[Propertalk] Fwd: Sermon Resources for June 15 - Sermons for Trinity Sunday - Sermons.com - Part 2

[Joe Parrish]

Fw:


Sermons.com - Part 2

 
The Image of the Father
 
Thomas Troeger, a Presbyterian pastor and gifted preacher, tells a story of an experience he had once. He wrote:

“One day several years ago I was in a department store buying myself a new shirt when a complete stranger walked up to me and said, ‘You must be Henry Troeger's son.’

"I looked at this person and I said, ‘I don't believe I have ever seen you.’

"He said, ‘Oh, no, you have never met me at all, but a long time ago I worked with your father. I was a close colleague of his and when I saw you across the aisle of the store, I said to myself, `I'd know that face anywhere.' You are the very image of your father.’

"For several weeks after that, I would sometimes be going down the street, and maybe come around a corner, and catch my reflection in a store window. I started to see myself with the eyes of someone else. It is not like looking into the mirror in the morning. I would come around the corner, catch that reflection and I would think, ‘That's Henry Troeger.’ All of a sudden I would be seeing how I bore the image of my father.”

And so it is with us.

Each one of us is created with the image of God indelibly imprinted on our souls, so that, in some miraculous and inexplicable way, the diverse expressions of God that are you and you and me all come together to illustrate the mystery, to live together in community as we do our best to display for the world all the possibilities that the divine imprint on all of us could mean.

Amy Butler, A Curious Community
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Tertullian on the Trinity
 
Tertullian, one of the theologians of the early church, explained the Trinity in a metaphor. God the Father he described as "a deep root, the Son as the shoot that breaks forth into the world, and the Spirit as that which spreads beauty and fragrance."
 
Brett Blair, www.Sermons.com
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"To try to deny the Trinity endangers your salvation, to try to comprehend the Trinity endangers your sanity."
 
Martin Luther
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Who, Me?
 
Unfortunately, most of us act like the out-of shape, overweight man who decided to take up tennis. He took lessons from a pro. He read several self-help books which advised him to "think positively" and "develop a winning attitude."


A friend asked him how his tennis was going. With a positive, winning attitude in his voice, the man replied, "When my opponent hits the ball to me, my brain immediately barks out a command to my body: 'Race up to the net.' Then, it says, 'Slam a blistering shot to a far corner of the court. Then immediately jump back into position and return the next volley to the other far corner of the court.' And then my body says, 'Who, me?'"
 
I'd be willing to bet, if we could go back in time, that the first words out of the mouths of all the Disciples after Jesus spoke these words were the same: "Who, me?" You have to remember that the events of this passage actually took place before Pentecost and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. But the question is still pertinent. "Who, me?"
 
Billy D. Strayhorn, Go!
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“Feeling Like…”
 
I rather like the story Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick once related from his own childhood days. His father had said to his mother, upon leaving the house one Saturday in the morning hours: “Tell Harry that he can cut the grass today, if he feels like it.”
 
Then, halfway down the walk, his father turned once more to add: “And tell Harry that he had better feel like it.”
 
Well, in its own rather humorous way, there is something essential about life wrapped up in that. For there is a difference between knowing we are supposed to do something, and ‘feeling like” doing it. There is a difference between a sense of obligation and a sense of generosity. There is a difference between obedience and desire. And the one of those weighs us down, while the other lifts us up.
Christianity says to us, you do not know God, if you know Him only as a sense of authority over your life. Furthermore, you do not know God, if you merely believe intellectually that God is a God who cares and loves.
 
You do not know God somehow at all, unless the same spirit of His authority and His love captivates you from within, so that you live knowing the spirit of it for yourself. You do not know God, unless all this that we have been saying about Him becomes for you your own way of life and not an obligation imposed on you by the Church, or by the fear of death, or by anything else.
 
Paul van Dine, Not the Nature, But the Character of God – Trinity!, Cathedral Publishers.
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Safely through the Storm
 
Max Lucado tells the story about the time he was sailing with his son and a church friend of the coast of Miami. They were having a leisurely cruise and the weather was perfect. But out of nowhere a storm appeared. The sky darkened, the rained started and the ocean became violent. Max was terrified and looked at his friend Milt for help.

Milt was deliberate and decisive. He told the men exactly where to sit and gave them specific instructions. Last he said, "just hang on." They did what he said. Why? Because Milt was the only skilled sailor on board and knew exactly what to do in a storm. Until then Max could have boasted about his merit badge in sailing that he had received in the boy scouts. But, that was no comparison to a real storm on the high seas. He had no choice but to trust in Milt’s directions…
 
Many additional illustrations, sermons, and commentary for Trinity Sunday and for each week of the year can be accessed at www.Sermons.com. 
 
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