[Propertalk] Fw: Sermon Resources for May 2 - Part 1

[Joe Parrish]

Sermons for Easter 5:

     John 13:31-35 – “Love One Another” 
     Revelation 21:1-6 – “Time to Get Wet” by Leonard Sweet

John 13, the sermon titled “Love One Another" 

A junior high music teacher had just organized a band in her school. The principal was so proud of the music teacher's efforts that without consulting her he decided that the band should give a concert for the entire school. The music teacher wasn't so sure her young musicians were ready to give a concert, so she tried to talk the principal out of holding the concert, to no avail. Just before the concert was ready to begin, as the music teacher stood on the podium, she leaned forward and whispered to her nervous musicians, "If you're not sure of your part, just pretend to play." And with that, she stepped back, lifted her baton and with a great flourish brought it down. Lo and behold, nothing happened! The band brought forth a resounding silence.

Sometimes we in the church are like that junior high band, unsure of our parts, tentative in our roles, reluctant to trumpet forth the music of faith that God desires of us. And that's because we have trouble deciding what's most important.

An incident a couple of summers ago in San Antonio, Texas, illustrates what I'm talking about. It was a hot, 99-degree August day when a ten-month-old baby girl was accidentally locked in a parked car by her aunt. Frantically the mother and the aunt ran around the auto in near hysteria, while a neighbor attempted to unlock the car with a clothes hanger. The infant was bawling at the top of its lungs, beginning to turn purple and foam from the mouth, a combination of anxiety and the intense heat inside the car.

It had quickly become a life-and-death situation when Fred Arriola, a tow-truck driver, arrived on the scene. He grabbed a hammer from his truck and smashed the back side window of the car to free the baby. Was he heralded a hero? Not so. According to an article in the San Antonio Tribune, he is quoted as saying, "The lady was mad at me because I broke the window. I just thought, 'What's more important -- a baby or a window?' "

Most of the choices we make in life are not between what is trivial and what is important. Rather, most of the choices we make are usually between what is important and what is more important. This morning's Gospel reading is so timely for us because it shows us what is most important.

1. The Greatest Blessing We Have is God’s Love
2. Our Love in Action
3. May God Help Us Love

The rest of this sermon following the outline above can be obtained by joining www.Sermons.com.

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Revelation 21, the sermon titled "Time to Get Wet"]

The governor of Washington state just signed a new series of "sin taxes" into effect. The items being taxed include the usual suspects: tobacco products and beer (though NOT beer produced by micro-breweries). But there is a new sinful category: you can now add "snack food" to the roster of iniquity. 

But the most anticipated money raiser for the state is the "sin tax" on -- are you ready for this? -- bottled water. From now on if you want to indulge in guzzling a bottle of H2O, it’s going to cost you. Just over the state line in Idaho, eager shop owners are creating water bottle pyramids next to their cartons of Camels, anticipating a stream of thirsty Washingtonians.

Every savvy entrepreneur knows that water is a sure fire way to attract people. Is there any mall in America that doesn’t have a fountain or a pool full of pennies in it somewhere? Hotel lobbies, office complexes, libraries, county courthouses, all spurt water, inviting people in and making them feel welcome. Can you find a doctor's office nowadays without an aquarium? 

Human beings crave closeness to water. That's why most of the earth's population hugs the shorelines of its continents. Maybe it is because we are made almost entirely of water. Maybe it is because we started our life in water, living in it and breathing it for our first nine months of life. Maybe it is because almost none of us get the recommended daily 60-70 ounces of water we need to be optimally hydrated, so that whether we recognize it or not, our bodies are constantly thirsty.

Water is life. Disney's Earth Day release of "Oceans," a 103 minute special breathtaking in every way, reminded us that we live on the only blue planet in the galaxy and it is that azure which animates us. Is it any wonder then that, in this week’s text from Revelation when John receives his vision of "the new heaven and the new earth," the first thing God does is to offer water to all who are thirsty? And because this is the beginning of a new creation, a new living relationship, whole and healed, between all the peoples of the world and God, this can only be called "living water."

Living water comes freely and fully from God…

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

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Loving as Jesus Loved Us

Some years back neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote a fascinating vignette of an intriguing neurological difficulty. As some of you know, Tourette's Syndrome is a bizarre mental disorder that causes victims to have any number of physical and verbal tics. Some Tourettic people have constant facial twitches, others find themselves uncontrollably uttering verbal whoops, beeps, and sometimes also raunchy swear words. One man with Tourette's whom Dr. Sacks knew was given to deep, lunging bows toward the ground, a few verbal shouts, and also an obsessive-compulsive type adjusting and readjusting of his glasses. The kicker is that the man is a skilled surgeon! Somehow and for some unknown reason, when he dons mask and gown and enters the operating room, all of his tics disappear for the duration of the surgery. He loses himself in that role and he does so totally. When the surgery is finished, he returns to his odd quirks of glasses adjustment, shouts, and bows.
 
Sacks did not make any spiritual comments on this, of course, yet I find this doctor a very intriguing example of what it can mean to "lose yourself" in a role. There really can be a great transformation of your life when you are focused on just one thing--focused to the point that bad traits disappear even as the performing of normal tasks becomes all the more meaningful and remarkable.
 
Something like that is our Christian goal as we travel with Jesus. Our desire is to love one another—to love the whole world finally, I suppose—as Jesus loved us. To do that, we need an infusion of a kind of love that does not arise naturally from the context of the world as we know it. So as we lose ourselves in Jesus and in being his disciples, we find even our ordinary day-to-day activities infused with deep meaning as a love from another place fills our hearts. Because if sacredness happens to us at all, it happens among the pots and pans of the everyday and not just on Sundays when we feel particularly jolted by worship or on Tuesdays when we volunteer for some service project (vital though those things are, too). If we are to love as Jesus loved us, this becomes for us a daily reality that is possible if and only when the love of Christ fills us to the brim.
 
Scott Hoezee, Comments and Observations
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