[Propertalk] Fw: Sermon Points - Luke 13:1-9 - Part 5

[Joe Parrish]

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From: Joe Parrish 
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Sent: Sunday, March 07, 2010 1:05 AM
Subject: Sermon Points - Luke 13:1-9 - Part 5


We moderns (and postmoderns) are also adept at externalizing. In addition, our contemporary affection for the adequacy of causal explanations escalates our use of diversionary tactics. Jesus, however, twice brings the judgment home by employing first-order discourse: "unless you repent you will all likewise perish" (13:3, 5).

http://www2.luthersem.edu/word&world/Archives/12-1_Luke-Acts/12-1_Simpson.pdf

Gary M. Simpson
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"It's my punishment," she said, "for smoking these damned cigarettes. God couldn't get my attention any other way, so he made my baby sick." Then she started crying so hard that what she said next came out like a siren: "Now I'm supposed to stop, but I can't stop. I'm going to kill my own child!"
This was hard for me to hear. I decided to forego reflective listening and concentrate on remedial theology instead. "I don't believe in a God like that," I said. "The God I know wouldn't do something like that." The only problem with my response was that it messed with the mother's worldview at the very moment she needed it most. 

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=641

Barbara Brown Taylor, 1998
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In the little Georgia country church of my childhood, there was a story the older folks loved to tell again and again, laughing over it and savoring it and embellishing it. The tale involved a certain Sunday night in October 1938. Evening prayer services were in full swing when a man named Sam, a member of the congregation who lived down the road from the church, charged into the prayer meeting trembling with fear and excitement. Finally gaining the breath to speak, he shouted, "Martians are attacking the earth in spaceships! Some of 'em have already landed in New Jersey!" The preacher halted in mid-sentence; the congregation stared at Sam blankly. "I s-s-swear," he stammered, now a little unsure of his footing. "I h-h-heard it on the radio."
What Sam had heard, of course, was Orson Welles's now infamous Mercury Theater radio production of War of the Worlds, but no one in the congregation was aware of that at the moment. For all they knew, the world outside was coming to a flaming end. The little flock looked apprehensively at the preacher, but he was mute and indecisive, never having had a sermon disrupted by interplanetary invasion. Finally one of the oldest members of the congregation, a red-clay farmer of modest education, stood up, gripped the pew in front of him with his large, callused hands, and said, "I 'speck what Sam says ain't completely true, but if it is true, we're in the right place here in church. Let's go on with the meetin'." And so they did.

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No one bothered to tell them that the patients in the back ward were abandoned cases, so they visited them regularly, bringing flowers, fresh baked cookies, prayer, cheerfulness and mercy. Before long, some of the patients began to respond, a few of them even becoming healthy enough to move to other wards. 

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2165

Thomas G. Long., 2001
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Jesus' reply is shocking. One would expect that Jesus would at least lash out against Pilate and call down curses on such a cruel man. But no such venomous vindictiveness is pronounced against Pilate. Instead, the tables are turned against the reporters: "unless you repent, you will all perish." 
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...this view is reflected in John 9:2 where Jesus came across a blind man and the disciples asked Jesus whose sin it was that resulted in him being born blind. Jesus rejected that view when he replied, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him." 

http://www.cresourcei.org/lectionary/YearC/Clent3nt.html

Jirair Tashjian
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"Why?" we ask. "Why did this happen to them? Why did this happen to me?" Probably for no good reason. Bad and good things happen all the time. As Willimon rightly argues, the notion that only good things happen to good people was put to rest when Jesus was put upon the cross. The more crucial question is, in all circumstances of joy and pain, can you trust God to be God? Can you love God without linking such love to the good or bad things that come your way in life? 

http://day1.org/1758-beyond_whats_fair

Robert Dunham
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