[Propertalk] Fwd: Sermon Resources for August 15 - Part 1

[Joe Parrish]

Sermons for Proper 15: 
     Luke 12:49-56 – “Fire Falling from Heaven”  
     Hebrews 11:29 - 12:2 – “Be Square” by Leonard Sweet
 
Luke 12 - the sermon titled "Fire Falling from Heaven" 
 
Jesus spends much of the twelfth chapter of Luke reassuring and encouraging his followers in the face of possible catastrophic circumstance. "I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that can do nothing more" (v. 4). "Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life" (v. 22). "Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom" (v. 32).  The same chapter ends on a far less positive note. Rather than encouraging reassurance, Jesus says that his ministry will be very divisive. After spending 45 verses trying to quiet the anxiety of his followers, Jesus tells them that he came to bring fire to the earth. He insists that he will not bring peace. Instead, his ministry will divide families and pit individual members of households against one another. The ministry of our Lord is to rain fire from heaven!  

I suspect his first century audience understood that imagery more readily than we do. We have only a passing acquaintance with the power of fire. We see flames in the fireplace. We worry about children holding candles on Christmas Eve. We read of an occasional forest fire and hear the siren of a racing fire truck. Our fire departments are so competent that an accidental fire death makes the national news.  

Ancient people had a more intimate knowledge of fire. Their only nighttime illumination came from the flames of oil lamps. The smoke of the cooking fire on the kitchen floor constantly irritated and reddened their eyes. Everyone's fingers were callused from working household fires. Their arms and hands bore the scars from burns. Early in childhood they learned that food tasted better cooked, that flames tempered metal tools, and that the kiln's heat hardened pottery. People also knew firsthand the danger of uncontrolled fire. Homes regularly burned to the ground by an overturned lamp or a carelessly maintained kitchen fire. Well into the nineteenth century, devastating fires shaped communities. In fact, fire spurred on the next urban renewal. So, how was Jesus using the image of fire in this Gospel?  This Gospel recalls an ancient belief of fire as the manifestation of God.  Jesus is reminding us of the radical nature of his ministry and is demanding we step up to the plate.
 
1. Fire as a Manifestation of God.
2. The Radical Gospel of Jesus Christ.
3. Catching Fire for Christ.
 
The rest of this sermon following the outline above can be obtained by joining www.eSermons.com.
 
Hebrews 11 - the sermon titled “Be Square” by Leonard Sweet 
 
Every generation has its own language of “cool” from “everything’s jake” to the “cat’s pajamas” to “bees knees” to “groovy,” “fat,” “sweet” and now “ridiculous.” But even though a flash-in-the-pan pop song proclaimed “It’s Hip to Be Square,” no one has ever really aspired to being rectangular with equal sides until Nickelodeon made it “ridiculous” (now synonymous with “cool”).
 
SpongBob SquarePants was such a dorky, goofy, lovable guy, he truly made it “hip to be square” for the first time in a very long time, maybe ever.
 
But SpongeBob SquarePants wasn’t the first to make “square” mean something special.
 
Somewhere in the time period between 500-1100 in Italy, being “square” became a sign of greatness. In the fourth century “halos” first made their appearance on frescoes, mosaics, and paintings. Halos are shining ovals shimmering over the heads of celebrated religious figures. Often halos were back-lit, giving those wearing them a special spiritual sheen. But however presented, halos were incorporated into the relatively new branch of artistic creation we now call “Christian art.”
 
Round halos signified the presence of God’s glory. They depicted the anointing of the Triune God and testified to the saintliness of the haloed individual. Artists found that a halo was an easy way to point out who was important in a large crowd scene. Viewers of these paintings and mosaics could quickly figure out who to focus on, and who were background figures. Not surprisingly, emperors, kings, and people perched at the top of the economic and religious food chain began to demand that they too be given halo-power.
 
Of course, there was one other benefit the round nimbus called a halo provided. In statuary art, halos were sometimes added as a kind of protective roof over the head. In other words, the halo protected the enshrined celebrity from the ever-threatening rain of bird droppings!
 
But the “halo effect” reached forward. Instead of commemorating gods or goddesses, great rulers or the holiest figures in Christian history, artists found a way to honor and glorify those who were still living at the time their artwork was produced. 
 
Instead of a round halo, living men and women of great holiness and honor were depicted with a square halo behind their head. For example, in 820 Pope Paschal I (pope from 817 to 824) was painted with a strange-looking frame behind his head. He received the honor of a square halo. In early medieval art the square halo is found behind the head of popes and soon-to-be saints, people who were still living and whose lives radiated holiness and faithfulness with such power that it was evident to all those who met them and witnessed their work.
 
Every one of you here this morning has round halo people and square halo people…
 
The rest of Leonard Sweet's sermon can be obtained by joining www.Sermons.com
________________________
 
Without the Fire the Seeds Will Never Grow
 
Stretching south for hundreds of miles from Glacier National Park lay a majestic mixture of valleys, rushing streams, and gargantuan mountains called the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Backpackers have hiked there for decades looking for elk, grizzlies and golden eagles. Fortunately the grizzlies stay up in the high country, but a golden eagle may be spotted and the elusive wolverine may be tracked.
 
The Bob Marshall Wilderness hosts some 90,000 packers and hikers each year, most of them in the months of July and August. They must come in either by foot or horseback. No motorized vehicles are allowed. The forests on those rugged mountain slopes are thick with Lodgepole Pine, a tough, hardy tree with cones so thick that only extreme heat can burst forth the seeds. That's where fire comes in. For thousands -- oh, millions of years -- lightning has cracked the big sky out there down to the forests below. (Often the lightning will hit the Douglas Firs, less rugged than the Lodgepole Pines, and a forest fire will begin.) For years, of course, the United States Forest Service fought furiously to put out these fires. More recently, they have adopted a policy of managed fires. They have learned these fires have a purpose. Without them the seeds of the Lodgepole Pines are never released. Without them much of the underbrush and plant life there does not regenerate. The earth needs a fire cast on it or it will die.
 
Jesus, speaking to Peter, that blustery, Lodgepole Pine kind of a man, said, "Peter, I have a fire to cast over the earth, and how I am constrained until it be kindled!" What did Jesus mean? He knew that Peter, like all of his disciples, was a wilderness that needed fire or he would die. Peter needed the fire of God's Word to keep his heart from freezing over and to keep the passion of his soul from cooling down.
 
John G. Lynn, Trouble Journey, CSS Publishing
 
________________________
 
Like Fire Cast On the Earth
 
Martin Luther knew that the ice of human nature had frozen things over in his day, most especially he thought, in the heart and mind of a man named Erasmus. To that Dutch humanist Luther wrote the Word of God always puts the world in a state of tumult because it comes like fire cast on the earth. "For the Word of God comes, whenever it comes, to change and renew the world."
 
Nowhere does the fire of God's Word burn off the ice and cause tumult more than in the differences between generations, in the relationships between father and son and mother and daughter. These relationships tend to freeze over into a cool placidity where mother thinks her daughter must be just as she is, or son thinks he must be a carbon copy of dad. Not so, says the gospel. There will not be agreement between mother and daughter or father and son so much as there will be distinction; each will have a proper share of the kingdom of God. God's Word burns off the ice of mutual identification and kindles the fire of proper identity over and over again.
 
John G. Lynn, Trouble Journey, CSS Publishing. 
 
______________________
 
<>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://stsams.org/pipermail/propertalk_stsams.org/attachments/20100810/2f807941/attachment.htm>