[Propertalk] Fwd: Sermon Resources for September 9 - Part 1

Tue Sep 4 08:31:03 EDT 2012

September 9, 2012

Mark 7:31-37 - "The Man Who Couldn't Hear"
Mark 7:24-37 - "You're a Treasure" by Leonard Sweet

Mark 7, the sermon title "The Man Who Couldn't Hear"  
In ancient Greece it was customary for peddlers who walked the streets with their wares to cry out, "What do you lack?" The idea was to let people know they were in the vicinity, and also rouse the curiosity of the people. Coming out of their houses they would want to know what the peddler was selling. It might be something they lacked and needed, or simply something they desired.
What do you lack? We may have sight and hearing, but what do we lack? Take an honest inventory of yourself. Have you found contentment? Are you close enough to God to receive his guidance and strength? Have you secured peace of heart and peace of mind, invaluable assets in life? Deciding what we lack is the first step in securing it. Christ can fulfill our needs -- needs that are to some extent physical, but, more so, the deepest needs of heart, mind, and soul.
The man in Mark 7 lacked the physical ability to hear. But many of us lack the spiritual ability to hear. We suffer a kind of a spiritual deafness. The affliction of not listening to people, or, to put it another way, the affliction of physically listening to people, yet failing to comprehend, to understand, and come to grips with what they are saying, is a plague upon the Church. For, you see, it is possible to listen to a person, yet fail to really hear them...

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Mark 7, the sermon titled "You're a Treasure" by Leonard Sweet   

"I want to be alone." 

That was the famous declaration made by the early Swedish film star and glamour girl Greta Garbo (1905-1990). But it was that declaration that jinxed her search for solitude. A vast cast of has-been, over-the-hill actors and actresses struggled to stay in focus but swiftly faded out of the limelight and into obscurity. But Garbo, by her very insistence on alone-time, was hounded by media hangers-on until her death in 1990. To get a picture of Greta Garbo remained a paparazzi "holy grail" throughout her life.

We are more alone and less alone these days than ever before. Humans have always lived in communities, in tribes, in families - for protection, for food, for companionship, for love. In the twenty-first century urban living is the norm, with large populations of people gathered around a commercial/communal core. But even as we live lives more closely packed, we are more solitary. Education and economics have made it possible for more people to "make it" on their own. What for centuries had been the culturally and economically determined "norm" - to marry and produce a family in order to survive - is no longer viewed as a necessity. In America, the new norm is singledom. Half of all adults are unmarried, and 15% of those singles live by themselves. In Scandinavia it is estimated that by 2020 half of all "households" will be occupied by only one individual.

But singledom does not mean we are alone...

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Persistent Attention 

In Keeping Pace, Ernest Fitzgerald relayed the true story of a magazine company which several years ago purchased a new computer. Its function was to compile data and send out subscription notices to customers whose subscriptions had lapsed. One day something went wrong with the machine, and before the error was discovered (about a month later), a certain rancher in Colorado had received 9,374 notices that his subscription had expired. Someone in the magazine office posted the letter the company received from him. Inside was a check for one year's subscription along with a handwritten note saying: "I give up! Send me the magazine." He was won over by their consistent, persistent attention. 

That's what still wins people over to Christ. It's the consistent witness we live before them: the kindness and gentility that are consistently evident, the willingness to listen without judging and to help without expecting something in return, the smile that's always there, the warm hug or handshake that we can count on, the friendship that doesn't blow hot and cold, the faith that is evident in good times and other times, as well. We articulate Christ's presence and power most effectively not with eloquent words but rather with a steady, faithful Christian life that others can see and believe in.

Michael B. Brown, Be All That You Can Be, CSS Publishing Company

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A Model of Faith

It may come as a shock to most Christians today, but we would do better to use this woman as a model of faith even more than the disciples. After all, we are neither Jewish nor Galilean; we have no familial claim or geographical claim to Jesus.

While the woman learns that the power of faith lies internally, the disciples learn that faith can't be measured by proximity to Jesus. They are right next to the Lord and yet they see the woman as a bother. They don't lead her to Jesus or attempt to heal her daughter, her faith does that. They are too blinded by their social and religious prejudice to offer miracles to anyone.

Jesus words are obviously not meant to cut down the woman (her compassion runs too deep to care if she is insulted). The words of Christ are meant to reprimand the disciples-and us-when our politics and religious agenda blind us to compassion.

Which faith most resembles mine? Am I like the cocksure disciples steeped in religious and cultural prejudice, deeply self-assured of my proximity to Jesus? Or, am I like the outcast woman of Lebanon, indentured by compassion and uncaring of insults if I can just save one soul?

Jerry Goebel, Even the Dogs

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