[Propertalk] Fwd: Sermon Resources for February 10 - Part 2

[Joe Parrish]

Humor: It'll Come Back to You
 
This preacher moved to a new Church. This particular church didn't have a lawn mower so he was looking for someone to either mow the lawn or sell him a used lawnmower. One day he saw a young man going by pushing a lawnmower. So the preacher asked him, "Hey, looking for a job?" The young man said, "Sure." It turned out that he was mowing yards and trying to earn enough money to buy a bicycle. This preacher was kind of young and didn't mind mowing the yard so he told the young man, "Look, I've got a 10 speed bicycle that I never ride any more. What do you say we trade the bicycle for the lawnmower."
 
Well, the young man was ecstatic. They swapped and the young man took off on the bicycle. He rode around the block and came back to see the preacher standing in the same place wiping sweat off his brow. The preacher waved the boy over and said, "Hey, I've pulled on the rope a half a dozen times and this lawn mower just won't start."
 
The young man said, "Preacher, I hate to tell you this but it's a special kind of lawnmower. You have to cuss it to get it to start."
 
The preacher looked at him and said, "Well, I've been in the ministry so long I don't think I can remember how to cuss."
 
The young man grinned and said, "Pull on the rope some more and it'll come back to you."
The point is this, we ought not stay on the mountain top so long that we forget what it is like to be in the crowd. Like Peter, we shouldn't forget that our work is in the crowds.
 
Traditional 
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A Haunting Moment
 
John Killinger tells this story about a haunting moment: "Somewhere in my journals there is an entry about how strongly it hit me one day as I was sitting in the chancel of a church, waiting to deliver the guest sermon. A beautiful woman was playing a violin solo. Her lovely hands worked continuously at the frets and the bow, evoking the most soulful music I thought I had ever heard. There was a rose pinned in her exquisitely coiffed hair. I was transported.
 
"Then a dark thought crossed my mind, as if it had been a cloud passing between me and the sun. In a few years the woman would become old. The rose in her hair would die. Her soft hands would be gnarled and wrinkled by age. She would stop playing the instrument. She would be confined to a bed or a wheelchair. Then she, too, would die.
 
"The music brought me back again to a realization of how beautiful it was. But I did not recover from the image of the violinist as an old woman. It haunted me for days."
 
John Killinger, Letting God Bless You, Nashville, Abingdon, 1992, quoted in sermon by William Willimon.
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Slow Down and Listen
 
Writer Charles Swindoll once found himself with too many commitments in too few days. He got nervous and tense about it. He was snapping at his wife and children, choking down his food at mealtimes, and feeling irritated every time there was an unexpected interruption in his day. He recalls in his book "Stress Fractures" that before long, things around their home started reflecting the pattern of his hurry-up life style. He said the situation was becoming unbearable. Then it happened.
 
After supper one evening his younger daughter, Colleen wanted to tell him something important that had happened to her at school that day. She began hurriedly, "Daddy, I wanna tell you somethin' and I'll tell you really fast."
 
Suddenly realizing her frustration, Swindoll answered, "Honey, you can tell me -- and you don't have to tell me really fast. Say it slowly." He has never forgotten her answer: "Then listen slowly."
 
I can hear God's voice saying to Peter, James, and John: "This is my Son, listen to him! Slow down. Don't be so quick to move things your way, to shape the world as you see it Peter. Don't be so quick to climb the corporate ladder, to join the rat pack and be number one John. Don't try to beat your colleagues to the first position James. Slow down. My Son is trying to show you another way, another world, another kingdom. If you will listen slowly.
 
Brett Blair, www.Sermons.com.
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Figuring Out The Transfiguration
 
Madeleine L'Engle, the great Christian writer, said we tend to avoid this story for the following reason, in her words:
 
The Christian holiday which is easiest for us is Christmas, because it touches on what is familiar. The story of the young man and woman who were turned away from the inn, and had a baby in a stable, surrounded by gentle animals, is one we have known always. I doubt if many two or three-year-olds are told at their mother's knee about the Transfiguration ... And so, because the story of Christmas is part of our folklore, we pay more attention to its recognizableness than to the fact that the tiny baby in the manger contained the power which created galaxies and set the stars in their courses.
 
She concludes by saying:
 
We are not taught much about the wilder aspects of Christianity. But these are what artists have wrestled with throughout the years.
 
William G. Carter, Praying for a Whole New World, CSS Publishing Company 
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Mountain Top Experiences
 
Fred Craddock tells a wonderful story about a young minister, newly graduated from seminary, serving his very first church. He gets a call telling him that a church member, elderly woman who has just given her life to the church, is in the hospital. She's so weak she can't even get up out of bed, and the doctors don't hold much hope for her recovery. Would he go up and visit? Well, of course he will and he does.
 
All the way to the hospital he's thinking about what he will say to this Christian lady, what words of comfort he can give her to prepare her for her eminent death. He arrives at the hospital, goes up to her room for the visit. He sits and talks with her a few minutes, just small talk really, nothing earth shattering. When he makes ready to leave, he asks if she would like him to have prayer with her. She answers, "Yes, of course. That's why I wanted you to come."
He then asks politely, "And what exactly would you like me to pray for?"
 
"Why, I want you to pray that God will heal me," she answers in a surprised tone of voice.
Haltingly, fumbling over the words, he prays just as she wanted, that God will heal her, even though he's not really sure that can happen. When he says the "Amen" at the end of the prayer, the woman says...
 
The rest of this illustration and many additional illustrations and sermons for this week, Lent and Easter, can be accessed at www.Sermons.com. 
 
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