means to be human, but the Bible rather talks about eternal life as gifts - the gift of God in Jesus Christ to those who respond in faith to him. 

If you're going to live beyond death, the Bible says, there must be a resurrection of the body. A resurrection of who we are as we are as persons, yet made new by Christ himself, who even now sitting upon the throne, keeps saying, behold I am making all things new. When Paul was confronted with what people felt to be the preposterousness of this idea of the resurrection of the body, when you consider what happens to the body in death - he said, we will have a resurrected new body. And just as the Greeks had an analogy to talk about the immortality of the soul, so Paul had an analogy to talk about the resurrection of the body. He said it's like a farmer, planting a seed in the ground, and the shell of the husk falls away and new life appears. So we die, to be born again into new life.

 

Maxie Dunnam, All This and Heaven, Too, www.Sermons.com

 

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