[Propertalk] Fwd: Sermon.com Resources for August 12 - Part 1

Tue Aug 7 10:42:55 EDT 2012

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Dear Friends,

A few weeks ago I asked for help. I asked for this community, which I have served for 14 years, to give. It's the first time I have done so in all this time. The response was abysmal. My wife's parents suffered the loss of their home in the Colorado fires. They lost everything in their home. I would like to be direct this time. The campaign will end in a week. We are far from our goal. I know that everyone in this community can give at least $10 each.

Please go the links below to help. They have no idea this is being done for them and I would like them to see that the Christian community can give profoundly in a time of need. Help us give them a wonderful surprise. 

I have set up a website to make contributions. Please go to:
www.indiegogo.com/thayerfund  

In addition to your financial support please share on twitter and Facebook this link: http://igg.me/p/149866  

Many Thanks,

Brett Blair

If you wish to send a word of encouragement to my wife: cyndi at clergy.net

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Aug 12, 2012

Sermons for Proper 14 

John 6:35, 41-51 - "Jesus: Liar, Lunatic, Legend, or Lord?"
Ephesians 4:25-5:2 - "Tinctures of Truth in the Tincture of Time" by Leonard Sweet

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John 6, the sermon title "Jesus: Liar, Lunatic, Legend, or Lord?"  

Before we read the text for this morning I am going to ask you to do something a little different. I want you to listen to the reading not with a heart of faith but with a skeptical mind. If it helps, imagine that you do not know that Jesus is anything else but a teacher. You are a first century person who has just been introduced to him. [Read John 6:35, 41-51]

Pretty incredible isn't it? For someone to make such claims. What if, later today, you were introduced to someone and that someone said, "Hi, I am the bread that has came down from heaven." You would look at your friend who just introduced you to this person and you would say, "I'm sorry, what did he just say?" Anyone who seriously made such claims would easily be labeled a kook, a nut, certifiable...

The rest of this sermon can be obtained by joining http://www.sermons.com/signup
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Our lectionary reading from Ephesians this morning offers a healing ointment to a church that is sick and in need of salve, a word from which we drive our word "salvation." 

This morning I have before me some salves I grew up with: a bottle of iodine, a bottle of merthiolate, a bottle of mercurochrome. [It will not be easy to find these except by asking some of your older members if they still have any samples in their medicine chests.]

Here are their replacements today: bacitracin, neosporin. [These will be easy to find.] 

We don't have either mercurochrome or merthiolate because both these compounds contained mercury, one mercury and bromine (Mercurochrome) and the other mercury and sodium (merthiolate). The FDA has decided that things with mercury in them were not good for you, which sounds about right to me. But why you can have mercury in your mouth through tooth fillings, or mercury in your home through fluorescent bulbs, and not in anti-bacterial medicines and antiseptics is a mystery to me. 

But let's see this morning how many of you remember being tortured by your parents with the germ-killing sting of a tincture of iodine or a tincture of merthiolate. Raise your hand. . . . My parents never used mercurochrome because it didn't sting, and thus it couldn't possibly be working to wipe out bacteria. 

Those of you who put your hands up know that these killer fluids came in tiny brown bottles with a long glass dropper inside. [If you don't have the real thing, you will need to make sure they can picture it.] The glass dropper would hover over whatever wound was being treated, a scraped knee, a sliced toe, a de-slivered finger-tip, while the howling child (that's you) waited for that first bright red drop of medicine to hit home...

Outside of the chemistry lab, though, a "tincture" has come to be recognized as a generic term for a kind of healing, restorative tonic...

Click here: http://www.sermons.com/signup or call 1-800-777-7731 to join.
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Clothed in Human Flesh

Next to the Bible, my favorite book is Harper Lee's award-winning novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird." I love both the book and the movie. The main character, the one who tells the story, is a little girl named Jean Louise Finch, who goes by the name of Scout. Her father, Atticus Finch, is the town's lawyer and a man of deep principles and integrity. I always wanted to grow up and be like Atticus Finch. 

One day, Scout came home from school and told her father about some problems she was having with the teacher and several other students. In an effort to help her get along better with others, Atticus gave her this advice: 

"First of all, if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." 

That's exactly what Jesus did. Clothed in human flesh, Jesus felt pain as we feel pain. He suffered as we suffer. He even experienced death. Jesus climbed into our skin and walked around in it. 

Billy D. Strayhorn, Beyond Skin Deep
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Our Christian Landmarks

During World War II allied armies marched into Germany on their way to Berlin. Retreating German soldiers switched road signs and destroyed landmarks in an effort to confuse their enemy. And, to an extent, it worked, for many a G.I. followed a false marker only to end up in the wrong place. That just goes to show the need for landmarks, the importance of reliable signposts by which to steer. 

Here locally, landmarks like the courthouse, the river, the college, or the bridge are important in helping us find our bearings. Why, if some villain came in one night and removed our signposts, the next day would become a bewildering jumble of uncertainties, and we'd all be lost. 

The text is about landmarks. It refers to the Jewish custom of setting boundary stones to mark out property. Just as we do today, so our Hebrew forefathers did then. Wells, fords, buildings, and stone sentinels were their guides. Hence the strict law: "Remove not the ancient landmark which your fathers have set." 

We live in a day of rapid change, and this law is being grossly ignored. Our history is being bulldozed to clear the way for development. Some professors are twisting the guideposts in the minds and hearts of our students. Traditions are forgotten, manners ignored. The result is a kind of chaos -- social confusion and rootless individualism. We live in a society that's lost its bearings and is adrift on a sea of change. 

The Lord's Table is a landmark. For nearly 2,000 years Christians have been gathering to eat this meal. And, for all, it can be the means of getting one's bearings.

Stephen M. Crotts, Sermons for Sundays after Pentecost, CSS Publishing 
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