[Propertalk] Fwd: Sermon Resources for July 22 - Part 2

[Joe Parrish]

With or Without People?
 
A second grader once asked his teacher how much the earth weighed. The teacher looked up the answer in an Encyclopedia. "Six thousand million, million tons," she answered. The little boy thought for a minute and then asked, "Is that with or without people?" Viewed from one perspective, it might very well seem that people don't really matter very much. After all, we are but microscopic inhabitants of a tiny planet orbiting a relatively obscure star in a small galaxy among the billions and billions of stars and galaxies that make up creation. Yet the God of creation has counted the very hairs of our heads. Wow! What a magnificent picture of God.
 
King Duncan, The Love of a Father, www.Sermons.com
 
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Effective Teaching
 
Robert Frost's first assignment for a class of teachers was to read "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." This was Mark Twain's famous story about a frog that lost a jumping contest because he had been pumped full of quail shot. When the class next assembled they were mystified because they did not understand what this story had to do with a course in education.

Frost patiently explained to them that this particular story was about teachers. He said that there were two kinds of teachers. There was the kind that filled you with so much quail shot that you could not move and the kind that gave you a little prod on the behind so that you could jump to the skies.
 
Gary W. Houston, Cowherding Christians, CSS Publishing Company 
 
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Your Mission, Should You Accept It
 
I played in the high school band before the days of flag corps, rifle drill teams and dance routines. Everything depended on the band and its abilities and talents in playing and marching. Every week we had to learn an entire new set of songs, to go with our new marching formations to be performed at half time of the football games. We all received our instructions early in the week and then practiced them until we got them right. They were not always easy: count time, play the music, step out on the appropriate measure and move exactly eight steps every five yards. As long as everyone followed their set of instructions, the maneuvers on the field were correct and the trombones did not run into the clarinets. Of course, if you missed a beat, or turned the wrong way, you could, as I did on one occasion, end up at one end of the field while the rest of the band was at the other. It's not easy trying to convi nce everyone that you were right and the other 64 were wrong!

The disciples are called to march, to move out with a special mission in the world. Matthew heard those moving words as addressed not only to him but to all who would join the movement in the years to come. There is about them an echo of the old television program "Mission: Impossible!" I can hear the words coming through: "Your mission, Matthew, should you decide to accept it…."
 
Larry M. Goodpaster, Like a Breath of Fresh Air, CSS Publishing Company
 
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The Importance of Rooftops in Jesus' Day
 
Rooftops were places of great activity in Bible times. The high, open, flat surfaces were perfect for winnowing chaff from grain, drying fruit, storing grain, nuts, and fruit, and sun-bleaching laundry.
 
Rooftops were also household gathering places because so much work was done there, and they were sleeping places on the hot nights of summer.
 
But rooftops, because of their height, their openness, and frequent assemblies of people, rooftops were great places from which to shout the news.
 
Staff, www.Sermons.com
 
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Lord Jesus, teach me to be generous,
teach me to serve you as you deserve,
to give and not to count the cost,
to fight and not heed the wounds,
to toil and not to seek for rest,
to labor and not to seek reward,
except that of knowing that I do your will.
 
St. Ignatius of Loyola
 
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The Work of the Righteous
 
In his book, Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman recounts a story of an American soldier inVietnam. His platoon was hunkered down in the rice paddies locked into the heat of a firefight with the Vietcong.
 
The rice fields in Vietnam are often separated by an earthen beam, and on this day, a line of six Buddhist monks started walking along the elevated beam separating the field where the American soldiers lay hugging the ground and the field where the Vietcong were also crouched in battle. 
 
The monks walked directly toward the line of fire, calmly and steadily. They did not look to the left or to the right, they just kept walking. The soldier reported, "It was really strange because nobody shot at 'em. And after they walked over the beam, suddenly all the fight was out of me. It just didn't feel like I wanted to do this anymore, at least not that day. It must have been that way for everybody, because everybody quit. We just stopped fighting."
 
Of course, I cannot say what any of us are called to do right now. I can only say that anyone who chooses to walk with God may well be completely out of step with the expectations of the office, the neighborhood or the family. Sometimes, it seems, God's people are called to walk right through the field of fire, faithfully, sacrificially, loyally, doing what we have been called to do.
 
Roger Ray, When God Won't Be Nice
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Do Not Call It Sacrifice
 
A couple, visiting in Korea, saw a father and his son working in a rice paddy. The old man guided the heavy plow as the boy pulled it.
 
"I guess they must be very poor," the man said to the missionary who was the couple’s guide and interpreter.
 
"Yes," replied the missionary. "That’s the family of Chi Nevi. When the church was built, they were eager to give something to it, but they had no money. So they sold their ox and gave the money to the church. This spring they are pulling the plow themselves."
 
After a long silence, the woman said, "That was a real sacrifice."
 
The missionary responded…
 
Many additional illustrations, sermons, and commentary for Proper 7 Sunday, the Pentecost Season and for each week of the year can be accessed at www.Sermons.com.
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