[Propertalk] Fwd: [More] Sermon Resource for December 30

[Joe Parrish]

Christ in the Temple
 
There is a famous oil painting called "Christ Teaching in The Temple." The painting gets it wrong. It comes from an era when religious people were still uneasy with the notion that Jesus was like the rest of us. In this picture he is standing in the midst of the elders looking very wise, obviously delivering a lecture. He is talking and pointing and they are listening. He had, no doubt, appeared to instruct them in the law, as if he knew what they didn't. But that's not what the text says. They found him, says Luke, "listening to (the teachers) and asking them questions." He was not the authority; he was the student. He was there to listen and learn. Now it is true that the religious leaders were impressed by how much he knew, and by how he answered their questions. But there is nothing in this text which indicates he was a precocious know it all.
 
Adapted from When It Is Dark Enough, Charles H. Bayer, CSS Publishing Lima, Ohio.
 
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Truth springs from argument amongst friends.
 
Scottish philosopher David Hume
 
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Significance of Things Eternal
 
Parish ministers will tell you that people come to them speaking with regrets like these:
 
When I was young, my mother was going to read me a story, but she had to wax the bathroom floor and there wasn't time.
 
When I was young, my grandparents were going to come for Christmas, but they couldn't get someone to feed the dogs and my grandfather did not like the cold weather and besides they didn't have time.
 
When I was young, my father was going to listen to me read my essay on "What I Want To Be When I Grow Up," but there was Monday Night Football and there wasn't time.
 
When I was young, my father and I were going to go hiking in the Sierras, but at the last minute he had to fertilize the lawn and there wasn't time.
 
When I grew up and left home to be married, I was going to sit down with Mom and Dad and tell them I love them and would miss them, but my best man was honking the horn in front of my house so there wasn't time.
 
Into our hectic world, Jesus comes, and still invites us to exercise the spirit as well as the mind and the body. The best way we exercise the spirit is by giving attention to things of eternal significance, such as listening, loving, and learning from the least expected places.
 
Richard A. Wing, Deep Joy For a Shallow World, CSS Publishing Company
 
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Humor: School Is a Part of Life
 
A young woman named Donna who got good grades in high school was in her first year of college. She had done poorly on one of her courses. In an attempt to prepare her parents she wrote her mother, "If you see an unfamiliar letter on my report card, remember it's just my first initial. Signed, Donna." As the time neared for grades to be sent home, Donna began to worry. Her worst fears were confirmed one evening when her mother called her. Donna said, "Hi, Mom." Her mother replied coldly, "Hello, Frank." 

School is part of life. For the Christian there are two kinds of education. There is education at school and on the job. And there is religious education about our faith. We have just celebrated Christmas. Unfortunately, we don't know much about the next few years in Jesus' life. We can imagine he lived in a home filled with love. We can imagine as a boy he worked with his father Joseph in the carpenter shop, learning a trade although Jesus' real vocation would surface in our lesson for today.

King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com
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Growing Up Fast
 
Kids grow up awfully fast these days. It seems like one minute you are trying to encourage your child to go faster on his bicycle, to get up enough speed to stay balanced, and the next you are pleading with the same boy now at the wheel of a car, pleading with him to slow down and live. One minute you're urging a shy daughter to say hello to strangers, and the very next, you're trying to discourage her from responding to strangers on the Internet.

Jesus is growing up fast too. Here we are, less than a week from Christmas, from the baby lying in a manger. Now Jesus is already an adolescent wandering off on his own. Last week Jesus was "prophecy miraculously fulfilled." This week he is questioning the teachers of that very tradition.

The classical confessions of the church hold that Jesus is "fully human, fully God," and in today's familiar story from Luke, we can see both sides. Jesus, fully human, is growing up as all mortals must. In the process, Jesus has scared his parents half to death as all teen-agers do. Jesus is asking questions, as should we all, and he is listening to learn, as all we must. And in this story, we see the twelve-year old Jesus fully divine with everyone amazed at his understanding and his answers. We hear Jesus declaring his unique relationship with God the Father as only the Son can do.
 
Sid Burgess, Question Time
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Small Things to Be Done with Great Love
 
It took me a long while to hear this truth from Mother Teresa: "There are no big deals anymore, just small things to be done with great love." 
 
Most of this coming year will be spent in ordinary time. We enter into the season on the church calendar marked as "ordinary time." What a good prophetic note for the New Year: most of the good that will be done will be done in ordinary time, when no one is looking and no one will report it to the paper. 
 
Here comes the New Year, full of ordinary time. We will enter it ready to slug it out for the common good while no one is looking. In the middle of ordinary time, God comes with extraordinary moments that make all others bearable, believable, and worthwhile. 
I have always thought that while our nation works out negotiations with other countries, like with North Korea, we only see the leaders in the news. But, if the whole story were revealed, we would see nameless people on both sides of the issue tirelessly speaking to each other through the night in order to work out an agreement. Leaders sit down and sign documents that were slugged out by unknowns in the night during ordinary time. 

Richard A. Wing, Deep Joy for a Shallow World, CSS Publishing 
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Our Children Can Teach Us
 
Some years ago in a midwestern town a little boy was born blind. His mother and father were heartsick, but they struggled with his blindness the best they could. Like all such parents, they prayed and hoped for some miracle. They wanted so much for their son to be able to see. Then one day when the little boy was 5 years old, the community doctor told them that he had heard about a surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital who was specializing in a new surgical procedure that might just work for their son… that might just give their little boy his eyesight.
 
The parents became excited at the prospect, but when they investigated further and discovered the cost of the surgery and the travel and the hospital expense involved, they became deflated because they were not people of means at all. In fact, some would call them poor. But word got out in the community and their church rallied to help them. In a short period of time, the money was raised to send them to Boston for the surgery.
 
On the morning they were to leave for Boston, the little boy gathered his things together including his tattered little teddy bear. It had an ear chewed off, was missing an eye, and was bursting at the seams. His mother said, “Son, why don’t you leave that old teddy bear at home? He’s about worn out. Maybe we can buy you a new one in Boston or when we get back.” But he said, “No, I need it.”
 
So off to Boston they went. He held tightly to that teddy bear all the way. The surgeon sensed how important the teddy bear was to the little boy, so he allowed the boy to keep the bear with him throughout all the many examinations prior to surgery. On the morning of the surgery, the hospital staff brought in two surgical gowns – one for the little boy and a smaller version for the teddy bear – and off to the operating room they went… a little blind boy on a stretcher holding on dearly to his beloved teddy bear.
 
The surgery went well. The doctor felt good about what they were able to accomplish. “I think he will be able to see,” said the surgeon, “but we won’t know for sure until we remove the bandages in a few days.”
 
Finally the day came for the doctor to remove the bandages. The nurses and interns stood with the parents as the surgeon slowly unwound the gauze from the boy’s eyes. Miracle of miracles! The little boy could see! For the first time in his life… he saw his mother’s face, he saw his dad and his doctor, he saw flowers and candy and balloons and the people who had cared for him. For the first time in his life, he saw his teddy bear. It was a joyous celebration!
 
When it came time for the boy to leave the hospital, his surgeon came into the room. The doctor had grown so attached to the little boy that he had to busy himself with those insignificant gestures that we… when we are trying to surmount a great wall of emotion. They said their good-byes with tears of joy all around… and then the doctor turned to leave. The little boy called him back…
 
The rest of this illustration, as well as many additional illustrations and sermons for this week, New Year’s, and the rest of the year can be accessed at www.Sermons.com.


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