[Propertalk] Fwd: Sermon Resources for October 28 - Part 1

[Joe Parrish]

Sermons for Proper 25 
Mark 10:46-52 - "Lord, I Want to See"
Hebrews 7:23-28 - "From Self-Help to God-Trust” by Leonard Sweet
 
Mark 10, the sermon title “Lord, I Want to See” 
 
Keller, so brave and inspiring to us in her deafness and blindness, once wrote a magazine article entitled: "Three days to see." In that article she outlined what things she would like to see if she were granted just three days of sight. It was a powerful, thought provoking article. On the first day she said she wanted to see friends. Day two she would spend seeing nature. The third day she would spend in her home city of New York watching the busy city and the workday of the present. She concluded it with these words: "I who am blind can give one hint to those who see: Use your eyes as if tomorrow you were stricken blind.'
 
As bad as blindness is in the 21st century, however, it was so much worse in Jesus' day. Today a blind person at least has the hope of living a useful life with proper training. Some of the most skilled and creative people in our society are blind. But in first century Palestine blindness meant that you would be subjected to abject poverty. You would be reduced to begging for a living. You lived at the mercy and the generosity of others. Unless your particular kind of blindness was self-correcting, there was no hope whatsoever for a cure. The skills that were necessary were still centuries beyond the medical knowledge of the day.
 
Little wonder then that one of the signs of the coming of the Messiah was that the blind should receive their sight…
 
The rest of this sermon can be obtained by joining http://www.sermons.com/signup 
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Hebrews 7, the sermon titled “From Self-Help to God-Trust” by Leonard Sweet   
 
It is always the longest, most solidly stocked stacks in any bookstore — the “self help” nonfiction section. Maybe it’s a holdover from the old American adage of “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps.” We’ll use some “self-help” suggestions offered by others only as long as we get to pick and choose what kind of help we’ll consider acceptable, only as long as we are still ultimately in charge of the direction and duration that the “help” we seek takes. 
 
 “Self help” books, whether they are focused on helping us learn to navigate the tax code, or the web, or an emotional “web” brought on by an illness or unemployment, a death or depression, still let us selectively embrace the advice they offer. We can avoid some topics, or even skip whole chapters, if we find them too challenging or uncomfortable. “Self help” manuals let us selectively focus on only those parts of our self that we want to prune and preen.
 
If truth be told, every civilization has had some form of “self-help,” even if they didn’t have the same concept of “self” that we do. What moral improvement literature was to the 19th century, self-help books are today…
 
The rest of this sermon can be obtained by joining http://www.sermons.com/signup 
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I Heard My Brother Crying
 
Some years ago in a small village in the Midwest, a little twelve-year old girl named Terri was babysitting her little brother. Terri walked outside to check the mail. As she turned back from the mailbox, she couldn't believe her eyes. The house was on fire. So very quickly the little house was enveloped in flames. 

Terri ran as fast as she could into the flaming house only to find her baby brother trapped by a burning rafter which had fallen and pinned him to the floor. Hurriedly, Terri worked to free her brother. She had trouble getting him loose as the flames were dancing around their heads. Finally, she freed him. She picked him up and quickly took him outside and revived him just as the roof of the house caved in. 

By this time, firemen were on the scene and the neighbors had gathered outside the smoldering remains of the house. The neighbors had been too frightened to go inside or to do anything to help, and they were tremendously impressed with the courage of the twelve-year old girl. They congratulated her for her heroic efforts and said, "Terri, you are so very brave. Weren't you scared? What were you thinking about when you ran into the burning house?" I love Terri's answer. She said, "I wasn't thinking about anything. I just heard my little brother crying." 

Let me ask you something? How long has it been? How long has it been since you heard your brother or sister crying? How long has it been since you stopped and did something about it? 

James W. Moore, Collected Sermons, ChristianGlobe Networks, Inc. 
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Humor: The Most Difficult Case

Two psychiatrists were talking and one asked the other, "What was your most difficult case?"

His colleague answered, "Once I had a patient who lived in a pure fantasy world. He believed that a wildly rich uncle in South America was going to leave him a fortune. All day long he waited for a make-believe letter to arrive from a fictitious attorney. He never went out or did anything. He just sat around and waited."

"What was the result?" asked the first psychiatrist.

"Well, it was an eight-year struggle but I finally cured him. And then that stupid letter arrived..."

Some people are afraid to open their eyes. And some just keep their eyes closed no matter what. 

Billy D. Strayhorn, From the Pulpit, CSS Publishing Company, Inc.


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