[Propertalk] Fw: Sermon Resources for September 6th

[Joe Parrish]

Sermon Resources for Proper 18:

    Mark 7:31-37  -  The Man Who Couldn't Hear
    James 2:1-10  -  Does Jesus Have a Health Plan - Leonard Sweet

Mark 7, the sermon titled "The Man Who Couldn't Hear"

In ancient Greece it was customary for peddlers who walked the streets with
their wares to cry out, "What do you lack?" The idea was to let people know
they were in the vicinity, and also rouse the curiosity of the people.
Coming out of their houses they would want to know what the peddler was
selling. It might be something they lacked and needed, or simply something
they desired.

What do you lack? We may have sight and hearing, but what do we lack? Take
an honest inventory of yourself. Have you found contentment? Are you close
enough to God to receive his guidance and strength? Have you secured peace
of heart and peace of mind, invaluable assets in life? Deciding what we lack
is the first step in securing it. Christ can fulfill our needs -- needs that
are to some extent physical, but, more so, the deepest needs of heart, mind,
and soul.

The man in Mark 7 lacked the physical ability to hear. But many of us lack
the spiritual ability to hear. We suffer a kind of a spiritual deafness.
The affliction of not listening to people, or, to put it another way, the
affliction of physically listening to people, yet failing to comprehend, to
understand, and come to grips with what they are saying, is a plague upon
the Church. For, you see, it is possible to listen to a person, yet fail to
really hear them.

Listening is a skill. It is something that can be acquired. I don't think it
is at all an exaggeration to say that you could have no greater impact upon
your world then by closing your lips and opening your ears. How can we
become better listeners? Let's take a look at�


1. The life of a man who could not hear.
2. The life of a man who will not hear.
3. How life changes when you hear.

The rest of this sermon following the outline above can be obtained by
joining www.eSermons.com.
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Second Sermon by Len Sweet

James 2, the sermon entitled 'Does Jesus Have a Health Plan?'

Back-to-school time is lay-down-the law time.

As all the kids go back to school, Moms and Dads are busy laying down the
ground rules to help make it a successful year.

Little ones get instructions on crossing the street, holding hands, and
eating their lunch.

Middle-school kids get cautionary tales about bullying behavior, harder
homework, and budgeting their time.

High school students get lectures on safe driving, curfews, and the looming
threat/promise of college - which means "buck down and buckle-down, now."

But for the first time in decades there is another back-to-school-rule that
is being stressed with great seriousness and grave concern - "Wash your
hands. With soap. Often!"

Along with the new backpacks and lunchboxes, and lockers, we are being told
to expect a new outbreak of the H1N1 virus - the Swine flu. After a few days
at the University of Washington the last week in August, a couple hundred
kids have gotten sick. With no vaccine even available until sometime in
October, there isn't all that much we can do to protect ourselves, and our
families, except "wash our hands." Not since the polio epidemics in the
1940's and early 1950's has going back to school been deemed such a
potential 'health hazard."

I don't know whether it's more ironic, or fitting, that the biggest debates
on health care ever to occur in this country are heating up just as the
temperatures are cooling down and the red flag storm warnings of a swine flu
outbreak are being unfurled. We are facing an approaching enemy without any
sure fire weapon to weld against is. How will we respond? And what happens
if the worst happens? What happens if 80 million Americans come down with
H1N1 virus?

The church has always been in the health care business. Jesus spent his
three years of ministry preaching, teaching and healing, but Jesus was most
known among the people as a healer. The crowds that followed him requested a
healing touch more often than a holy word. And Jesus didn't discount the
diseases of the body...


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

In Keeping Pace, Ernest Fitzgerald relayed the true story of a magazine
company which several years ago purchased a new computer. Its function was
to compile data and send out subscription notices to customers whose
subscriptions had lapsed. One day something went wrong with the machine, and
before the error was discovered (about a month later), a certain rancher in
Colorado had received 9,374 notices that his subscription had expired.
Someone in the magazine office posted the letter the company received from
him. Inside was a check for one year's subscription along with a handwritten
note saying: "I give up! Send me the magazine." He was won over by their
consistent, persistent attention.

That's what still wins people over to Christ. It's the consistent witness we
live before them: the kindness and gentility that are consistently evident,
the willingness to listen without judging and to help without expecting
something in return, the smile that's always there, the warm hug or
handshake that we can count on, the friendship that doesn't blow hot and
cold, the faith that is evident in good times and other times, as well. We
articulate Christ's presence and power most effectively not with eloquent
words but rather with a steady, faithful Christian life that others can see
and believe in.

Michael B. Brown, Be All That You Can Be, CSS Publishing Company

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A Model of Faith

It may come as a shock to most Christians today, but we would do better to
use this woman as a model of faith even more than the disciples. After all,
we are neither Jewish nor Galilean; we have no familial claim or
geographical claim to Jesus.

While the woman learns that the power of faith lies internally, the
disciples learn that faith can't be measured by proximity to Jesus. They are
right next to the Lord and yet they see the woman as a bother. They don't
lead her to Jesus or attempt to heal her daughter, her faith does that. They
are too blinded by their social and religious prejudice to offer miracles to
anyone.

Jesus words are obviously not meant to cut down the woman (her compassion
runs too deep to care if she is insulted). The words of Christ are meant to
reprimand the disciples-and us-when our politics and religious agenda blind
us to compassion.

Which faith most resembles mine? Am I like the cocksure disciples steeped in
religious and cultural prejudice, deeply self-assured of my proximity to
Jesus? Or, am I like the outcast woman of Lebanon, indentured by compassion
and uncaring of insults if I can just save one soul?

Jerry Goebel, Even the Dogs

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Jesus' Labor Day

This Labor Day weekend we need to remind ourselves that Jesus is still
working. He will never take a vacation as long as there are people who need
him. He is looking for people who are hurting, people who are lonely, people
who are bound by addictions of every kind. And he is telling them, "Come to
me. I can help you. I can help you today."

King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com

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Remade In His Image

G. K. Chesterton in his autobiography wrote about the effect of forgiveness,
of the absolution. He was referring to the words of absolution spoken by the
presiding minister after a confession of sin: "I forgive you all your sins
in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." Somewhat
freely paraphrased, this is what Chesterton
said: Forgiven Christians "do truly, by definition, step out again into that
dawn of their own beginning ... God has really remade them in his own image.
They are now, each one of them, a new experiment as they were when they were
really only five years old. They stand in the white light at the worthy
beginning of a new life. The accumulations of time [of previous sinning] can
no longer terrify. They may be grey and gouty; but they are only five
minutes old."


George W. Hoyer, Fringe, Front and Center, CSS Publishing.

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He Wasn't Listening

A story is told of a Father and his young daughter who had had a very
strained relationship for some time. Returning from a trip, the Father did
something that was very unusual for him. As he entered into the room he
presented his daughter with a necklace that he had bought her. Completely
overcome with joy by this unexpected act of giving, the young girl
inadvertently dropped the necklace and went running from the room with tears
in her eyes. She returned shortly only to find as she walked into the room
that her new necklace was now around the neck of her infant baby sister.
"Oh," said the father. "I went on and gave it to her. You didn't like it
anyway." Oh my friends, he wasn't listening. He wasn't listening.

Staff, www.eSermons.com

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The Buzzard, the Bat, and the Bumblebee

If you put a buzzard in a pen that is 6 feet by 8 feet and is entirely open
at the top, the bird, in spite of its ability to fly, will be an absolute
prisoner. The reason is that a buzzard always begins a flight from the
ground with a run of 10 to 12 feet. Without space to run, as is its habit,
it will not even attempt to fly, but will remain a prisoner for life in a
small jail with no top.

The ordinary bat that flies around at night, a remarkable nimble creature in
the air, cannot take off from a level place.  If it is placed on the floor
or flat ground, all it can do is shuffle about helplessly and, no doubt,
painfully, until it reaches some slight elevation from which it can throw
itself into the air. Then, at once, it takes off like a flash.

A bumblebee, if dropped into an open tumbler, will be there until it dies,
unless it is taken out.  It never sees the means of escape at the top, but
persists in trying to find some way out through the sides near the bottom.
 It will seek a way where none exists, until it completely destroys itself.

In many ways, we are like the buzzard, the bat, and the bumblebee. We
struggle about with all our problems and frustrations, never realizing that
all we have to do is look up! That's the answer, the escape route and the
solution to any problem!  Just look up.

Source Unknown

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Quiet Time Is for Listening

There was a fifth grade teacher who decided that she would use this
listening process with her children. Every morning for five minutes she
required them to be totally quite. That's hard for any of us to do, much
less a fifth grader. She discovered that a great deal of good came from the
experience of silence. After one of these quiet times she asked the students
if they had heard anything. One boy said: Yes, I heard something say that I
should be more obedient to my parents. Another said: I heard something say
that you should always be fair: When you are tagged and nobody sees it your
still out. There is no substitute for listening.

Staff, www.eSermons.com

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Setting Lofty Goals

Richard Wilkie wrote a book on the Lord's Prayer. In it, he described how
Dr. Albert Schweitzer loved to play Bach on the organ. In fact, even while
he was serving as a surgeon in the steamy jungles of Africa, he was still
known throughout the world for his musicianship. He loved music, but he
loved people more.

One evening, as one of the nurses was preparing to leave, he stood at the
gang plank preparing to bid her goodbye.

As he took her hand he said, "Before you go, I want to recall an incident
that happened several months ago. One night, you took a sick baby into your
own bedroom so that you could care for it even as you slept. All through the
night I heard cries coming from your room. Finally, in the wee hours of the
morning, the tone in the baby's cry changed. Immediately I knew that the
fever had broken and that the child would get better. I'm supposed to be
something of a musician but I want you to know that was the most beautiful
music I've ever heard."

Schweitzer sought for excellence as a musician but he also sought for
excellence in loving human beings. That would be a lofty goal, wouldn't it
- to be the most loving human being in our community? To be the most
trustworthy? To be the most generous?

The call to follow Christ is the call to set lofty goals.

King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com

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She Thinks That I Am Real

A story is told of a family that went into a restaurant. The waitress walked
up and, looking at the young boy, said: What will it be? The boy eagerly
shouted back: "I'll take a hamburger, French fries, and a chocolate shake."
The mother immediately interrupted: Oh, that's not what he wants. "He'll
take the roast beef, a baked potato, and a glass of milk." Much to the
surprise of both the mother and the boy, the waitress completely ignored her
and again asked the boy: "And what do you want on that hamburger?" The boy
shouted back, "ketchup, lots of ketchup." "And what kind of shake?"  "Make
it chocolate." The boy then turned to his parents with a big smile on his
face and said: "Say, ain't she something.
She thinks that I'm real!"

Well, let me give you fair warning. If you once, just once, start really
hearing people they are suddenly going to become real to you.

Staff, www.eSermons.com

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The Sermon Title

Generations of preachers at Princeton Seminary were schooled in their
homiletical skills by Dr. Donald Macleod. Among the points Dr. Macleod would
make during the semester was the importance of choosing a compelling sermon
title. In fact, he asked students to give their sermon title before
beginning each sermon.

He used to tell of Mrs. O'Leary who would hop on the Fifth Avenue bus on
Sunday morning in Manhattan and pass the great churches along that
thoroughfare. As the bus would approach each church, she would eye the sign
in front with the sermon title and decided, on the basis of what she read,
whether to get off the bus and attend that church. Dr. Macleod's constant
refrain was, "Pick a title that will make Mrs. O'Leary get off the bus."

Mindful of that instruction, one of his aspiring preachers mounted the
pulpit one morning for his first student sermon...
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The conclusion to this illustration and many additional illustrations and
sermons for Proper 18 can be accessed at www.Sermons.com.